Rohingya Muslims fleeing a Myanmar military offensive arrived in Bangladesh on Monday with fresh accounts of violence and arson as a rights group called for sanctions and an arms embargo to stop what the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing.

The military in Myanmar, led by commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, has launched a major military operation against Rohingya civilians using the pretext of hunting down militants who attacked government buildings, including police stations on August 25.

The Myanmar military response has sent more than 410,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh, escaping what they and rights monitors say is a campaign aimed at driving out the Muslim population.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar rejects that, saying its forces are carrying out clearance operations against the insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which claimed responsibility for the August attacks and smaller raids in October.

Hundreds of refugees travelled by small boats to an island on the southernmost point of Bangladesh late on Sunday and on Monday, telling of persecution and destruction.

‘The army came and they burned our homes, they killed our people. There was a mob of Rakhine people too,’ said Usman Goni, 55, after he stepped off a boat with his seven children and wife, clutching two sticks tied in rope and a sack.

Many of the refugees have spoken of ethnic Rakhine Buddhist civilians joining the Myanmar army in its attacks. Myanmar denies that and has blamed Muslim insurgents for the violence.

Myanmar has largely sealed the area off to aid workers and reporters.

Rights groups say satellite images show about 80 smouldering Muslim villages. They have seen evidence of arson attacks on Buddhist villagers, but on a much smaller scale.

Man responsible for horrific abuses gets little condemnation

Myanmar government leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has faced a barrage of criticism from abroad for not stopping the violence.

While the world focuses on Aung San Suu Kyi, the man responsible for these horrific abuses gets little condemnation, reports the huffingtonpost.com.

The military remains in charge of security and there is little sympathy for the Rohingya in a country where the end of army rule has unleashed old animosities. The military campaign in Rakhine State has wide support.

Horrific human rights violations have been committed — executions, beheadings, people being deliberately burned alive in their homes. Even children are being deliberately targeted by the military, security forces and armed militias and mobs. It’s not surprising that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, described the military attacks against the Rohingya as a ‘textbook example of ethnic cleansing.’

But the man responsible for these horrific abuses doesn’t get mentioned in government statements or the vast majority of media articles. Min Aung Hlaing is calling the shots. Articles about Suu Kyi are exactly what he wants to see; with more focus on her and none on him, he has more freedom to carry out his ethnic cleansing campaign.

Under Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution, Suu Kyi does not have control over the army. It is independent of her civilian-led government. The army controls the police, security services, prisons, border affairs and most of the civil service, and also appoints 25 percent of the members of parliament. Because 75 percent of MPs need to vote in favour of a constitutional change, Min Aung Hlaing effectively has a veto. He leads a second government in Myanmar, one armed with guns.

Min Aung Hlaing is guilty of ethnic cleansing and under investigation for war crimes, but he is embraced by the international community. This must change.

Min Aung Hlaing should be well known and treated as a pariah by now. He leads an army with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Even before this latest military offensive, it was under investigation by the UN for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups in Myanmar. Even after reforms began, Min Aung Hlaing’s army has been engaged in domestic conflicts, most recently in Kachin State and Shan State, where his soldiers killed civilians.

Min Aung Hlaing is guilty of ethnic cleansing, he is under investigation for war crimes and crimes against humanity and he is the biggest obstacle to democratic reform in Myanmar. Nevertheless, not only is he not facing international pressure, he is embraced by the international community.

Last October, President Obama lifted most of the US sanctions specifically targeting Myanmar’s military. In Europe, the British government provides the military with training at British taxpayers’ expense. Earlier this year, Min Aung Hlaing was given red-carpet treatment by the governments of Germany and Austria. They discussed military training and took him on tours of factories supplying military equipment. He was also taken to visit suppliers of military equipment on his visit to Italy last year. The European Union even invited him to address their prestigious annual meeting of military heads of EU countries.

Every tool available — diplomatic, legal, economic — must be employed to apply maximum pressure on Min Aung Hlaing.

In Asia, Min Aung Hlaing has completed visits to India and Japan this year, even meeting prime ministers in those countries. As he began his campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, he met military heads from Vietnam and Thailand to discuss closer military ties.

The international embrace of Min Aung Hlaing, despite his record on human rights, must have played a part in his calculation that he could carry out this campaign of ethnic cleansing and get away with it. So far, he appears to have calculated correctly.

This must change. It is time his sense of impunity ended. Every tool available — diplomatic, legal, economic — must be employed to apply maximum pressure on Min Aung Hlaing. Military training and cooperation must be stopped and replaced by a policy of critical engagement. Visa bans, not red carpets, should be rolled out by the international community. Countries should impose unilateral arms embargoes until a UN-mandated global arms embargo can be negotiated. Countries with existing arms embargoes should expand those embargoes to cover supplying equipment of any kind to the military. Military-owned companies should be targeted with sanctions, taking care to avoid hurting the general population. The Security Council should refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court.

There are no shortage of options for pressuring Min Aung Hlaing to stop his campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya. All that is lacking is political will. The lives of the Rohingya and other ethnic groups and the prospects of a genuinely democratic Myanmar depend on that will being found.