Yangon
A government-appointed panel estab-lished in Myanmar to probe allegations of abuses in Rakhine state in 2017 that drew global outrage, said on Monday they have found no evidence of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim mi-nority. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Rakhine state during weeks of brutal violence, which the United Nations says gang rapes and mass killings were car-ried out with “geno-cidal intent”. Hundreds of villages were burned to the ground and later razed and scraped. Although the panel ac-knowledged “war crimes” had taken place, rights groups and Rohingya leaders dismissed the report as a “whitewash” days ahead of an expected ruling by the UN’s highest court on a genocide case against the country. –AP
