DHAKA (THE DAILY STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - At a recent seminar on the Rohingya crisis, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen pointed out a grim yet unassailable truth: Despite condemning the atrocities committed by the Myanmar military against the Rohingyas, the international community has failed to stop selling weapons to the country, and is continuing to engage it in trade as well.

We commend the foreign minister for his candour, and express our support for his call for the imposition of economic and arms sanctions against Myanmar.

In 2017, the then UN human rights chief called Myanmar's "clearance operations" against the Rohingya community a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing." Since then, Bangladesh has provided refuge to over 700,000 Rohingyas fleeing violence and persecution in their own country.

While the international community has hurled words of condemnation at the perpetrators of this genocide and applauded Bangladesh for its humane response, their words ring hollow when considering that Myanmar has received arms worth US$2.4 billion (S$3.27 billion), including from some of our own development partners. According to a report in this daily, China, Russia, India, South Korea, North Korea, Israel, Ukraine and the Philippines are all supplying weapons to Myanmar, despite also calling for lasting solutions and peace within its borders.

It is not just that the Myanmar military, with the help of their civilian goons, have ruthlessly unleashed campaigns of violence and torture against their own citizens. It has refused to accept democratic reforms, engineered a coup to seize power over the country, violently put down pro-democracy protests, escalated its civil war with ethnic armed organisations, and is continuing to clamp down on free speech and civic spaces.

Yet, in the last four years, many developed countries' trade relations with Myanmar have only improved, and international support for Rohingya refugees has also dwindled over the years. If the world continues to give Myanmar a free pass for human rights abuses for the sake of trade, what does that say about global justice and the moral responsibility of the international community?

Effective pressure on Myanmar must involve economic and arms sanctions-simply imposing sanctions on certain military officials, or even companies, is not enough. At the same time, major regional players must also play their part to ensure that Myanmar is held accountable for its actions. It is high time that the international community took the pressure off of refugee-hosting countries like Bangladesh, and shifted the focus to the source of the problem-which, in this case, is Myanmar's military regime and their human rights abuses.

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