Myanmar is the most likely country in the world to experience an episode of mass killing, according to a recent risk assessment by the Early Warning Project.
The group, a project of the Holocaust Memorial Museum which predicts atrocities using statistical modeling and expert opinion, has placed the country first in a list of 162 nations.
There is a 14 per cent chance of mass killing – a targeted attack on members of a discrete group – in Myanmar, according to their research.
The country second most likely to experience an episode of mass killing is Sudan, with 8.3 per cent, followed by the Central African Republic, with 5 per cent.
“Myanmar’s risk is driven mostly by the “bad regime” theory of why mass atrocities occur, which includes factors like authoritarian rule, an exclusionary elite ideology, and state-led discrimination,” the assessment, updated late last month, says.
The group, a joint-initiative of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, also attributed the results to the ongoing Rohingya crisis.
Scores of Rohingya Muslims, members of an ethnic minority denied citizenship and said to be one of the world’s most persecuted groups, have been killed in the country since intercommunal violence broke out in 2012.
The stateless Muslims have faced discrimination for decades and are confined to dismal villages and camps across Rakhine state. Thousands have left their homes, some risking death in the hands of brutal traffickers.
On their website, the Early Warning Project cited a visit by The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center to Rakhine state where they found a “situation so tense, and so untenable, that a single spark could ignite mass violence”.
Photo / Poppy McPherson / Coconuts Yangon
