US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says Myanmar's military operation against the Rohingya population amounts to "ethnic cleansing" and says targeted sanctions against those responsible will be considered.
UN Human Rights chief Zeid Ra-al Al Hussein has described the military's actions as a textbook case of "ethnic cleansing" but Tillerson left Myanmar after a visit last week without using the label.
His statement on Wednesday, referring to "horrendous atrocities" in Myanmar, made it clear the US' stance on the crisis has shifted.
The shift also coincided with UN envoy Pramila Patten saying atrocities against Rohingya Muslim women and girls by Myanmar's military may also amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.
Patten has met with many Rohingya victims of sexual violence in Bangladesh camps and says she supports Al Hussein's assessment that Rohingya have been victims of "ethnic cleansing."
Patten told a news conference on Wednesday that the widespread use of sexual violence "was clearly a driver and push factor" for more than 620,000 Rohingya to flee Myanmar. It was "also a calculated tool of terror aimed at the extermination and removal of the Rohingya as a group," she added.
Tillerson said after a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state consitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.
"These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering and forced hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to flee their homes in Burma to seek refuge in Bangladesh," Tillerson said.
Myanmar's government has denied committing any atrocities as has its military.
Buddhist-majority Myanmar, led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, doesn't recognise the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, leaving them stateless.
The recent spasm of violence began when Rohingya insurgents launched a series of attacks on August 25. Myanmar security forces then began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the UN and human rights groups have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
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