The United States said Monday it has determined Myanmar's military committed "genocide" against the Rohingya ethnic minority, hoping to add more pressure on the junta that has seized control of the Southeast Asian country following last year's coup.

"Beyond the Holocaust, the United States has concluded that genocide was committed seven times. Today marks the eighth," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said as he announced the designation, describing the atrocities against the mainly Muslim minority as "widespread and systematic."

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said at a press conference later in the day, "Our view is that shining a light on the crimes of (the) Burmese military will increase international pressure, make it harder for them to commit further abuses."

Burma is the former name of Myanmar.

Human rights advocates, meanwhile, called on the United States and other countries to impose tougher economic sanctions on the Myanmar junta.

"The U.S. government should couple its condemnations of Myanmar's military with action," said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmar's generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences."

The determination that Myanmar forces committed "genocide and crimes against humanity" was reached after reviewing detailed documentation compiled by human rights organizations and other impartial sources as well as through the government's own fact-finding efforts, Blinken said at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

In a 2017 military campaign against the Rohingya, mostly living in Myanmar's western Rakhine State, over 9,000 were killed and more than 740,000 forced to seek refuge in Bangladesh. In the previous year, the violence forced nearly 100,000 to flee to its South Asian neighbor.

The evidence "points to a clear intent behind these mass atrocities -- the intent to destroy Rohingya, in whole or in part," Blinken said, noting that the population suffered the razing of villages, killing, rape, torture and other abuses.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group with rights as citizens. Instead, they are branded as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

Myanmar was at the time ruled by a civilian government that was overthrown in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup.

Under a U.N. convention, genocide includes actions such as killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, or imposing measures to prevent births, committed with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group."

While the latest U.S. recognition of genocide is focused on the Rohingya, Blinken noted that the Myanmar military for decades has committed killings, rape and other atrocities against members of other ethnic and religious minority groups.

The military leaders who overthrew Myanmar's democratically elected government in the coup are the same leaders who led the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017, according to Blinken.

"Since the coup, we've seen the Burmese military use many of the same tactics, only now the military is targeting anyone it sees as opposing or undermining its repressive rule: student protestors, pro-democracy activists, striking workers, journalists, health workers," the top U.S. diplomat said.

The administration of President Joe Biden has said the Chinese government's crackdown on its Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region amounted to "genocide," adhering to the position taken by the previous administration of Donald Trump.

In 2016, under the administration of Trump's predecessor Barack Obama, the United States declared the Islamic State extremist group had committed genocide against religious minorities in areas under its control, including Christians and Shiite Muslims.