THE HAGUE (AP) – An international case accusing Myanmar of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority returns to the United Nations’ highest court Monday amid questions over whether the country’s military rulers should even be allowed to represent the Southeast Asian nation.
Four days of public hearings at the International Court of Justice start Monday into Myanmar’s preliminary objections to the case that was brought by Gambia, an African nation acting on behalf of an organization of Muslim nations that accuses Myanmar of genocide in its crackdown on the Rohingya.
In August 2017, Myanmar’s military launched a lethal campaign in Rakhine state in the country’s west claiming it was in response to an attack by a Rohingya group. The campaign forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh and led to accusations that security forces committed mass rapes and killings and burned thousands of homes.
Gambia says the campaign amounted to a breach of the genocide convention and wants the court to hold the country responsible.
The figurehead who led Myanmar’s legal team in court last time there were public hearings in the case — the nation’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi — is in prison after being convicted.
The Myanmarese government Aung San Suu Kyi supported the military crackdown against the Rohingya Muslims. She even traveled to The Hague in December 2019 to defend the military atrocities against the Rohingya people at the UN’s top court.
“This is a shameful double-whammy. Myanmar is being represented at the ICJ by people sanctioned for gross human rights abuses and violating the rule of law,” said Chris Gunness, director of the Myanmar Accountability Project. “But in any case, this illegal junta should not be representing Myanmar.”
“What’s really important here is that ... if it is the junta that’s in court, this is not something that should be taken to confer legitimacy on the junta,” said Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center.
At public hearings in late 2019, lawyers representing Gambia showed judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos to detail a campaign of murder, rape and destruction amounting to genocide perpetrated by Myanmar’s military against Muslims.
That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.
Almost 900,000 Rohingya refugees remain stuck in squalid, crowded conditions in refugee camps in Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar.
Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as citizens, saying they are nationals of Bangladesh, which in turn, says they are natives of Myanmar.