Aung San Suu Kyi in The Hague for Rohingya genocide showdown | News | DW | 10.12.2019

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Aung San Suu Kyi in The Hague for Rohingya genocide showdown

The once internationally respected leader is in The Hague to reject an accusation that the Myanmar military committed genocide. The Gambia is leading the case, asking the court to invoke emergency measures.

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi in The Hague to defend the country's military

Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared at the United Nations International Court of Justice in The Hague on Tuesday, to defend her country's military from allegations of committing genocide against the Rohingya minority. 

Suu Kyi watched the proceedings on Tuesday without any show of emotion as a legal team for Gambia detailed accounts of atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Myanmar military personnel in western Rakhine state. They are accused of committing crimes including killings, sexual violence and the destruction of tens of thousands of Muslim minority homes in the state.

Read more: Rohingya people in Myanmar: What you need to know

Acting on behalf of the 57-country Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the Gambia is asking the world court to take "all measures within its power to prevent all acts that amount to or contribute to the crime of genocide.''

  • Bangladesh Rakhine refugees

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Seeking refuge

    A series of coordinated attacks by Rohingya insurgents on Myanmar security forces in the north of Myanmar's Rakhine State triggered a crackdown by Myanmar forces that has sent a stream of Rohingya villagers fleeing to Bangladesh. About 400 people have been killed in the clashes in Buddist-majority Myanmar.

  • A Rohingya man passes a child though a barbed wire border fence

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Mass evacuation

    A Rohingya man passes a child though a barbed wire border fence on the border with Bangladesh. Myanmar accused the Rohingya insurgents of torching seven villages, one outpost, and two parts of Maungdaw town.

  • Buddhist refugees

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Buddhist refugees on their way south

    The crackdown by Myanmar forces also sparked a mass evacuation of thousands of Buddhist residents of the area. Tension has long been high between the Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists, leading to bloody rioting in 2012. Rakhine Buddhists, feeling unsafe after the upsurge in fighting, are moving south to the state's capital, Sittwe, where Buddhists are a majority and have greater security.

  • Bangladesh's border guards block the Rohingyas from crossing in

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    No entry

    Bangladeshi border guards block people from crossing. Thousands of Rohingyas have sought to flee the fighting to Bangladesh, with nearly 30,000 crossing over. Bangladesh, which is already host to more than 400,000 Rohingya said it will not accept any more refugees, despite an appeal by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres for Dhaka to allow Rohingya to seek safety.

  • Crying Rohingya in Myanmar

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Humanitarian crisis

    An aid worker with an international agency in Bangladesh reports: "What we're seeing is that many Rohingya people are sick. This is because they got stuck in the border before they could enter. It's mostly women and children." The Rohingya are denied citizenship in Myanmar and classified as illegal immigrants, despite claiming roots there that go back centuries.

  • A group of Rohingya refugees takes shelter at the Kutuupalang makeshift refugee camp

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Not welcome in Bangladesh

    A group of Rohingya refugees takes shelter at the Kutuupalang makeshift refugee camp in Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. Bangladesh's unwillingness to host more refugees became apparent in the government's plan to relocate Rohingyas to a remote island that is mostly flooded during the monsoon season.

  • Rohingya children make their way through water

    The flight of Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar to Bangladesh

    Stranded in no man's land

    Rohingya children make their way through water as they try to come to the Bangladesh side from no man's land. Tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees are believed to be stuck at the border to Bangladesh.

    Author: Nadine Berghausen


Opening its case, the Gambia's Justice Minister Aboubacarr Tambadou urged the court to "tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people.''

UN investigators have also accused the Myanmar military of undertaking mass killings and committing atrocities against Rohingya Muslims with "genocidal intent."

More than 730,000 Rohingya fled the coastal state of Rakhine after the military launched its crackdown in 2017 and were forced into squalid camps across the border in Bangladesh.

Myanmar has previously denied almost all allegations leveled against its troops.

What will Suu Kyi say?

Suu Kyi, who is leading the Myanmar delegation in her capacity as foreign minister, is expected to address the court on Wednesday and defend the actions of the Myanmar military. She will likely argue that military "clearance operations" launched in August 2017 were a legitimate counterterrorism response to attacks by Rohingya militants.

Suu Kyi defending the Myanmar military in an international court would be a remarkable scene, given that she herself spent 15 years under military-ordered house arrest.

Suu Kyi was once seen as a shining light for democracy and a global beacon of hope for human rights. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for championing democracy and rights under Myanmar's then-ruling junta. But her silence over the plight of the Rohingya has tarnished her reputation in the West.

  • a Aung San Suu Kyi greets a crowd in 2012

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Darling of democracy

    The daughter of Myanmar's assassinated founding father, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to her home country in the 1980s after studying and starting a family in England. She became a key figure in the 1988 uprisings against the country's military dictatorship. Her National League for Democracy (NLD) was victorious in 1990 elections but the government refused to honor the vote.

  • Burmese soldiers

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Military rule

    Suu Kyi spent 15 of the 21 years between 1989 and 2010 under house arrest. After 1995, the rights advocate was barred from seeing her two sons and husband, Michael Aris, even after the latter was diagnosed with cancer.

  • Michelle Yeoh in 'The Lady'

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    'The Lady'

    Suu Kyi's determination to bring democracy and human rights to her country won her international renown, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. She was so popular that in 2011 famous French director Luc Besson made a biopic of her life starring Michelle Yeoh. She was often called the world's most famous political prisoner.

  • Amtseid Suu Kyi Birma (AP)

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Sworn in as lawmaker

    Decades of campaigning finally paid off and in 2012 Suu Kyi was allowed to run in free elections. She won a seat in parliament as Myanmar began its transition away from military government. Since general elections in 2015 she has been the country's de facto civilian leader, although officially she is the foreign minister and state counsellor under President Htin Kyaw.

  • Bildergalerie Jahresrückblick 2017 International (Reuters/D. Siddiqui)

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Persecution of the Rohingya

    Rohingya are a mostly Muslim ethnic group who had their citizenship revoked by Myanmar's Buddhist-majority government in 1982. Long persecuted, their plight intensified in 2016 when the military began what it calls "clearance" of illegal immigrants - but what groups like Human Rights Watch have described as "ethnic cleansing." Thousands have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

  • Protestors burn a picture of Suu Kyi

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Fall from grace

    When she became state counsellor in 2016, Suu Kyi set up a commission to investigate claims of atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine state. Suu Kyi has accused the Rohingya of spreading "a huge iceberg of misinformation," and that she is concerned by the "terrorist threat" posed by extremists. Her stance sparked protests in Muslim-majority countries around the world.

  • Nobelpreis-Medaille (picture-alliance/dpa)

    Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah

    Nobel no more?

    Suu Kyi has been stripped of various honors and lost much of her international support due to her handling of the Rohingya crisis. The Nobel committee was forced to issue a statement saying that her peace prize could not be revoked. Fellow Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai called on Suu Kyi to "stop the violence." Suu Kyi has said that outsiders do not grasp the complexities of the situation.

    Author: Elizabeth Schumacher


In Myanmar, however, many have rallied in recent days to show support for her. Suu Kyi's decision to personally lead the country's case at the court has also proved popular at home. On Tuesday, flag-waving supporters joined rallies in support of Suu Kyi in several cities across the country, with some 2,000 people marching through Yangon and tens of thousands more in Mandalay.

"We have to stand behind her as she travels to defend our country's dignity," said 57-year-old Yangon resident Thant Zin, sporting Suu Kyi stickers on both cheeks.  

The Gambia's lawyers said the appearance of huge billboards across Myanmar in recent weeks featuring pictures of Suu Kyi with three smiling generals showed she was "in it together" with the army that once held her captive. "It can only be intended to show that they are all in it together and that Myanmar has absolutely no intention of holding its emboldened military leadership accountable," lawyer Paul Reichler told the court.

This week's proceedings, before a panel of 17 judges, will not deal with whether Myanmar is guilty of the most serious international crime, but will focus on the Gambia's request for provisional measures. A decision on that request is expected within weeks. The tribunal has no enforcement powers. Still, its rulings are final and have considerable legal weight.

Separately, the US on Tuesday imposed sanctions on four Myanmar military generals, including the commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, in the toughest action taken yet by Washington following the alleged human rights abuses against the Rohingya. The sanctions freeze any US assets held by those targeted and prohibits Americans from doing business with them.

What is genocide?

The 1948 act, signed into international law after the Nazi Holocaust, defines genocide as committing any of the following against a national, ethnic, racial or religious group:

  • Killing members of the group;
  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Punishable offenses under the treaty include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.

These current proceedings are only the third genocide case filed at the court since World War II.

sri,aw/msh (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)

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