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.''
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
Darling of democracy
Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar's assassinated founding father Aung San, returned to her home country in the late 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.
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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. Aris, seen here displaying an honorary doctorate awarded to his wife, died in 1999.
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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 Malaysian actor Michelle Yeoh. Suu Kyi was often called the world's most famous political prisoner.
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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. After general elections in 2015, she became the country's de facto civilian leader, although officially she held the post of foreign minister and state counselor — a role akin to prime minister.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
Persecution of the Rohingya
Rohingya, a mostly Muslim ethnic group, had their citizenship revoked by Myanmar's Buddhist-majority government in 1982. Long persecuted, their plight intensified in 2016 when Myanmar's military began what it called "clearance" of illegal immigrants. Groups such as Human Rights Watch have described it as "ethnic cleansing." Thousands have died, and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
Fall from grace
When she became state counselor in 2016, Suu Kyi set up a commission to investigate claims of atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine state. Suu Kyi accused the Rohingya of spreading "a huge iceberg of misinformation," and said she was concerned by the "terrorist threat" posed by extremists. Her stance sparked protests in Muslim-majority countries around the world.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
Nobel no more?
Due to her handling of the Rohingya crisis, Suu Kyi was stripped of various honors and lost much of her international support. 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 said that outsiders could not grasp the complexities of the situation.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
A controversial election
In 2020, Myanmar's ruling National League for Democracy party won the November 8 general election, with enough seats to form the next government. However, the military's proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development party, claimed fraud and demanded a new election supervised by the military. With that came comments alluding to a possible coup. Supporters of the party also marched in protest.
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Aung San Suu Kyi: From freedom fighter to pariah
Military detains Suu Kyi
Myanmar's civilian leader, along with several of her political allies, were detained in an early morning raid on February 1, 2021 led by the military. The move came amid escalating tensions between the civilian government and army, which had been in control for decades.The junta claimed electoral fraud, announced a yearlong state of emergency and named a former general as acting president.
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)
