INTERVIEW: Ex-UN rights rapporteur on Argentina’s Rohingya genocide case

RFA
RFA Burmese
2024.05.06

‘All these legal cases help to reinforce the universal idea that we should not accept genocide.

UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea, Tomas Ojea Quintana attends a news conference after delivering his report before the Human Right Council on March 9, 2020, in Geneva.(Fabrice Coffrini/AFP) 

In an interview with Radio Free Asia’s Ye Kaung Myint Maung, international human rights attorney Tomas Ojea Quintana spoke about a case filed in a court in Argentina in 2019 that alleges genocide and crimes against humanity committed by senior Myanmar officials against Rohingya Muslims.

5 European nations and Canada seek to join genocide case against Myanmar at top UN court

abc News
MIKE CORDER Associated Press
November 16, 2023, 

Five European nations and Canada are seeking to join a case brought by Gambia at the United Nations’ highest court accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against its Rohingya minority.


THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Five European countries and Canada are seeking to join a case brought by Gambia at the United Nations' highest court that accuses Myanmar of committing genocide against its Rohingya minority.

The International Court of Justice said Thursday that Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK had joined with Canada in filing a “declaration of intervention in the case.” The Maldives filed a separate declaration.

Efforts to bring justice to Rohingya must be accelerated, ICC chief prosecutor says

CNN
By Helen Regan and Su Myat Mon,
Fri July 7, 2023

(CNN)The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor told CNN Friday that efforts to bring justice for the Rohingya must be accelerated and the world cannot look away from the ongoing crisis.

Chief prosecutor Karim Khan visited Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, for four days this week to hear testimony from survivors of alleged genocide by Myanmar’s military against its Rohingya population.

“There is heartbreak in these camps,” Khan said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “They feel the world is looking elsewhere, is looking at Ukraine (and) other epicenters. And they have a right to justice.”

More than 700,000 people have been living in squalid and overcrowded refugee camps in Bangladesh since fleeing attacks in Myanmar’s Rakhine state that began in August 2017.

Rapes and massacres detailed in Rohingya genocide case against Myanmar authorities

RFA
By Carlos G. Hamann, special for RFA
2023.06.13

Argentine case, under ‘universal jurisdiction,’ aims to hold leaders accountable

Roshida Begum, 22, shows where the Myanmar military slit her throat, Dec. 1, 2017 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. “The military took me and 5 other women into a house and raped us. After they were done, they slit our necks with machetes. They thought I was dead and they left and set the house on fire. I was the only one who escaped." She fled from Tula Toli village in Myanmar to Bangladesh shortly after the Aug. 25, 2017, attack.  Credit: Allison Joyce/Getty Image

 

Women gang raped, children stabbed and killed, men shot and burned to death.

The criminal complaint of genocide by Myanmar’s armed forces against the Muslim Rohingya minority includes detailed accounts of stomach-churning atrocities.

Myanmar Junta Reorganizes Legal Team for ICJ Rohingya Genocide Case

The Irrawaddy
24 June 2021

Regime Foreign Minister U Wunna Maung Lwin

The Myanmar military regime has organized a new legal team led by its foreign minister, U Wunna Maung Lwin, to present the defense in the Rohingya genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague.

The regime’s order restructuring the committee, which was previously led by detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was announced in a bulletin published by the Myanmar Gazette on Thursday.

The panel has eight members. Among them are two former military officers—U Wunna Maung Lwin, who will serve as chairman; and the regime’s planning, finance and industry minister, U Win Shein—and two serving lieutenant generals: Yar Pyae and Adjutant General Myo Zaw Thein.

Rohingya genocide case against Myanmar: West's failure to support the Gambia surprising, if not shocking

Dhaka Tribune
Humayun Kabir Bhuiyan
December 29th, 2019

File photo: A house is seen on fire in Gawduthar village, Maungdaw township, in the north of Rakhine state, Myanmar September 7, 2017Reuters

So far, only Canada and the Netherlands have openly supported the African Nation

On November 11, the Gambia, the tiniest nation in Africa with a Muslim majority, filed a case with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Myanmar, alleging violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in connection with the Rohingyas.

Aung San Suu Kyi Slammed for Army Defense in Myanmar Genocide Case

THE I DIPLOMAT
By Aleks Furtula and Lorne Cook
December 13, 2019

The Nobel Peace laureate was blasted by opposing lawyers for defending the Myanmar army’s conduct in Rakhine state.

Lawyers seeking to halt what they allege is ongoing genocide in Myanmar have slammed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s defense of her country’s armed forces, saying Thursday that the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former pro-democracy icon chose to ignore “unspeakable” crimes targeting Muslim civilians.

The United Nations’ top court is conducting emergency legal proceedings to determine if military personnel committed genocide against Myanmar’s Rohingya minority in 2017. The African nation of Gambia, acting on behalf of a large group of Muslim countries, requested the International Court of Justice hearings and alleges that human rights violations against the Rohingya continue.