Why Sri Lanka And Cambodia Shouldn’t Support Myanmar Junta’s Defense In Rohingya Genocide Case At ICJ? – OpEd

eurasiareview

Parvej Siddique Bhuiyan*
February 17, 2022

Rohingya refugees. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

Following the military-led “clearance operation” that forced 750,000 Rohingya to flee neighboring Bangladesh, Gambia, a West African nation, in November 2019, brought a case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing Myanmar of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In response to the court’s unanimously indicated legally binding provisional measures to protect the Rohingya from further atrocities, on January 2021, the then NLD government filed a preliminary objections to the jurisdiction of the Court and the admissibility of the Application. In this context, the ICJ recently announced that it will hold a fresh round of hearings from Feb. 21–28 in the Great Hall of Justice in which the regime’s leaders will be potential defendants, sparking speculation that the Court is implicitly taking a position in the ongoing civil war and legitimizing the unrecognized military regime. It is worth noting that the Junta-formed State Administrative Council (SAC) and the National Unity Government (NUG) have been struggling for recognition from the international community since the coup d’état in February 2021.

ေဖ့စ္ဘုတ္ကို ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္မ်ား တရားစြဲမႈ အလား အလာ

VOA
ဗီြအိုေအၿမန္မာပိုင္း
ဝင္းမင္း
11 ဒီဇင္ဘာ၊ 2021  

ဘဂၤလားေဒ့ရွ္ႏုိင္ငံ ကုတုပေလာင္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းတြင္းမွ ႐ုိဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္မ်ား။ (ဧၿပီ ၁၊ ၂၀၂၀)

႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြအေပၚ အၾကမ္းဖက္တဲ့အထိ အမုန္းတရားေတြ ျပန႔္ပြားေစတဲ့ ေရးသားေဖာ္ျပမႈေတြ၊ သတင္း မွား ေတြကို ေဖ့စ္ဘုတ္က ထိထိေရာက္ေရာက္ အေရးယူ မကိုင္တြယ္ခဲ့ဘူးလို႔ စြပ္စြဲၿပီး ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာ ဒုကၡသည္ေတြက Meta ကုမၸဏီကို ေဒၚလာ ၁၅၀ ဘီလ်ံ ေလ်ာ္ေၾကးေပးဖို႔ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုမွာ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့ တနလၤာေန႔က တရားစြဲတင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီစြဲဆိုမႈေၾကာင့္ လူအေျမာက္အျမား ေသဆုံးခဲ့တဲ့ ျဖစ္ရပ္အေပၚ နည္းပညာကုမၸဏီႀကီး တခုအတြက္ နာမည္ဆိုး က်န္ခဲ့လိမ့္မယ္လို႔ ၿဗိတိန္အေျခစိုက္ ျမန္မာ႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာမ်ားအဖြဲ႔ ဥကၠ႒ ဦးထြန္းခင္က ေျပာပါတယ္။ ကိုဝင္းမင္းက ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္း တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။

Rohingya genocide: Facebook faces massive $200 bn legal action in UK, US

Ahamedabad Mirror
06-12-2021

Rohingya genocide: Facebook faces massive $200 bn legal action in UK, US 

 

Lawyers in the UK and the US on Monday initiated coordinated legal campaigns against Facebook, now known as Meta, on behalf of Rohingya Muslims for its alleged role in facilitating the genocide perpetrated by the Myanmar regime and extremist civilians against the Rohingya people.  

 

According to the lawyers, Facebook contributed to the 2017 genocide of Rohingya Muslims by allowing hate speech against the persecuted minority to be propagated in Myanmar. The United Nations had described the violence as "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing".

Argentina's justice system to probe Myanmar war crimes claims

Buenos Aires Times

29th November 2021

Argentina's justice system will investigate allegations of war crimes committed by the Myanmar military against that country's Rohingya minority under a court ruling upholding the principles of universal jurisdiction.

TUN KHIN, PRESIDENT OF THE BURMESE ROHINGYA ORGANISATION UK, PREPARES TO GIVE TESTIMONY. | TWITTER.COM/TUNKHIN80

Argentina's justice system will investigate allegations of war crimes committed by the Myanmar military against that country's Rohingya minority under a court ruling upholding the principles of universal jurisdiction.

The appeals court decision, which AFP has seen, overturns a lower court ruling rejecting a request for an investigation by the Britain-based Burmese Rohingya Organisation (BROUK).

Argentine court to hear Myanmar Rohingya genocide case

FINANCIAL TIMES
John Reed, south-east Asia correspondent
28TH NOVEMBER 2021

Matter brought under universal jurisdiction allowing grave crimes to be tried anywhere

Rohingya refugees protest before the UNHCR office in Jakarta this month against the Myanmar military’s crackdown © BAGUS INDAHONO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Argentina’s judiciary has agreed to open a genocide case brought by Rohingya victims of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military, in a move hailed by victims and their advocates as a historic step toward bringing the country’s ruling generals to justice.

 The case was brought in Buenos Aires by a UK-based Rohingya group and six female survivors of the military’s 2017 crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where security forces killed thousands, committed rapes and drove about 750,000 members of the long-persecuted minority into Bangladesh.

The Rohingyas Inside Myanmar's Genocide by ( Novel Peace Price Winner Dr Muhammed Younus ) Azeem Ibrahim

Myanmar's Rohingya Genocide Identity History and Speech by Ronan Lee

The Rohingya's Quest for International Justice

THE WIRE
ANAYLIS

Saumya Uma
30/AUG/2021

This is the third in a series of articles on the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute creating the ICC entered into force on July 1, 2002 and the court is now in its 20th year. To mark the occasion, The Wire is publishing a series of articles evaluating its performance over the past two decades. Read the first part here and the second part here.

The situation faced by the Rohingya is once again in the spotlight with the Bangladesh government reportedly commencing the COVID vaccination drive for Rohingya refugees on one hand and the Indian government terming them “a threat to national security” on the other. Last month, the Human Rights Watch minced no words in asking the Indian government to release the detained asylum seekers.

Rohingya to give first testimony in push for Myanmar army probe

THE STRAITS TIMES
17 August 2021

A photo from Sept 10, 2017, showing a Rohingya refugee pulling a child as they walk to the shore in Shah Porir Dwip, Bangladesh.PHOTO: REUTERS

YANGON (AFP) - Rohingya refugees expelled from Myanmar in a bloody crackdown are to testify in court for the first time on Tuesday (Aug 17) to urge a full judicial investigation into allegations of war crimes committed against them.

A military campaign in Myanmar in 2017 is believed to have killed thousands and forced some 750,000 members of the Muslim minority group to flee to refugee camps in Bangladesh, bringing accounts of rape, murder and arson.

The witnesses will testify remotely to a court in Argentina, which is considering invoking the principle of "universal jurisdiction" to bring a case against Myanmar's leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity. The legal premise holds that some acts - including war crimes and crimes against humanity - are so horrific they are not specific to one nation and can be tried anywhere.

China, Myanmar named in US genocide report

UCA News

UCA News reporter
Published: July 14, 2021

Report highlights China's treatment of Uyghurs and Myanmar military's ethnic cleansing and post-coup atrocities

Protesters gather outside the Belgian parliament in Brussels on July 8 as MPs vote on a resolution to recognize China's policies towards Uyghurs as genocide. (Photo: AFP)

China, which has been accused of ill treatment of its Uyghur minority, and its neighbor and ally Myanmar, which faces allegations of ethnic cleansing, have been named in a new US genocide report.

The State Department’s annual report to Congress on countries where there is risk of atrocities being committed named China and Myanmar along with Eritrea, Syria and South Sudan.

U.S. Repeats 'Genocide' Accusations Against China

Radio Free Europe
Radio Liberty
RFE/RL

July 12, 2021

Uyghurs and others pray in the Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region during a government-organized trip for foreign journalists in April.

The United States has repeated genocide allegations against China over its treatment of Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and members of Xinjiang's other indigenous, mostly Muslim, ethnic groups.

The message came alongside additional sanctions warnings against Burma, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and South Sudan over ethnic cleansing in their respective conflicts.

All were contained in materials sent by the Biden administration as part of the State Department's annual report to Congress on the prevention of genocides and atrocities.

ERASING THE EELAM VICTORY Part 21 A

Lankaweb
KAMALIKA PIERIS
July 8th, 2021

The word genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 for the killing of Jews in World War II. Genocide was first recognized as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly (A/RES/96-I). It was codified as an independent crime in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948. Sri Lanka signed the Convention in 1950. .The International Criminal Court (est. 2002) which is specifically mandated to judge crimes of Genocide uses the definition given in the UN Convention.

The international legal definition of the crime of Genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention. There must be a proven intent on the part of perpetrators to physically destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. Also action must be taken to carry out the intent. A crime must include elements, intent and action, to be called “genocide.” If the government is to be blamed, it must be a part of state policy.

Rohingya genocide case at ICJ: Myanmar military regime organises new legal team

The Daily Star

Digital Report
June 26, 2021

Armed police confront protesters on the streets of Naypyitaw, Myanmar’s capital, on Monday, February 8. Photo: AP

The Myanmar military regime has organised 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).

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

Junta forms new legal team to face Rohingya genocide allegations at ICJ

Coconuts Yangon

Jun 25, 2021 

Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin at the UN Assembly’s 70th annual General Debate. Photo: UN News

Myanmar junta’s military council has set up a legal team to defend itself against allegations of genocide of Rohingya Muslims at the International Criminal Court (ICJ) on July 23.

Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin, appointed by the military council, chaired the meeting. Attorney General of the Union Daw Thida Oo has been appointed as the Vice-Chairperson.

On the Rohingya genocide

THE NATON
Shakoh Zulqurnain
September 09, 2020

The persecution of Rohingyas in Myanmar is an issue which has attracted little attention at the international level. The low visibility of this issue reveals not only the double standards of the international community, but also brings into question the effectiveness of human rights laws. More than a million Rohingya refugees commemorated the third anniversary of the genocide on August 25 in crowded camps in Bangladesh. Rohingya Muslims are one of the most persecuted communities in the world and have been observing this day as the ‘Rohingya Genocide Remembrance Day’ since it was the same day in 2017 that the Myanmar army began a vicious crackdown on Rohingya civilians—forcing thousands to seek refuge in neighbouring countries. However, the story of the Rohingyas’ persecution dates back to many decades.

Why the US Should Recognize the Rohingya Genocide The Biden administration has a chance to reasse

THE I DIPLOMAT
Michael P. Scharf, Paul R. Williams, and Milena Sterio
June 01, 2021

The Biden administration has a chance to reassert the United States’ moral authority on human rights.

Justice delayed is justice denied. As lawyers who have advised nearly every international criminal and hybrid tribunal, as well as over two dozen peace negotiations around the world, we have seen firsthand the consequences of ignoring atrocities in the name of preserving peace or alliances.

 

Minara Begum, 22, in her shelter at Balukhali

refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 5, 2018.

Credit: UN Women/Allison Joyce

The Biden administration is faced with an historic opportunity. By labeling the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s Rakhine State as genocide, the Biden administration has a chance to reassert the United States’ moral authority on human rights and to lead the international community on issues of justice and accountability. The Biden administration should speak out firmly and clearly in favor of holding Myanmar and the individual perpetrators accountable for “the crime of all crimes.”

Genocide of Rohingya shows no sign of abating: Report

THE NATION
Anadolu

May 29, 2021

A UK-based Rohingya rights defender, the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK (BROUK), in a new report claimed “the genocide against Rohingya shows no sign of abating in Myanmar” despite the order of the UN's highest court to the Myanmar authorities for protecting the minority community.

“Since the start of 2021, at least 15 Rohingya -- including nine infants and young children -- have died as a direct result of onerous and illegal travel restrictions preventing access to medical care,” the report released on Monday said.

The release has also coincided with Myanmar’s duty to report to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), on how it is preventing genocidal acts against the minority Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

Genocide against Rohingyas not abating

The Daily Star

Diplomatic Correspondent
May 25, 2021

Says BROUK; junta leader cast doubt on return of refugees

The genocide against the Rohingyas shows no sign of abating in Myanmar, the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) said in a new briefing yesterday.

It said the Myanmar military continues to subject the Rohingyas to a vicious pattern of abuse and extortion in the Rakhine State, where Rohingyas are kept in what amounts to an open-air prison, creating intolerable living conditions.

Since the start of this year, at least 15 Rohingya, including nine infants and young children, have died as a direct result of onerous and illegal travel restrictions preventing access to medical care, said BROUK President Tun Khin in a statement.

Global Islamophobia: China, India, and Beyond

INTERNATIONAL POLICY DIGEST
Mohamed Elshekh
MAY 10, 202

State-sponsored persecution and unlawful vigilantism characterize the sociopolitical conditions of many Muslim minority communities. The French Senate’s latest proposal to ban the hijab in public settings and the ongoing exodus of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar spotlight only a few manifestations of Islamophobia in countries across the globe. The laws and rhetoric against Islam and Muslims have led to violent killings, mass migration, and even genocide. These are not merely isolated case studies of Islamophobia but global trends that need to be challenged. Governments have mobilized targeted efforts against the beliefs and practices of Muslims, effectively rejecting international standards which safeguard religious pluralism and the freedom to worship.

OPINION - Purge genocide culprits from democratic leadership: Myanmar

AA

Maung Zarni

08.05.2021

Hesitating to take stand against Rohingya genocide is costing $1B to National Unity Government and blocks its global recognition

File Photo

The author is coordinator of the UK-based Free Rohingya Coalition, general secretary of Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia, and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia

LONDON

It was excruciatingly painful for me to watch the four-minute question and answer between US Congressman Brad Sherman and Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s pro-democracy permanent representative to the UN during the virtual hearing, entitled the Unfolding Crisis in Burma hosted by US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs on May 4.