Myanmar Rohingya genocide case opens at UN’s top court
A historic lawsuit accusing Myanmar of genocide against the Muslim Rohingya minority has been filed in the United Nations supreme court.
This will be the first genocide case the International Court of Justice will hear in its entirety in more than a decade.
The outcome will have repercussions beyond Myanmar and will likely affect the genocide case South Africa filed against Israel at the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza.
Myanmar has denied genocide accusations.
“The case is likely to set critical precedents for how genocide is defined, how it can be proven, and how violations can be remedied,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the UN’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, told Reuters.
The majority-Muslim West African nation of Gambia filed a lawsuit with the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, in 2019, accusing Myanmar of committing genocide against the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority in the far western Rakhine state.
Myanmar armed forces launched an offensive in 2017 that forced at least 730,000 Rohingya from their homes into neighboring Bangladesh; Murders, gang rapes and arson were described here.
The UN investigative mission concluded that the military offensive in 2017 involved “acts of a genocidal nature”.
Speaking in The Hague before the hearings, Rohingya victims said they wanted the long-awaited trial to bring justice.
Yusuf Ali, a 52-year-old Rohingya refugee who said he was tortured by the Myanmar army, told Reuters: “We hope to get a positive result that will tell the world that Myanmar is committing genocide, that we are its victims and that we deserve justice.” he said.
Myanmar authorities rejected this report, saying the military offensive was a legitimate counter-terrorism campaign in response to attacks by Muslim militants.
At preliminary hearings of the ICJ case in 2019, Myanmar’s then-leader Aung San Suu Kyi rejected Gambia’s genocide accusations as “incomplete and misleading”.
The hearings at the ICJ will mark the first time Rohingya victims of alleged atrocities will be heard by an international court, but these hearings will be closed to the public and media for sensitivity and privacy reasons.
Hearings at the ICJ will last three weeks in total.
The ICJ is the highest court of the UN and deals with disputes between states.
Myanmar has been experiencing further turmoil since 2021, when the military overthrew the elected civilian government and violently suppressed pro-democracy protests, sparking a nationwide armed rebellion.
The country is currently holding staggered elections that have been criticized by the United Nations, some Western countries and human rights groups as not being free or fair.
