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Myanmar’s Suu Kyi told to ‘stop the genocide’ in UN court showdown
THE HAGUE, Dec 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi
faced calls for Myanmar to “stop the genocide” of Rohingya Muslims as she
personally led her country’s defence at the UN’s top court on Tuesday.
Suu Kyi, whose silence about the plight of the Rohingya has tarnished her
reputation as a rights icon, sat through graphic accounts of murder and rape
in the wood-panelled courtroom in The Hague.
Rights groups have criticised her decision to represent Myanmar at the
International Court of Justice against accusations by the west African state
of The Gambia that it has breached the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Around 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh after a bloody
crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017 that UN investigators have already
described as genocide.
“This is very much a dispute between Gambia and Myanmar,” Gambian Justice
Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told the judges of the court, which was set up in
1946 to resolve disputes between UN member states.
“All that The Gambia asks is that you 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.”
Tambadou, a former prosecutor at the tribunal into the Rwanda’s 1994
genocide, said Myanmar’s military operation involved “mass murder, mass rape
and mass torture, children being burned alive in their homes and places of
worship.”
The Gambia is seeking emergency measures to prevent further harm to the
Rohingya, pending a wider case at the ICJ which could take years.
– ‘We stand with you!’ –
Suu Kyi listened to accounts by The Gambia’s lawyers of Rohingya victims,
including a mother whose one-year-old son was beaten to death and an eight-
month-pregnant woman who was stamped on and then repeatedly raped.
Wearing traditional Burmese dress, the 74-year-old did not speak to waiting
media after arriving at the court’s turreted Peace Palace headquarters in a
motorcade with a police escort.
A group of some 50 pro-Rohingya protesters gathered outside the gates of
the ICJ for the hearing, carrying banners saying: ‘Say yes to Rohingya,
justice delayed is justice denied” and “Stop Burma military attack Rohingya.”
“Today is the start for our right to justice,” said Mohammed Harun, 49, who
travelled from London for the hearings. “It’s international justice day for
Rohingya,” he told AFP.
A small group of Suu Kyi supporters also unfurled a banner outside the
court with the Myanmar leader’s face on it saying: ” We love you, we stand
with you!”
“Suu Kyi is the only person who can solve this problem,” supporter Swe Swe
Aye, 47, told AFP.
“We are not denying that the Rohingya people suffered, but we are denying,
like Suu Kyi, that there was a genocide in Myanmar.”
Thousands of people have also turned out in Suu Kyi’s support in Myanmar in
recent weeks since she announced that she would personally lead the southeast
Asian nation’s case at the court.
– ‘I demand justice’ –
Suu Kyi is set to speak in Myanmar’s defence on Wednesday. She is expected
to argue that Myanmar was conducting legitimate operations against Rohingya
militants and that the ICJ has no jurisdiction in the case.
The 74-year-old was once mentioned in the same breath as Nelson Mandela and
Mahatma Gandhi, having won the Nobel in 1991 for her resistance to Myanmar’s
brutal junta.
After 15 years under house arrest she was freed in 2010 and led her party
to victory in elections in 2015, but her defence of the same generals who
once kept her locked up has since caused international condemnation.
The case is also being watched in Bangladesh where the Rohingya remain in
sprawling camps.
“I demand justice from the world,” said Nur Karima, a Rohingya refugee
whose brothers and grandparents were killed in a massacre in the village of
Tula Toli in August 2017.
ICJ judges have only once before ruled that genocide was committed, in the
1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia.
Myanmar, however, faces a number of legal challenges over the fate of the
Rohingya, including a probe by the International Criminal Court — a separate
war crimes tribunal in The Hague — and a lawsuit in Argentina.
BSS/AFP/RY/1730 hrs