THE HAGUE: The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) said on Wednesday ( Nov 27 ) he would seek an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity in the alleged persecution of the Rohingya, a mainly Muslim minority.
Myanmar’s ruling junta said in a speech to Reuters that the country was never a member of the court and that it does not accept its claims.
A million Rohingya fled, most to neighbouring Bangladesh, to avoid a Myanmar military rude launched in August 2017, a plan that United Nations prosecutors have described as a textbook case of ethnic cleansing.
Men, officers, and Buddhist inhabitants are alleged by UN investigators to include razed hundreds of villages in Myanmar’s rural northern Rakhine state, torturing residents as they fled, carrying out large killings and gang-rapes.
Myanmar has denied the allegations, saying security forces were carrying out reputable businesses against militants who attacked police posts.
Most migrants today live in squalor in camps in Bangladesh.
” He [Min Aung Hlaing ] is responsible for orchestrating the holocaust against the stupid Rohingya folks,” said Mohammed Zubair, a Rohingya scientist living in a Bangladeshi immigrant station. ” Under his order, the military killed thousands of Rohingya and subjected many women and girls to brutal deeds of sexual assault. “
Seeking a warrant for” the person who holds the highest military status in Myanmar sends a strong message to offenders that no one stands above the laws,” said Nicholas Koumjian, mind of the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which assisted the ICC investigation.
A board of three judges may then decide if they agree there are “reasonable grounds” to think Min Aung Hlaing bears legal responsibility for the repatriation and persecution of Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
There is no fixed time frame for their selection but it usually takes around three weeks to act on a permit.
The ICC attorney’s move comes as his department faces powerful political backlash from Washington, among people, over its arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his original defence chief Yoav Gallant.
The attorney’s office said it was seeking the warrant after broad, separate and independent studies. More applications for arrest warrants relating to Myanmar will follow, it added.
Myanmar is not a member of the treaty-based ICC, but in 2018 and 2019 rulings judges said the court had jurisdiction over alleged cross-border crimes that partially took place in neighbouring ICC member Bangladesh, and said prosecutors could open a formal investigation.
” This is the first application for an arrest warrant against a high-level Myanmar government official that my Office is filing. More will follow,” the ICC prosecutor’s statement said.