Burmese resistance leaders urge Hague to deny junta legitimacy

Myanmar’s resistance leaders are pleading with the International Court of Justice in the Hague not to give legitimacy to the country’s ruling junta in a case alleging that its soldiers perpetrated genocide against Rohingya Muslims.

The ICJ will today begin four days of hearings on the claims of genocide, during the brutal displacement of more than 700,000 Rohingya, who were forced out of Myanmar into Bangladesh in 2017.

But since the first hearings two years ago, the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi has been overthrown and replaced by a military government, the same soldiers who are accused of genocide.

The question now is who will represent Myanmar in the hearings. The junta has sent its own legal team to the Hague, but Myanmar’s shadow democratic government has urged the court not to give them any standing in the case because that would imply a recognition of the junta’s legitimacy.

The National Unity Government (NUG), which is made up of opponents of the Myanmar junta in hiding or in exile, has insisted that the ICJ should deal with Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, who remains in his post despite being an outspoken critic of the junta.

 “It would set a dangerous precedent . . . to accept the military as the representative of Myanmar,” Duwa Lashi La, president of the NUG, said. “Should the ICJ accept the military, it would embolden the junta to continue and escalate its daily atrocity crimes.”

Chris Gunness of the Myanmar Accountability Project, which is gathering evidence against members of the junta, said: “Allowing the murderous military junta to represent Myanmar at the ICJ would send a terrible message to the people of Myanmar who are crying out for international justice.”

In August 2017 the Burmese security forces used the pretext of small-scale attacks by Rohingya militants to launch murderous attacks against defenceless villages which drove people into neighbouring Bangladesh.

The case in the ICJ was brought by Gambia, a West African government with a predominantly Muslim population, and supported by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, and the governments of Canada and the Netherlands.

In 2019 Suu Kyi appeared in person at the court and argued that, although Myanmar’s armed forces may have broken international law, such acts did not amount to genocide, the gravest of all international crimes.

Her efforts to defend them appalled and alienated many people who had idolised her as a champion of human rights during her long period under house arrest, before democratic elections allowed her to become the elected leader in 2016.

Some of her supporters argued that she needed to remain on good terms with the armed forces to avoid being overthrown by them. Just over a year ago, this happened anyway, and she is now on trial on multiple charges that could see her sentenced to as long as 150 years in prison.