Porimol Palma

Denial of citizenship to Rohingyas and their systematic deprivation and violation of basic rights by the Myanmar authorities over the decades were not mentioned by any of the lawyers at the ICJ -- making their arguments of genocidal intent weak, analysts said.

“Genocidal intent was not only in 2016 or 2017 in the military crackdown against the Rohingya. Myanmar took up a genocidal policy since 1962. It was a slow genocide that found its momentum in 2017,” said former ambassador Munshi

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Agencies

Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi defended her government from accusations of genocide against the Rohingya community at the United Nation’s top court yesterday, calling the allegations “incomplete and misleading.”

Addressing the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at the Peace Palace in the Netherlands, the Nobel Peace Prize winner said “genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis” regarding the Myanmar military’s operations in Rakhine State in the summer of 2017.

More than 740,000 Rohingyas fled into neighbouring Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017 during the ensuing violence. Survivors have recounted harrowing atrocities including gang-rape, mass killings, torture and widespread destruction of property at the hands of the Myanmar army.

The violence has been described as

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“Genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis.”

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

“Multiple independent agencies and experts, as well as Rohingya themselves, have documented mass killings, widespread rape, and wholesale destruction of land and property intentionally inflicted on innocent civilians. The government has discriminated against the Rohingya for decades. This is genocide and it’s precisely what the Genocide Convention set out to prevent.”

AKILA RADHAKRISHNAN, GLOBAL JUSTICE CENTRE PRESIDENT

Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi speaks on the second day of hearings in a case filed by Gambia against Myanmar alleging genocide against the minority Rohingya population at the International Court of Justice in The Hague yesterday.