Aung San Suu Kyi will answer for Myanmar’s Rohingya genocide at The Hague
- Myanmar is accused of systematic rape, torture and murder of thousands of Rohingya Muslims that forced more than 740,000 people to flee to Bangladesh
- On Tuesday, the International Court of Justice will begin hearings on only the third genocide case it has heard since World War II
Suu Kyi in her capacity as state counsellor will lead a team to defend Myanmar against the accusations largely directed at the same military apparatus that for 14 years kept her under house arrest until her release in 2010. The decision to appear before the court comes despite overwhelming evidence of guilt, while Suu Kyi herself is accused by UN investigators of “complicity” in the atrocities.
The trial marks a low point for the reputation of a democracy icon who during her political rise in Myanmar’s 2015 elections was often compared to the likes of Nelson Mandela.
“It’s hard to think of figure in modern history who’s public perception has fallen so sharply,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and former senior director for Southeast Asia at the US Chamber of Commerce.
Filed in November by the small Muslim-majority African nation of Gambia, the case argues Myanmar is in violation of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide after security forces engaged in widespread “clearance operations” in Rohingya villages that began in earnest in August 2017. Myanmar has been a member of the convention since 1956.
Since then, international organisations have withdrawn a number of accolades from Suu Kyi including the US Holocaust Museum’s Elie Weisel award and Edinburgh’s Freedom of the City award. The latest came in November when Amnesty International withdrew its most prestigious human rights award, calling out Suu Kyi by saying, “you no longer represent a symbol of hope, courage, and the undying defence of human rights”.