MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th January, 2020) A prominent human rights group, in a comment to Sputnik, welcomed the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) ruling obliging Myanmar to protect the Rohingya Muslim minority from genocide.
Earlier in the day, the ICJ ordered the country to use all possible measures to prevent acts that constitute genocide per Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. They include murder, torture, inflicting negative conditions, forcibly limiting births and taking children from their parents committed with the purpose of destruction of religious, racial, ethnic and national groups. Myanmar was also ordered to preserve evidence related to the genocide allegations and provide the ICJ with regular reports on its measures to protect the Rohingya population.
"This was a slam dunk victory for human rights and justice for the Rohingya. The ICJ granted everything the plaintiffs sought and more, in terms of ending genocidal abuses against the Rohingya, preserving evidence, and binding the government and military to comply," Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said.
Robertson expressed hope that the measures ordered by the ICJ would play a crucial role in the lives of an estimated 600,000 Rohingya, who still reside in Myanmar's Rakhine state despite the 2017 exodus.
"Many of them are locked down in internally displaced persons camps, with strict controls on their freedom of movement, restrictions on livelihoods, and discrimination that prevents access to basic services like food, health and education. Those restrictions will have to end as part of Myanmar's compliance with the orders," Robertson said.
Robertson added that Myanmar's compliance with the ICJ orders depended on whether the international community would pressure them to do it.
"The UN Security Council, UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council all have important roles to play going forward to ensure Myanmar does not slip when it comes to following these orders," he said.
According to UN figures, more than 700,000 Rohingya have either fled Myanmar or have been driven out of the country to neighboring Bangladesh due to hostilities that erupted when the government launched an offensive in Rakhine in response to an attack on security forces' posts in August 2017. The United Nations called the situation a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing."
In 2018, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar issued a report saying there were grounds to believe that the Myanmar leadership had committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. On November 11, 2019, the Republic of The Gambia initiated proceedings at the UN-backed ICJ against Myanmar accusing it of engaging in atrocities on a massive scale against the Rohingya Muslims.
Earlier this week, Myanmar's Independent Commission of Enquiry said that it had found no "genocidal intent" in the authorities' actions in the Rakhine state during the security operations that forced numerous Rohingya to flee the state. However, they admitted that war crimes and human rights violations had occurred during security operations in August and September 2017.
