Rohingya genocide trial begins at UN court

After nearly a decade, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s highest court, is set to begin a trial of atrocities committed against Myanmar’s religious minority Rohingya population. The crucial hearing is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. local time on Monday (January 12) at the court in The Hague, Netherlands, and will last three weeks.
According to a Reuters report, the head of the UN’s independent investigation agency in Myanmar, Nicholas Koumjian, confirmed this information. The Rohingya crisis began in July 2017, when the country’s army launched a brutal campaign against ordinary Rohingya after attacks on police and army camps in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. At that time, about a million Rohingya fled to Bangladesh, unable to escape the killings, rapes and arson by Burmese forces.
A preliminary investigation team from the UN described the campaign as an outright ‘act of genocide’. Based on that investigation, the West African country of Gambia filed a genocide case against Myanmar in 2019. At the time of the crackdown in Myanmar, the country’s civilian government was led by Aung San Suu Kyi, who at the time dismissed the allegations in a UN report as “misleading”. However, Suu Kyi is currently in prison after being ousted in a military coup in 2021. On the other hand, the trial process that has begun at the ICJ is seen as highly significant. Nicholas Koumjian, the lead investigator in the case, believes that the hearing will set a historic precedent in defining genocide worldwide and ensuring justice for such crimes.