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Myanmar hit out Monday at a genocide case brought against it by The Gambia for alleged persecution of Rohingya Muslims, urging the UN’s highest court to drop the claim on legal grounds.
Banjul dragged Myanmar before the International Court of Justice in 2019, accusing the predominantly Buddhist country of genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority after a bloody 2017 military crackdown.
When the case opened in December 2019 Aung San Suu Kyi personally represented Myanmar at the Hague-based ICJ, but she was ousted as the Asian country’s civilian leader in a military coup last year.
The Nobel peace laureate, who faced criticism from rights groups for her involvement in the case, is now under house arrest and on trial by the same generals she defended in The Hague.
“Myanmar is… not seeking to impede the judicial process of the court,” its agent Ko Ko Hlaing told the judges in the imposing courtroom at the Peace Palace in The Hague.
“On the contrary it is seeking to answer the proper administration of justice,” Myanmar’s international cooperation minister said.
Both Hlaing, who was in court and Myanmar’s attorney general Thida Oo, who was attending virtually, have been hit with US sanctions over the coup.
‘Proxy applicant’
Christopher Staker, another lawyer for Myanmar, said the ICJ did not have the jurisdiction because it was not a case brought by two states, as required by the ICJ’s statutes.
“The court lacks jurisdiction and… the application is inadmissible because the real applicant in these proceedings is the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,” Staker said.
He accused The Gambia of “not acting in it own rights… but stepping in on behalf… of the OIC,” referring to the 57-member body that was set up in 1969 to represent global Muslim interests.
Staker said it was only after the OIC proposed that the case should be…
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Source : france24
