ICJ to Decide Myanmar’s Genocide Case on January 23
Den Haag , MINA – The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the highest court of the United Nations which convenes in Den Haag scheduled to give its decision regarding the genocide case against Myanmar on January 23.
The Gambian Ministry of Justice confirmed this issue in a tweet on Monday, The Independent reported.
Gambia filed the case to the ICJ on 11 November with Myanmar accusing genocide in it’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
The Gambia, which filed a case on behalf of the Islamic Cooperation Organization (OIC), called on the ICJ to immediately order measures “to immediately stop Myanmar’s genocide”.
In the case of first Genocide Convention, the ICJ imposed a temporary measure against Serbia in 1993 and finally decided that Serbia had violated its duty to prevent and punish genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
The Myanmar military launched its brutal campaign against the Rohingya ethnicity in August 2017 on the pretext of a counter-insurgency response.
An estimated 745,000 Rohingya have been forced to flee to Bangladesh since then, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Rohingya and human rights groups accuse Myanmar of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” campaigns which include mass rapes, homicides and arson. But so far Myanmar has denied the allegations.
Myanmar has rejected the citizenship of Rohingya ethnicity, even though they have lived in the country for generations and forced many Rohingya to live in slum camps in conditions like apartheid.
In Bangladesh’s refugee camps today, there are more than 1.1 million Rohingya residents.
The head of the UN fact-finding mission in Myanmar last month warned that “there is a serious risk of recurrent genocide”.
The mission also said in its latest report in September that Myanmar must take responsibility in an international legal forum for alleged genocide against Rohingya. (T/R7
Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)
