The ICC wants to arrest the head of Myanmar’s military over the Rohingya campaign

The head of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Wednesday that he would try to get Myanmar’s military boss Min Aung Hlaing arrested for crimes against humanity related to the alleged abuse of the Rohingya, a mostly Muslim minority.

A spokesman for Myanmar’s ruling junta did not answer right away when asked for comment.

A military offensive by Myanmar in August 2017 forced a million Rohingya to flee, most of them to nearby Bangladesh. The U.N. has said that the offensive is a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.

U.N. inspectors say that soldiers, police, and Buddhist locals destroyed hundreds of villages in Myanmar’s remote western Rakhine state, torturing and killing many people as they fled and raping and killing many more.

Myanmar has rejected the claims, saying that its security forces were just doing their jobs and going after militants who attacked police posts.

Most refugees now live in filthy camps in Bangladesh.

Min Aung Hlaing is to blame for the killing of innocent Rohingya people, according to Mohammed Zubair, a Rohingya researcher who lives in a refugee camp in Bangladesh. “Under his command, the military killed thousands of Rohingya and subjected countless women and girls to horrific acts of sexual violence.”

The fact that an arrest warrant is being sought for “the person who holds the highest military position in Myanmar sends a strong message to perpetrators that no one stands above the law,” said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the U.N. Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which helped the ICC investigation.

Now, a group of three judges will decide if they agree that there are “reasonable grounds” to think Min Aung Hlaing is guilty of crimes related to the deportation and abuse of Rohingya people in Myanmar and Bangladesh.

In general, it takes them about three months to make a decision on an order, but there is no set time frame.

The ICC prosecutor’s office is getting a lot of political backlash, including from Washington, over its arrest order for Yoav Gallant, who used to be the defense chief for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The prosecutor’s office said it was asking for the order after doing a lot of separate, fair, and independent research. It also said that more requests for arrest warrants related to Myanmar would be made soon.

Myanmar is not a member of the ICC, which is based on treaties. However, in 2018 and 2019, judges said the court had the power to hear claims of cross-border crimes that happened in part in ICC member Bangladesh and that prosecutors could start an official investigation.

“This is the first time my office has asked for an arrest warrant for a high-level Myanmar government official.” It was said in the ICC prosecutor’s speech that more would come.

INVESTIGATION FOR FIVE YEARS

Crimes against the Rohingya have been looked into by the ICC for almost five years. Myanmar has been in chaos since the military overthrew an elected government led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. This started a resistance movement that started as peaceful protests and later turned into an armed rebellion on many fronts. This has made it harder for the investigation to go forward.

Investigators used witness statements, including those from people who knew what was going on, as well as documentary proof and verified scientific, photographic, and video materials.

“The ICC prosecutor’s decision to seek a warrant against Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing comes at a time when Rohingya civilians are again being killed in horrific ways that remind us of what happened seven years ago,” said Maria Elena Vignoli, senior international justice counsel at Human Rights Watch.

“The ICC’s action is an important step toward breaking the cycle of abuses and impunity that has long been a key factor in fueling the military’s mass violations.”

The ICC is made up of 124 countries that try people for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. Since there is no police force, it is up to the states to make charges. Because Min Aung Hlaing doesn’t move, it will be hard to catch him.

The United States, Russia, China, and India are all world leaders, but they have not joined the ICC. The European Union, Australia, Canada, Britain, Brazil, Japan, and many other African and Latin American countries all support it.

A number of current world leaders, such as Netanyahu, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan, have been given arrest warrants by the agency.

So far, only one head of state who is currently in office has been charged by the ICC. That person was Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, who was charged by the ICC before he was chosen president in 2013. The case was dropped in the end.