In February this year an Argentine court ordered the first arrest warrants against Myanmar’s military leadership for genocide following the 2017 clearance operations against the Rohingya community of Myanmar. 25 Myanmar officials, including senior military and Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi, are prosecuted for genocide and crimes against humanity, and the charges focus on sexual violence.
The attacks on the Rohingya have been described as having genocidal intent by a UN fact-finding mission. They forced hundreds of thousands to flee across the Bangladesh border. Sexual and gender-based crimes were identified as one of the key factors that to show that genocidal intent. 80% of cases investigated by the UN were gang rapes.
In 2023, seven witnesses went to Buenos Aires federal criminal court to give testimony at investigative hearings held under the principle of universal jurisdiction. It was the first time they could tell their suffering before a court. Ishita Kumar of Legal Action Worldwide, an NGO, accompanied them. She is the guest of this podcast by our partners at Asymmetrical Haircuts. “Official documents show that the [Myanmar] authorities had an obsession with reducing the Rohingya population,” she says. “It is highly likely that [the violence] was controlled and overseen by the command structure.” But why do we need Argentina when several international institutions – the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar – are already involved?
ASYMMETRICAL HAIRCUTS
This podcast has been published as part of a partnership between Justice Info and Asymmetrical Haircuts, a podcast on international justice produced from The Hague by journalists Janet Anderson and Stephanie van den Berg, who retain full control and independence over the contents of the podcast.
