Aung San Suu Kyi ignoring ‘unspeakable’ crimes against Rohingya Muslims, court at The Hague hears

Lawyers condemn Nobel Peace Prize winner for genocide denial in Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi’s defence of Myanmar’s military during a court hearing over the alleged 2017 genocide has been strongly criticised.

The de facto civilian leader of Myanmar appeared at the International Court of Justice in The Hague ​on Wednesday to deny claims her nation’s armed forces raped, killed and terrorised hundreds of thousands of Muslim Rohingya people during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine State.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who spent decades under house arrest by the very same military for her pro-democracy activism, said the well-documented allegations of genocide were, in fact, a legitimate response to an armed insurgency.

But lawyers representing The Gambia, which has spearheaded the legal action on behalf of the Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, condemned her refusal to acknowledge the copious evidence that Burmese soldiers had repeatedly killed civilians and razed entire Rohingya villages to the ground.

Paul Reicher, a lawyer for The Gambia, said Ms Suu Kyi had shamefully entirely ignored the issue of “unspeakable” sexual violence in the Rohingya conflict.

“We heard nothing about sexual violence from Myanmar yesterday, not a single word about it,” he said.

“Because it is undeniable and unspeakable, they chose to ignore it completely. I can’t really blame them. I would hate having to be the one to defend it.”

Regardless of Ms Suu Kyi’s attempts to describe the situation as “complicated” and unfortunate, the reality was the evidence all pointed towards a deliberate genocide by Myanmar’s army against its Muslim Rohingya minority, Mr Reicher said.

“There is no reasonable conclusion to draw other than the inference of genocidal intent from the state’s pattern of conduct,” he said.

“Everyone was a target and no one was spared. Mothers, infants, pregnant women, the old and infirm. They all fell victim to this ruthless campaign.”

Ms Suu Kyi, for years seen as a hero by the wider world for her tireless campaign against the military junta that ruled Myanmar as a dictatorship, has seen her credibility and respect shredded in recent years.

She has repeatedly denied the state’s actions in Rakhine State were anything other than a proportionate response to a domestic insurgency, prompting condemnation from several of her fellow Peace Prize recipients.

More than 700,000 Rohingya have fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in response to the violent campaign launched by the army in 2017.

The case at the International Court of Justice was brought by The Gambia on behalf of a 57-member bloc of Muslim-majority nations. It wants the UN’s top court to rule on whether Myanmar’s military leaders committed genocide and take actions to prevent any such acts occurring again.

Throughout the three days of the hearing, Ms Suu Kyi has watched on impassively as evidence, including photos and personal testimony, was brought detailing the crimes committed by her nation’s armed forces against the Rohingya.

Once lauded by human rights organisations, the 74-year-old is now castigated as an apologist for war crimes.

“Aung San Suu Kyi tried to downplay the severity of the crimes committed against the Rohingya population,” Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International’s regional director, said in a statement.

“In fact, she wouldn’t even refer to them by name or acknowledge the scale of the abuses. Such denials are deliberate, deceitful and dangerous.”

Experts of Burmese politics suggest, as well as sharing the military’s anti-Muslim prejudice, Ms Suu Kyi may also be trying to position her party, the National League for Democracy, for next year’s elections.

By defending the country in the eyes of the world, she can build public support within Myanmar to force the military to give up more of its grip on the country’s political apparatus.

“[She] is presenting herself as defending Myanmar at The Hague and quite a large number of her supporters see her as doing just that,” said Jane Ferguson, an anthropologist at the Australian National University.

“Many people in Myanmar see the Rohingya issue as a kind of Muslim conspiracy to take over Myanmar.”

But Mark Farmaner, the director of Burma Campaign UK, said Ms Suu Kyi did not need to take the military’s side. “Aung San Suu Kyi’s actions have nothing to do with political realities or constitutional constraints,” he said. “Aung San Suu Kyi has chosen to defend the military, driven in part by her own racist prejudice against the Rohingya.”