Myanmar Junta Chief Among Key Suspects Identified in Rohingya Genocide Case

Bangladesh, Education, Help Refugees, Human Rights, Myanmar, Refugees Issues, Religious Rights

Some 20 key suspects, including junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and senior Myanmar military generals, have been identified as being responsible for a clearance campaign against the Rohingya ethnic minority in Rakhine State that is now the subject of a genocide case at the United Nations (UN) highest court.

The investigation by the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), an independent war crimes investigator, also reveals that the Myanmar military planned the brutal purge of the Rohingya years in advance.

Its execution in 2017 forced over 700,000 Rohingya to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. Those who fled said that the Rohingya were subjected to extrajudicial killings, rapes and arson attacks by security forces. UN investigators said that the operation had “genocidal intent”.

ALSO READ THIS: BANGLADESH ASKS CHINA FOR HELP IN REPATRIATING ROHINGYA REFUGEES

In its report released last Thursday, the CIJA said that during its four-year investigation it focused on looking for evidence of high-level criminal responsibility so that the perpetrators can be held accountable before the UN court in The Hague, the capital of the Netherlands.

“The key with a complex international criminal investigation isn’t to establish the crimes, but establishing the individual criminal responsibility for those crimes. We’re not interested in the low-level perpetrators. We’re interested in the generals, the leading politicians who initiated this criminal operation,” said Bill Wiley, Executive Director of the CIJA, in the report.

The report named the military’s chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, Major General Maung Maung Soe, chief of the military’s Western Command from 2016 to 2017, and Brigadier General Thura San Lwin, chief of the Border Guard Police (BGP), as being among 20 high level suspects responsible for the clearance operation that is the subject of the genocide case at the UN’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague.