The International Court of Justice in The Hague continues the hearings on Aung San Suu Kyi’s case. She remains the government’s head of Myanmar and defends Myanmar military’s crimes.
Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in ICJ as a crass apologist for her country’s military against charges of gross human rights abuses. As WSWS reports, among the charges, is genocide against the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority in 2017 and earlier.
The brutal operations to terrorise the Rohingya population in 2017 have forced hundreds of thousands of Myanmar citizens to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. Since then, the refugees live in squalid camps with no hope to return.
A UN fact-finding mission last year found that the estimated death toll of 10,000 was “conservative” and called for the indictment of six senior generals, including Min Aung Hlaing, the commander-in-chief of the army, on charges of genocide.
Aung San Suu Kyi addressed judges
Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi has explained her position in the address to judges of the International Court of Justice. Being de facto the State Counsellor of Myanmar, she defends the military.
Suu Kyi has also dismissed the charge of genocide, claiming that the exodus of Rohingya from a state of Rakhine was simply the result of the conflict between the military and armed Rohingya separatist groups. According to her, that wasn’t a result of any conscious policy of ethnic cleansing by the military.
While acknowledging that individual members and units of the military might have carried out crimes, Myanmar’s leader insisted that these would be dealt with by the country’s military courts and, in any case, did not constitute genocide.
Suu Kyi also ignored the systematic denial of basic democratic rights, and do nothing to address Rohingya issue.
