THE HAGUE, Netherlands: Lawyers for Gambia on Wednesday urged the United Nations’ top court to throw out Myanmar’s legal bid to end a case accusing the Southeast Asian nation of genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority.
“This court must reject Myanmar’s meritless preliminary objections and proceed to adjudicate the merits of this dispute,” Gambia’s Attorney General and Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told judges at the International Court of Justice.
Lawyer Paul S. Reichler said the military takeover of power in Myanmar last year made the case all the more important as the country’s new rulers are alleged to be behind the atrocities committed against the Rohingya.
“If they can escape the court’s jurisdiction, they will be accountable to no one and there will be no constraints on their persecution and ultimate destruction of the Rohingya,” he warned, adding that “the Rohingya remain at grave risk of mass atrocity crimes.”
The case stems from what the Myanmar military called a clearance campaign it launched in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes as more than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh.
The African nation of Gambia has argued that the 2017 crackdown amounts to genocide and is asking the world court to hold Myanmar accountable.
On Monday, lawyers representing Myanmar’s military-installed government urged judges at the global court to throw out the case, arguing they did not have jurisdiction, in part because they say Gambia was acting as a mouthpiece for an organization of Muslim nations.
Myanmar’s legal team was led by Ko Ko Hlaing, the minister for international cooperation. He replaced pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who led the country’s legal team at earlier hearings in the case in 2019. She now is in prison after being convicted of what her supporters call trumped-up charges.
The leader of Gambia’s legal team stressed the case was brought by Gambia and not the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
“We are no one’s proxy,” Jallow told the court.
“This is very much a dispute between the Gambia and Myanmar,” he added in a direct rebuttal of Myanmar’s argument that Gambia’s case was really brought by the Muslim organization and that the court can only hear cases between nations.
Judges will likely take months to rule on Myanmar’s preliminary objections. If they reject them, the case will go ahead and likely take years to reach a conclusion.
Summing up Gambia’s presentation on Wednesday, Philippe Sands was dismissive of Myanmar’s attempts to have the case dropped.
“To say that the arguments of Myanmar are tantamount to clutching at straws would be generous,” he told judges. “It would require you to redefine both the act of clutching and the nature of straw.”
Pro-democracy advocates have harshly criticized the UN court for allowing the military government to represent Myanmar in a case focusing on alleged atrocities by the country’s armed forces.
“It is outrageous for the ICJ to proceed with these hearings on the basis of junta representation. The junta is not the government of Myanmar, it does not represent the state of Myanmar, and it is dangerous for the court to allow it to present itself as such,” said Chris Sidoti of advocacy group Special Advisory Council for Myanmar.
Gambia urges UN court to continue Rohingya genocide case
https://arab.news/zy3c2
Gambia urges UN court to continue Rohingya genocide case
- The case stems from what the Myanmar military called a clearance campaign it launched in Rakhine state in 2017 after an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group
- The African nation of Gambia has argued that the 2017 crackdown amounts to genocide and is asking the world court to hold Myanmar accountable
Australia bans a citizen with alleged links to militant Daesh group from returning from Syria
- The woman was planning to join another 33 Australians and fly on Monday from Damascus to Australia, Burke said
- “These are horrific situations that have been brought on those children by actions of their parents”
MELBOURNE: Australia’s government banned an Australian citizen with alleged ties to the militant Daesh group from returning home from a detention camp in Syria, the latest development in the case of fraught repatriation of families of Daesh fighters.
The woman was planning to join another 33 Australians — 10 women and 23 children — and fly on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Wednesday.
But the group was turned back by Syrian authorities to the Roj detention camp, due to unspecified procedural problems.
The Australian government had acted on news that the group planned to leave Syria, Burke said. He said the woman, whom he did not identify, had been issued with a temporary exclusion order on Monday and her lawyers had been provided with the paperwork on Wednesday.
She was an immigrant who left Australia for Syria sometime between 2013 and 2015, Burke said, declining to elaborate on whether she had children — though he generally blamed the parents for the predicaments of their offspring stranded in Syria.
“These are horrific situations that have been brought on those children by actions of their parents. They are terrible situations. But they have been brought on entirely by horrific decisions that their parents made,” Burke told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
Burke has the power to use temporary exclusion orders to prevent high-risk citizens from returning to Australia for up to two years.
The laws were were introduced to in 2019 to prevent defeated Daesh fighters from returning to Australia. There are no public reports of an order being issued before.
Burke said security agencies had not advised that any of the other Australians in the group warranted an exclusion order. Such orders can’t be made against children younger than 14.
Confusing messages at a cramped camp
At the Roj camp, tucked in Syria’s northeastern corner near the border with Iraq, the Australian women who had expected to travel home refused to speak to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
One of the women, Zeinab Ahmad, said they had been advised by an attorney not to talk to journalists.
A security official at the camp, Chavrê Rojava, said that family members of the detainees — who she said were Australians of Lebanese origin — had traveled to Syria to arrange their return. They brought temporary passports that had been issued for the would-be returnees, Rojava said.
“We have no contact with the Australian government regarding this matter, as we are not part of the process,” she said. “We have left it to the families to resolve.”
Rojava said that after the group had departed the camp to travel to Damascus, they were contacted by a Syrian government official and warned to turn back. The families were “very disappointed” upon returning to the camp, she said.
“We recently requested that all countries and families come and take back their citizens,” Rojava said.
She added that Syrian authorities do not want to see a “repeat of what happened in Al-Hol camp” — a much larger camp, also in northeastern Syria that once housed tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, with alleged ties to Daesh.
Last month, during fighting between Syrian government forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which had controlled Al-Hol, guards abandoned their posts and many of the camp’s residents fled.
That raised concerns that Daesh members would regroup and stage new attacks in Syria.
The Syrian government then established control of Al-Hol and has begun moving its remaining residents to another camp in Aleppo province. The Kurdish-led force remains in control of Roj camp and a ceasefire is now in place.
The thorny issue of repatriating Daesh-linked foreign citizens
Former Daesh fighters from multiple countries, their wives and children have been detained in camps since the militant group lost control of its territory in Syria in 2019. Though defeated, the group still has sleeper cells that carry out deadly attacks in both Syria and Iraq.
Australian governments have repatriated Australian women and children from Syrian detention camps on two occasions. Other Australians have also returned without government assistance.
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday reiterated his position announced a day earlier that his government would not help repatriate the latest group.
“These are people who chose to go overseas to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology and that seeks to undermine and destroy our way of life,” Albanese told reporters.
He was referring to the militants’ capture of wide swaths of land more than a decade ago that stretched across Syria and Iraq, territory where Daesh established its so-called caliphate. Militant from foreign countries traveled to Syria at the time to join the Daesh. Over the years, they had families and raised children there.
“We are doing nothing to repatriate or to assist these people. I think it’s unfortunate that children are caught up in this, that’s not their decision, but it’s the decision of their parents or their mother,” Albanese added.
