Rohingya deserve justice

Anne Main visits Rohingya refugee camps
29th August 2018

Anne Main has today called on the UK government and the other members of the UN’s permanent Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the charges of genocide, crimes and against humanity and war crimes, as detailed in the UN’s fact-finding report on Myanmar released on 27th August 2018.

Mrs Main said, ‘It is now over one year on from the huge influx of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh and it is time the international community took strong action against the vile crimes carried out by the Burmese military in Rakhine state’.

The UN’s fact-finding mission was set up in March 2017 to investigate the crimes carried out by the military against the minority Rohingya population living in Myanmar. The report states that Myanmar’s top military officials ‘must be investigated and prosecuted for genocide in the north of Rakhine State’ and for ‘crimes against humanity and war crimes in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States’.

The report will be fully presented to the UN Human Rights Council on the 18th of September along with detailed satellite imagery of the acts carried out in Myanmar.

The UK government has received the report and said they will ‘discuss options for bringing the report before the Security Council’ after the final presentation is made on the 18th September. The government have also acknowledged the Burmese government’s current investigation and has called on them to prove its credibility and judicial oversight.  

Anne said, ‘it is time to disregard any thoughts of credibility in Myanmar’s own investigation. It is clear they cannot hold themselves to account and this requires clear independent adjudication by the ICC.’

Mrs Main continued, ‘by allowing this tragedy to go unpunished, we risk encouraging other regimes to think they can carry out similar atrocities with impunity.

‘Now is the time for the international community to come down hard on the Burmese military, and Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s civilian government that have done nothing to try and stop these acts and have been complicit  in the lies and cover ups that have followed.

‘The Rohingya deserve justice and this can only be done by a referral to the International Criminal Court. ‘

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