The head of the Myanmar Army, General Min Aung Hlaing, who on Monday took full control of his country with a coup that was repudiated by a number of countries, has an open cause in Argentina, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, for genocide crimes against the Muslim Rohingya minority.
“What is happening in Myanmar now is an element that should further convince the judge that it is very important to exercise the universal principle for these atrocious events,” explained Tomás Ojea Quintana, former UN rapporteur for Myanmar, to the Télam agency. and one of those that drives the lawsuit that entered the court of María Romilda Servini in November 2019.
At that time, Rohingya, Latin American and Argentine human rights groups, including Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and the Nobel Peace Prize organization Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, filed a lawsuit invoking the principle of universal jurisdiction, which maintains that some actions, such as War crimes and crimes against humanity are so appalling that they are not the province of a single nation and can be tried anywhere in the world.
“Five women who were raped in droves in a town in Rakhine state appeared in front of their children and husbands who were later murdered,” said Ojea Quintana, an Argentine human rights lawyer, who recalled that “the murders and rapes were credited in detail in a 2018 UN report. “
Myanmar’s army seized control of power on Monday and detained Nobel Peace Prize Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: EFE
The violence and helplessness of this Muslim minority was such in 2017 that in just a few months, more than 740,000 Rohingya fled with just their clothes, crossed a river and even ran amid bursts of machine guns to reach the border and take refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. , one of the poorest countries in the region, where they still live huddled in fields administered by the international community.
The lawsuit, which fell into the hands of Servini and prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan, accused the military leadership and the commanders who acted in Rakhine state of “being directly responsible for the genocide” against the Rohingya community, and pointed to the political leaders of the government, today detained and victims of the coup, for their “collusion” in these crimes against humanity.
Among them, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and at that time the highest political reference for the government, Aung San Suu Kyi, who in the face of increasing international pressure in 2017 and 2018 clarified over and over again that she was “in charge” of the country and that what was happening in Rakhine was “an internal conflict”.
Tanks and vehicles with followers of the army chief who took control of Myanmar by force, this Monday, in the streets of Yangon- Photo: DPA
The cause in the Argentine justice has not yet advanced because both the judge and the prosecutor raised doubts about the possibility that the defendants were being tried twice for the same cause, since Rohingya and international organizations also filed a complaint before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Ojea said. Quintana to Télam.
However, that international court responded to the consultations at the end of 2020 and clarified that they were dealing with two different cases: “Argentina’s is about events committed in Myanmar, while those of the ICC took place formally in Bangladesh, since Myanmar did not sign the Rome Statute and, therefore, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the court in The Hague, “explained the Argentine lawyer.
Now it is up to Servini to decide whether to open an investigation.
“We hope that he will do so and so we can request arrests via Interpol and demand, for example, official letters from Facebook to make a report on how that network was used to distribute hateful and racist messages that fueled the genocide,” said Ojea Quintana.
“The objective is always to get a conviction, but also this type of cause mobilizes the expectation of the affected community to be heard, the issue is kept alive in the press and the general public, and reminds those responsible that they are not forgotten the atrocities they committed, “he concluded.
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source https://pledgetimes.com/myanmars-coup-leader-has-an-open-cause-in-argentina-for-genocide/
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