ICC prosecutor requests arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing

Myanmar junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing presides over a military parade to mark Armed Forces Day, in Naypyidaw March 27, 2021. REUTERS The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) requested, Wednesday November 27, an arrest warrant against General Min Aung Hlaing. The highest official of the Burmese junta is being prosecuted for acts of deportation and persecution – described as crimes against humanity – against the Rohingya Muslim minority. The content of the request is confidential, but the crimes alleged by the prosecutor allegedly took place between August 25 and December 31, 2017, and were committed by the Burmese armed forces, with the national police, the border police as well as civilians, details a press release from the prosecutor’s office. The arrest warrant requested against General Min Aung Hlaing is the first act resulting from the investigation opened in November 2019, two years after the crimes. “Others [mandats d’arrêt] will follow,” explained prosecutor Karim Khan in a video posted online, the day after a visit to the Kutupalong refugee camp, in Cox’s Bazar, in southeastern Bangladesh. “I met Rohingya women who speak with determination about their expectation of justice,” the prosecutor said. I met young people who wanted to play their part in seeking this justice. And I have spoken with men of all ages, including the elderly and the sick, who agree that it is crucial to give greater importance to their plight and ensure that responsibilities are established in this regard. » Desire to be invisible General Min Aung Hlaing, 66 years old, head of the Burmese military junta who seized power in February 2021 during a military coup, has always considered that the very term “Rohingya » was “imagination”. Like many other Burmese, he considers that the Muslim minority in the west of the country is, in fact, nothing more than a Bengali ethnic group. This desire for invisibility and non-recognition of the identity of a population which has, over the decades, self-appropriated the name Rohingya to designate itself, partly explains the violence of the massacres unleashed in two phases, first at the end of 2016, then in August 2017: for the Burmese ultranationalists, for the Buddhist populations of Arakan – the province where the majority of Rohingya – and for the Burmese soldiery, the Rohingya do not exist. But if these Burmese Muslims have been bearing the brunt of state violence for decades, these “cleansing operations” are unprecedented since the country gained independence in 1948. You have 50% of this article left at read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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