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Rohingya refugees’ lawyers lobby for International Criminal Court to sit in Asia
By RNZ News and AA News Agency
Two Australian lawyers acting on behalf of hundreds of Rohingya refugees are pushing to have the International Criminal Court (ICC) sit in Asia for the first time. The ICC is investigating allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by Myanmar government and military officials in 2017. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya – a stateless, mostly Muslim minority group – fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during the unrest.
Myanmar’s government, led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, has faced accusations of failing to stop a systematic campaign of violence by security forces to wipe out the Rohingya minority, which Myanmar denies. Lawyers acting on behalf of Rohingya refugees have now lodged a pre-trial motion asking the court to investigate the possibility of holding a trial outside of Europe.
What are they asking for? — Counsel at the ICC Kate Gibson is representing groups of Rohingya living in the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp in Bangladesh. Gibson said they were hoping the court would hold some or part of the hearings in Asia, possibly in Bangkok in Thailand, or even Bangladesh.
”We’re just asking the court to be aware of this massive gap that is existing between the Rohingya population in the camp who are cut off in every sense that you could imagine from The Hague to be aware that they feel like this,” she said.
”We think one of the most effective ways of doing that would be to look into whether the ICC can move its seat to somewhere closer to the victim communities.”
What are the issues with the ICC’s current location? — Postdoctoral research fellow at Sydney Law School Rosemary Grey said witnesses and victims faced a number of problems, including financial difficulty, lack of documentation and poor internet connections.
”If justice is going to be closer to them, the ICC is going to have to move to them, not them to the ICC,” Dr Grey said. Emma Palmer, a lecturer at Griffith University Law School in Brisbane, Australia, said The Hague’s distance from victims had an effect on the way it ran its trials. ”[Prosecutors] need to rely much more on intermediaries, on civil society groups to help them in the actual jurisdiction that they’re trying to investigate,” Dr Palmer said.
