ICJ Rejects Military Council’s Request for 1 year Postponement in the genocide case filed by Gambia in 2019

Narinjara News, 22 April , 2023

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has denied the Military Council’s request to postpone the deadline to submit a Counter Memorial to the ICJ for The Myanmar case in the case filed by Gambia by approximately one year in relation to the genocide accusation.

The Gambia filed a lawsuit against Myanmar in 2019 at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging that the Myanmar military committed ethnic crimes against Rohingya Muslims during the 2017 violence in the Maungdaw region of Rakhine State.

When the lawsuit was first filed, Myanmar’s former State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi personally attended the hearings at the ICJ Court in The Hague, Netherlands to defend the Myanmar government against the accusations.

The NUG has pointed out to the ICJ, that the UN General Assembly does not recognize the SAC - Military Junta and that the ICJ should no longer be recognizing the Military Council as the Myanmar Government in the case, and that NUG would be willing to join Gambia in this action against the junta.

The Myanmar Military Council is scheduled to submit a Counter Memorial to the ICJ on April 24 (Monday), but on March 14, it requested a 10-month postponement until February 24 of next year.

On April 6, the ICJ announced that the deadline for submitting the Counter Memorial had been extended by one month, from April 24 to May 24, despite rejecting the Military Council's request for a 10-month extension.

Major General Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the Military Council, said that the request for a 10- month extension is due to the need to have more solid information when submitting the Counter Memorial to the ICJ, VOA reported on April 21.

The ICJ’s statement on April 6 listed several reasons for Myanmar's request to postpone the submission of the Counter Memorial, including the length of the petition filed by Gambia, which is suing Myanmar; the need for time to translate the documents related to the case into Burmese (or English); insufficient resources available to the Myanmar side; the need for time to recall refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar and take testimonies; and the impact of the change in leadership in Myanmar in February 2021, which affected the ability to prepare the Counter Memorial.

According to Rakhine affairs analyst U Pe Than, a former member of Pyithu Hluttaw of Myebon Township, although the Myanmar Military Council is preparing to submit a Counter Memorial to the ICJ, some of the crimes committed by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya Muslims have already been proven to be true, making it extremely difficult to refute the accusations, as he told Narinjara.

To prepare the Counter Memorial, a group of Union Ministers led by U Ko Ko Hlaing, Deputy Chairman of the Steering Committee on Litigation at the ICJ and Minister of International Cooperation, visited Sittwe, Rakhine State and held a two-day meeting with Rakhine State Chief Minister U Htein Lin in early February.

The Myanmar government submitted four points to the ICJ last year, stating that the allegations were false and requested that a hearing on the indictment not be held. However, the ICJ rejected all four of these points on July 22, 2022.

In 2016 and 2017, according to the United Nations, more than 700,000 Muslims were forced to flee to Bangladesh as a result of ethnic cleansing operations carried out by the Myanmar military in Maungdaw, Buthidaung, and Rathedaung townships.