The Gambian legal team called in the first sessions devoted to the consideration of the case filed by the Gambia against the Myanmar government in the International Court of Justice, to stop the killing and genocide against the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Gambian Justice Minister Abubakar Tambado said that the judges of the United Nations International Court of Justice should take action to stop the ongoing genocide of the minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
He addressed the court judges, saying, "Tell Myanmar to stop this senseless killing, to stop these atrocities that continue to shock our collective conscience, and to stop this genocide of its people."
"Another genocide is unfolding right before our eyes, but we are doing nothing to stop it," added Tambado, the former prosecutor of the court on the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Commissioned by the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, The Gambia filed a complaint with the International Court of Justice accusing Myanmar of committing bloody repression of the Rohingya minority two years ago, in violation of the United Nations Convention on Genocide and Punishment.
During the three-day trial hearings, the Gambia will ask the court to take interim measures to protect the Rohingya before the case is fully considered.
The Gambia, the small Muslim-majority country in West Africa, asserts that Myanmar (formerly Burma) violated the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, concluded in 1948.
United Nations investigators accuse the Myanmar army of carrying out mass killings, and other atrocities, against the Rohingya Muslim minority "with the intention of extermination" during 2017, which pushed hundreds of thousands to flee towards the border with Bangladesh.
An independent fact-finding committee concluded that soldiers had gang-raped women and children, set fire to villages, and burned people in their homes, during an attack on Arakan province, but the Myanmar army denies this and considers the entire investigation invalid.
Su Chi facing the court
On Tuesday, Myanmar leader Aung Sang So-chi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, faced the International Court of Justice with calls for her country to "stop the genocide" of the Rohingya Muslim minority.
Soe Chi, who arrived Tuesday at the court’s seat in The Hague, led the Myanmar delegation to the court, to lead the defense of her mainly Buddhist country, accused of genocide against the Rohingya minority in 2017.
In Myanmar, supporters waving flags gathered in several cities across the country, while about two thousand people participated in marches in Rangoon and tens of thousands in Mandalay in support of Su Chi, 74, whose silence on the Rohingya tragedies tarnished her international reputation after she was seen as a symbol of peace and democracy and an icon Human rights.
After spending 15 years in house arrest, she was released in 2010 and led her party to win elections in 2015, but her defense of the generals who have been in prison for many years has tarnished her image.
Rohingya case
The details of the case go back to what happened in the summer of 2017, when about 800,000 Rohingya fled from Arakan province in Myanmar to expanding camps on the borders of neighboring Bangladesh, to escape a military campaign launched by the army on the region.
Refugees brought with them thousands of testimonies of killings, rape and the burning of their property, violations that UN investigators considered to amount to genocide.
Su-chi rejects these accusations, saying publicly that the outside world does not understand the complexity of the internal situation, and the Myanmar government also pretends that the army-led campaign was a legitimate reaction to the attacks by Rohingya militants.