The ruling junta in Burma challenged, Monday, February 21, before the judges the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on the accusation of genocide against the Rohingya, a majority Muslim community in the country.

The Burmese delegation, which replaces the former civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi before the highest court of the United Nations, believes that the application, filed by The Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), n is not admissible.

"Burma does not seek to obstruct the judicial functioning of the Court, on the contrary", it seeks to ensure respect for the proper course of justice, declared, before the judges Ko Ko Hlaing, the Minister for International Cooperation, who made the move.

Created after World War II and based in The Hague, Netherlands, the ICJ adjudicates disputes between states.  

"Burma maintains that the Court lacks jurisdiction and that the application is inadmissible because the real applicant in these proceedings is the Organization of Islamic Cooperation" (OIC), said Christopher Staker, lawyer for the Burmese delegation.

"Only States have the capacity to appear before the Court", but "the OIC is an international organization, not a State", he added.   

"Mandatory State"

"It cannot be possible for an international organization to bring a case before the Court using a State as a proxy applicant", continued Christopher Staker.

Around 850,000 Rohingya live in makeshift camps in Bangladesh, after fleeing a bloody military crackdown in their Buddhist-majority country in 2017.

Some 600,000 others remain in Rakhine State, Burma.

The Gambia, a Muslim country which had filed its request on behalf of the OIC, accuses the Burmese authorities of violating the United Nations Convention on Genocide of 1948.

The Gambia will present its counter-arguments on Wednesday before the ICJ.

The Court's judgments are binding, but it has no real means of enforcing them.

Aung San Suu Kyi presented Burma's case to the ICJ herself in late 2019 when the case was first heard, but she has since been ousted as head of Burma's government by the coup. Military status of February 1, 2021.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner, who had been criticized by human rights NGOs for her involvement in the persecution of the Rohingya, is now under house arrest in her country by the same generals she defended in The Hague .   

Bloody repression

Ahead of Monday's hearing, Burma's "national unity government", founded by ousted parliamentarians who had gone underground, said it, not the junta, was "Burma's proper representative in the ICJ in this case".

He also rejects the "preliminary objections" of the junta, believing that the Court should move on to study the case on the merits.

This "government of national unity" is however not recognized by any foreign government and is considered by the junta as "terrorist".

The alleged genocide case facing the ICJ has been complicated by the coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi, sparked mass protests and led to a bloody crackdown, with more than 1,500 civilians killed according to a local observatory.

Aung San Suu Kyi must herself be tried in Burma on a series of charges that could earn her more than 150 years in prison.

With AFP

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