Dhaka should move International Court of Justice to force
Myanmar to pay reparations to for hosting victims of genocide
By Dr. Maung Zarni
Last week, UN International Independent Fact-Finding
Mission’s Chris Sidoti, Bangladesh’s high commissioner to the U.K. and
prominent experts from Bangladesh, gathered in London to tackle an overlooked,
but pressing issue: the challenges of repatriating 1.2 million Rohingya refugees
to their homes in Myanmar.
This comes in the back drop of Bangladesh’s Foreign
Minister AK Abdul Momen reportedly accusing Myanmar of “lying” about the status
of the repatriation of Rohingya refugees to their places of origin.
Although the two countries signed a repatriation
agreement in October 2018, according to the UN and other international
observers, the favorable conditions for the returning Rohingya are
non-existent.
Of the 800 expected villages promised as a part of the
repatriation efforts, only two villages with favorable conditions are believed
to be existed.
Herein lies the problem: the long-term, large-scale
presence of the Rohingya people in Bangladesh is unsustainable.
The government of Bangladesh has been struggling to
address the existential need of the world’s second largest refugee population.
Abul Kalam, refugee relief and repatriation commissioner stated: “22% of the
fund appeal (out of a total of $920 million annual appeal for the Joint
Response Plan (JRP) for the Rohingya humanitarian crisis) has been met.”
Bangladesh simply lacks the resources to cope with the
burden of having to shelter and feed 1.2 million Rohingya genocide survivors.
It is also unfair to Dhaka to be left to handle a huge refugee burden alone
without adequate financial support from the international community.
Moreover, allowing the Rohingya to permanently settle in
Bangladesh would validate the genocidal regime in Myanmar. Since February 1978,
following military dictator Gen. Ne Win’s premeditated campaign to erase
western Myanmar of any Rohingya presence, Myanmar has engaged in an atrocious
campaign of terror against the residential population of northern Rakhine
state.
In doing so, Myanmar’s successive regimes, civilian and
military alike, have resorted to all the violent, institutional and legal means
at their disposal. Over the last four decades, Myanmar has relentlessly shifted
the official justifications for its state-directed persecution of Rohingya.
Long-held fears of Rohingya
Among the evolving justifications are “concerns for
Muslims’ demographic dominance” in western Myanmar, “communal conflict”,
“terror threat” -- as Aung San Suu Kyi put it to Indian Prime Minister Narendra
Modi in October 2017, “security clearance operations”, or “unfinished business
from WWII” as put by Suu Kyi’s military partner Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
In the national imagination of the Burmese public, their
government’s genocidal project is about restoring Rakhine to its original,
purely “Buddhist”, state and ridding the region of "Bengali"
interlopers.
The question that the Bangladeshi leadership, and those
meeting in London last week, ought to confront is the following: Why would the
neighbor that systematically destroyed nearly 400 villages in a matter of
weeks, thereby seizing the vast and important western Myanmar region of
northern Rakhine, cooperate with Dhaka on the repatriation of almost three
quarters of the entire Rohingya population?
With this cultural, political and societal backdrop in
mind, recognizing the long-held fears of the Rohingya people for rights and
safety will be crucial to understanding why this voluntary scheme has not been
successful so far.
As long as Myanmar has done nothing to assuage Rohingya's
well-founded fear of renewed state-directed mass-violence and deportation, any
plans for repatriation will remain implausible. No Rohingya in their right mind
will voluntarily return to Myanmar. Not without international protection,
restored citizenship and basic human rights.
So, what are Dhaka’s strategic options? The first is one
of three major proposals from Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina -- the
creation of the “safe zone” inside northern Rakhine state in Myanmar.
I for one, think the establishment of a safe zone where
Rohingya can return, live under the protection of a coalition of international
actors, armed or unarmed, is a potentially viable plan to address the needs of
returning Rohingya as well as Dhaka’s need to repatriate the vast number of
Rohingya refugees.
Needless to say, Myanmar will violently oppose the idea.
Some Burmese officials have already publicly dismissed the safe zone proposal
on grounds of sovereignty.
Interim possibility
Secondly, Dhaka should pursue one interim possibility:
Force Myanmar to pay reparations to Bangladesh for hosting the victims of the
genocide.
This demand should be part of the set of “immediate
measures” that Dhaka, a state party to the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, can ask from the International Court of
Justice (ICJ). Dhaka can make this legal demand unilaterally via the ICJ, or
jointly with other state parties such as Malaysia, which also shoulders the
burden of hosting an estimated 200,000 Rohingya on its soil.
Alternatively, Dhaka can join the Gambia-led initiative
by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), to mount a legal challenge to
demand justice and accountability for the genocide.
The UN already recommended in 2018 that military leaders
should face genocide charges and this month, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda has
asked judges on the International Criminal Court to open a full investigation
into these allegations.
Ultimately, why not find a way for Bangladesh, which has
shouldered the financial burden of supporting over 1 million Rohingya refugees,
to obtain compensation from Myanmar? Dhaka should include an annual payment of
$1 billion from Myanmar in the OIC's move to challenge Myanmar at the ICJ.
Introducing an economic deterrent may yet discourage
other states from engaging in ethnic cleansing and forced deportation of
minority ethnic groups. The other 150 states -- which are party to the Genocide
Convention, still unprepared to participate meaningfully to end Myanmar's
ongoing genocide -- should do their part in backing a legal challenge at the
ICJ.
On July 1, the Dutch parliament passed with 2/3 majority
votes a motion requesting the government to explore possible legal proceedings
against Myanmar before the ICJ for violating its obligations under the Genocide
Convention. Bangladeshi parliamentarians should follow the suit.
Myanmar, as the perpetrating state, must be made to pay
for its crimes. Literally.
[Maung Zarni is a Burmese coordinator of the Free
Rohingya Coalition, an umbrella network of Rohingya refugees and human rights
activists, and co-author, with Natalie Brinham, of "Essays on Myanmar
Genocide" (2019).]
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own
and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy.