A TEAM of investigators of the International Criminal Court is due in Dhaka today to prepare for the preliminary probe into crimes committed against minority Rohingya community in Rakhine of Myanmar. The Bangladesh government would maintain distance from the ICC team to facilitate them to work independently.
The ICC granted permission to Chief Prosecutor in the first week of July to probe the reasons of mass deportation of Muslim majority Rohingya community members from Myanmar to Bangladesh. Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said she would examine reports of ‘alleged coercive acts having resulted in the forced displacement of the Rohingya people, including deprivation of fundamental rights, killing, sexual violence, enforced disappearance, destruction and looting.’
More than 7,00,000 Rohingyas, mostly women, children and aged people, entered Bangladesh from August 25, 2017. The number of undocumented Myanmar nationals and registered refugees in Bangladesh is to about 11,16,000, according to estimates by UN Agencies and Bangladesh Foreign Ministry. Myanmar is likely to set a delegation on July 26 to visit the makeshift camps for building confidence among displaced residents sheltered in Cox’s Bazar as part of preparations for taking them back to Rakhine. Myanmar Foreign Ministry permanent secretary Myint Thu is expected to lead the delegation.
By now even a blind man would be able to figure out the atrocities committed against the Rohingyas. Over two million of them are residing as refugees in other countries–surely they have not gone to those for their health. The testimonies of hundreds of people can’t be coordinated to say the same thing. But Myanmar denies everything and has done its best to make the lives of Rohingyas inside Myanmar as difficult as possible. This is a state of apartheid not seen even in South Africa during the apartheid era.
The sole aim of all these restrictions is to ensure that the Rohingyas flee the country and the Myanmar government is happy as long as they stay somewhere else. A simple probe of the ICC is unlikely to change the minds of the Myanmar military–unless their key generals can be indicted and brought to trial nothing much will change.
