Myanmar junta asks court to toss Rohingya genocide case

Lawyers for Gambia on Wednesday urged the United Nations’ top court to reject Myanmar’s legal bid to close the case. Lawyer Paul S. Reichler said the military coup last year in Myanmar, also known as Burma, has made the case all the more important. Myanmar’s legal team argued that Gambia had no jurisdiction to bring the case and only acted as the spokesperson for an organization of Muslim nations.

What spurred the case? Gambia brought Myanmar before the International Court of Justice in 2019 over the bloody crackdown on the Rohingya Muslim minority in 2017. Security forces were accused of mass killings and assaults in the crackdown that sent more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing into neighboring Bangladesh. The court’s decision to allow Myanmar’s military government to represent the country at the hearings sparked criticism. The judges will likely take months to rule on the preliminary objections.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archive, read Angela Lu Fulton’s report on anti-coup protests in Myanmar.