Myanmar is continuing to commit genocide against Rohingya Muslims in breach of orders by the UN’s top court, according to human rights lawyers and activists, The Guardian reported.
The international court of justice (ICJ) in January rejected arguments made personally by Myanmar’s civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in The Hague and imposed urgent interim measures on the predominantly Buddhist nation.
The ICJ ordered Myanmar to cease the commission of genocidal acts, prevent the destruction of evidence of crimes against the Rohingya and report back to the UN every six months.
“The genocide is still ongoing,” Tun Khin, president of Burma Rohingya Organisation UK, said in a statement on Monday, the deadline for the second report. The group is one of the most prominent Rohingya rights organizations.
“The Myanmar government and military are calculating that they can safely ignore the provisional measures and not face any consequences,” he said.
A brutal military crackdown in 2017 is thought to have killed thousands and forced about 750,000 Rohingya to flee to refugee camps in Bangladesh.
About 600,000 more Rohingya remain in Myanmar, however, stripped of citizenship in what rights activists describe as apartheid conditions.
Myanmar denies committing genocide, justifying the 2017 operations as a means of rooting out Rohingya insurgents.
M Arsalan Suleman, the legal counsel working on the case against Myanmar, confirmed on Monday that the country had submitted the report in time.
But activists are urging the ICJ to force the south-east Asian nation to make it public to allow full scrutiny. “For Rohingya, this lack of transparency is yet another injustice,” said Tun Khin.
Rights groups have condemned the almost absolute exclusion of Rohingya from voting in November’s election and their continued vilification as illegal interlopers.