The Chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Karim Khan, has announced the filing of an application for the arrest of Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing over alleged crimes against humanity committed against Rohingya Muslims.
Khan’s request to the court’s Hague-based judges is the first application for an arrest warrant against a high-level Myanmar government official in connection with abuses against the Rohingya people.
Khan said in a statement that his request follows an extensive, independent and impartial investigation, carried out by his office which showed that there are reasonable grounds to believe that Senior General and Acting President Min Aung Hlaing bears criminal responsibility for crimes against humanity,”.
Khan said this included crimes of deportation and persecution, allegedly committed between 25 August and 31 December 2017.
A junta spokesman did not immediately respond to request for comment.
The ICC prosecutor in 2019 opened a probe into suspected crimes committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state in 2016 and 2017, that prompted the exodus of 750,000 of the Muslim minority in the southeast Asian country to neighbouring Bangladesh.
About one million Rohingya now live in sprawling camps near the Bangladesh border city of Cox’s Bazaar. Many of those who left accuse the Myanmar military of mass killings and rapes.
Khan said the alleged crimes were committed by Myanmar’s armed forces, the Tatmadaw, supported by the national and border police “as well as non-Rohingya citizens.”
This is the first application for an arrest warrant against a high-level Myanmar government official.
Myanmar has been racked by conflict between the military and various armed groups opposed to its rule since the army ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021.
The junta is reeling from a major rebel offensive last year that seized a large area of territory, much of it near the border with China.
Earlier this month, Min Aung Hlaing told China’s Premier Li Qiang that the military was ready for peace if armed groups would engage, according to an account of the meeting in the Global New Light of Myanmar (GNLM).
Rohingya who remain in Myanmar are denied citizenship and access to healthcare and require permission to travel outside their townships.
Min Aung Hlaing who was head of the army during the crackdown has dismissed the term Rohingya as “imaginary”.
ICC judges must now decide whether to grant the arrest warrants. If granted, the 124 members of the ICC would theoretically be obliged to arrest the junta chief if he travelled to their country.
China, a major ally and arms supplier of Myanmar’s ruling junta, is not an ICC member.
