Sound and fury (Indian Express)

Mains Paper 2: International
Prelims level: Rohingya crisis
Mains level: Role of ICJ to resolve disputes

Context:

• From December 10 to 12, Nobel laureate and Myanmar’s State Counsellor and de-facto foreign minister, Aung Sung Suu Kyi, appeared before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to defend her country against charges of committing genocide.

About the incident:

• The case at ICJ revolves around proving genocidal intent and commission of actual genocide by Myanmar in October 2016 and August 2017, when more than 80,000 and 7,40,000 members of the Rohingya community left Myanmar’s Rakhine state for Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.
• Apart from alleged cases of sexual violence against women, surveys conducted by Médecins Sans Frontières in Bangladeshi refugee camps estimated that at least 9,000 Rohingya died in Rakhine state, between August 25 and September 24, 2017.

Highlights about the hearing at ICJ:

• The three-day ICJ hearing offered few surprises: Similar arguments had been made at multiple forums in the past.
• On such occasions, Myanmar has denied the charge of genocidal intent and Bangladesh, a country where Rohingya fled to in 2016 and 2017, has charged Myanmar of continuing with the “decades-long state practice of deprivation, disenfranchisement and atrocities”.
• At the ICJ, as expected, Suu Kyi disputed the allegations of genocide and called it an “incomplete and misleading factual picture of the situation in Rakhine state in Myanmar”.
• Repeating the military’s position, Suu Kyi stated it was the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), an extremist group of some members of Rohingya community, that first carried out attacks on military posts.
• Aware of the domestic sensitivities, she didn’t use the term “Rohingyas” but addressed them as “Muslims”.
• In Myanmar, the usage of the term is an indicator on which side of the debate one stands.
• The Rohingya are officially called Bengalis by the authorities whereas Rohingya have repeatedly asserted their right to self-identify.
• In her defence at the ICJ, Suu Kyi admitted that “it cannot be ruled out that disproportionate force was used by members of the defence services in some cases in disregard of international humanitarian law, or that they did not distinguish clearly enough between ARSA fighters and civilians”.
• She also expressed unhappiness over the military’s pardon of four officers and three soldiers who were sentenced to 10 years in prison with hard labour for executing 10 Rohingyas in Inn Din village.

International Investigative Mechanism:

• International Investigative Mechanism (IIM) established on September 27, 2018 by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council is gathering prosecutorial evidence, making use of the information handed over to it by the Fact Finding Mission established in March 2017.
• At the UN, Myanmar has mentioned there were at least seven mechanisms at the UN “with a focus on Myanmar with a total spending of more than $35 million from the precarious regular budget resources (of the UN)”.
• It has stated that it will not engage with the IIM because “the country does not accept double standards and, selective and discriminatory application of human rights”.

Way ahead:

• At the ICJ, only “provisional measures” to protect the Rohingya can be imposed before the case can potentially be heard in full.
• The Security Council has struggled to come out with a united response for several weeks.
• By then, only around half a million Rohingyas were left in Rakhine; the rest had crossed over to Bangladesh.
• Therefore, the provisional measures being demanded carry less weight. The approximate number of Rohingya living in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, the UAE and Malaysia are as follows: 9,47,000, 5,00,000, 3,50,000, 40,000, 50,000 and 1,50,000.
• Those living outside Myanmar are scared to return and several efforts involving Myanmar and Bangladesh for repatriation of refugees have failed.

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Prelims Questions:

Q.1) With reference to the IBM Global High-Resolution Atmospheric Forecasting System (IBM GRAF), consider the following statements:
1. It is a high-precision, rapidly updating global weather model that updates hourly.
2. It can only generate forecasts at a resolution of 12-kilometres.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
A. 1 only
B. 2 only
C. Both 1 and 2
D. Neither 1 nor 2

Answer: A
Mains Questions:
Q.1) What are the implications if Myanmar has denied the charge of genocidal intent? Comment.