The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court on Wednesday sought an arrest warrant for the country’s army leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, accusing him of crimes against humanity linked to the persecution and deportations of the Muslim Rohingya.
The request for the court’s judges to issue a warrant marks a rare effort by international institutions to hold the Myanmar military accountable for its actions against civilians.
The decision by the prosecutor, Karim Khan, to seek the warrant also is likely to further isolate the general, who seized power in a coup three years ago and is now a pariah at home and in the international community.
Mr. Khan said that after conducting an extensive investigation, his office has concluded that “that there are reasonable grounds to believe” that General Min Aung Hlaing bears criminal responsibility for the crimes of deportation and persecution of the Rohingya.
An arrest warrant is unlikely to significantly affect General Min Aung Hlaing’s travel plans. Myanmar is not a member state of the I.C.C., and neither are China and Russia, the junta’s top allies.
But the warrant request has the potential to be a galvanizing force for the opposition in Myanmar, which has long sought justice against a military that has answered to no one.
In 2017, the military, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, carried out widespread attacks on Rohingya civilians, killing them, torching their homes, and raping women, in a campaign that a United Nations expert has called genocide.
The United Nations estimated that 10,000 people were killed. More than a million Rohingya, who are often called the world’s largest stateless population, have been forced to flee violence in Myanmar, according to the court.
Soyed Alom, 40, who was part of a group of Rohingya community leaders who met with Mr. Khan in the refugee camps in Bangladesh on Tuesday, said he was happy about the announcement, calling it a crucial first step.
“It took more than seven years for this to happen, so this is a good day for us,” Mr. Soyed said.
For years, the army was able to commit these acts with impunity because the country’s civilian leaders refused to criticize the violence.
Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader at the time, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, had brushed off questions about the military’s conduct. The United Nations also has done little, as China and Russia have blocked any action at the U.N. Security Council.
But in 2018, judges at the International Criminal Court issued a surprise ruling saying they could exercise jurisdiction because Bangladesh, where many Rohingya have fled, is a member of the court. That paved the way for the request on Wednesday.
In a statement on Wednesday, the I.C.C. said arrest warrant applications for other Myanmar officials would follow.
The announcement comes amid reports that Rohingya families have once again been forced to leave their homes in Myanmar.
Hundreds of thousands have been caught in the middle of increasingly fierce clashes between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, one of many armed groups opposing the junta. Tens of thousands of Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh in recent months alone.
Amnesty International said that in recent months, the Bangladeshi border authorities have forcibly returned Rohingya people fleeing the violence.
The request for the arrest warrant is also likely to shine a light on the plight of Myanmar civilians, many of whom have been fighting a war of resistance against the military.
Since the February 2021 coup, more than 5,000 civilians have died, and more than 3.3 million people have been displaced, according to the United Nations.
In 2020, the International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled that Myanmar must take action to protect the Rohingya, who it said faced “real and imminent risk” from the military.
It was then the first international court ruling against Myanmar over the military’s brutal treatment of the minority group.
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