International arrest warrant sought for Myanmar junta chief

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said on Wednesday he would seek an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing for crimes against humanity over the persecution of Muslim Rohingya people.
A panel of three judges will now decide if they agree there are “reasonable grounds” to believe Min Aung Hlaing bears criminal responsibility for the deportation and persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar and Bangladesh.
There is no set time frame for their decision but it generally takes around three months to rule on issuing an arrest warrant.
A spokesperson for the State Administrative Council, as the military government the seized power in 2021 is officially known, did not answer calls seeking comment immediately after the announcement.
The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that it was seeking the warrant after extensive, independent and impartial investigations. More applications for arrest warrants will follow, it said.
More than 730,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh during the campaign which United Nations investigators said was carried out with “genocidal intent”.
The main military crackdown occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, while the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi was still in power. In December 2019 the Nobel Peace Prize laureate personally led a legal team at the International Court of Justice to defend Myanmar against accusations of genocide.
The court did not issue a finding of genocide but ordered the Myanmar government to take measures to protect the Rohingya minority.
Buddhist majority Myanmar denies accusations of genocide and has always maintained it does not target civilians, saying it carried out military operations against terrorists.
Myanmar is not a member of the treaty-based ICC, but in rulings in 2018 and 2019, judges said the court had jurisdiction over alleged cross-border crimes that partially took place in neighbouring ICC member Bangladesh, and said prosecutors could open a formal investigation.
“This is the first application for an arrest warrant against a high-level Myanmar government official that my Office is filing. More will follow,” the ICC prosecutor’s statement said.