TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Legal redress for Rohingya: ASEAN's responsibility
There should be a legal redress mechanism for the Rohingya subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocidal practices by the Myanmar government.
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Rohingya refugees fill pots for drinking water from a hand pump at Nayapara refugee campin Teknaf on October 27, 2017.
(AFP/Tauseef Mustafa)
M
uch has been discussed about the current crisis in Myanmar’s Rakhine state and the consequent exodus of more than 620,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh. Yet there is little to no discourse on what the international community and ASEAN should do after the crisis.
There should be a legal redress mechanism for the Rohingya subjected to ethnic cleansing and genocidal practices by the Myanmar government.
Given the inability of the international and regional community to immediately end their persecution, it is ironically the same community that must work toward establishing a redress mechanism.
Such a mechanism should provide accountability for the crimes the military of Myanmar is causing and send a clear message to the world that such actions cannot and will not be tolerated with silence.
Southeast Asia is not alien to such mechanisms. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which was established to prosecute the crimes of the Khmer Rouge, and the United Nations Special Crimes Panel in East Timor are the two most prominent legal redress mechanisms in ASEAN countries.
Indonesia is also familiar with such mechanisms with its ad hoc human rights courts to deal with human rights violations, which so far have never been used.
Punishing genocide is a moral and legal obligation under international law as reflected in the 1948 Genocide Convention, which has evolved into an obligation that legally mandates all countries to abide by it. Although establishing genocide would be left to a tribunal, a study by Yale Law School in 2015 found ample evidence that violence against the Rohingya violates the Genocide Convention.
