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The ICC's warrant request for Myanmar junta chief is too little, too late
An ICC prosecutor’s decision to apply for an arrest warrant – not to issue one – for the Myanmar junta leader is essentially a powerless move, coming as it does after Washington and Paris rejected its arrest warrants for Netanyahu and several members of his cabinet at the cost of the court's credibility and authority.
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Myanmar junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing (left) gestures upon his arrival at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport on April 24, 2021, ahead of the ASEAN Leaders' Meeting at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta. (Handout/Rusman/Indonesian Presidential Palace via REUTERS)
T
here’s occasionally something to be said for symbolic gestures, but I struggle to get too worked up over the news that an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has finally applied for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s junta chief.
The Nov. 27 request is specifically over his military’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group, between 2017 and 2018.
Human Rights Watch called it a “major step towards justice for the country’s Rohingya population”. Amnesty International regarded it as a “decisive step and an important signal”.
My disappointment is for two reasons: the local and the global.
The ICC hasn’t yet issued an arrest warrant; a prosecutor has applied for one. But even if a warrant is forthcoming, it won’t be acted upon.
Min Aung Hlaing won’t be hauled to The Hague while his junta holds power over much of the country and has the backing of Beijing. If his junta defeats the revolutionary forces and ends the civil war, he won’t voluntarily make a sojourn to the Netherlands.
If his junta falls and is replaced by a new, federal democratic Myanmar, we should vehemently oppose an international tribunal in favor of a local trial. In that eventuality, Min Aung Hlaing would have much more barbarism to answer to than only the Rohingya genocide.
