Myanmar must be held to account – or the world will look powerless against Rohingya persecution

Justice for the Rohingya is justice for Myanmar, writes Amnesty International’s Joe Freeman – and there’s a historic chance to break the cycle of impunity plaguing the country

In 2018, when I worked as a journalist, I took part in one of many government-guided tours in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine state, the heartland of the country’s Rohingya people.

These trips were organised in the aftermath of the Rohingya refugee crisis, which at the time was an international news story. Northern Rakhine had been largely inaccessible to independent media, so many leapt at the chance to report from the ground, even under the watchful eye of the government.

To this day, however, I still don’t understand why Myanmar’s government – which was under the de facto civilian leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi at the time – carried out these tours.

Though our movements were restricted and our participation certainly helped Myanmar look transparent with nothing to hide, the trips were failures as propaganda. In the end, they served as unforgettable reminders of the atrocities that Myanmar’s military carried out in Rakhine State, which the civilian government was hopelessly trying to defend.

Northern Rakhine State, along Myanmar’s long western border, is a vast territory. As we drove for hours north under armed escort towards the Bangladesh border, we saw village after village systematically destroyed to its foundations. I remember seeing one house with only the door frame still standing.

“Why are they showing us this?” I kept asking myself.

In one open field, we were led to a small model home for returning Rohingya refugees. There were 740,000 Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh in the months after 25 August 2017, when an attack by Rohingya militants became the pretext for sprawling “clearance operations” against the ethnic minority.

But only a handful of these new model homes stood in the field. In the distance, I could see another set of destroyed homes. The rebuilding effort itself seemed like a purposeful half-measure meant to go nowhere.

The shadows of violence were everywhere. One journalist who had been on an earlier trip to the same area said he had put his hands on a chest in a scorched home. It still felt hot to the touch, from being on fire so recently. Another trip backfired spectacularly when the media convoy came across a group of people burning down Rohingya homes.

In February 2021, more than three years after the Myanmar military operations against the Rohingya, the same military launched a coup. They started by arresting civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, despite her having staked what remained of her international reputation as a human rights champion to defend the military’s actions in person at the International Court of Justice in 2019, in a genocide case brought by The Gambia.

After putting Suu Kyi and most of the senior civilian leadership in arbitrary detention, where they remain today, the military turned to deal with a rising protest movement. There are now 6,000 people dead, 20,000 sitting in Myanmar prisons and more than three million displaced by armed conflict, nearly 40 per cent of whom are children.

To this day, no one has offered a reliable answer as to why Myanmar’s military launched the 2021 coup, or why they would detain the one influential person – Suu Kyi – who had helped defend them on the international stage. The military still retained control over large parts of Myanmar’s political, social and economic levers. There was no need.

But if no military leader was ever held accountable for the Rohingya crisis, we shouldn’t be surprised when they become emboldened to continue carrying out further abuses, or when Rohingya continue to be persecuted.

That’s why what happened last month could be a game-changer for Myanmar. On 27 November, the office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court filed a request for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, the Myanmar general who oversaw both the 2021 coup and the 2017 Rohingya expulsions. Amnesty International and many other rights groups have long demanded that he be investigated for his role in atrocity crimes in Myanmar.

When the request is granted, as seems likely, the international community must ensure that Min Aung Hlaing is arrested and surrendered to the ICC in The Hague.

Anything less would send a dangerous message about the lax attitude towards prosecuting crimes under international law. It would also reinforce notions in Myanmar that the international community is powerless to help Myanmar.

Much more can be done, which is why we at Amnesty International continue to call on the UN Security Council to refer the entire situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court Prosecutor. But it’s important to recognize the seismic importance of, and not downplay or dismiss, what is happening now at the ICC. Because justice for the Rohingya is still justice for Myanmar.

Joe Freeman is Amnesty International’s Myanmar Researcher. He was interviewed for the Independent’s new documentary on the legacy of Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar.