Q: You probably saw also, Vice President Pence yesterday appealed to you and to Myanmar to let the two Reuters journalists out of jail. I think they got a sentence of seven years. What is your response to Vice President Pence?

A: Well, I think what I want to know is whether they feel that there has been a miscarriage of justice. And you know of course, that due process allows them to appeal the sentence.

Q: But that, I guess, you also as a democratic leader don’t feel comfortable with journalists being jailed?

A: It’s not a matter of… They were not jailed because they were journalists. They were jailed because the court has…. Well, sentence has been passed on them because the court has decided that they had broken the Official Secrets Act. So, if we believe in the rule of law, they have every right to appeal the judgment and to point out why the judgment is wrong, if they consider it wrong. 

Interview of Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counsellor of Myanmar by Børge Brende, World Economic Forum in Hanoi, Vietnam

In December 2017, Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo came across reliable information (eye-witness accounts and photographs) leading to the uncovering of a mass grave of ten Rohingya civilians in Inn Din, Myanmar, killed during a clearance (ethnic-cleansing) operation carried out in the Northern Rakhine State by Myanmar’s security forces (military and police) and local Buddhists in August 2017. Given the location of the burial site, the ongoing events in that area, the equipment required to dig and cover-up the mass grave, the bulldozing over and destruction of any remaining evidence, and the eye-witness accounts and photographs, it was clear that this atrocity was committed and then covered up by Myanmar’s security forces. Reuters would later write a lengthy story on this and other events (see my post), implicating Myanmar’s security forces along with its proxies – local civilians. Continue reading “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s remarks in context: is she defending the convictions and imprisonment of the journalists?”

The United States will use any means necessary to protect our citizens and those of our allies from unjust prosecution by this illegitimate court.

John Bolton, US National Security Advisor

John Bolton’s “happiest moment” as the US Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), so he claims, was when he “personally ‘unsign[ed]’ the Rome Statute” that established the International Criminal Court (ICC).¹   John Bolton, Surrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations and Abroad, Threshold 2007, as cited by Brian Urquest, One Angry Man, New York Review of Books, March 6, 2008, pp. 12–15. This is the same John Bolton who once said that if the UN Secretariat building in New York “lost ten stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” And believe it or not, this statement would later bring hope to some of the accused (and some of their lawyers) at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) when Bolton became US Ambassador to the UN; they naively thought that Bolton would lead the charge to dismantle the ICTY. I was flabbergasted hearing these ludicrous expectations, yet Bolton’s remarks had captured their imagination.

Continue reading “Bolton threatens the International Criminal Court: gunboat diplomacy by other means”

On 6 September 2018, the Pre-Trial Chamber (PTC) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) held by Majority (Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut dissented in part) that the ICC has jurisdiction over some of the mass atrocity crimes allegedly committed (and, as some may argue, still being committed) in Myanmar against the Rohingya. This comes on the heels of the UN Human Rights Council’s conclusions that violations in Rakhine State (and elsewhere) in Myanmar amounted to the gravest crimes under international law, and, more alarmingly, that certain “clearance operations” conducted by the Myanmar Military (known as “Tatmadaw”) were not a response to a concrete threat from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), but  the “unfinished job” of “solv(ing) the long-standing Bengali problem” thus warranting an investigation and prosecution of the senior officials in the Tatmadaw chain of command “so that a competent court can determine their liability for genocide in relation to the situation in Rakhine State.” (See Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, Advance Unedited Version, A/HRC/39/64, 24 August 2018, paras. 86-87.) Continue reading “The ICC’s Ruling on the OTP’s Rohingya Request over Jurisdiction:  well-reasoned or a judicial overreach?”

THE CHAMBER HEREBY

a) ORDERS the Registry, to establish, as soon as practicable, a system of public information and outreach activities for the benefit of the victims and affected communities in the situation in Palestine and report back to the Chamber in compliance with the principles established in the present decision;

ICC, Decision on Information and Outreach for the Victims of the Situation, 13 July 2018

According to The Times of Israel, Israel has formally complained to the International Criminal Court (ICC) about the outreach program the ICC Registry is launching at the behest of the Pre-Trial Chamber (Judge Péter Kovács Presiding, Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, and Judge Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou) “for the Victims of the Situation” in Palestine, calling into question the ICC’s impartiality in treating Israel fairly. What took so long?

Israel has a point. And a predicament. Continue reading “The ICC’s Palestinian Outreach Campaign: an appearance of anti-Israel bias”

Prompted by ongoing reports of mass-scale atrocities being committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar, resulting in at least 700,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh (what UN High Commissioner for Human Rights characterized as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”), the Office of the Prosecutor (“OTP”) of the International Criminal Court (“ICC”) filed a Request with the Pre-Trial Chamber (“PTC”) under Article 19(3) of the Rome Statute.  The Request seeks a binding decision on whether the ICC has jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of the Rohingya from Myanmar (a non-State Party) to Bangladesh (a State Party). The Request set out in detail the events in Myanmar as they have been reported over the past year or so (see my previous posts here, here, here, and here), that Myanmar security forces have directly and indirectly been involved in the killing, rape, torture, and enforced disappearances of the Rohingya, as well as destruction and looting of their villages. Continue reading “ICC-OTP to Interveners on its Rohingya Request: thanks but you’re putting the cart before the horse”