Irrawaddy/AFP-Jan 28
A hundreds-strong crowd in Myanmar rallied on Tuesday against the country’s prosecution for genocide, a rare public protest permitted by military authorities accused of the atrocities against the Rohingya minority. Myanmar is defending itself at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) from allegations its crackdown on the mostly Muslim minority starting in 2017 breached the UN’s genocide convention. Dancing to drums in downtown Yangon, the crowd of nationalist activists and saffron-robed monks twirled miniature national flags and toted banners denying accusations of ethnic cleansing being leveled in The Hague. “We gather today for the dignity of our country, the truth for our country and for justice for our country,” ultra-nationalist activist Win Ko Ko Latt told AFP before taking the stage. Myanmar’s leaders insist the Rohingya are descendants of immigrants from Bangladesh, and that their crackdown targeted a militant uprising. Executions, rape and torture by the army and Buddhist militias forced an exodus of more than one million Rohingya, who now live across the border in Bangladesh, in the world’s largest refugee settlement. While the UN court has no means of enforcing its decisions, a guilty verdict would heap more pressure on Myanmar, already considered a pariah state by many nations after the military snatched power in a 2021 coup. Read more at: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/myanmar-nationalists-protest-icj-rohingya-genocide-case-in-yangon.html
