MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The International Court of Justice at The Hague has opened a genocide case against Myanmar over the South Asian nation's treatment of Rohingya Muslims. The hearings are being watched closely by legal experts for clues on how the court might deal with future cases, such as the one against Israel over its actions in Gaza. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: The case against Myanmar was brought by the West African nation of Gambia. The Genocide Convention gives countries a mandate to act against genocide anywhere in the world, even if they're not affected. Gambia's Justice Minister Dawda Jallow told ICJ judges this was not about esoteric issues of international law.
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DAWDA JALLOW: It is about real people, real stories and real group of human beings, the Rohingya of Myanmar. They have been targeted for destruction.
BEARDSLEY: In the fall of 2017, around 1 million Rohingya Muslims fled violence by the Myanmar army and Buddhist militias, escaping to neighboring Bangladesh and bringing harrowing accounts of mass rape, arson and murder. Human rights groups have called it a coordinated, scorched-earth campaign. Myanmar rejects the accusations and says it was waging a counterterrorism campaign against armed Rohingya groups. NPR reported extensively on the refugee crisis. Here's Michael Sullivan speaking to Rohingya mother Satara Bago, who fled with her 2-year-old.
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MICHAEL SULLIVAN: "Wednesday, they burned our village, so we ran to another," she says. "But the next day, they burned it, too. So we just kept going until we reached the river." But her husband and two of her children were killed, she says, along the way. Now it's just her and her daughter.
BEARDSLEY: The International Court of Justice, which was established after World War II and is an arm of the U.N., is allowing a 2023 charge of genocide against Israel brought by South Africa to go ahead. The case is still in its early stages. Israel has rejected the charge. In its 80-year history, the closest the world court has come to holding a nation responsible for genocide was in 2007 in a case brought against Serbia by Bosnia for the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. The court ruled it an act of genocide but did not hold Serbia responsible. While the ICJ has no power to enforce its decisions, they do carry moral weight with the international community. However, a few countries - including Israel, China and the U.S. - do not recognize the court.
Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Paris.
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