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Leader says a report from an internal inquiry into Myanmar soldiers was due soon
In a defiant closing address to the UN’s highest tribunal, Aung San Suu Kyi has pleaded with its 17 international judges to dismiss allegations that Myanmar has committed genocide and urged them instead to allow the country’s court martial system to deal with any human rights abuses.
The 74-year-old leader of the Asian country informed the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague that she expected a report by an internal inquiry to recommend more prosecutions of Myanmar soldiers soon.
Myanmar leader tells court in The Hague that civilian deaths were not genocide but part of a civil war
She might have been saving her best defence for the highest stage of all. But the arguments advanced by Aung San Suu Kyi at The Hague in response to allegations including genocide were much the same as the Burmese leader has been making for years. Most had been discredited long before she delivered her 20-minute address at the international court of justice on Wednesday morning.
There had undoubtedly been violence in the country’s restive northern Rakhine state, Aung San Suu Kyi told the judges. Armed groups had attacked the Burmese army, which had responded with force, sending more than 700,000 Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh. But she challenged the idea that the military’s actions were carried out with genocidal intent – “to destroy the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part”.
Aung San Suu Kyi has dismissed allegations of state violence against Rohingya Muslims at The Hague. Speaking on the second day of hearings at the International Court of Justice in the genocide case against Myanmar, the country's de facto prime minister denied there had been genocidal intent in her government't treatment of the Rohingya and blamed the conflict on an uprising by separatist insurgents
World’s failure to act over Myanmar is ‘stain on collective conscience’, UN court told
Aung San Suu Kyi has sat impassively through graphic accounts of mass murder and rape perpetrated by Myanmar’s military at the start of a three-day hearing into allegations of genocide at the UN’s highest court.
“I stand before you to awaken the conscience of the world and arouse the voice of the international community,” Abubacarr Marie Tambadou, the Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, said as he opened his country’s case against Myanmar at the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague. “In the words of Edmund Burke: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’
Peace prize winner will lead her country’s defence against claims at court in Netherlands
A momentous legal confrontation will take place at the UN’s highest court this week when the Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi appears in person to defend Myanmar against accusations of genocide.
Once internationally feted as a human rights champion, Myanmar’s state counsellor is scheduled to lead a delegation to the international court of justice (ICJ) in The Hague.
Burmese leader will lead delegation to international court of justice next month
Aung San Suu Kyi will travel to The Hague to defend Myanmar against allegations of genocide, her office has announced.
The Burmese leader, once an icon of democracy but now tainted by her association with what UN investigators have described as crimes against humanity, will lead a delegation to the international court of justice (ICJ) next month.
The decision to honour the Ethiopian prime minister recognises the astonishing changes he has pushed through. But the country’s progress remains precarious
The list of Nobel peace prize winners encompasses the good and great, but also a few more curious nominees. Some were controversial from the first. Barack Obama was honoured before he had a chance to do anything significant with his office. Henry Kissinger was given the prize when he had already done far too much; the award, said one observer, made political satire obsolete. In other cases, history has proved unkind. Aung San Suu Kyi was recognised in 1991, as a dissident who had long campaigned for democracy and freedom. But she became head of Myanmar’s government and, though she has no power over the military, her silence as it carried out mass killings of Rohingya Muslims led many to call – unsuccessfully – for her prize to be revoked.
So handing this year’s prize to a leader who has been in power for just 18 months, and was little known before that, is a bold move. Yet the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has an astonishing amount to show for his time in office. The award is primarily to recognise his work to secure peace and international cooperation, and in particular the deal he signed with Eritrea last summer, which ended a nearly 20-year military stalemate following a long border war. The domestic changes he has effected in a highly repressive country are equally impressive. Half his cabinet is female, as is his chief justice – and the head of the election board, a former exiled dissident. Bans on opposition parties have been lifted, thousands of political prisoners have been freed, and senior officials have been arrested for corruption and human rights abuses. It is all the more astonishing given that he was appointed by the instinctively autocratic Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. His remarkable record, however brief, has turned scepticism about his promises into “Abiymania”.
On a rare trip to Europe, Myanmar leader and Hungary PM discuss issue of ‘growing Muslim populations’
From her failure to speak out against ethnic cleansing to imprisoning journalists, the reputation of Aung San Suu Kyi in the west has taken a battering in recent months.
But the leader of Myanmar has found a new ally in far-right, staunchly anti-immigrant Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán.
Washington, Sep 12 : Indian-American Congressman Ro Khanna has said that he wants to revoke Myanmar State Counsellor Suu Kyi's Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honour in the US, which was bestowed on her with much fanfare six years ago. Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi has been silent as military rulers of Myanmar ravaged the Rohingyas, an ethnic minority group on the country's western border, in a brutal campaign the UN deemed "genocide".
Myanmar's military has assured the United Nations of "harsh" action against perpetrators of sexual violence, state media reported on Tuesday, as U.N. envoys traveled to Rakhine State where the military conducted a widely criticized crackdown. Rohingya refugees are reflected in rain water along an embankment next to paddy fields after fleeing from Myanmar into Palang Khali, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh November 2, 2017.
Rohingya Muslim refugees have staged a protest rally at a camp in Bangladesh, calling for United Nations protection on their potential return to Myanmar as well as citizenship. The rally on Sunday coincided with a four-day visit by the UN Security Council representatives to Bangladesh and Myanmar to see firsthand the aftermath of state-sponsored violence against the minority Muslims in the Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which has been denounced by the world body as "ethnic cleansing."
President Duterte said he is willing to accept and welcome Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, as long as European countries would do the same. Duterte issued the statement as he slammed the United Nations anew for criticizing him over the deaths and alleged human rights violations linked to the relentless war on drugs.
In this March 18, 2018, file photo, Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi listens to the opening speech at the Leaders Plenary during ASEAN-Australia Special Summit in Sydney, Australia. The Trump administration has slapped sanctions on companies across the globe to punish illicit trade with nuclear-armed North Korea, yet Myanmar, which is suspected of acquiring ballistic missile systems from the pariah state, has escaped the full force of the "maximum pressure" campaign.
The U.S. regularly conducts military rehearsals with the armed forces of other countries around the world, annual exercises and emergency rescue drills that are often subject to political headwinds. But when this year's Cobra Gold exercises kicked off Tuesday in eastern Thailand, there was a particularly controversial attendee: Myanmar's military, known locally as the Tatmadaw , stands accused of ethnic cleansing , and some say genocide.
Philippine president said he pities Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi for being the focus of international criticism over her country's handling of the Rohingya refugee crisis. Suu Kyi and Duterte met in New Delhi this week at a summit of Southeast Asian leaders on the 25th anniversary of ASEAN-India ties.
Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has overseen what is said to be the world's fastest growing refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims flee to neighbouring Bangladesh. Risking death by sea or on foot, more than half a million have fled persecution in northern Rakhine state since August 2017.
As 2018 begins in Cambodia and around the world, we take a last look at what made headlines and, fitting in this day, lit up Facebook and Twitter in Asia in 2017. From the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother at a Malaysia airport to smog-filled Indian skies and a year-end US presidential visit, the images were all-too-real.
The Myanmar military, which has been accused of ethnic cleansing against the country's Muslim Rohingya minority, has been invited back as an observer in a major multinational military exercise next year led by the United States and Thailand. Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said Thailand had invited Myanmar to take part in the annual Cobra Gold exercise, which involves thousands of US and Thai military personnel and participants from other Asian countries.
The Vatican is pushing back against criticism aimed at Pope Francis for not speaking out against Myanmar's treatment of the Rohingya Muslims during his historic visit to the southeast Asian country. Foreign diplomats, including US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have called what Myanmar's military is doing to the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, a charge that its leadership and the country's defacto ruler Aung San Suu Kyi deny.
The United States declared the ongoing violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar to be "ethnic cleansing" on Wednesday, threatening penalties for military officials engaged in a brutal crackdown that has sent more than 600,000 refugees flooding over the border to Bangladesh. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson blamed Myanmar's security forces and "local vigilantes" for what he called "intolerable suffering" by the Rohingya.