This article reviews some of the most significant developments in 2023 involving issues of international criminal law.
Since November 2020, the Ethiopian Government has waged a brutal war in the northern region of Tigray leading to massive and widespread human rights violations and causing the deaths of roughly 600,000 people. In that war, Ethiopia and its allies—including the Eritrean Defense Forces (“EDF”), Amhara regional forces, and various ethnic militias—systematically violated the rights of millions of Tigrayan civilians by carrying out airstrikes on civilian targets, brutal massacres, and extrajudicial killings, systematically committing sexual and gender-based violence, and imposing a crushing humanitarian blockade. An agreement signed in November 2022 by the Ethiopian Government and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (“TPLF”) to cease hostilities, unfortunately, did not bring an end to the suffering of the Tigray people.
To date, the violations the Ethiopian Government has been perpetrating against Tigrayans have been left largely unchecked by the global community. One particular aspect of Ethiopia’s campaign has been its deliberate shutdown of internet access and mobile phone services as an instrument of warfare. By exploiting internet and communications infrastructure, the Ethiopian Government has been quashing documentary and testimonial evidence of its human rights violations, while simultaneously cultivating a climate of fear and perpetuating a narrative of the conflict that conveniently underplays and obfuscates its own violations. On the global stage, meanwhile, Ethiopian leaders have been obstructing any and all international efforts at accountability, including by refusing UN and other human rights investigators physical access to Tigray.
Ethiopia’s conduct with respect to the deliberate targeting of communication infrastructure can be understood as part of a growing “digital authoritarianism” trend, which is defined by the “use of information technology by authoritarian regimes to surveil, repress, and manipulate domestic and foreign populations.” This trend, which this article will examine through the lens of the Tigray conflict, threatens to undermine accountability for human rights violations the world over. In particular, the following sections will address the challenges that digital authoritarianism poses for human rights advocacy in Ethiopia, the ways in which human rights advocates are overcoming those challenges, and the role that human rights legal proceedings can play in advancing transitional justice initiatives, including before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (“African Commission”).
Since 2020, the Ethiopian Government has been exploiting the tools of digital authoritarianism to conceal its violations. In the very first days of its invasion in November 2020, Ethiopia severed all communications between Tigray and the outside world. Internet and mobile phone services were completely unavailable for most of the two-year war. Even after the parties reached an ostensible agreement to cease hostilities in 2022, the Ethiopian Government has continued to shut down internet access and mobile phone services for months at a time. This communications blackout has cut off victims from their families and communities, silenced victims and their advocates, and is helping to shield Ethiopia from the consequences of its own actions. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian Government has been capitalizing on this deliberate silencing by broadcasting anti-Tigrayan sentiment across State television and digital media, ensuring that only its narrative of the conflict would be heard. The Ethiopian Government has silenced even those Tigrayans living elsewhere in Ethiopia by cultivating a climate of fear through the media, rounding up and arbitrarily detaining Tigrayans en masse, and subjecting them to torture, inhumane conditions, and even death.
Ethiopia’s systematic efforts in this regard have created many challenges for accountability. Above all, the communications blackout has made it nearly impossible to transmit concrete evidence of human rights violations out of the region. Human rights NGOs have lamented how little access they have to videos, photographs, and other forms of visual evidence that could corroborate reports of human rights violations occurring across Tigray. The communications blackout has also made it difficult for investigators and advocates to identify Tigrayan victims and witnesses who could provide first-hand accounts of human rights abuses. Even where communication is technically possible, the climate of fear Ethiopia has fostered has prevented survivors from coming forward to share their experiences.
As a result of Ethiopia’s tactics, the magnitude of Ethiopia’s violations is likely understated. For instance, the prevalence of rape and sexual violence against Tigrayans is likely far higher than what has been officially reported due in large part to the Ethiopian Government’s refusal to allow human rights observers into Tigray. This has contributed to human rights advocates facing significant difficulties in drawing public attention to, and obtaining accountability for, the Ethiopian Government’s widespread human rights abuses against Tigrayans.
Despite these challenges, Tigrayan and international human rights advocates have found several, mutually reinforcing means to help overcome accountability challenges posed by digital authoritarianism. First and foremost, they have drawn from Tigray’s resilient diaspora community. Many of the victims who feel safe enough to speak out against the Ethiopian Government are Tigrayan refugees displaced by the conflict, or family members who moved abroad long before war broke out. In addition, human rights advocates have been creative in gathering a variety of evidentiary sources to document violations of human rights. These include, for instance, medical reports, forensic analyses, satellite imagery, and a variety of other sources. Such evidence has been critical in documenting abuses in proceedings before international bodies, as well as in contributing to fact-finding missions, human rights reports, and media campaigns. Such initiatives also have the ancillary effect of drawing much-needed global attention to the conflict.
In order to obtain accountability on behalf of the Tigray people, a team from Legal Action Worldwide, the Pan-African Lawyers Union, and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP brought a communication, including a request for provisional measures, on behalf of Tigrayan victims of the war to the African Commission alleging systematic violations of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (the “Charter”) by Ethiopia and its allies. The African Commission is responsible for promoting the rights enshrined in the Charter and ensuring their protection across Africa by, for example, receiving and considering individual communications against States such as the one submitted by Tigrayan victims.
The landmark communication was filed in February 2022, making the African Commission the first regional human rights body to consider claims arising out of the armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in Ethiopia. A report from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission was published on December 28, 2023 (after the submission of this article).
Despite the real and credible threats of violence against Tigrayans who speak out, many came forward to testify in the case. Through in-depth interviews with these brave witnesses, coupled with rigorous analysis of information from UN bodies, international human rights organizations, and credible news outlets, the Tigrayan victims’ communications meticulously document Ethiopia’s violations of the twenty-three articles of the African Charter and its supporting Maputo Protocol through its two-year campaign against Tigrayans. This includes: massacres and extrajudicial killings; widespread and brutal sexual and gender-based violence; systematic arbitrary detention and torture; massive forced displacement; the devastating humanitarian blockade of the region; and Ethiopia’s failure to investigate and prosecute these violations. Tigrayan victims have also brought a distinct claim that Ethiopia’s power and communications blackout in Tigray violated the rights to freedom of expression and access to information guaranteed under Article 9 of the African Charter.
On October 14, 2022, the African Commission granted urgent provisional measures, requesting that Ethiopia cease all violations that would result in loss of life or violations of the dignity and physical integrity of Tigrayan civilians, and ensure humanitarian access in Tigray. As of publication, the parties await the African Commission’s decision on the admissibility of the communication.
Raising these issues before human rights mechanisms, such as the African Commission, serves to highlight the violations that persist. For example, when Ethiopia entered into the November 2022 agreement, it committed to “[m]obilize and expedite humanitarian assistance” in Tigray.” Yet, many months after the agreement, Ethiopia and its officials continued to deprive starving Tigrayans of much needed food and other forms of humanitarian aid. Ethiopia also committed to the “return and reintegration of internally displaced persons and refugees.” And yet, in Western Tigray, where over 2.6 million ethnic Tigrayans have been forcefully expelled from their homes as part of a campaign that Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and U.S. officials described as “ethnic cleansing,” there is little indication that displaced residents have been able to return home.
Under the November 2022 agreement, Ethiopia also committed to “implement a comprehensive national transitional justice policy” to ensure accountability for violations committed on all sides. The Tigrayan victims’ submissions before the African Commission help put sustained pressure on Ethiopia to make good on this promise. By introducing first-hand witness accounts and documentation, human rights organizations’ reporting, news articles from outlets across the world, and more, this case can help build a credible record of events to ensure that these gross human rights violations are never forgotten and will not go unpunished. A decision by the African Commission, drawing on this robust body of evidence, would go a long way in building the factual and legal foundation for comprehensive and equitable accountability in Ethiopia and around the world.
This article provides a brief history of censorship in Iran that helps to understand the current state of censorship impacting the country. After a short-lived but flourishing two years of relative freedom of expression during the Shah of Iran’s attempts to calm the nationwide protests, censorship returned almost immediately after the fall of the last Pahlavi government and the victory of the 1979 Revolution. It was also widely institutionalized with the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran (“IRI”). The first and most defining policy of the new regime, implemented even before it was officially established and before the adoption of its new Constitution by a referendum, was censorship. The fact that censorship held such a position of urgency within the IRI’s system of governance indicates not only its importance as the essential feature of IRI’s totalitarianism but also its purpose as a means of maintaining a theocratic dictatorship that had appropriated a popular revolution. A statement by a member of the Book Supervisory Board called the censorship (i.e., Momayezi) “the essence of all the revolution’s ideals.”
The history of censorship in post-revolutionary Iran can be identified as two distinct stages: 1980–1997 and 1998–present, based on the evolution of the IRI’s complex censorship apparatus and the expansion of its tools and mechanisms from direct to indirect application. The first stage established the basic structure of the IRI’s censorship apparatus, predating the Islamic Republic and the adoption of its constitution. The earliest attempts to restrict and suppress Freedom Of Expression (“FOE”) shaped the sociopolitical environment that promoted and empowered Iran’s new political and legal systems, which in turn institutionalized censorship through a variety of legal and extralegal tools in gross violation of Iran’s obligations under international human rights law. The first stage utilized the most extreme methods of direct censorship, including prior restraint, licensing, monopolization of mass media, criminalizing dissenting speech, and institutionalizing intolerance in all aspects of everyday life. The series of events known as the Cultural Revolution was the most characteristic policy of this era when the whole education system, along with the totality of the cultural industry and the Iranian intellectual sphere, was reconstructed to block any possibility of generating and disseminating ideas that could differ from the ruling ideology and its system of values within the education system and the mass culture. Therefore, The Cultural Revolution process shall be seen as establishing the infrastructures necessary for implementing one of the most suppressive systems of direct censorship in history.
The second stage attempted to expand the tools of censorship from direct to indirect methods to reduce global condemnation of the IRI’s suppression of FOE and to tackle the emerging tools of communication and sources of information primarily based abroad and beyond the reach of the IRI’s means of direct censorship. The IRI’s shift from direct censorship towards indirect censorship was mainly aimed at concealing the state’s role in suppressing FOE and replacing the overt censorship methods with those less known and condemned by the international community. It was in this stage when the IRI actively participated in establishing and spreading discourses and arguments, such as cultural relativism, that could frame restrictions on FOE in Iran within the scope of the state’s margin of appreciation based on cultural difference rather than a gross violation of international human rights standards. But another reason for adopting the indirect means of censorship at this stage was the potentiality of these methods to silence voices beyond the reach of the state’s methods of direct censorship. The mass immigration of dissident voices, the rise of the Persian media abroad, and the emergence of new mass communication technologies–such as satellite TV and, most importantly, the internet–disarmed the IRI’s censorship apparatus, which was mainly focused on direct censorship. Silencing the dissenting diaspora and foreign media through direct censorship was either technically impossible or politically too costly. The IRI’s attempt to assassinate Iranian dissidents abroad was usually backlashed with tremendous political and diplomatic crises. It was at this point when the IRI decided to adopt indirect methods as far-reaching, more effective, and less costly means of censorship. The Cultural Engineering Map is the principal policy that characterizes this era as it shifts towards adopting indirect censorship methods disguised as engaging with the “soft war” and “soft threats.”
As a result of the Cultural Revolution and the Islamization of the education system, the state monopoly over the Radio and Television broadcast, and its vast system of licensing and pre-publishing reviews, the IRI had almost total control over the flow of information and ideas up until the mid-90s. While the limited existing literature on indirect censorship focuses on the potentiality of avoiding transparency and misdirecting accountability as the main reasons behind adopting the indirect mechanisms, this section argues that their effectiveness, especially in the face of emerging means of social communication, and their far-reaching impact are as equally essential motives for utilizing these mechanisms by the States.
The emergence of new communication technologies effectively challenged the IRI’s absolute power over the mass media and flow of information. Additionally, certain political upheavals, including the growing domestic and international critique of the IRI’s censorship system and its own urgent need to reconstruct its relationship with the international community, pushed the state to reconstruct its censorship system and adopt more covert mechanisms of indirect censorship.
The first threat came from satellite television broadcasts from outside Iran. Although the IRI swiftly tackled the problem with legislation banning the use of satellite receiving equipment in 1995, satellite TV channels became severe rivals to the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (“IRIB”) and a key source of information. Although the police have fiercely enforced the banning, the number of viewers has grown. Criminalizing access to equipment and even satellite jamming was not enough and, at some point, ineffective. There was a new threat, a powerful and far-reaching media that was out of the IRI’s jurisdictional reach with no obligation to follow its system of licensing and prior restraint. The need to silence beyond borders and in a vast scale to compete with the diversity and multiplicity of the threat makes the direct mechanisms of censorship too costly, impossible, or obsolete. Moreover, making an impact on the FOE in another state’s jurisdiction doubles the importance of misdirection and concealment of responsibility.
The second and main threat that forced the IRI to reconstruct its system of censorship accordingly was the internet. The internet as a limitless source of information was widely embraced and used to verify the information released and fact-check claims made by the state, but it also enabled Iranian citizens to freely communicate their opinions and ideas not only to each other but to the rest of the world. After two decades of having public opinion censored and misrepresented by the state-controlled media, and after two decades of having all sources of information or means of communication (other than that of the state) withheld, Iranians had access to points of view that strongly contradicted the monotonous and forged voice of their people as transmitted by media controlled by the state. The Internet facilitated whistleblowing and documentation of evidence of human rights abuses. It also reinstated the pressure of public opinion through the voice of the victims that could now be heard globally. The IRI once again used the same legislative pattern to block access to countless and ever-growing numbers of websites and blogs directly. Iran’s Internet-blocking system is one of the broadest and most sophisticated in the world. But the availability of means of circumventing internet blocking and the crucial role of the internet in Iran’s political upheavals up until today proves that direct internet censorship was, at best, insufficient and financially, legally, and politically costly. When the internet became an inseparable part of businesses through social media, the direct blocking of such platforms became even more expensive for the state. All these reasons contribute to IRI’s policy to reconstruct and renovate its system of censorship and misdirect or conceal its responsibility.
In May 1997, Mohmmad Khatami won the presidential election with the promise of reform and re-establishment of the basic freedoms. Before the reformist government, censorship was almost completely arbitrary and based on laws and bylaws vaguely formulated and broadly interpreted to stifle freedom of expression. The rogue nature of revolutionary institutions and power groups, and the vague concept of existing laws, had created a vast and heavy but random and chaotic system of censorship. For instance, pre-publishing reviews and licensing processes for all forms of cultural product are assigned to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance (“MCIG”) based on the SCCR’s directive that delegates the authority regarding the publishing permissions to the MCIG without any clarification on the scope and nature of the pre-publishing review. In turn, the MCIG itself refused to provide clear guidance on the scope and nature of permissible and impermissible contents. Iranian playwright, Mahmoud Karimi Hakkak’s account of his attempts to obtain permission to stage plays in Iran clearly illustrates the arbitrary nature of censorship in this period: “From 1993 to 1998 I petitioned the authorities to stage 124 various plays. None were accepted. None were rejected. I faced a wall. It was as if I had never petitioned.”
When a reformist government took office, the IRI was determined to shift from an extreme isolationism towards reconstructing its foreign relations especially with liberal democracies. Therefore, it was crucial for the IRI to improve its image among the international community especially regarding its widely condemned human rights record. The first step was to reframe the state’s suppressive measure including its methods of censorship to better fit into a quasi-legal framework in order to present them as less discriminatory and arbitrary and, therefore, more defendable against the criticisms of the international watchdogs.
The new regulations aimed at transforming and systematizing an arbitrary regime of suppression into a highly restrictive system of censorship presented as cultural policy. Some of them made the pre-publication review and licensing processes easier, faster, and partly transparent. But most of these processes remained intentionally vague and at the total discretion of the censors. The MCIG issued two major directives to clarify the qualifications for press freedom enshrined in Article 24 of the Constitution. The first directive calls for a clarification on the scope and meaning of the clause “harmful to the principles of Islam” and the second one responds with an interpretation of “the principles and limitations of FOE in the press from legal and Sharia perspectives.” For the first time, the right to FOE is addressed extensively in a legal document that acknowledges that the “restrictions on FOE should be exceptions to the principle of freedom.” The document claims that it clarifies the scope and instances of the impermissible exception, i.e., “[the] contents deemed harmful to the principles of Islam”—and yet the interpretation is still too broad and open to discretionary interpretations. More importantly, the MCIG attempted to provide an interpretation of Article 24 while the Guardian Council (which was primarily established as the Constitution’s sole interpreter) had not provided any substantial clarification in the form of opinion or interpretation up until 2015. Nevertheless, even these minor and insufficient efforts towards reinstating the rule of law and regulating mechanisms of direct censorship were deemed to be a major improvement compared to the chaotic and arbitrary mechanisms of censorship during the first stage, and led to a drastic increase in the number of the press and cultural products.
At this point, the IRI’s system of censorship, mostly overseen by the conservatives, tended towards indirect and covert mechanisms of censorship. In April 2000, the parliament passed a new Press Law in which the amended Article 34 placed press offences under jurisdiction of General Criminal Courts (“GCC”) and the Revolutionary Courts (“RC”). These special criminal courts, primarily tasked with national security and political cases, were notorious for their total disregard for principles of fair trial and constitutional safeguards under Article 168. Prior to this amendment, the press was under jurisdiction of the special press court. The RC and GCC used the Pre-Revolution era “Safety Measure Law,” which was meant for preventing dangerous criminals from recommitting the crime by allowing the confiscation of the tools that could be used to commit the crime, as a pretext for temporary and indefinite seizure of the press without a trial or even a conviction for the crime.
After a few years of fearful silence, in the early 1990’s a new wave of anti-government protests swept the country. In less than four years, six uprisings took place in Iran’s largest cities. Since 1979, with each wave of anti-government protest, the IRI has tried to reinforce its system of censorship. If the Cultural Revolution in the 1980’s was a response to the protests led by the students and threats posed by free academia, the response to the new wave of protests in the early 1990’s was the enactment of New Penal Code (“NPC”) in 1996. Article 500 of the NPC introduces a new criminal offense: “propaganda against the system.” The provision is so broad and ambiguous that it could cover any act of criticism, activism, and protest in any form of speech as long as it was covered by the press or echoed by the opposition media outlets. Similarly, after the large student protests over the seizure of Salam Newspaper in 1999, the new Press Law was passed, which gave the Revolutionary Courts jurisdiction over the press cases and excluded the authors of the articles from being tried in public courts and in front of a jury.
But, the most important changes in the IRI’s system of censorship were implemented after the 2009 protests over the disputed results of the presidential election, known as “Green Revolution,” which marked as the largest anti-government demonstrations in Iran’s history. The protests immediately made their way to the headlines and numerous videos of the atrocities by security forces were captured by citizen journalists were aired on mainstream media around the world. As a result, the protests received worldwide public solidarity and the IRI’s human rights record was once again unequivocally condemned by the international community.
The anti-government uprisings since 2009 revealed the internet’s potential as a powerful tool for organizing protests. The most recent uprising and the current Woman Life Freedom Revolution have also foregrounded the social media’s importance in the live coverage of such protests and in the mobilization of a vast and global network of public support. But most importantly, it demonstrated the deficiency of the direct system of censorship in the age of satellites and cross-border massively multiplayer online platforms of expression. At this point the IRI expanded its censorship, focusing on indirect methods due to emerging communication technologies, the emigration of dissidents, and the shift from print to satellite TV and online media. Direct censorship had become ineffective as most information sources were now overseas, and the state therefore adopted what Babak Rahimi described as “proactive censorship.” These methods do not directly intervene with the flow of information but actively create loud noises and false narratives that, in effect, silence, marginalize or dehumanize unwanted voices or distort and discredit undesirable information through propaganda.
This new approach became part of the IRI’s overall strategy for “soft war.” A term initially used by security and intelligence think tanks, “soft war” became the code for a vast project of updating the state’s system of censorship. Three years after the Green Revolution, the Deputy Joint Chief of Staff for Iran’s armed forces announced the establishment of the “soft war headquarters,” while the Cultural and Propaganda Deputy of the IRGC announced the operation of 20,000 IRGC agents organized into cultural associations to fight the soft war against dissidents.
The IRI’s new strategy of censorship embedded in the term soft war was eventually incorporated into a larger “map of cultural engineering” as the principal cultural policy and the most essential element of the IRI’s controlling system after the Cultural Revolution that determined the new dimensions of the IRI censorship system.
Cultural engineering introduces a vast range of indirect mechanisms of censorship. These mechanisms include massive expansion of the state media’s overseas network as a means of spinning the speech, promoting social censorship and “cancel culture” through proxy agents, systematic spread of propaganda and directing nationalistic anger and religious hatred towards the journalists, activists, and dissidents inside Iran and abroad, organizing user-generated censorship, establishing an oligopoly of companies connected to or indirectly controlled by intelligence and military organizations, over the media market and cultural industries, budget cutting, and manipulating the education system. The last method is specifically used in the humanities and social sciences to marginalize or silence secular ideas in favor of the ideologically altered contents.
Since the February 2021 coup orchestrated by the Myanmar military junta, the situation in the country continues to deteriorate. It is estimated that over 4,000 civilians have been killed, and approximately 25,000 people have been arrested post-coup. Compounding these issues has been the lack of humanitarian aid to reach ethnic groups who continue to be the victims of the junta’s targeted killings and the occurrences of natural disasters such as Cyclone Mocha. Despite tragedy on the ground, cases are being pursued outside of the country, which could finally have an impact on the long-reigning impunity the military junta has enjoyed for decades. This article reviews litigation pending as of 2023 that was filed against the junta for mass atrocities crimes. A separate article focusing on corporate accountability for the Rohingya genocide will be published by New Lines Institute by 2024.
On October 24, 2023, five Myanmar nationals from the Chin community filed a complaint with the Philippines Department of Justice against ten officers of the Myanmar military for “violations of Republic Act 9851 or the Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law, Genocide, and Other Crimes Against Humanity.” The advocacy group Myanmar Accountability Project (MAP) has alleged that in September 2021, soldiers attacked the town of Thantlang in Chin State. Approximately 2,000 homes were reportedly destroyed, approximately 250 people were killed, and over 50,000 people fled from the violence. During this attack, complainants alleged that “soldiers murdered civilians, mutilated bodies, burned down hundreds of houses, destroyed churches, and used aid as a weapon of war.” From the date of filing, the Prosecutors in the Philippines have ninety days to approve or dismiss the case.
On January 20, 2023, the non-governmental organization Fortify Rights, along with sixteen individual complainants, filed a criminal complaint with the Office of the Federal Prosecutor in Germany. Using universal jurisdiction, the parties seek justice for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes perpetrated by the military junta. In addition to seeking charges against specific individuals in the Myanmar military, the complaint requests German Prosecutors to “open a ‘structural investigation’ into the situation in Myanmar, which would uncover numerous other crimes in various locations and affecting other ethnic groups not otherwise covered by the complaint.” Although Germany has been proactive in utilizing universal jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for torture in Syria and by the Islamic State group, the Prosecutors office notified Fortify Rights that it would not initiate an investigation.
On March 29, 2022, MAP filed a case with the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Turkey under universal jurisdiction for torture. The case focuses on one victim’s time at the interrogation center called “Ye Kyi Ain” and accuses twenty-four people, including junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and others who run the interrogation center. According to MAP’s reporting, the filing was accepted and the Justice Ministry in Ankara has initiated an investigation.
In June of 2023, the universal jurisdiction case filed by a London-based non-governmental organization proceeded with a week-long hearing in front of the Federal Prosecutor in Argentina. Due to security issues, victims testified behind closed doors. The Federal Prosecutor is “technically” still in the discovery phase of the matter.
The United Nations Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (“IIMM”), established in 2018, focuses on collecting evidence relating to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In its Fifth Annual Report, the IIMM stated that authorities in Myanmar have “disregarded” requests for information and access to the territory of Myanmar, which has caused the IIMM to operate in a “challenging environment with no physical access to crime sites or witnesses inside Myanmar and has serious witness protection concerns.” However, the IIMM reported that it “collected an unprecedented and unanticipated amount of information and evidence.” The IIMM continues to extend support and provide evidence to cases relating to Myanmar as they are filed.
Another novel legal pathway was created by a member of the Chin community in northern Burma. The Chin community continues to face aerial bombardments of churches, schools, and villages. In August of 2023, Applicant Salai Za Uk Ling filed an Application against Myanmar, asking the Association of South East Asian Nations (“ASEAN”) and The ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (“AICHR”) to (1) declare Myanmar to be in violation of its international obligations; (2) ask the military junta to cease and desist violations of human rights; (3) call upon the junta to provide reparations to victims (4) establish a fact finding mission to Myanmar; (5) establish a regional tribunal for prosecution of international crimes since February 1, 2021; and (6) implement an individual complaints mechanism in ASEAN system. The Applicant noted that in 2009, Myanmar had indicated its support for the creation of the AICHR by signing the Cha-am Hua Hin Declaration.
International Criminal Court (“ICC”) Prosecutor Karim Khan visited the Rohingya camps in Bangladesh in July. He met with representatives from the camps for a question-and-answer session regarding the ICC matter. Khan promised to “accelerate” the investigation and report on progress in 2024.
The government of France decided to intervene in The Gambia v. Myanmar case pending before the International Court of Justice (“ICJ”). In March of 2023, Myanmar requested an extension of its counter-memorial due to a litany of issues. The Gambia opposed the request. On April 6, 2023, the ICJ granted Myanmar a brief reprieve, ordering an extension of the deadline to file the counter-memorial to May of 2023. On October 16, 2023, the ICJ set new “time-limits” for the written pleadings that will now take the case late into 2024.
Two other matters which are worth mentioning are the pending public interest litigation focusing on the treatment of Rohingya refugees in India, in violation of the Indian Constitution. Activists petitioned the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Indonesia to allow for a case to be filed against the junta for crimes against humanity and genocide. While more activists and lawyers continue to pursue pathways to justice, the people of Burma continue to plead with the international community to take action to stop the unnecessary violence perpetrated against them by the military junta, who continue to be supported by corporate actors and governments through economic pathways and weapons sales.
