“She decided to face the lawsuit by herself,” proclaimed National League of Democracy (NLD) spokesman Myo Nyunt about his boss, Myanmar’s state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi. He was referring to her decision to lead the country’s delegation of lawyers to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on 10-12 December 2019, where Myanmar stands accused of having committed acts of genocide.
The Republic of the Gambia, on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and supported by Abubacarr M. Tambadou, a high-profile lawyer with expertise on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, has submitted a lawsuit that invokes the 1948 Convention for the Punishment and Prevention of Genocide. As a party to this convention, which covers “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such,’’ Myanmar has been asked for an official reaction. Aung San Suu Kyi decided to travel to The Hague in person as foreign minister. However, she had not been officially invited by the Netherlands, and is thus privately there. While her personal involvement caught many people by surprise, it is in line with her way of doing politics.
She returned to Myanmar (then Burma) from the United Kingdom in 1988 to care for her ailing mother, but when that same year the army violently suppressed a democratic uprising led by students, monks and other civilians, she entered politics and joined the newly established NLD. Between 1989 and 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest for a total of 15 years. In isolation, she pursued vipassana meditation, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia, and wrote essays, short stories and letters. She was internationally praised for her fight for democracy and against human rights violations and for selflessly enduring all the hardships caused by the army whose founder had been her own father, General Aung San.
