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Aung San Suu Kyi appears at The Hague for genocide hearing

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Aung San Suu Kyi has appeared at The Hague where she is expected to defend Myanmar against genocide charges.The country's de facto leader, a Nobel Peace laureate, is appearing before the UN's highest court for a hearing into allegations that a military campaign against the Rohingya Muslim minority amounted to genocide.Ms Suu Kyi is expected to argue that the military operations in 2017 were a legitimate counter-terrorism response to attacks by Rohingya militants.Image: Suu Kyi departed Myanmar from Naypyidaw International Airport yesterdayMore than 700,000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh during the campaign, which involved mass rapes, killings and the torching of homes.Members of Myanmar's Rohingya minority were reported to have been praying for justice last night ahead of the hearing in the Netherlands.Ms Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for championing democracy and human rights under Myanmar's then-ruling junta, is set to defend those who once held her under house arrest.The case before the UN's International Court of Justice was launched by Gambia, which has a predominantly Muslim population, in November.Gambia has accused Buddhist-majority Myanmar of violating its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.It is only the third genocide case filed at The Hague, the UN's International Court of Justice, since World War Two.The other two relate to crimes in the former Yugoslavia: the Srebrenica massacre of Bosnia's Muslim population in 1995 and the accusations of genocide between Croatia and Serbia during the Croatian war of secession.Image:A Rohingya widow and mother breaks down in tears while describing the killings in her village Gambia will argue Myanmar's forces carried out widespread and systematic atrocities under a campaign known as "operation clearance" from August 2017 that constituted genocide.This week's proceedings before a panel of 17 judges will not deal with the core allegation of genocide, but Gambia has requested a court order for Myanmar to halt any activity that may aggravate the dispute.Gambia's court has accused Myanmar of genocidal acts "intended to destroy the Rohingya as a group, in whole or in part, by the use of mass murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence, as well as the systematic destruction by fire of their villages, often with inhabitants locked inside burning houses".The United Nations has said the campaign was executed with "genocidal intent."Opening Gambia's case at The Hague, the country's justice minister Aboubacarr Tambadou urged the court to "tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people"."It is indeed sad for our generation that 75 years after human kind committed itself to the words 'never again', another genocide is unfolding right before our eyes," he added."Yet we do nothing to stop it."This is a stain on our collective conscience."Desperate Rohingya stranded in Myanmar While the United States stopped short of calling it genocide, it said the acts amounted to "ethnic cleansing" and imposed sanctions against military leaders.The tribunal, also known as the World Court, has no enforcement powers, but its rulings are final and have significant legal weight.Image:Hasina Begum has said she was among many women raped by Myanmar soldiers Hasina Begum, 22, said she was among many women raped by Myanmar soldiers who also burned down her village.She said: "They have done these things to me, to my relatives and my friends.

I can tell them face to face, looking them in the eyes, because I am not lying."Ms Begum arrived in The Hague on Monday with two other victims and an interpreter, having left the refugee camp in Bangladesh for the first time since she fled Myanmar.She said from her hotel on the night before the hearings: "I feel great."Myanmar military raped many of our women.

We want justice with the help of the international community."Later on Tuesday, the US imposed sanctions on four Myanmar military leaders, including the commander-in-chief, for alleged human rights abuses against the Rohingya and other minorities.ANALYSIS: An extraordinary fall from grace for Aung San Suu KyiBy Michelle Clifford, Europe correspondent at The HagueA woman who was for so long held up as the voice of democracy and human rights in Myanmar entered the International Court of Justice with no words for the press.Nor did Aung San Suu Kyi show emotion as international lawyers detailed an appalling litany of atrocities which, they claim, she failed to use her authority to stop.It marked an extraordinary fall from grace for a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who was once feted, but is now condemned internationally.Ms Suu Kyi has chosen to stand up for the same military which kept her under house arrest for years.Lawyers for Gambia - a small Muslim-majority nation which has brought the case against Myanmar - detailed mass rapes and murder, sexual abuse and systematic destruction of villages where the minority Muslim Rohingya community lived.It amounts to genocide, they said, and could have been prevented.

Ms Suu Kyi did not visibly react.She has always denied the claims and on Wednesday is expected to repeat denials of the persecution of the Rohingya despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.A UN fact-finding mission has said the military's action against the Rohingya was carried out with "genocidal intent".Ms Suu Kyi says the operations were legitimate counter-terrorism following attacks on the security forces by Rohingya militants.But that crackdown by the army in 2017 left thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands to flee to Bangladesh.Some have travelled from there for the hearing in The Hague and Ms Suu Kyi will have seen and heard crowds of protestors as she left the court.They will be back when she appears as a witness, probably in even greater numbers.We asked many of them why they think she is prepared to defend the military against them and you get the same answer: "Because we are Muslims".A few speculate she is trying to shore up support at home ahead of elections next year.And she still has plenty of support; both at home and outside the court, where people carrying posters declaring their love for Ms Suu Kyi stood in the freezing cold in the hope of seeing her.She will return on Wednesday to try to refute the mass of evidence already presented before the UN's highest court, as well as tell that court the international community simply fails to understand what is happening in Myanmar.




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