The Hague: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is set to rule on Myanmar’s preliminary objections regarding the genocide case brought over against the military’s brutal 2017 crackdown on the mostly Muslim Rohingya people, Al Jazeera reported.
The court heard arguments on the objections in February this year, and ICJ President Judge Joan E Donoghue will read out its decision on Friday at 3 pm.
Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center (GJC) in New York, has said that it is “reasonably likely” that the ICJ will reject the objections, allowing the court to move to the next stage of the process — the merits phase — when it will consider the factual evidence against Myanmar.
“These objections were nothing more than a delaying tactic and it is disappointing that the ICJ has taken a year and a half to make its decision,” Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK), told Al Jazeera. “The genocide is ongoing and it is vital that the court doesn’t allow any further delays.”
The Gambia took the case against Myanmar to the ICJ in November 2019, with the backing of the 57-member Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, after a brutal military crackdown in the northwestern state of Rakhine forced hundreds of thousands of Rohingya to flee into neighboring Bangladesh.
