British MPs want Myanmar govt. referred to ICC

A British parliamentary committee says the government must support efforts to refer Myanmar’s government to the International Criminal Court (ICC) over evidence of state-sanctioned "ethnic cleansing" of Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State.

According to Press TV, the lawmakers on the International Development Select Committee said that the UK should still seek to gather “support for the UN Security Council to refer Burma to the International Criminal Court and to apply targeted financial sanctions at all identifiable key figures”.

The lawmakers welcome a move by the ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to seek a ruling whether she can investigate the deportation of thousands of Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh, the committee added.

The committee has accused Myanmar’s de facto Leader Aung San Suu Kyi of a “longstanding approach of denying human rights abuses have taken place and seeking to obstruct moves towards justice and accountability [and] failing to counter hate speech through positive speech and messages of tolerance and restraint”.

The developments come as there has been a tension within the UK’s Foreign Office over the degree to which Britain should give Suu Kyi. But the British parliamentary committee says the former Nobel Prize winner has become part of the problem.

The committee also called for a complete review of UK aid to Myanmar.

The MPs point out that, since the last British aid program was prepared, “there has been ethnic cleansing, the breaking of ceasefires, a closing of civil society space, including restrictions on media freedoms and the persecution of journalists, and a reduction in religious freedom”.

Following this bleak assessment, the committee said the UK’s government’s language and actions towards Myanmar needed to change dramatically, including by imposing targeted sanctions.

ME