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Two members of the Myanmar military are believed to be in the custody of the Office of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, the Netherlands. The two members are Mio Win Tun (33) and Ya Ning Tun (30). In a recently leaked video message, they admitted to committing serious crimes against the Rohingya Muslim minority population in Myanmar’s Rakhine State in 2016, including massacres, rapes, burning of houses and mass graves.
His recent presence in The Hague could be a major turning point in the trial for the Myanmar genocide, crimes against humanity and other serious crimes against the Rohingya. In particular, the confessions of these two Myanmar members could lead to significant breakthroughs in the ongoing investigation by the ICC prosecutor.
In the video, Mio Win Tun says their commanding officer ordered them to “shoot anything they see or hear.” In response, she participated in the murder of 30 Rohingya Muslims. Then she gave them mass graves near the military bases and the Watch Tower.
Ya Ning Tun was in a nearby township around the same time. He said that he and his colleagues obeyed the orders of the senior officers of his battalion. The order was about them: ‘Kill any children or old people you see.’ “We have evacuated about 20 villages and handed over mass graves,” said Ya Ning Tun.
The descriptions of the crimes committed by these two members of the Myanmar military are similar to the descriptions of the Rohingya who have been displaced and taken refuge in Bangladesh.
Matthew Smith, executive director of the human rights group Fortify Rights, said the two members of the Myanmar military are currently in The Hague are credible. But an ICC spokesperson has ruled out the possibility that the two Myanmar troops are in ICC custody.
However, when contacted by The Voice in The Hague on Tuesday evening, the ICC Prosecutor’s Office said that after ICC judges gave their approval on November 14 last year, Prosecutor Fatu Bensuda initiated a formal inquiry into the Bangladesh-Myanmar situation. That search is still ongoing. The most important part of the search process is privacy. Otherwise, the prosecution will not be able to properly perform its functions. The prosecution does not comment on any of the ongoing investigations and the search process. It is not only about the integrity of the investigation process, but also about the need to guarantee the safety of victims, witnesses and those who have communicated with the prosecution. The ICC Prosecutor’s Office told Kaler Kanth that since the official initiation of the investigation, they have been independently and impartially collecting evidence on various crimes from various sources. Search operators carefully review and analyze that data evidence. They want to know what happened to the Rohingya people from Myanmar who had to move to Bangladesh.
If the evidence obtained at the end of the investigation is adequate for legal action, the prosecutor will ask the judges to issue an arrest warrant for anyone who has evidence of a serious crime. The prosecution will inform the public when it makes an important decision about the investigation and when there is significant progress. The Office appreciates the public’s interest in an independent investigation. However, due to the reasons mentioned above, the prosecution must conduct this investigation in complete confidentiality. No specific information was available on how the two members of the Myanmar military arrived at the ICC. However, a few months ago, in a separate video message, they made a confessional statement about the operation to eradicate the Rohingya from the custody of Arsar, a group fighting with Myanmar forces. According to sources in The Hague, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) said the two troops had arrived at the Bangladesh border last August to protect them.
Gambian lawyer Payam Akhavan told CBC in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for violating the Genocide Charter that he could not reveal the identities of the two Myanmar soldiers.
However, he recognized that their numbers were not enough to defeat the Myanmar army. As a result, Bangladesh has reported to the ICC prosecutor in The Hague as an obligation under the ICC constitution. They are no longer in Bangladesh.
Payam Akhavan did not confirm whether the people in the video message released by Arsar in recent months reached the border with Bangladesh. He said that many of those people participated in the massacre.
According to Payam Akhavan, the fact that the statements of the two Myanmar soldiers in the search process are true will show that the terrible persecution of the Rohingya was not an isolated incident or a misdemeanor of some wayward soldiers. Rather, it was implemented through specific orders from the highest levels of the military.
It was revealed that the identity of the two Myanmar soldiers in the video message matched the truth. Reports from various international human rights organizations have identified their military units as persecuting the Rohingya.
Please note that Myanmar is not a member of the ICC. Myanmar has denied the judicial jurisdiction of the ICC. However, the ICC has jurisdiction over crimes committed by Rohingya who enter Bangladesh from Myanmar as members of the ICC. The ICC Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the circumstances in which the Rohingya were forced to leave Myanmar and return to Bangladesh, and the crimes committed through this mass eviction. The ICC can try individual crimes; On the other hand, it can guarantee the responsibility of the state.
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