Myanmar Spring Chronicle – July 06 Scenes
MoeMaKa, July 07, 2023
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged to hand over the Myanmar military council to the ICC; 15 deaths in Ngwetwin Village in Ayadaw
At the UN human rights session being held in Switzerland, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volkar Turk, urged the Security Council to hand over the Myanmar military council to the International Criminal Court (ICC), according to news reports.
Referring to the killings, human rights violations, loss of life after arrests, massacres, economic decline, high commodity prices, rapidly increasing number of war refugees, war refugees fleeing across the border, and resource damage in Myanmar, the High Commissioner urged the Security Council to hand over the Myanmar Military Council to the ICC.
Even if the Security Council had handed over the leaders of the Myanmar Military Council to the ICC, how to deal with the leaders of the Military Council of Myanmar, which is not a member of the ICC, seems to be an issue that raises many questions.
The first step is the potential that the Security Council may hand over the issue of taking action against the leaders of the Myanmar Military Council to the ICC. Since Russia and China are permanent members of the Security Council and have the right to use veto power, it is almost impossible to hand over the leaders of the Myanmar Military Council. In March 2018, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Putin, but he has not yet been arrested and prosecuted. If a country visited by Putin is a member of the ICC, it has an obligation to arrest and deliver the wanted person, but there are instances where some member countries do not arrest the person, citing diplomatic immunity, so only the decision of the host country is applied.
There were calls to the ICC to take action against Myanmar’s military leaders for the 2018 genocide of the Rohingya, and the NLD party, which led the government at the time, rejected those calls.
First, the UN Security Council has had limited powers and declining influence in international affairs for decades. Not only in the case of Myanmar, but in other international issues, the United Nations cannot use its influence to enforce the points it should follow, and it is unable to intervene and resolve human rights violations, conflicts between countries, invasions, etc.
Major Security Council member countries only give priority to global strategy and the strategic landscape of powerful countries, so even though human rights violations, arson, and killings are occurring in a country, if it is not directly related to the global strategy, and if it is not connected with mutual interests, they do not take it seriously.
In the context of the global strategy of powerful countries, they act urgently on issues such as the invasion of Ukraine, the threatening flight of Chinese planes in the Taiwan Strait, but they cannot urgently address the issues that are happening in countries that are not important in terms of political geography and in terms of global strategy. Specifically, as powerful countries, they prioritize global strategies and assume that normative value issues such as human rights violations and crimes against humanity are no longer as important as the above global strategic issues. In addition, influence over the United Nations, and not taking into consideration by the powerful countries over the UN depending on the situation lead to a situation that the decision of the Security Council in world affairs is gradually becoming no more than a decision on paper.
Last year, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution on Myanmar, and since there is no system or basis that can effectively pressure the implementation of the recommendations of the resolution, this resolution did not have a major impact.
Looking at these facts and examples, the prospect of handing over Myanmar military leaders to the ICC is unlikely. In the case of Myanmar, I believe that organizing regional countries, practical actions, and possible exhortations that can produce likely results in practice are more important than such resolutions.
Another news item for today is the news that 15 villagers were killed and 7 injured who were said to be junta-backed militia when the people’s defense forces raided the village of Ngwetwin Village in Ayadaw Township recently and opened fire with homemade weapons. This news item was first published by the military council’s propaganda telegram channels. It was not reported by other media outlets, but on July 6, the VOA news agency reported it by quoting the news from AFP. In the AFP report, the statement of the PDF group was quoted, and the PDF group said in a general sense that the victims of the village were junta-backed militia, and there was no mention of gender, whether children were included or not, or whether the inclusion of 3 priests among the 7 injured.
In the Sagaing region, in retaliation for the killings by the military council, killings of civilians, Pyu Saw Htee, etc. often occur from time to time. These numbers are not comparable to the number of killings by the military council troops, but there is a danger of the local residents taking revenge among themselves or killings between supporters of each side, retaliation, familial killings, and military-related crimes, if military ethics are not followed strictly. And, I think it is important for the news media to be able to report human rights violations freely.