the question of genocide in Burma

_ By Jared Genser

It is interesting to note as a reference point that in his private briefing to the UN Security Council of 16 December 2005, UN Under-Secretary Ibraham Gambari says the following: _

"The Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide has also been collecting information from different sources within and beyond the United Nations system concerning allegations of indiscriminate killings of large numbers of civilians, forced relocations, displacement, rape used as a weapon of war and forced labour affecting particular ethnic and national groups. He is concerned that, under the prevailing circumstances in Myanmar, civilian populations may be identified as enemies or as sympathetic to enemies, solely on the basis of their ethnicity. He stands ready to engage in a practice dialogue with the authorities and the United Nations with a view to devising a means of preventing further massive or serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law."

If the question of genocide in Burma is decided (i.e., that the UN had determined that what is happening in Burma is not genocide and there is no risk of genocide), then any investigation of the kind that he is conducting would be outside the scope of his mandate.

Of course, I'm not suggesting what is happening in Burma is genocide. I don't have the information on which I could make that judgment. But this clearly remains an open question for the Special Advisor and the UN has not made a determination either way.

Lastly, I would point out that it oversimplifies things to state the question as to whether genocide is or is not occurring. To that point, I would suggest that people look at Professor William Schabas massive and thoroughly researched book entitled "Genocide in International Law."

It explains comprehensively that the concept of genocide is an evolving one given the ongoing jurisprudence of the Special Courts for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the newly established International Criminal Court. The concept of what constitutes genocide is slowly broadening over time, not narrowing, and this is an important consideration as well.

Thus, while the term genocide does invoke the mass atrocities of the Holocaust or Rwanda in the public consciousness, what actually constitutes genocide in international law is a different matter. The public perception that genocide entails fast-burning set of mass killings of hundreds of thousands of people does not match the current state of genocide in international law which requires much less.

For example, in 2004, the International Court for the Former Yugoslavia described the killing of 8,100 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica genocide: "By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. The Appeals Chamber states unequivocally that the law condemns, in appropriate terms, the deep and lasting injury inflicted, and calls the massacre at Srebrenica by its proper name: genocide."

And lastly, one must also understand that there are various other offences described in the Genocide Convention that are justiciable at the International Court of Justice. Most interesting is the crime of attempted genocide which does not require that a genocide have occurred but rather that a "substantial step" has been taken in that direction.

 Jared Genser

(Jared Genser is the author of the "Havel & TuTu" report which led to UN Security Council debates on Burma)

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Comments

Fiona Thompson said _

The deliberate policy towards the Rohingya, economically, starvation, denial of marriage, education, travel and citizenship, not to mention confiscation of land property and livelihoods, is deliberately aimed at genocide. Regardless of the abuses in the other ethnic areas. The Rohingyas are most definitely  targeted.
 

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If you have evidences of genocide committed by military regime please contact burmadigest@tayzathuria.org.uk