Testimonies of Rohingya genocide survivors and witnesses at the Argentine federal court are a grim reminder that justice and accountability remain elusive for victims of the Myanmar military’s decades-long human rights violations and atrocity crimes.

According to the campaign group Progressive Voice, Only the guarantee of justice will lead to a durable solution to the current human rights and humanitarian catastrophe and Myanmar’s future and the international community must take all necessary steps to hold the Myanmar military to account.

The spotlight once again returns to justice and accountability – or lack thereof – for ethnic minorities in Myanmar as the UN Human Rights Council’s 53rd Regular Session kicks off on 19 June 2023.

In parallel with this, a couple of weeks before the session, a federal court in Buenos Aires, Argentina, started the hearing of a historic universal jurisdiction case, filed by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK) in November 2019, against Myanmar military leaders for the Rohingya genocide. Rohingya witnesses testified about the heinous crimes committed by the Myanmar military from 2012 to 2018, which led to mass forced displacement within and across Myanmar borders.

The complaint incriminated the Myanmar military and its soldiers in rape and other forms of sexual violence against numerous Rohingya women and girls. Notably, “large-scale gang rape was perpetrated by soldiers in at least 10 village tracts in Rakhine state.” At times, groups of up to 40 women and girls were raped or gang-raped together, even in public and in front of their families, “to maximize humiliation.”

Another horrendous incident exposed in the complaint was the massacre of Min Gyi Village, Maungdaw Township in Rakhine State, on 30 August 2017, where the Myanmar military slaughtered at least 750 people. Men were killed, and their bodies were thrown into pits and incinerated. Women and girls were robbed, raped, and stabbed, while children were slain.

In 2020, a Myanmar military deserter who took part in a Rohingya massacre in 2017, confessed that he followed an order from his commanding officer to “Kill all you see, whether children or adults.”

According to Progressive Voice, the Myanmar military has never deviated from its plan to persecute and exterminate the Rohingya people, even after the genocide. A total of 1.6 million Rohingya were forcibly displaced by the Myanmar military between 2012 and 2017, with over 900,000 living in extremely congested camps in Bangladesh.

Some of them are now being used by the military junta as political pawns in its repatriation “pilot project” to return to internment camps in Myanmar without any guarantee of their rights, particularly restoration of their citizenship. This will add to the over 140,000 Rohingya confined in Rakhine State’s overcrowded, flood-prone internment camps since 2012, who recently faced the junta’s wilful negligence and weaponization of humanitarian aid during Cyclone Mocha.

BROUK warned that the junta’s tactics are all designed to result in “slow death” for Rohingya.

Progressive Voice points out that the Rohingya massacre is far from an outlier in the military’s history of violations against innocent civilian populations. The Myanmar military has committed uncountable war crimes and crimes against humanity against ethnic minorities throughout Myanmar’s history.

These crimes have only worsened as the military has tried to suppress the nationwide democratic resistance movement since its illegal coup in 2021.

One example is the Muso Massacre, also known as the Christmas Eve Massacre, in Hpruso Township, Karenni State, where junta troops killed at least 35 Karenni civilians. Another mass killing happened this March in Pinlaung, Southern Shan State, where junta troops killed 23 civilians from the Pa-O community. These are only a few examples among countless more.

Progressive Voice believes that the lack of response from the international community has emboldened the Myanmar junta. It says that although the Myanmar military has been repeatedly applying the same patterns to commit these atrocities, the international community continues to allow these war criminals to enjoy blanket impunity. The cowardly Myanmar military has been enabled to evade justice for decades because the international community has allowed it to do so.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2669 failed to produce concrete actions to stop the Myanmar military’s terror campaign against the people of Myanmar. The Pa Zi Gyi Village aerial attack that killed almost 200 civilians happened only a week after the adoption of another annual resolution by the UN Human Rights Council, which demanded the junta immediately cease all airstrikes. This is merely more clear evidence of the junta’s total disregard for the international community’s repeated empty calls.

Progressive Voice believes that only concrete actions to hold the junta accountable for its crimes can stop the ongoing horrific acts committed nationwide against the people of Myanmar.

It says that excruciating testimonials of Rohingya witnesses, including the victims of sexual and gender-based violence, must not be just another reminder of the junta’s crimes. The international community must

take them seriously and pledge to bring about justice and accountability for those victims and survivors violated by the Myanmar military.

This must be done through concerted efforts to pursue all available mechanisms and avenues to actualize justice and accountability, including a UNSC resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and for UN member states, agencies and mechanisms to provide financial, political and technical support for ongoing universal jurisdiction efforts in Argentina, Germany, Indonesia, and Turkey.

Progressive Voice says that now is the time for the UN and member states to live up to their mandates and obligations by ending the culture of impunity that has plagued Myanmar’s history.

As Tun Khin, president of the BROUK said, “Holding the military accountable for genocide of the Rohingya will benefit everyone in Burma.”