Rohingya Genocide: Of a lawyer and his about-turn
Professor William Schabas, a globally acclaimed lawyer hired by Myanmar, comes under spotlight for denying that there was genocidal intent during the violence perpetrated against the Rohingya people in Rakhine state.
He made the argument at the International Court of Justice in the Hague on Wednesday. The Gambia, which filed a case against Myanmar on November 11, accusing it of genocide against Rohingya Muslims in 2016 and 2017, presented its arguments on December 10.
The denial by Prof Schabas, a global expert on international and criminal laws and genocide, is said to be a shift from his remarks in 2013 when he told Al Jazeera that there were elements of genocide in how Myanmar was treating the Rohingyas.
Some 750,000 Rohingyas fled a brutal crackdown by Myanmar military after August 2017 in Rakhine state. The Muslim community has been denied of citizenship, basic rights including education, health, and freedom of movement. They also faced restrictions on marriage.
UN investigators and other rights bodies accused Myanmar of genocide, but Myanmar has been refuting the allegations consistently, including at the ICJ last week.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Prof Schabas in 2013, said: “We’re moving into a zone where the word [genocide] can be used [in the case of the Rohingya]. When you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of the people, hoping to see that they really are eventually, that they no longer exist, denying their history, denying the legitimacy of the right to live where they live, these are all warning signs that mean that it is not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide.”
Making reference of Schabas’ comment in Al Jazeera, Prof Philippe Sands, legal counsellor for The Gambia, said, “Of course, everyone is allowed to change their mind, but the obvious question is: how could that which was “not frivolous” in 2013, before the “clearance operations”, before the killings, before the rapes, somehow become implausible in 2019?
“The path to implausibility is eased, of course, if you simply take certain categories of acts out of the equation: Myanmar has been conspicuously silent, for example, about all the sexual violence that has occurred on a wide and systematic basis, a clear reflection, we say, as do the UN bodies that have considered the matter, of genocidal intent.”
Yesterday was the third and final round of the three-day hearing of the case. In the final round, Prof Schabas said his answer to Al Jazeera was in response to a hypothetical question.
“I refused to say because it was a hypothetically question. I answered ‘no’. If the copy of the entire interview is available, it could be found,” he told the judges at the ICJ yesterday.