me and more must prevent genocide against the ring tone that's the order from the international court of justice its judges say rohingya muslims there are extremely vulnerable but will this ruling make a difference or is it just symbolic this is inside story. hello and welcome to the program i'm homage i'm joined the international court of justice the world's highest court has ordered me and mars government to prevent its military from committing acts of genocide against the regime go feral he in the end i have been subjected to iraq to. keep it a trick in their right to fix these things the i.c.j. has also warned that they were in the muslim minority remain at serious risk of genocide and ordered the country to abide by the genocide convention and take all measures within its power to prevent further killings the case brought by the gambia last year accuses me and more of committing an ongoing genocide against us minority muslim population mean more denies the allegations thursday's ruling comes just days after an inquiry backed by me and more as government dismissed allegations of genocide manned mars de facto civilian leader aung san suu kyi says they were having to have exaggerated abuses so what does this ruling mean and will mean more abide by the orders will discuss all this in a moment with our guests but 1st let's take a look at how we got here it's been more than 2 years since 700000 rohingya fled violence and mayhem on the military launched the crackdown in iraq and state the u.n. later described it as a textbook example of ethnic cleansing according to doctors without borders at least $6700.00 rohingya including 730 children under the age of 5 were killed in the 1st month of the operation more than $1000000.00 rohingya are now living in refugee camps in neighboring bangladesh the united nations special repertoire on myanmar has called on the international community to continue to put pressure on me and more to follow whatever decisions come from the un's top court. the security council fails to refer the situation of we have to international court of international criminal court and i think we must continue to put pressure on the security council of its failure to do this by not referring the situation to the city but to i.c.c. this case the council is really not fulfilling its obligations and its responsibilities set forth under the un charter etc i have been stressing. setting up an. international type you know. dedicated to the situation of him. all right let's bring in our guests in london we have thomas mcmanus he is director of the international state crime initiative at queen mary university of london in chicago on skype we have brought him he is chair of the center for global policies were being a legal forum and author of the book inside man mars hidden genocide and in new york we have simon adams he is the executive director of the global center for the responsibility to protect and he has worked with the gambia on this case welcome to you all azeem let me start with you i was struck today by how many rohingya refugees who are in bangladesh were posting their reactions on sites like twitter to the ruling from the international court of justice now one person in particular a writer and poet name i you ali he wrote my writing are brothers and sisters the gate of justice is just open so i want to get your reaction to that as somebody who has written extensively for several years about all the persecution faced by they were hanged do you believe that this actually opens the gates for justice going forward so that the rangar can. finally get some justice for all the abuses and atrocities that they have suffered and this is what i do in an unprecedented decision but we have to put into context that these just a decision on preliminary measures and terms of you could see is the question of a restraining order against the state that the state has to protect its population from general say and preserve the evidence as not a decision on the actual heating which could take many many years and the meeting with the court makes a determination on that to say oh so we have to put that into context but despite that that he's an unprecedented decision without a doubt is actually very unusual particularly for the court to. command myanmar that they have to report to the i.c. g. you know every 6 months for example this is just not happened before but in terms of the rule in judge you know that there will in job be described as one of the most persecuted minorities and the one who the genocide against them has been going on for decades a day kids appoint day kids the majority of their population has been displaced forcibly displaced out of me on maher and you know many of them have never see any sort of justice or any sort of accountability in their life and this decision by the highest court in the what do as obviously extremely welcome to them and hence the excitement thomas if i can i saw you nodding by the way and if i could ask you to expand a bit on what acim was saying i mean the international court of justice when it all boils down it has no in forstmann power so can we expect that me and more would actually comply or even attempt to comply with this rule. well i think a gateway to justice is actually a good way of describing today's events the international court of justice is now going to refer the matter to the un security council and this was a unanimous decision by judges from my mar china russia so at the u.n. security council is going to be very difficult for permanent members to veto any action now that their own judges of made this determination so we haven't come to any justice as such or we have them is possibly potentially reach the end of the line for denial by the berm ease my remark government about the genocide process which has been going on for a long long time and became much more serious since june 2012 so i think it is a very important step as can be very difficult now for both the burma's government to continue with their denial and for other nations to go along with that everyone's on notice now for example we had a huge investment conference here and in london in march last year run by the british government for investment into burma myanmar how are they going to be able to do something like that again with this judgment on the table so the significance is there that we now have a determination. yes but we have a determination that there's a case to answer as simon you've worked with the gambia as ministry of justice on this case could you explain for our viewers the genesis of this case. yeah absolutely i mean i think 1st of all the 1st i'd like to say about that is we should absolutely applaud the gambia you know the tiniest smallest country in in africa but it is kind of emerging as a giant in the world of human rights now because of the transition from dictatorship to democracy in their own country and look any state that is a signatory to the genocide convention could have brought this case forward but we approached a number of governments selves and our partners at the global justice center lots of talk but nobody was willing to take this case forward except for the gambia so i think they upheld their responsibility to protect the people it's a historic case and i think today was a very bad day for the generals in myanmar because in front of the eyes of the world the previous speakers were right this is not a final decision but in in front of the eyes of the world the court issued an order saying that they have to stop acts which could be potential acts of genocide against the regime and i think it's a very good day for international justice just hours before the ruling was issued and suci the de facto civilian leader of me and more published an editorial in which she denied once again that acts of genocide had taken place she also said that refugees had exaggerated the extent of the abuses committed against them so with what's happened should we extrapolate this to mean that unsung suchi and also the military in me and more will continue to just defy international pressure or will they start coming more in line with the demands being placed on them by bodies like the i.c.j. . it's very difficult to see how they're going to deactivate is doing him because this anti a process backfired from what i can see an unsung suki by appearing in court in addition to court she has legitimized the court usually in these kinds of situations when international courts find against individuals or stockton quite easy against water claims or general sate their usual policy is to deny the legitimacy of the court but. me on must simply cannot do that anymore. under center payments our argument also backfired her argument was that there was no say there's only water claims are being committed and we can argue and we take action against that but the court has decided that you know those walk aims can turn into general say hence why they have to take these provisional measures so and he has been going through a process of trying to buy taint she has set up numerous commissions of inquiry of our own one of them just reported yesterday richard all just seen as whitewash is a. scene as well washes one of the previous inquiries which me and my dead you know after one of the previous episodes of general say a quiet he came to the conclusion that when he came committed was that a soldier story so this is the level of inquiry that they're undertaking and the course of plea did not recognize the fact that to be on my is going to take any c.d.'s action to the situation hence these provisional measures thomas i've myself have made 4 separate reporting trips to cox's bazar to report on the plight of the rangers since october of 2017 i was there in 2018 when a u.n. fact finding mission came out with a statement in which they urged that generals in myanmar be prosecuted for genocidal intent what's happened with the international court of justice does this give us any closer to a day perhaps when we would see a particular person or perhaps a military leaders actually named in one of these bodies in one of these forums and prosecuted perhaps for genocidal intent. absolutely we're much closer to now to the punishment phase of international justice the court today is really concerned with urgent preventative measures that the genocide convention covers prevention and punishment so they they're talking about prevention and they have released judgments telling the world that there's a serious risk of genocide a serious risk of the legal terminology that is used to kick in the obligations to every nation on earth now under the genocide convention so at the moment today is about prevention but down the line we know are looking at we can't just leave it up prevention punishment will come later on and i think this this case is going to go on for another few years now once we start seeing the evidence coming in it's going to be very hard for senior members of the burmese military and senior members of the civilian government to avoid accusations and eventually charges of genocide in an international criminal form simon i saw you nodding along with with what thomas was saying so i want to get your reaction as well but i also want to bring up the fact that you have the case of course in the international court of justice but you also have a case that's going on the international criminal court whereby the judges there have now granted the prosecutor basically the ability to investigate the crimes that have gone on been committed against their hanger so 1st if you could talk about what you think as far as what happens next are we closer to actually seeing specific people being prosecuted at some point and beyond that how does the case or the potential case of the international criminal court also play along in putting pressure bring pressure to bear on me and more and its leaders. yeah absolutely look justice is coming there's no doubt about that we see that in the in the provisional measures ruling that happened today at the international court of justice we see that as you mentioned in the fact that the prosecutor is now looking into crimes at the international criminal court we see that even in a universal jurisdiction case that's being put forward in the thing that these cases all have in common is that the world has become a little bit smaller for those generals in me and ma who thought that they could get away with this crime in front of the eyes of the world and that no one would speak up for the ranger that nobody would would do anything that nobody would come to their assistance or a dead to speak on their behalf so i think that's what they all have in common i think that the one big question here which was kind of alluded to earlier is where is the u.n. security council in all of this china when the genocide happened in 2017 china used its veto power in the backroom negotiations to block to stall to avoid any kind of accountability for the regime in me and ma well that's just getting harder and harder as the evidence mounts as the court rulings are starting to come out and so i think it's now morally politically and also legally the u.n. security council is a bush is obligated to make sure that these provisional measures are actually up held the provision measures of the international court of justice and they should uphold their responsibility to protect their people as simon as you heard was talking about china was talking about their veto at the u.n. security council and the fact that up until now that has seemed to protect me and more when it comes to investigations being launched what do you think about this point will china continue to resolutely stand by me and more will there at some point be enough pressure put on the u.n. security council so that we will see them act in a deliberative way and actually try to punish me and more for the crimes committed against the. changes to me and mother to this and. and we must not forget that president g. from change i just visited me on my just days ago a signing more farther do you use through the built and road initiative putting in massive amounts of investment they will inject crisis wasn't mentioned a toe simply because it doesn't feature on the radar china as an interest in me on mar because i ask but asians to be a global superpower but before it become can become a global superpower it must become a delusional power and that means keeping its nuclear i who india and chick access to me on my gives access to to be a big goal in the end be an ocean thus they can avoid this face of malaka so china is a much higher geopolitical live who but being a superpower also carries significant responsibilities with that and i certainly hope china comes to the lazy asian that they simply cannot ignore and to national law particularly when they themselves are lying on international law and many facets in the global community particularly the trade war with the united states you know so china has to become much more responsible but so far they've just been nothing but a hindrance on the security council how long they can do this and whether the security council can be bypassed and this this key is good at it lead to the 2nd to general still remains to be seen but that may be the only option thomas and in the past week in the lead up to the ruling today i've been speaking with ringer refugees who have come to know from the reporting trips that i took to cox's bazaar bangladesh and they had been praying that they would get the ruling that they got today and in the wake of the ruling there was a lot of elation that was expressed on their part because of what had happened thinking that this was opening a door so that they could finally be granted some justice but at the same time many of the same people that i speak with they're still extremely worried they're living in dire conditions they are being fenced in more and more in those in can. ments in cox's bizarre so will what happened at the international court of justice have any effect on the conditions on the ground for those refugees who fled mean more and are now living in neighboring countries like bangladesh. we can imagine how frustrating it is for the orange and now living in bangladesh they were roasted from their own country by the military who you know could completely foresee the conditions in which they were going to have to live in and that they they knew that many people had written books written reports from academics to n.g.o.s explaining in detail the genocide process to which they have been suffering under and frankly i think a lot of people have been bottled about why the international community has done nothing about of until now and so the court this case will be welcome by them because it makes it much more difficult for members upstanding members of the international community to ignore what has happened to them. as for how do we where do we go from here that they they want to go home they want to be repressed treated but they can't go back into the arms of the military who has just tried to destroy them so it's a big problem and that's probably the 1st thing the security council is going to have to look at how do we report treat this community and how do we reintegrate into society again because of the rift between the different ethnic groups now inside rakhine state have gone on for years how do we provide them with security so i think this is a this is where we look at now we we cannot ignore that the miles from burma is government we're going to go where the sense of tce we now have it on record that there's a prima facie case to answer and so we need to take steps now practical steps to repatriate there and simon whatever these repatriation schemes that are entered into between bangladesh and me and my whenever they come up and i speak to rohingya refugees they tell me they would love to go back home but the key sticking point is always they don't have sufficient citizenship they will not be granted citizenship and this is not something this is not a point that man more has ever relented on they never indicated that they would consider it does the ruling from the i.c.j. point in that direction that perhaps at some point me and mark could start relenting on this. it doesn't resolve it but it does point in that direction as you just put it then and as you would know from your own experience talking to reinjure you're absolutely right people want to return home but they want to turn to safety and security and at the moment you know that what we hear from ranger is return to what they're being made stateless they've been stripped of their citizenship they essentially have no civil and legal rights in me and ma about 120000 ringer who is still living in northern rakhine state are actually segregated from the rest of the population and a living in so-called displacement camps which are really just basically concentration camps to keep them out of the way of the rest of the population so this is not a situation that anybody wants to return to and i think wide today's order was very important was because precisely because the gambia again had laid out those kinds of conditions and said we think that this is part of the ongoing genocide against the revenge of people and that this has to be changed in order for people to return and for this to stop the provisional measures doesn't exactly solve that issue but it puts a huge obligation now on me in montu actually show that they're trying to create real conditions to which people can return to in safety and security aseem you know the rohingya the plight of the ring has largely been ignored by the international community whenever i speak to aid workers in those camps they say more often than not that they're not getting the funding that they need that the donor countries aren't meeting their obligations this just continues to get worse and worse and worse does the ruling from the i.c.j. shine enough of a light on this issue now that you think that we will start seeing more members of the international community trying to contribute to help the rangar. i think you should certainly hope so. as you know that the cat that the occupying cock bears are is the largest refugee camp in the world you're talking almost $1000000.00 refugees living in mud and squalor but none of these camps are designed to be permanent yet the government of bangladesh is ready clear that they want the injected tartness to flee as possible which at the moment doesn't seem lately even though this ruling is certainly welcome we have to understand the range of really nothing to actually they're trying to you know when they were expelled from myanmar their villages were burnt down and they were blue dogs oh the evidence was destroyed and me i'm our main the border to make sure that none of the injection actually are torn so this was a systematic an organized campaign to ensure that these people can never actually tarns so it falls upon the international community know to look at this ruling and see that have died action is going in this is hopefully just the 4 state for the in job and terms of getting justice but the reality is that most of them simply want to go back home and enjoy equal rights and the country of their birth thomas where does this leave things now when it comes to our own son suchi. and says that she is i think at the end of the road with her denial she's been using her political capital that she built up over decades to deflect the international community away to to deflect their eyes away from what the burmese military were doing and she's done that quite successfully and this was her kind of last gambas going to the i.c.j. representing her country herself in the final the final denial the final blow out for her and i think that's over now i think that she can no longer be taken seriously by governments around the world in that the model what's going on there is now a legal obligation on every country in the world court today is that there's a serious risk and that puts a legal obligation on everybody to prevent genocide the conditions in cox's bazaar are part of the burmese military is planned to destroy other n.g.o.s. everybody has to come together and do something about that now there are made my view legal obligations on the entire community and as for uncensored she she now needs to be taken for what she is a possible complicit in this in this whole business and we cannot we can no longer countenance our own ambassadors just taking for her for her word and allowing them to do internal investigation which are completely whitewashes i think i think we need to take a much more stronger stance all right when we run out of time so we're going to have to leave it there thanks so much to all our guests thomas mcmanus azeem ibrahim and simon adams. and thank you too for watching you can see the program again any time by visiting our website al-jazeera dot com and for further discussion go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter our handle is at a.j. inside story for me i'm a gentleman the whole team here by for now. join africa's largest trade and investment bit in the wanda a.t.f. gives you access to more than 1100 exhibitors and 10000 visitors and baez and more than 5000 conference delegates from more than 55 countries participate in trade and investment deals with $40000000000.00 u.s. dollars as business and government come together to explore business and networking opportunities at the international exhibit which will include a creative africa exchange by the african export import bank and a premium falkner speak on 80 of 2020 transforming africa. always the last time you 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