THE Rohingya diaspora has been observing Aug 25 (today) as Rohingya Genocide Day'.
It is the day security forces in Myanmar and their collaborators, the ethnic Rakhine groups, mounted genocide on persecuted Rohingya Muslims through mass murders, rapes, systematic arson attacks and burning of homes and villages.
This is not the first time the Rohingya faced genocidal attacks. During the British colonial period, about 100,000 Rohingya were killed by the Rakhines and their allied forces.
Genocide was first recognised as a crime under international law in 1946 by the United Nations General Assembly, later codified as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Most states have ratified this convention. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has repeatedly stated that all nations have obligations to prevent and punish genocide even if they are not signatories to the convention.
Since the early 1980s, human rights groups have criticised the Myanmar government's policy of excluding the Rohingya from fully participating in political, social and economic life.
The situation changed after the 2012 Buddhist-Muslim riots and the massacre of Rohingya and other ethnic Muslim minorities. Worse, the post-2015 Aung San Suu Kyi-led quasi-civilian government failed to improve the situation.
The genocide consisted of two phases. The first was a military crackdown from October 2016 to January 2017 and the second has been occurring since August 2017. More than a million Rohingya fled because of well-founded fears of persecution.
From 2012 to 2017, wholesale destruction, systematic rape and mass killings were carried out against Rohingya as part of the government policy to eradicate them from their ancestors' lands.
In September 2018, the UN Human Rights Council mandated Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar released a report, detailing state violence against the Rohingya.
It demanded that Myanmar's military leadership be held accountable for genocide, that the military, as well as some civilians, had committed genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against its own people.
It stated that Myanmar civilian authorities, including state counsellor Suu Kyi, had not carried out their responsibilities to protect civilians, enabling the commission of atrocious crimes.
The report found evidence of "genocidal intent", including policies designed to alter the demographic composition of Rakhine and a premeditated plan for the destruction of Rohingya communities.
On Nov 11, 2019, the Republic of Gambia, with the backing of 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) filed a case before the ICJ, alleging that Myanmar's atrocities against the Rohingya in Rakhine had violated various provisions of the Genocide Convention.
Myanmar raised preliminary objections to the jurisdiction of the court and the admissibility of the application, claiming that the "real applicant" was the OIC, which is not a nation-state and therefore disqualified from making an application to the ICJ.
Last July 22, the ICJ rejected those objections. But, as the ongoing legal procedures might take a decade, it seems that "justice delayed is justice denied".
On this genocide day, we want to see that the perpetrators do not be let off scot-free and we need to stop the culture of impunity. The displaced Rohingya are entirely dependent on humanitarian aid in Bangladesh and other nations.
The political situation in Myanmar suggests that without accountability and justice, the future generations of the Rohingya will face a similar situation as bleak as the present generation. If they do not get full citizenship rights, it will never be safe for them to return to Myanmar.
There has been minimum progress regarding the repatriation agreement signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar in November 2017.
Bangladesh had called on the UN to engage with the Myanmar government to facilitate sustainable repatriation of displaced Rohingya to their homes in Rakhine.
Recently, Bangladeshi Foreign Minister A.K. Abdul Momen made the appeal while meeting with the visiting UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet in Dhaka.
Bachelet said the Rohingya needed to wait for repatriation as the present situation in Rakhine was unstable.
Without any permanent peaceful solution, Myanmar will remain divided and unstable in the years to come.
Today, the genocide survivors inside Myanmar and the displaced Rohingya in Malaysia or Bangladesh are living without a future and dignity.
The writer is a faculty member of the Faculty of Law and International Relations, University Sultan Zainal Abidin, and a founding member of Initiatives for Human Rights in Asia