Aung San Suu Kyi, who is state counsellor and de facto leader of the Myanmar government, is accused in the application of crimes against humanity for the deportation or forcible transfer of a population in relation to widespread and ongoing human rights abuses inside Myanmar.
More than 650,000 Rohingya have crossed the border to Bangladesh since August, fleeing systemic violence from the country’s military including murder, rape, and the deliberate torching of villages.
Ron Merkel QC, a Melbourne barrister and former federal court judge, international lawyers Marion Isobel and Raelene Sharp, and Sydney human rights lawyers Alison Battisson and Daniel Taylor filed the private prosecution application in the Melbourne magistrates court late on Friday.
The application is being assessed by the court and a response is expected next week. A formal request has also been sent to the office of the attorney general, Christian Porter, asking him to consider consenting to the prosecution proceeding.
A statement from the legal team said there were “widespread and credible eyewitness reports … of extensive and systematic crimes against the Muslim Rohingyan population by the Myanmar security forces, including extra-judicial killings, disappearances, violence, rape, unlawful detention, and destruction of property and whole villages. Ms Suu Kyi has denied these events have occurred.
“It is alleged that Ms Suu Kyi has failed to use her position of authority and power, and, as such, has permitted the Myanmar security forces to deport and forcibly remove Rohingya from their homes.”
Aung San Suu Kyi – the 1991 Nobel peace laureate whose public image has been tarnished by her unwillingness to publicly condemn military atrocities against the Rohingya – is visiting Australia as part of the Asean Australia special summit, hosted by the federal government in Sydney.
She has spoken little about the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state – and pointedly refused to use the word Rohingya. In a speech last September she said the latest violence in Rakhine was sparked by attacks on military outposts.
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