Attorney General files charges against military junta in Myanmar

A group of people from Myanmar have filed criminal charges in Germany against their country’s military junta. They accuse the military of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Almost two years after the coup in Myanmar, human rights activists in Germany, together with those affected, filed criminal charges against members of the military junta in the Southeast Asian country. As the organization “Fortify Rights” announced in Bangkok, a corresponding complaint was filed with the Attorney General.

Accordingly, the office of the federal prosecutor in Karlsruhe is being asked to investigate crimes since the military seized power in February 2021 and the genocide of the Rohingya.

Display based on the principle of universal jurisdiction

According to the information, the ad is aimed, among other things, against high-ranking generals. The complainants invoke the so-called principle of universal jurisdiction, which enables serious international crimes to be prosecuted, regardless of where they were committed. In January 2022, the Syrian state torturer Anwar R. was sentenced to life imprisonment on the basis of this principle by a court in Koblenz.

The applicants are 16 people from different ethnic groups living in Myanmar and other countries. Among them are representatives of the Muslim minority of the Rohingya and the Burmese ethnic group of the Chin.

Systematic killing, rape, torture

The 215-page report accuses the military of “systematically killing, raping, torturing, imprisoning, disappearing, persecuting and committing other acts that constitute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

The ad is based on more than 1,000 interviews conducted by Fortify Rights since 2013, as well as leaked documents from the Myanmar army and deserters, the human rights group said.

According to the organization, high-ranking military officials knew about the crimes of their subordinates but did nothing to prevent them. It also looks at the army’s crackdown on the Rohingya in 2017, which forced more than 740,000 people to flee their homes.

Military putsch against elected government

In February 2021, the military staged a coup against the elected government under Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. The armed forces justified the coup with electoral fraud without presenting any evidence. Since then, the armed forces have been taking increasingly brutal action against members of the opposition and resistance groups, some of whom are armed. Again and again there are reports of massacres of the civilian population.