Bangkok: 16 Myanmarese people and a human rights organization have filed a criminal complaint in Germany demanding Myanmar generals be punished for alleged genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in that country after their 2021 coup. Key's. Action on 2017 Muslim Rohingya.

In a complaint filed in Bangkok in the case that was made public on Tuesday, Fortify Rights said "those responsible for both related crimes have yet to be held accountable."

The legal complaint was submitted last Friday to the German federal prosecutor's office, which declined to comment. Before the case can be heard in court, the office has to decide whether to file charges, which may take some time.

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Both the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, are investigating the actions of Myanmar generals in a genocide case.

But under the principle of universal jurisdiction, activists seeking accountability have also brought cases to national courts in Argentina, Turkey and now Germany.

According to Matthew Smith, CEO and co-founder of Fortify Rights, the legal principle allows for prosecution of mass atrocities regardless of place or nationality when the crimes are so serious that they amount to crimes against the entire international community. represent.

According to a statement from Fortify Rights, "An investigation and subsequent prosecution of these crimes under German law will serve to punish those who committed the crimes, prevent further crimes from occurring in Myanmar, and other Send the message – be criminalized in Myanmar and elsewhere that accountability for atrocity crimes cannot be avoided."

The complaint was filed days before the anniversary of the military's seizure of power from an elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021.

Aung San Suu Kyi is currently serving a 33-year prison sentence for alleged crimes that are widely believed to have been invented to justify military rule.

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Furthermore, the German complaint was filed more than five years after Myanmar's security forces brutally suppressed an insurgency by the country's Muslim Rohingya minority in 2017.

Following the burning of their villages and the mass rape and murder of Rohingya, some 740,000 of them fled to safety in neighboring Bangladesh.

People in Myanmar who resisted the military takeover in 2021 and fought for the return of democracy were accused of similar atrocities by the military, which eventually led them to take up arms.

Of the 16 people who filed a German complaint, nearly half were said to have been harmed by the Rohingya, and another six had been subjected to abuse following the 2021 army takeover.

According to Fortify Rights, these latter individuals, who come from various ethnic groups, include scholars, farmers, former village chiefs, and housewives.

According to Fortify Rights, which withheld her name, one of the complainants is a 51-year-old Rohingya woman who suffered the loss of family members and injuries at the hands of the soldiers.

The group claimed that after a mob of soldiers and non-Rohingya civilians entered the woman's village, they prevented residents from leaving, destroying homes.

It claimed that while she was present, men working for the army sexually assaulted her while thrashing her daughter-in-law in an adjacent room.

According to Fortify Rights, in addition to raiding her village and killing seven members of her family, the Myanmar army also mutilated her with a knife, leaving her with scars that will never fade.

She "saw military soldiers stabbing, beating and killing several Rohingya men and children," according to the report, as well as bodies of Rohingya civilians piled up in her village. A child was murdered by soldiers for begging for water.

According to Fortify Rights, the complaint submitted to the federal prosecutor's office in Germany "contains substantial evidence ... that senior military junta officers, bearing superior responsibility to subordinates who committed crimes, were aware of their subordinates' crimes, and failed to take any action. Prevent crimes from happening and punish the perpetrators."

According to the group, the complaint's evidence was supported by interviews with survivors, documents and information leaked by deserters from the Myanmar military and police, as well as by prior reports compiled by UN investigators and other parties.

In recent years, cases of torture committed in Syrian prisons and crimes committed by members of the Islamic State group have led to convictions in German courts using the principle of universal jurisdiction.

Under the universal jurisdiction principle, Argentine courts agreed in November 2021 to look into charges of genocide and crimes against humanity against senior Myanmar officials. The Burmese Rohingya organization UK, which is based in London, filed a lawsuit in 2019.

An Argentine court looked into allegations of human rights violations during the First Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), the regime of Francisco Franco, and the two years between the dictator's death in 1975 and the country's first democratic elections. This case set the stage for this investigation.

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The Myanmar Accountability Project, a non-governmental organisation, filed a complaint in a Turkish court in March last year against Myanmar's military leaders, alleging that the use of torture since their takeover in 2021 was "widespread". and arranged". The international organization with its headquarters in London is leading a number of legal actions against the military regime.