(Buenos Aires) Members of Burma’s Rohingya Muslim minority testified for the first time in person on Wednesday in Buenos Aires, as part of an Argentine justice investigation into alleged crimes by the Burmese military, it said. -we learned from a Rohingya organization.
The hearing, behind closed doors, is “a historic day for everyone in Burma. In-person hearings are finally taking place, and strong evidence is being produced in court,” Maung Tun Khin, chairman of the London-based Burmese Rohingya Organization (BROUK), told AFP.
The spokesman did not specify the identity, nor the number of “survivors” heard, nor the facts concerned, “for security reasons”. But the hearings of half a dozen people should continue until June 13, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In 2021, the Argentine justice, seized of a complaint, announced the opening of an investigation into accusations of crimes by Burmese soldiers against the Rohingya minority, under the principle of “universal justice”, enshrined in the Constitution. Argentina.
That same year, six Burmese Rohingya women, refugees in Bangladesh, had participated in a virtual hearing before the Argentinian court, evoking sexual assaults and the death of relatives as a result of the repression.
“The in-person hearings will continue, very important things are on the record,” Mr. Tun Khin said.
Argentinian justice has in the past already agreed to examine distant cases under the principle of universal jurisdiction, in particular crimes committed under the Franco regime in Spain. This principle makes it possible to prosecute the alleged perpetrators of the most serious crimes, regardless of their nationality and the place where the facts were committed.
About 750,000 members of the Rohingya community fled to Bangladesh in 2017 from a crackdown by the Burmese military, which is now the subject of separate proceedings before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and for “acts of genocide” before the Court International Justice (ICJ).