The International Criminal Court (ICC) announced that it has opened a “full-fledged preliminary examination” into crimes committed against Rohingya Muslims by Myanmar’s military this week.
Thousands of Rohingya have been killed and over 700,000 displaced, with a United Nations report calling for senior Burmese military figures to be investigated for genocide.
The chief prosecutor of the ICC, Fatou Bensouda said in a statement that her office would now examine “a number of alleged coercive acts having resulted in the forced displacement of the Rohingya people, including deprivation of fundamental rights, killing, sexual violence, enforced disappearance, destruction and looting”.
Earlier this month ICC judges ruled that the Hague-based court could investigate the reported crimes despite Myanmar not being a member state of the court, as part of the alleged crime of deportation happened on the territory of Bangladesh – which is a member of the court.
"While Myanmar is not a State Party to the ICC, Bangladesh is. The Court may therefore exercise jurisdiction over conduct to the extent it partly occurred on the territory of Bangladesh," Bensouda said in her statement.
See the full statement here.
See more from Al Jazeera here, the Guardian here and the BBC here.
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