The case between the Gambia and Myanmar has opened at the International Court of Justice.
The records of proceedings of 11th of December obtained by Courtroom Mail can be downloaded here.
The case has been brought by the Gambia, a predominantly Muslim west African state that alleges Myanmar has breached the 1948 genocide convention enacted after the Holocaust.
The Gambia’s claim states that Myanmar has perpetrated “manifest” contraventions of the convention through the acts of its military, and continues to do so.
Those acts, the court was told, included “extrajudicial killings, rape or other forms of sexual violence, burning of homes and destruction of livestock … calculated to bring about a destruction of the Rohingya group in whole or in part”.
Detailing events at the village of Min Gyi, the Gambia’s lawyer Andrew Loewenstein drew on witness accounts recorded in a report by UN investigators, who estimated 750 people were killed there, including more than 100 children under the age of six.
