Mr Sam-Bloom Cooper, Advocate for Myanmar, submitted his pleadings on key locations outlined in Chapter 8 of Myanmar’s written submissions in The Gambia versus Myanmar case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Netherlands, yesterday.

He stated: My colleague Ms Lawrie and I will now address The Gambia’s allegations of genocidal acts committed during the counter-terrorism operations in northern Rakhine State in 2016 and 2017. I will focus on events in and around the three villages of Min Gyi, Chut Pyin and Maung Nu. Following this, Ms Lawrie will deal with the other 43 specific locations where The Gambia alleges acts of violence to have been committed.

I refer to Min Gyi, Chut Pyin and Maung Nu as the ‘main locations’. This is because, out of the 509 locations in northern Rakhine State inhabited wholly or in part by Bengalis, The Gambia focuses predominantly on these three, the populations of which were, at the time, respectively 4,300, 1,200 and 4,600 people.

Throughout these proceedings, The Gambia has repeatedly sought to claim that what happened in these three locations was typical and representative of what happened in many locations throughout northern Rakhine State. It claims repeatedly that there was a “consistent pattern of conduct” in 2016 and 2017, from which a genocidal intent can be inferred. Events in these three locations were not as alleged by The Gambia.

Events in the vast majority of the other 43 locations referred to by The Gambia were of a completely different quality by way of alleged violence, and where loss of life was either minimal or even non-existent. As for the hundreds of other locations in northern Rakhine State inhabited by Bengalis, The Gambia presents no evidence at all of any violence.
They are words that guide what we say about the allegations in this case now, just as those words were central to the careful village-by-village analysis of each location in Chapters 8 & 9 of Myanmar’s Counter-Memorial. We know that The Gambia read those chapters, because its Reply then radically resiled from its unsubstantiated, initial claims of “hundreds of villages” being subject to a “consistent pattern of conduct” of extreme brutality and sexual violence. The Gambia’s Reply refers to just 13 locations.

There had been attacks by ARSA in the region in October and November 2016, and ARSA was known to be planning further attacks. An increased presence in security forces in the region was therefore understandable, indeed inevitable.

The evidence shows that ARSA initiated the violence with a series of attacks across northern Rakhine State, and the military responded to it. No responsible sovereign State could, or would, sit back and permit such pervasive violence to go unchecked. Myanmar acted in necessity, and justifiably, to protect its citizens and the integrity of the State.

The counter-terrorism operations against ARSA and its supporters were conducted only in locations where ARSA was active. That is a profoundly important point in this case. They were conducted not over months or years but over a short period of time: just three days in October 2016; two days in November 2016, and for just the last week of August and the first days of September 2017. That was the full extent of the military operations – to be measured in days – and undertaken in response to ARSA’s widespread campaign of violence. The vast majority of Bengali villages and communities were not subject to any form of military intervention at all.

The Gambia omits any details about events that took place in or around this village in the hours, days and weeks prior to 8 am on 30 August 2017. The Gambia omits to mention that this was just five days after ARSA had commenced its coordinated attacks throughout northern Rakhine State.

ARSA’s latest campaign of violence began by the early hours of 25 August, with a focus on Maungtaw Township. In the days leading up to 30 August, witnesses noted that there was a “heavy ARSA presence in the Kha Maung Seik area and surrounding village tracts”, following ARSA’s massacre of nearly a hundred Hindus at Kha Maung Seik itself, a village 10 kilometres up the Pyuma river valley from Min Gyi itself.

Witnesses “consistently described seeing large groups of ARSA fighters gathered … in the village tracts of Ta Man Thar and Thit Tone Nar Gwa Son” on 25 August and the days following. The Gambia’s own witness, Andrew Riley, had himself noted the “strong ARSA presence” in that particular area. Military records show that two days later, some 300 Bengalis attacked and set fire to the Thet Kaing Nyar Police outpost.

In the early hours of 25 August, ARSA attacked the Net Chaung police post that neighbours Min Gyi, and the following day, ARSA conducted a further attack on the Wat Kyein police post. Each of these attacks is corroborated by Myanmar’s own contemporaneous military reports, often recorded within hours of the events taking place, which detail the involvement in the attacks of up to 600 armed Bengalis from the surrounding villages of La Baw Wa, Pa Da Khar and Min Gyi. Police officers fled from their posts at Net Chaung and Min Gyi, which were both then burnt.

Following its massacre of the Hindus at Kha Maung Seik on 28 August, ARSA fighters attacked Wat Kyein once more, detonating an IED and burning down 30 houses. Contemporaneous reports describe approximately 400 ARSA militants participating in the attack upon Khu Daing, during which they murdered seven Mro villagers.

The threat posed by ARSA also emanated from other villages south of Min Gyi, where hundreds of ARSA-led fighters engaged in violence. Ms Lawrie will address events in and around the villages of Ree Dar, Don Peik, Kyein Chaung, and Laung Don, where confrontations with the Myanmar Defence Services occurred.

In accordance with the Rules of Engagement distributed to all combat personnel, which The Gambia accepts are consistent with internationally recognized standards, warning shots were fired in repeated attempts to ward off advancing attackers, before any use of force was deployed. Even then, the military continued to be fired upon until well into the evening of 30 August, before the attackers finally withdrew southwards.

Each and every one of the 21 witness statements taken by Legal Action Worldwide, which were provided years after these events took place, positively denies any suggestion whatsoever of armed activity by even a single Bengali, or even the presence of ARSA at all, at any stage. Even more starkly, 53 out of the 54 anonymous witnesses interviewed by the FFM likewise make no mention of ARSA’s presence, let alone any of its violent activity.

There are only three plausible explanations for The Gambia’s witnesses to so systematically hide the truth: First, there has been coordinated management and control of those witnesses presented to the organizations who interviewed or took statements from them; Second, fear of ARSA, or loyalty to ARSA, as described by Ms. Lawrie, is so entrenched that those interviewed were too afraid or unwilling to provide a truthful account of what occurred. The third is that there was a combination of those factors: of management, of fear, of loyalty.

This Court will appreciate why, given that his account includes ARSA’s murder of a fellow informant, like him, shortly before its August attacks. ARSA members from Maung Nu had cut the informant’s throat, placed him in a sack, and then thrown him down a hill.

As far as fatalities in and around the area of Maung Nu is concerned, Myanmar’s contemporaneous reports record that 15 terrorists died during clashes with the Myanmar Defence Services. This was out of a population of approximately 4,600. It is not disputed that Rules of Engagement, accepted as being consistent with international standards, were distributed to security services personnel prior to engagement with ARSA and its mobilized supporters.

Events in Min Gyi, Chut Pyin and Maung Nu were not typical of events during the counter-terrorism operations elsewhere in northern Rakhine State, and, as Ms Lawrie will demonstrate this afternoon, there was no consistent “pattern of conduct” throughout northern Rakhine State mirroring what occurred in these three main locations.

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