Gambiaj.com – (The Hague, Netherlands) – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) heard harrowing evidence on Thursday as The Gambia’s legal team detailed a systematic campaign of dehumanization and violence orchestrated by the Myanmar military against the Rohingya people.
During the fourth day of public hearings on the merits of the case, lawyers for the West African nation argued that senior military officials in Myanmar used vitriolic hate speech—including labeling the ethnic minority “Muslim dogs” and calling for their “extinction“—to incite genocidal acts.
Evidence of Dehumanization
Jessica Jones, a member of The Gambia’s legal team, highlighted a pattern of “longstanding denigration” directed at the Rohingya. She presented a video posted to Facebook in August 2017 featuring a Myanmar soldier who issued a chilling call for violence.
“He told them, and I quote, ‘We will clear the villages where those animals live. We have guns, we have bullets… If you can carry a sword, carry a sword. If you can carry a stick, then carry a stick… and bravely face these animals,’” Jones told the court.
The Gambia alleges that such rhetoric was a precursor to the 2016-2018 “clearance operations” in northern Rakhine State, which resulted in the indiscriminate killing of up to 10,000 civilians and the burning of hundreds of villages.
Sexual Violence as a Tool of Destruction
A central pillar of Thursday’s presentation was the role of sexual and gender-based violence. Legal experts representing The Gambia argued that the mass gang rapes and genital mutilation documented by UN missions were not incidental crimes but strategic tools intended to destroy the group.
Ashita Alag of the Global Justice Center explained that targeting women and girls of reproductive age constitutes “biological destruction.” By impacting the group’s “regenerative capacity,” the military sought to ensure the Rohingya could no longer survive as a community.
“This violence is being perpetrated to destroy this community biologically,” Alag noted, urging the court to adopt a gender-sensitive understanding of genocidal intent.
The “Only Reasonable Inference”
Lead counsel Paul Reichler dismissed Myanmar’s long-standing defense that the military was conducting “counter-terrorism” operations against insurgents.
“Deliberately targeting, shooting indiscriminately at, and massacring thousands of unarmed, unthreatening, and defenseless Rohingya civilians is not counter-terrorism,” Reichler told the judges. “It was the antithesis of counter-terrorism. It was genocide.”
The Gambia faces a high legal bar. Historically, the ICJ has required that genocidal intent be the “only reasonable inference” that can be drawn from a state’s conduct.
However, Reichler argued that given the scale of the atrocities and the systemic denial of basic rights—including citizenship, marriage, and freedom of movement—no other conclusion is possible.
A Landmark Pursuit of Justice
The Gambia, a Muslim-majority nation, filed this case in 2019, marking the first time a country not directly involved in a conflict has used the 1948 Genocide Convention to hold another state accountable.
The case has already secured a 2020 provisional order requiring Myanmar to cease all genocidal acts. The current hearings seek a final ruling on state responsibility, restitution, and compensation for the more than 700,000 Rohingya currently living in refugee camps in Bangladesh.
Myanmar is scheduled to present its alternative interpretation and defense to the court starting Friday, January 16. The hearings in The Hague are expected to continue through January 29
