Bangladesh’s interim government intends to bring charges of crimes against humanity against the country’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and members of her Awami League party at the International Criminal Court, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus announced during a meeting with ICC prosecutor Karim A Khan in Dhaka on Wednesday, reported The Daily Star.
The allegations relate to the killing of protestors and enforced disappearances of dissidents during a public uprising against Hasina’s government in July and August, after she had been in power for 16 years.
Hasina resigned as the prime minister and fled to India on August 5 amid the protests.
Yunus, a Nobel laureate economist, took over as the head of an interim government on August 8.
Khan also confirmed that his office had sought a warrant for the arrest of Min Aung Hlaing, head of Myanmar’s military government, for crimes against humanity committed against the Rohingya Muslims. He pledged his court’s cooperation with Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal, which has already issued an arrest warrant for Hasina and her associates.
Khan backed Yunus’s proposal to hold a global conference on the Rohingya crisis in 2025, endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly.
More than seven lakh Rohingya Muslims had fled to neighbouring Bangladesh after the Myanmar Army launched a military operation in Rakhine state in August 2017. More than 6,000 people were killed in just the first month of the crackdown.
Yunus reiterated his demand for a United Nations-guaranteed safe zone in Myanmar’s Rakhine state to aid displaced persons. “When the fighting stops, people who live in the safe zone can easily return to their localities,” Prothom Alo quoted Yunus as saying.
During the talks, both leaders discussed the Rohingya crisis, humanitarian efforts and accountability for atrocities linked to the Myanmar military. Yunus warned of the potential consequences of neglecting the plight of Rohingya children growing up in refugee camps, saying, “We have to make sure that it does not explode.”
Bangladesh, a signatory to the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court, is looking forward to further collaboration with the court, said Khaliliur Rahman, Bangladesh’s High Representative on Rohingya Affairs.
Rahman and other senior officials, including Lamiya Morshed, the principal coordinator for sustainable development goals, and Riaz Hamidullah of the foreign ministry, were present at the meeting with Khan on Wednesday.