GAMBIA TAKES MYANMAR TO COURT FOR GENOCIDE
During the last year, many nations have been threatening Myanmar (formerly Burma) with legal and economic action over their treatment of the Rohingya minority group. Failing to see significant change in the government’s responsibility for and attitude and practice towards this minority people group, international outrage has been growing. However, the nation that has finally turned the threats into action is Gambia! Gambia, the smallest country in Africa and very far away from Myanmar, has filed a lawsuit for genocide with the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
The case is being filed by Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, Abubacarr Tambadou, who worked for many years as a UN lawyer on the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Last year he read a UN report on the Rohingya crisis, and his heart was stirred to such an extent that he arranged to go and visit the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. Listening to the stories in these refugee camps reminded him of the many stories he had heard from Rwanda. He said, “The world failed to help in 1994, and the world is failing to protect vulnerable people 25 years later.” He hopes the lawsuit will pressure the Myanmar government to act.
Who would have dreamed that God could use Rwanda’s pain to prompt someone in Gambia to speak out for the suffering Rohingya?
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