Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah .that the Rohingya were the victims of a “genocide” and that, in the absence of safety and citizenship in Myanmar, they should be granted their own sovereign “self-governing territory” insulated from predation by Myanmar security forces.
But despite that fiery rhetoric, there is no evidence that either Mahathir or Saifuddin sought to follow through on it in any meaningful way. Although the Malaysian government has had no shortage of time or evidence to file a Genocide Convention complaint against Myanmar with the ICJ, it passed on an opportunity that Gambia, located thousands of miles from Myanmar on another continent, delivered on earlier this week.
Despite that missed opportunity, there’s still much the Malaysian government can do to support justice and accountability efforts for the Rohingya. It can start by using its position of moral clarity on the Rohingya’s plight to push, pull, and prod its fellow Asean members into rejecting the grouping’s “non-interference principle,” behind which Asean states have long hidden to avoid engaging on member states’ human rights abuses.
Asean can then leverage its hefty diplomatic and economic leverage to spur Myanmar to stop victimising the Rohingya and take substantive moves toward accountability. Malaysia can also, in collaboration with Asean members or independently, impose individual sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, against Myanmar government and military officials – and their family members – implicated in the 2017 targeted violence against the Rohingya.
PHELIM KINE is the director of research and investigations at New York-based Physicians for Human Rights.