Suu Kyi dodges rights lawsuit
Australia’s attorney-general has shot down a bid by Australian lawyers to prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi on charges of crimes against humanity.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is hosting Myanmar’s de facto leader in Sydney at an Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) summit.
An estimated 700,000 Rohingya people from Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state have poured across the border into Bangladesh refugee camps since last August following a military crackdown. The atrocities have included villages being burned, women being raped and babies murdered.
Ron Merkel QC and a group of international and human rights lawyers needed Attorney-General Christian Porter to give permission for a private prosecution, but that won’t be forthcoming.
‘‘Aung San Suu Kyi has complete immunity, including from being served with court documents because under customary international law, heads of state, heads of government and ministers of foreign affairs are immune from foreign criminal proceedings and are inviolable,’’ a spokesman for Porter said yesterday.
The legal team lodged an application in the Victorian Magistrates Court on Friday and was seeking to prosecute Suu Kyi using universal jurisdiction provisions in Australia’s federal criminal code.
They allege that Suu Kyi has failed to use her position of authority and power to prevent Myanmar security forces from deporting and forcibly removing Rohingya from their homes.
Turnbull is due to sit down with Suu Kyi for bilateral talks tomorrow. He has promised to raise the matter of Rakhine state, but did not use the term Rohingya in a media statement, and dismissed a journalist’s description of human rights abuses as ‘‘sweeping generalisations’’.