A day after International Court of Justice (ICJ) order, Myanmar government on Friday said that it has already put in place measures to protect Rohingya Muslims.
The ICJ on Thursday ordered Myanmar to stop “genocidal” acts against the ethnic minority.
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The Hague-based court ordered Myanmar to protect the persecuted Rohingya against further atrocities and preserve evidence of alleged crimes, after The Gambia, a largely Muslim African nation, pressed a lawsuit in November accusing Myanmar of genocide.
“The government is already doing most of the orders,” Myo Nyunt, a spokesman for the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), told a news agency.
“One more thing we need to do is submit reports,” he said, referring to one of several measures approved by the court requiring Myanmar to write regular summaries of its progress.
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But he said the civilian government, which rule jointly with the military in an awkward constitutional arrangement that reserves great powers for the commander-in-chief, could not control the country’s troops.
More than 730,000 Rohingya fled western Rakhine state for neighbouring Bangladesh in 2017 to escape a military-led crackdown that the U.N has said was executed with genocidal intent.
Myanmar says the military campaign was a legitimate counter-insurgency operation launched in response to militant attacks on security forces.