An ICC arrest warrant for Myanmar junta chief is too little, too late

There’s occasionally something to be said for symbolic gestures, but I struggle to get too worked up over the news that an International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor has finally applied for an arrest warrant for Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s junta chief.

The Nov. 27 .

The French government says it won’t comply with the Netanyahu warrant either because Israel isn’t a member of the ICC.

But neither is Myanmar a party to the Rome Statute, so hasn’t Paris just given Min Aung Hlaing a kind of Western-backed immunity?

For years the ICC has tried to rid itself of the criticism that it only goes after rulers of poor, internationally-weak nations while ignoring the crimes of first world leaders.

Unfortunately, by seeking to prosecute the leaders of Israel and Myanmar in the space of a few weeks, the court may have succeeded in removing that stigma – but at the cost of its credibility and authority.

David Hutt is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies (CEIAS) and the Southeast Asia Columnist at the Diplomat. He writes the Watching Europe In Southeast Asia newsletter. The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the position of RFA.