PTC I’s Problematic Closed, Ex Parte Hearing on the Myanmar Situation

Last Friday, Pre-Trial Chamber I issued an Order Convening a Status Conference to consider the OTP’s request for a ruling on whether the ICC has jurisdiction over Myanmar’s deportation of the Rohingya to Bangladesh — an issue I discussed here. According to the Order, the status conference will be held “on 20 June 2018… in closed session, only in the presence of the Prosecutor.”

I find a number of aspects of the short Order troubling. To begin with, I don’t understand why the PTC believes the status conference has to be held in closed session. Whether the ICC has jurisdiction over deportation from a non-member state to a member state is a pure issue of law, so what justifies the secrecy?

The answer seems to come in paragraph 4 of the Order, where the PTC says that, “[w]ith a view to adjudicating the Prosecutor’s Request, the Chamber orders the Prosecutor to consider the issues set out in the annex appended to the present order and to address them during the status conference.” The PTC thus clearly believes that there are other issues at stake concerning the OTP’s request in addition to the purely legal one. But the annex is also secret, so we have no idea what those other issues might be.

I am also troubled by the ex parte nature of the status conference. Why are counsel for Myanmar and Bangladesh not invited, given that the interests of those states are obviously affected by the jurisdictional issue — particularly Myanmar’s, given that the conference concerns the potential criminal responsibility of its officials? Even if the PTC is within its power to hold the status conference ex parte (which it probably is), doing so will only further alienate non-member states concerned with the ICC’s overreach and penchant for secrecy. So I hope the PTC has a very good reason for inviting only the OTP.

Finally — and perhaps most problematically — there is no doubt whatsoever that the PTC’s Order violates the Regulations of the Court, which the judges themselves wrote and adopted. Here is Regulation 20, concerning public hearings (emphasis mine):

1. All hearings shall be held in public, unless otherwise provided in the Statute, Rules, these Regulations or ordered by the Chamber.

2. When a Chamber orders that certain hearings be held in closed session, the Chamber shall make public the reasons for such an order.

Even if we assume that the PTC has the power to hold a closed hearing, the Order does not comply with Regulation 20(2). The Order makes no attempt to explain why the status conference cannot be held in public. Literally none.

The PTC’s failure to comply with the Regulations and its general lack of transparency is unacceptable given the stakes — legal and otherwise — in the Myanmar situation.