Thirty residents of Buthidaung and Maungdaw townships – including Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus – have been ordered to sign affidavits by the junta’s Minister of International Cooperation Ko Ko Hlaing. A delegation led by Ko Ko Hlaing arrived in Rakhine State on Feb. 5 to pick up 30 signed affidavits to take with him to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), according to locals. The affidavits confirm what they stated they had witnessed during the Burma Army’s violent campaign of “security clearance” operations against Rohingya in 2016-2017, which many governments have termed genocide. “We were investigated at a Sittwe hotel in 2020. They told us to sign an affidavit to assure our statements were correct in order to submit them to the International Court of Justice. There was no new investigation. We were not the witnesses of the violence and we ran when we heard the sound of gunfire,” said a Rohingya resident of Maungdaw who participated in the investigation. Ko Ko Hlaing attended The Gambia v. Myanmar ICJ hearing in July 2022. All four of Burma’s objections to The Gambia bringing this case under the Genocide Convention were rejected by the ICJ on July 22, 2022.