Category: ASEAN

Attacks on civilians by Myanmar’s junta since its takeover in February 2021 constitute crimes against humanity and include the widespread sexual assault of women and the torture of children, a United Nations investigative unit said in an annual report Tuesday. The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said it had gathered evidence that sexual and gender-based crimes, including rape and other forms of sexual violence, and crimes against children have been perpetrated by members of the security forces and armed groups. The IIMM said in its report that children in Myanmar have been tortured, conscripted and arbitrarily detained, including as proxies for their parents. “Crimes against women and children are amongst the gravest international crimes, but they are also historically underreported and under-investigated,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the IIMM, said in a statement issued by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Bangkok that accompanied the release of the report. “Our team has dedicated expertise to ensure targeted outreach and investigations so that these crimes can ultimately be prosecuted. Perpetrators of these crimes need to know that they cannot continue to act with impunity. We are collecting and preserving the evidence so that they will one day be held to account.” Other vulnerable groups impacted by the crimes include members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community in Myanmar, according to the IIMM. The IIMM said it has collected more than 3 million pieces of information from almost 200 sources since starting operations three years ago, including interview statements, documents, videos, photographs, geospatial imagery and social media material. Since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, the IIMM said it had found “ample indications” that crimes have been committed in Myanmar “on a scale and in a manner that constitutes a widespread and systematic attack against a civilian population.” The report found that the geographic scope of the potential crimes had expanded to include Chin, Kayin, and Kayah states, from Yangon, Naypyidaw, Bago, Mandalay, Magway and Sagaing regions a year earlier. Additionally, the IIMM reported the number of instances of potential criminality had also increased from a year ago, including with the junta’s July 25 hanging of four democracy activists in the country’s first judicial executions in more than 30 years, which drew public and international condemnation. Koumjian noted that the report came just two weeks ahead of the five-year commemoration of clearance operations that displaced nearly 1 million ethnic Rohingya from western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, most of whom remain in refugee camps in neighboring Bangladesh. “While the Rohingya consistently express their desire for a safe and dignified return to Myanmar, this will be very difficult to achieve unless there is accountability for the atrocities committed against them, including through prosecutions of the individuals most responsible for those crimes,” he said. The IIMM said it is sharing relevant evidence to support international justice proceedings currently underway at the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Myanmar junta troops torched houses in Mu Kan village, Tabayin township, Sagaing region, June 14, 2022. Credit: Tabayin Township Brothers aid group Township targeted The IIMM report came as residents and aid workers in Sagaing region told RFA Burmese that the military had razed around 700 houses from 30 villages in Tabayin township during its scorched earth offensive in the area between Jan. 1 and Aug. 8. Around 4,000 people are in need of assistance as a result of the burnings, they said. A resident of Tabayin, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing security concerns, said junta troops had continued to use arson attacks in their search for opposition forces in the township as recently as Monday, when they burned down Mu Kan village on the road between Ayadaw and Shwebo townships. “The fires started [Monday] morning. Mu Kan is almost gone,” said the resident, who said the perpetrators belong to a military unit that had torched at least one other village in the township since January. “Even though we called it a village, it’s like a big town. It has a hospital and clinics. Currently, the residents are on the run. We heard some people have also been arrested. The army has set up camp there.” Residents told RFA there are more than 800 houses in Mu Kan and said this was the second time the military had set fire to the village, after burning more than 160 houses there in June. A member of the Tapayin Township Brothers aid group said that the estimated 4,000 residents left homeless due to the arson attacks since the start of the year are enduring severe difficulties and “in need of urgent help.” “Residents of 30 villages lost around 700 houses in the fires,” said the aid worker, who also declined to be named, citing a list the group had compiled of military arson attacks in the township. “The situation in Tabayin township is getting worse lately. The villagers’ lives have been disrupted, especially those who lost their homes. They need a lot of help. Everyone in the region has been affected, so aid donations have dwindled significantly.” The aid worker said that a few charity organizations and the shadow National Unity Government (NUG) have provided some assistance to the township, “but it is not enough.” He said his organization had provided 346 houses in 17 villages with 30,000 kyats (U.S. $14) each, but the need for assistance remains substantial. Helpless against attacks A resident of Tabayin’s Ma Ya Kan village, who asked to remain unnamed, said troops are “targeting the villages” and inhabitants are helpless to stop them. Refugees are in need of food, clothing and shelter, he said, adding that the military had also destroyed the crops in their fields. “The military arrests anyone they see in the villages, uses them as porters, and finally kills them. If they see residents wearing earrings on them, they tear them off. That’s how bad it is,” the Ma Ya Kan villager said. “We have no place to live, so…

Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) and activists marked the anniversary of the uprising against former Gen. Ne Win on Monday with protests calling for an end to junta rule and a vow to fight until their goal of a federal democracy is achieved. The “People Power Uprising,” also known as the “8888 Uprising,” was a series of nationwide protests, marches, and riots led by university students against the Ne Win regime, key events of which took place on Aug. 8, 1988. Authorities crushed the movement in mid-September that year. On Monday, the NUG observed the anniversary of the uprising in a ceremony hosted online in which shadow Prime Minister Mahn Win Khaing Than condemned Myanmar’s successive military dictators for their brutal oppression of the country’s democracy activists. He vowed to channel “the spirit of the ‘4-Eights’” in supporting the people’s fight against the current regime, which seized power in a Feb. 1, 2021 coup, and to form a federal union in Myanmar based on democracy and the protection of human rights. This year’s anniversary held special significance for the opposition as it came just weeks after the junta put to death 8888 Uprising leader Ko Jimmy and three other democracy activists in the country’s first judicial executions in more than 30 years. The executions prompted protests in Myanmar and condemnation abroad. In addition to the NUG ceremony, activists held protests in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon, the embattled region of Sagaing, and in Laiza, the “capital” of the ethnic Kachin Independence Organization-controlled territory in Kachin state. Anti-junta groups in Yangon held anti-junta flash protests in the morning and carried out pot-banging activities in the evening, sources told RFA Burmese. Nang Lin, a member of the Yangon Anti-Dictatorship Force, described the 8888 Uprising as “a powerful movement … that involved people from all walks of life working together to bring down [a] terrible one-party dictatorship and allowed democracy to flourish.” “Now, we will continue to carry the banner of this uprising,” he said. “We will hold the spirit of that uprising and carry on its work, with determination, to achieve federal democracy, which is the goal of successive revolutions and the goal of this ongoing spring revolution.” Jewel, a member of the Pazundaung and Botahtaung Townships Young People’s Strike Committee in Yangon, told RFA that she and her comrades would continue to carry out the unfinished task of the 8888 democracy movement and “root out” the military dictatorship. “The 4-Eights Uprising was over a long time ago. However, as members of a younger generation, we’ll continue its unfinished work and are determined to eradicate this military dictatorship,” she said. Sagaing and Kachin In Sagaing, the region in which the junta has encountered some of the strongest armed resistance to its rule since the coup, more than 200 residents of Yinmarbin and Salingyi townships joined together and staged a multi-village protest, carrying signs that vowed to “fight to the end to overthrow the military dictator.” Villagers in Sagaing’s Kani and Budalin townships also held protests to commemorate the 8888 Uprising. The All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF), which is headquartered near Laiza, in northern Myanmar’s Kachin state, also held a 34th anniversary event on Monday. A member of the ABSDF Northern Military Region Committee who gave his name as Joshua told RFA that the people of Myanmar can expect more coups in the future unless the military dictatorship is “uprooted.” “We are holding this ceremony as a way of passing on the torch of the 8888 spirit, what the 8888 had wanted and fought for, so that all the young and old can remember why the 8888 Uprising came to be,” he said. “As long as there are military dictators, they will seize power … if they cannot get what they want. They will seize power again in the future if we cannot fight them off for good.” Joshua said that the ABSDF has been fighting successive military dictators with “whatever weapons we could lay our hands on” and that “more than 700” of its members had died in the more than three decades since 1988. In a statement to mark Monday’s anniversary, the ABSDF warned that the political, economic, education, and health sectors of Myanmar are in the midst of “serious deterioration,” while all three branches of government in the country “have collapsed.” Protesters give a three-finger salute signaling their opposition to the junta at a rally in Sagaing region, Aug. 8, 2022. Credit: Citizen journalist Impetus for success Attempts to reach junta Deputy Minister of Information Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment went unanswered Monday. Myanmar political analyst Than Soe Naing told RFA that if the people of Myanmar hope to succeed in their current democratic struggle, they must not forget the 8888 Uprising. “It’s time to make up for the weaknesses of 88 and push for victory in this Spring Revolution,” he said, adding that the movement should use the movement’s goals as an “impetus for success.” Ye Naing Aung, a member of the 88 Generation group of students who led the uprising, told RFA that he believes the people of Myanmar will one day achieve the democracy they desire. “As long as people have an expectation for a better system, we can’t move backwards,” he said. “Even though the change is not here yet, it will take place at some point. I’m absolutely certain that they will enjoy a democratic system.” While authorities claim that only around 350 people were killed in the military crackdown on the 8888 Uprising, rights groups say the death toll is at least 3,000. Security forces have killed at least 2,167 people and arrested more than 15,000 since last year’s coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.