Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Individual Documents
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"Between October 8th and 14th Military Junta arrested and used as human shields more than 7 civilians from the Sagaing Region . Military Junta burnt and killed 2 civilians including an underaged child from Kale Township in Sagaing Region. Military Junta Troop attacked with heavy artillery to Monelaichat IDP camp in Laiza, Kachin State and 32 civilians including 13 children were killed. The Military Troop also started cutting off Telecommunication in Tedim, Chin State on October 13th.
About 35 civilians died and over 18 were injured by the Military’s heavy and light attacks within a week. They arrested over 22 civilians and killed 7 within a week. 4 children were injured and 15 killed when the Military Junta committed violations..."
Source/publisher:
Network for Human Rights Documentation-Burma
Date of publication:
2023-10-16
Date of entry/update:
2023-10-16
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights and international relations, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"“The troublemaker of Myanmar already has one foot in the grave. Should she die now, perhaps she would be worshiped as NUG Goddess.”
This was the caption for a photo-shopped picture of jailed civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi recently published on the pro-junta Telegram channel “Ba Nyunt” and then shared by other likeminded channels on the platform.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was called “Ma Tin Shwe” in the caption, a pronoun used to refer to any woman. “NUG” is the acronym for the parallel National Unity Government.
The hateful caption was just one of many defamatory posts created by pro-junta Telegram channels about the Nobel laureate, civilian leader, and champion of democracy at home and abroad, according to the Beautifier of Diversity Network, which monitors pro-regime Telegram channels.
“Women are always targeted,” said a monitor from the network, which has been monitoring 13 social media accounts, including pro-junta Telegram channels that spread hate speech.
Hate speech has surged on social media platforms since the coup. The platforms are used not only to incite violence, but are also as breeding grounds for launching and amplifying hatred against individuals, and ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, the network said.
A wave of hate speech targeting women followed the release of a film labeled “blasphemous’ by the regime, according to data from the network.
The movie “Don’t Expect Anything” was written and produced by Swiss director Didier Nusbaumer and uploaded to the YouTube channel “Isi Dhamma” on July 24. The regime alleged that the film harmed Myanmar’s culture and Buddhist traditions, and arrested its director and cast.
Research by The Irrawaddy has also found that hate speech degrading women always accompanies attacks on revolutionary figures.
Criticism and denunciation accounted for 39 percent of hate speech, insulting posts accounted for 27 percent, threats accounted for 15 percent, and incitement to violence accounted for 13 percent, according to research conducted by the Beautifier of Diversity Network from June to August.
Article 20 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights states that “any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law.”
According to research by independent organizations, the rise of hate speech since the coup can be divided into three groups—hate speech on the grounds of race, religion, political beliefs and sexual orientation; posts that provide details about dissidents including their home addresses and calls for arresting, killing or raping of them; and posts that portray those involved in Spring Revolution as terrorists, traitors or criminals.
Hate speech against women, including pro-democracy activist Pencilo, a key figure involved in raising funds for the revolution, are posted daily on social media.
Non-Buddhist women are subjected to racially, religiously, and sexually discriminatory and derogatory remarks. Recently, several pro-junta Telegram channels, including “Han Nyein Oo” shared a post accusing Muslim Ma Thuzar Myint of committing adultery, and participating in a sex chat with a fake Buddhist monk who participated in the Spring Revolution.
The post used a common racial slur for people of Indian origin (“kalar”) to describe Ma Thuzar Myint, who is a supporter of the National League for Democracy.
Ma Thuzar Myint and at least one other woman were sexually abused online by Buddhist monk Ashin Kethara, who calls himself the Spring Revolution Sayadaw. Pro-junta Telegram channels have exploited his misogyny to attack all people involved in raising funds for Spring Revolution.
Ma Thuzar Myint said: “They tend to chastise women more severely in a way to degrade and cheapen them. I feel like women suffer more from hate speech than men. I myself have [been a] victim. Women are criticized twice as much as men are.”
About a dozen pro-junta Telegram channels operate as a network, sharing propaganda and hate speech. Some channels, including “Ka Ka Han” and “Hmine Wai,” have more than 60,000 subscribers each.
Hate speech is not only perpetrated on regime-friendly social media. Some individuals and organizations who support revolutionary forces fighting for democracy and human rights also spread hate speech.
Pro-democracy activist Ma Thinzar Shunlei Yi, who leads the Sisters2Sisters campaign that raises awareness about sexual violence perpetrated by the military junta, said:
“Regarding the attacks on people serving in the regime, often they are targeted by hate speech for their gender and their sexual orientation. And often vulgar language is used against women civil servants who do not join the Civil Disobedience Movement.”
The junta’s tourism minister, Daw Thet Thet Khine, is often attacked by anti-junta social media users. Most of the hate speech directed towards her focuses on her transgender husband, Dr. Aung Kyaw Win. This is usually hate speech against the LGBT community in general and same-sex marriage in particular. Both pro-junta and resistance members use it.
Pro-democracy activists fighting the regime have been urged to avoid attacking people on the basis of their race, religious beliefs or sexual orientation. While social cohesion, understanding and integration are necessary to resist the wave of hate speech created by the regime, it is also important that those who oppose the regime do not use hate speech, rights activists and hate-speech monitors say.
Ma Thinzar Shunlei Yi said the increase in sexist hate speech is attributable to the nature of Myanmar’s military, which is steeped in sexism.
More than half of those who were arrested after being identified by pro-junta Telegram channels as anti-junta have been women. Of the more than 1,100 people arrested from February 2022 to May 2023, 57 percent of women were women, according to an analysis of arrests reported in junta media.
Women detainees continue to be subjected to online abuse and sexism after being arrested. After actress May Pan Che and singers Shwe Yi Thein Tan and May La Thazin were arrested for expressing their condolences for the victims of the junta’s deadly air strikes on Pazi Gyi Village in Sagaing Region, they were labelled whores who deserved no mercy.
Telegram channel “Han Nyein Oo,” which has over 16,000 subscribers, called them prostitutes, adding: “I want to see photos of them handcuffed and kneeling on the ground like other detained loose cannons. Those bitches must be suppressed. Why show mercy to them?”..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-10-09
Date of entry/update:
2023-10-09
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations
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"The civilian death toll in Myanmar since the February 2021 coup surpassed 4,000 as of August 24 as the junta escalated its campaign of atrocities against its own people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which monitors civilian casualties and arrests by the regime.
Number of post-coup civilian deaths in states and regions as of August 24, 2023
At least 1,080 civilians were killed between January 1 and August 24 of this year, as the junta intensified attacks on civilian targets, the AAPP estimated.
An average of 130 civilians are killed each month by junta airstrikes, shelling, gunfire and other methods, it said.
Junta forces killed nearly 3,000 civilians between February 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022.
Estimated number of civilians killed in Myanmar so far this year (by gender)
Graphic: The Irrawaddy Source: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
The resistance stronghold of Sagaing Region suffered the highest number of civilian causalities as junta troops conducted frequent raids, massacres, indiscriminate shelling and airstrikes in both rural and urban areas.
Estimated number of civilian deaths by month so far this year
Graphic: The Irrawaddy Source: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Nearly 1,800 civilians were killed in Sagaing (45 percent of the total civilian death toll) while tens of thousands of homes were incinerated in the region by junta forces since the military takeover.
So far this year, more than 600 women civilians were killed and 18 rape cases were reported, the AAPP reported..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-09-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-09-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
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Sub-title:
They were accused of having links to pro-democracy forces.
Description:
"Junta troops have arrested 11 people in a raid on Myitkyina township in Myanmar’s Kachin state, locals told RFA Thursday.
They said that six men and five women were detained three days ago after around 30 soldiers went to a house and accused the residents of having ties to the local People’s Defense Force, part of the pro-democracy forces created in 2021.
As of Thursday, the detainees were still being questioned at the Northern Command base in Myitkyina, according to township residents.
One local, who didn’t want to be named for security reasons, told RFA none of the arrested have links to anti-junta militias and had just gathered for a celebration.
“I heard people chanting ‘Happy Birthday’ at around 8:00 p.m. I think it was a birthday party, with people gathered for food and drinks,” the local said.
“Some employees of phone shops were among those detained. I have no idea who informed the junta soldiers about them.”
The local added that the arrests may have been prompted by an attack on the Northern Command in which five bombs exploded close to the base. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack and the junta has not released any statement about it.
Win Ye Tun, the junta’s spokesperson for Kachin state, declined to provide comments.
According to figures exclusively compiled by RFA, the junta arrested at least 700 people between June 2023 and August 2023, and among them, only 500 were released.
More than 24,000 people, including pro-democracy activists, have been arrested since the Feb. 1, 2021, coup, according to the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)..."
Source/publisher:
"Radio Free Asia" (USA)
Date of publication:
2023-08-31
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-31
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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"In her dreams at least, Phyu Nyo hoped to see all the colors of the outside world and experience freedom, even though she was in prison. But it never happened.
“I thought I could exist only in my dreams,” she said over the phone, recalling her 19 months locked up in two notorious junta prisons.
“But I never escaped from the prisons, even in my dreams. [The dreams] were all about prison, about running away and being recaptured. It was like my mind was also jailed,” the now 30-year-old said in a low voice.
The number of female political prisoners in Myanmar is at a record high under the military junta led by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing. According to rights group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), at least 4,883 women were arrested for anti-regime activities between Feb. 1, 2021 and Aug. 23 this year. Another 602 were killed, including 114 girls. Of those arrested, more than 3,770 are still in custody, 15 of whom face the death penalty.
The women arrested include political leaders, elected lawmakers, activists, striking civil servants, medics, resistance fighters, students, journalists, businesswomen and those from all walks of life.
Before the military staged a coup and overthrew Myanmar’s elected civilian government in February 2021, Phyu Nyo was a fashion designer and trainer from Yangon, living a decent life with her husband, who had a livestock farm and agribusiness.
But the pair were forced to become fugitives after participating in anti-coup protests and supporting striking civil servants who took part in the civil disobedience movement (CDM).
The two left their house in Yangon and fled to Mandalay to evade arrest, but were detained after being discovered in their hideout in the city in October 2021. The junta also sealed off Phyu Nyo’s fashion shop in Yangon and seized everything inside including clothes, bags and shoes.
She and her husband were sent to the junta’s notorious Mandalay Palace interrogation center, where Phyu Nyo was threatened with rape.
“They [the junta forces] yelled at me and said ‘We could rape and kill you!’” Phyu Nyo recalled.
Since the coup, women in Myanmar have been tortured, sexually harassed and threatened with rape in custody. The National Unity Government’s Ministry of Women, Youth and Children’s Affairs said in March that junta troops have sexually assaulted at least 122 women since the beginning of the coup.
Another form of sexual harassment that female political prisoners increasingly face is humiliating mass strip searches by prison staff.
Phyu Nyo said she had heard in June from female political inmates still held in Yangon’s Insein Prison that such searches had become worse this year.
Female inmates in Insein Prison are being forced to submit to thorough checks of their intimate body parts after court appearances. Told that it is necessary to ensure that the detainees don’t smuggle papers, female political prisoners are required to lift their breasts and expose their vulva. And prison staff wearing gloves touch and rub all of the inmates’ private parts and even use their hand to forcefully penetrate into the vagina during the searches.
In addition to the usual strip search humiliations, women who are menstruating are ordered to remove their sanitary pads in order to be strip-searched.
Supposedly done in order to search for smuggled “papers”, all such activities are violations not only of the detainees’ human rights but also their dignity, Phyu Nyo said.
Phyu Nyo was held in Mandalay’s Obo Prison and Myingyan Prison. During her imprisonment, she didn’t experience the most invasive searches into the vagina but did endure occasional body searches.
“Human rights abuses were common and the prison staff would swear at all of us, including women old enough to be their mothers and grandmothers, every day,” Phyu Nyo said, sobbing as she described the encounters.
“In prison you can’t do anything the way you wish, from speaking to taking a bath,” she said.
For bathing, prisoners are limited to 15 regular cups or 30 small cups of water a day.
Phyu Nyo said that while she would prefer not to think about those days in the military interrogation center and the prisons, as the memories are suffocating and painful, she felt a responsibility to speak up for her sisters who continue to languish in jails across the country, and to let others know their stories and what is happening behind bars.
“Sometimes, I have even thought of suicide. But the mindset that I will not give up on these guys, and that we will be free if we win, keeps me alive.”
Alinn, another former political prisoner who was also jailed in Obo Prison and Myingyan Prison for two years, similarly recalled that the prison authorities, especially in Obo Prison, treated political prisoners with hostility, adding that non-political inmates were encouraged to take part in abuses against political prisoners, and to monitor their activities.
A first year student at a nursing training school at the time of the coup, Alinn took part in peaceful protest rallies in Mandalay to demand the return of democracy in the country.
During a dawn protest on May 12, 2021 in Mandalay’s Pyigyidagon Township, she was violently arrested together with 30 other protesters. She was beaten on the head, back and arm, and collapsed during the arrest. Almost all of the detained protesters were later sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on incitement charges.
Alinn said many political prisoners suffer from health problems inside due to the lack of proper healthcare provisions.
“In prison, whatever your illness, they just give you para [paracetamol],” Alinn said.
According to accounts from media and rights groups, some political prisoners have died because of inadequate medical treatment and health care, including denial of emergency care at public hospitals.
The lack of adequate health care and medical treatment is only compounded by the growing number of female political prisoners that continue to be crammed into Myanmar’s overcrowded prisons across the country.
Khin Waddy, a 27-year-old former female political prisoner and student activist from Monywa, Sagaing Region, said she was forced to share a space, including while sleeping, with 100 to 150 inmates in one single dormitory in Monywa Prison. Around 60 percent of the inmates there were political prisoners, she said.
Being locked up with more than 100 people makes it difficult for prisoners to even change position from one side to another or turn around while sleeping, and inmates were forced to sleep face to face due to the lack of space.
Hygiene is another problem; those positioned near the septic tank were directly exposed to the smell, with liquid leaking from the tank passing near their heads.
To avoid being positioned near the septic tank, prisoners must pay the head of the dormitory for a sleeping space farther away, Khin Waddy said.
The former student activist and human rights advocate was arrested in May 2021 for providing support to 1,500 striking civil servants who joined the CDM following the military takeover.
Khin Waddy recalled that while she was being interrogated in the military interrogation center in Monywa, she was forced to kneel down while holding her hands up for 24 hours, and was beaten if she lowered her hands. She was also denied food and water. After two-and-a-half days of interrogation, she began experiencing stomach pains and vomiting and had to be sent to a military hospital.
While there she met Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker for Sagaing Region’s Mingin Township, who was also hospitalized while undergoing military interrogation.
The 56-year-old was twice elected a lawmaker for her constituency, in both the 2015 and 2020 elections. The results of the latter were annulled by the military following the coup.
Khin Waddy said Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, despite her frail outer appearance, stood firm and served as a mother figure for all of the female detainees in the prison.
Later, Khin Waddy and Daw Khin Mawe Lwin were both transferred to Myingyan Prison.
In prison, the two engaged in activities together including political talks and discussions during which prisoners could exchange political views, and organizing strikes mirroring those taking place outside, such as silent strikes, Thanakha (traditional cosmetic paste) strikes and flower strikes, and strikes to mark occasions such as Martyrs’ Day, the anniversary of the 1988 uprising, and detained leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday.
In prison, staging such activities can have repercussions ranging from the imposition of stricter rules or a reduction in the water allotted for showering, to a beating. There have been many reports of female political prisoners being brutally beaten and seriously injured, or being transferred to a remote prison, simply for asking that their rights be observed.
Khin Waddy was released in November last year. But instead of releasing Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, the junta hit the NLD lawmaker with another charge and transferred her to Kalay Prison.
Daw Khin Mawe Lwin suffered facial paralysis due to a stroke while in Monywa Prison. Denied timely medical care, she did not fully recover and later suffered another stroke in Kalay Prison, Khin Waddy said.
“If people like Amay [mother] Mawe were outside, they could do much more than us,” Khin Waddy said, adding that her wish is for Amay Mawe [Daw Khin Mawe Lwin] and all political prisoners to be released soon.
Despite the horrific, traumatizing experiences they have endured, female former political prisoners like Khin Waddy, Alinn and Phyu Nyo are not disheartened, and refuse to abandon their activism. Instead, they have joined other women who are at the forefront of the revolution.
Women from all walks of life have bravely participated in Myanmar’s democracy struggle under successive military regimes, including the current junta, to restore democracy in the country. Similarly, women civil servants in the education, health and other sectors have joined the CDM, refusing to work under military rule—to date, their strike continues. This is to say nothing of the many women resistance fighters who are fighting alongside their male comrades in the armed struggle against the junta.
Phyu Nyo, who was released together with her husband in May this year, said she has continued to dream of her days of imprisonment over the past three months.
“In my dreams, we are both still on the run and being caught, again and again,” she said with frustration. “Only when I wake up without seeing any [prison] bars, and recognize that I am now outside, do I feel relief,” she said.
However, Phyu Nyo hasn’t let her traumatizing experiences stop her from resuming her contributions to the political movement. She has joined the Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar, which was founded by her husband and other former detainees to help political prisoners still being detained by the junta.
Alinn, the former political prisoner from Mandalay, also joined the network with the same aim as Phyu Nyo.
“I couldn’t feel happy on the day of my release. Though I was free, people who had become like family members to me remained behind,” Alinn said.
Through the network, both Phyu Nyo and Alinn now help to send parcels containing medicines and cash to female political prisoners.
Khin Waddy is also working on raising funds for displaced people in Sagaing Region who were forced to flee their homes amid the junta’s raids and arson attacks.
“We want this revolution to end quickly. Only if we win will all the political prisoners be released, and thus we are determined to contribute in all ways we can. The same mindset we had while inside [prison], we now have on the outside,” Khin Waddy said.
Phyu Nyo said that some of the female political prisoners still locked up are serving terms as long as 30 to 40 years.
“I want all of them to escape quickly and return home. That can only happen if the revolution succeeds at the earliest possible time. And thus I will devote myself to the revolution,” she said.
With the exception of Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, the names of the women mentioned in this story were changed to protect their safety..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-08-30
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-30
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Women and Politics in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
Revolutionary forces have seen notable successes in some areas, while struggling to gain traction in others.
Description:
"On May 5, 2021, Myanmar’s parallel government, the National Unity Government (NUG), established its armed wing, the People’s Defense Force (PDF), with the aim of overthrowing the military regime that seized power in a coup on February 1, 2021. Led by members of the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government, the NUG has built a strong military partnership with four long-standing ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) known as the K3C: the Kachin Independence Organization (K), the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Progressive Party, and the Chin National Front. The NUG is also collaborating less visibly with other EAOs, mostly those that enjoy close ties to China.
Though the military still controls the country’s major cities and assets after two years of battle, resistance groups have slowly taken control of territory, including border areas and some towns in ethnic states, in addition to the territories that have long been under the control of allied EAOs. As territorial competition has intensified, so have human rights breaches and humanitarian crises. As of July 30, the United Nations estimated that there were now 1.9 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar, 1.59 million of whom had been displaced since the coup. On the human rights front, a local NGO reported that 3,850 civilians had been killed for opposing the junta; at least 24,100 had been arrested, of whom 158 had been sentenced to death. In addition, approximately 70,324 houses and buildings had been torched by the military as of May 31. In fact, all those numbers mostly represent open sources and Myanmar military abuses, not counting opposition violations, which were of course relatively insignificant. What the current political climate suggests is that the country’s struggle will not end anytime soon.
Throughout the world’s history, different factors have contributed to the success or failure of armed revolutions, and this article reviews the strengths and weaknesses of the current resistance movement in five key areas.
In the aftermath of the coup, the Myanmar military, known as Tatmadaw, offered certain positions to ethnic-based political parties in the newly-formed administration in order to mitigate the political unrest in ethnic states, while anticipating anti-coup protests in the country’s Burman majority regions. The calculation was totally wrong, as the regime’s spokesperson later admitted in a media interview, as the initial protests against the military takeover evolved into a nationwide uprising. The Tatmadaw was brutal in cracking down on peaceful protestors, and yet the public continued to resist it by organizing nationwide silent protests (or uprisings) on specific days, banging pots and pans every night during a specific period, boycotting military businesses, and initiating social punishment against military associates.
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The Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) has rapidly evolved into a resistance platform for civil servants, including security forces, and the NUG claims that the number of state workers who had joined the movement reached 360,000 in mid-2021. The movement drew international attention, even being nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize. Even when the anti-coup campaign devolved into a full-fledged civil war, the people, especially Burmese expatriate communities, continued to fund both the NUG and their own ethnic-based resistance organizations. The public’s support basically ticks all the boxes for the revolution to prevail.
International Support (4/10)
Just as the people’s support was an obvious strength of Myanmar’s revolution, international assistance and support has been on the weaker side. Following the coup, protestors called widely for external armed intervention to safeguard civilians from the Tatmadaw’s inhumanity, but it was utterly unsuccessful. Under diplomatic and economic pressure, the U.S. has played a leading role in coordinating sanctions, pressuring the Tatmadaw on human rights issues, and encouraging the members of ASEAN to move forward with its Five-Point Consensus peace plan.
However, these efforts have been largely ineffective in preventing the military’s action and the U.S. has even failed to persuade its Quad partners – Australia, India, and Japan – to collaborate on a solution to the crisis. The passing of the Burma Act by the U.S. Congress remains the most significant gesture of international support, yet six months later, there has been no meaningful action or pledge under the Act. Meanwhile, the Tatmadaw has maintained close ties with neighboring countries, except Bangladesh, and imported at least $1 billion in arms since the coup, mostly from Russia ($406 million) and China ($254 million).
A Strong & Charismatic Leader (6/10)
An influential and charismatic leader is essential to uniting the populace, motivating followers, gaining international confidence, and waging psychological warfare on the enemy. The Tatmadaw was of course concerned about the anti-coup movement being led by a prominent leader, so it detained key officials and senior members of the ruling party, including the president, Win Myint, and de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on the morning of the coup.
Arrest warrants are also issued to NLD associate public figures, including Min Ko Naing, once described by The New York Times as the second most prominent opposition leader behind Aung San Suu Kyi. Though he no longer wields much weight in the aftermath of the Rohingya crisis, he was someone the public looked up to during the peaceful protest phase, but has surprisingly played no key role in the NUG.
The current acting president, Duwa Lashi La, is highly praised for his honesty, social skills, and communication skills. However, with all due respect, his appointment was widely seen as a gesture toward the Kachin Independence Organization, the NUG’s most reliable armed group partner, to which Duwa Lashi La is reportedly close. Is it time for a new leader to emerge among the NUG’s trusted armed partners? A former U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar, Scot Marciel, once said, “a unifying, charismatic figure would certainly help a great deal, as would a highly professional public communications campaign.”
Adaptability and Resilience (8/10)
By its nature, armed revolution can last much longer than anticipated, and can encounter unforeseeable challenges. Therefore, resilience and adaptation to changing circumstances is crucial for survival and eventual success. The PDF- and NUG-affiliated Local Defense Forces (LDFs) were born out of the immense need to protect civilians from the Tatmadaw’s cruelty without receiving any international aid. The presence of well-established EAOs has been crucial in terms of providing technical and moral guidance for the PDF and LDF.
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With technical support and limited materiel from EAOs, these groups have grown in numbers, manufactured military equipment, built strong coordination, built an operational structure, and developed a military code of conduct. They have attracted defectors from the security forces, with or without arms, through financial rewards and promises of protection. They have modified commercial drones and employed them on the battlefield in a variety of ways, including taking security footage, transporting equipment, and dropping improvised explosive devices. Their fierce drive and endurance gives them an edge over their enemies, who fight for money and power alone.
A Strong Chain of Command (6/10)
The coup and its subsequent bloodshed led to the establishment of approximately 309 armed groups as of November 2021, the troop number in each group could range from less than 50 to more than 1,000. After failing to create a much-anticipated Federal Army, uniting the newly formed armed groups with existing EAOs under a coordinated and cooperated chain of command, the NUG created the PDF as a precursor. As of April 2022, the NUG claimed to have consolidated an estimated 50,000–100,000 troops into its armed wing, while more than 30,000 troops are estimated to be operating outside of their chain of command. As security analyst Ye Myo Hein stated in 2022, more than 100 LDFs, or around 25 percent, had joined the NUG.
The obstacle to further mergers is the NUG’s inability to provide substantial aid. A few groups have refused to join for ideological reasons, seeing the NUG as under the NLD’s dominance. When it comes to military affairs, the NUG relies heavily on partner EAOs to set up an effective chain of command and reinforce its authority over PDFs. However, EAOs are also focusing on strengthening their parallel influence over PDFs or LDFs with technical support and arms supplies. Ye Myo Hein argues that “alliance politics in the resistance movement are still fluid and unstable,” though there are some improvements in military cooperation on the ground.
Conclusion
Myanmar’s decade-long democratic transition during the 2010s produced greater political freedom, economic prosperity, and a new educated generation, all of which have contributed to strong resistance against the return of military rule by any possible means. Resilience and determination are what have kept the revolution moving forward, in contrast to the regime soldiers, who frequently surrender or defect when faced with a crisis.
As the revolution approaches its third year, financial hardship has posed a major challenge to the resistance groups’ continued expansion and even their existence. The passage of the Burma Act was widely expected to be a watershed moment in the revolution that would address its financial burden and help the NUG to consolidate more resistance groups under one chain of command. But the implementation of the Act indicates that it is mostly intended to provide moral support to Myanmar’s opposition forces. As things stand, a power vacuum will likely persist with no side able to fill it anytime soon, leading to increased violence and instability and a worsening humanitarian crisis..."
Source/publisher:
"The Diplomat" (Japan)
Date of publication:
2023-08-30
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-30
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations
Language:
more
Description:
"Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from July 22 to 31, 2023
Military Junta Troops launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region and Shan State from July 22nd to 31st. A woman who died was hitted by a car and arrested by the Military junta in Shwepyitha Township, Yangon Region.Electricity was also cut off at the 31 villages in Kyaukdaga Township, Bago Region. Military Junta troops arrested over 100 civilians and used them as human shields in Sagaing Region and Tanintharyi Region. Also, about 9 civilians were arrested and killed by the Military’s junta in Magway Region and Sagaing Region.
Local administrative authorities under the Military Junta troops threatened local people to attend the Pyusawhtee Military training in Kyunhla Township, Sagaing Region. Military Junta imposes Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code to impose curfews and restrict gatherings and freedom of movement in Muse TownshiShan State on July 29th. 11 civilians also died from the Military’s heavy and light artillery attacks within a week..."
Source/publisher:
Network for Human Rights Documentation-Burma
Date of publication:
2023-08-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights and international relations, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations
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" August 2, 2023
On the Full Moon of Waso, the junta made 7 announcements in regards to the release of sentenced prisoners and prisoners facing trial.
The announcements in question covered:
(1) President U Win Myint
(2) State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
(3) 22 political prisoners from Ethnic Resistance Organizations
(4) 72 members of Ethnic Resistance Organizations who were facing trials had their cases dismissed
(5) 7,749 prisoners
(6) 125 foreign prisoners were released
(7) Several prisoners on death row had sentences commuted to life imprisonment
Two of the five charges against President U Win Myint, and five of the 19 charges against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi were removed.
U Win Myint’s prison sentence was commuted by 2 years for the two removed charges, he still has to serve 10 years in prison. In a similar vein, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s prison sentence was only commuted by 6 years for the five removed charges, she still has to serve 27 years in prison.
22 people who were imprisoned for their relations with 4 Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs), MNDAA, TNLA, SSPP/SSA, and AA, were released.
Only a handful of political prisoners were released out of 7,749 prisoners across the country. As of 10 a.m. at the time of writing this report, AAPP has confirmed over (120) prisoners but further verification of prisoners is ongoing.
The junta continues to deny its criminal detention of (24,130) innocent civilians since the coup.
The political prisoners released were unjustly arrested and should never have been detained in the first place.
The military refuses to be transparent about the identities of the political prisoners to impede independent verification of accurate numbers released, and whether political prisoners are included among them.
Political prisoners released will have had less than 6-months of their sentences remaining.
AAPP Secretary U Tate Naing, said Releasing people after forcibly arresting them arbitrarily in the first place does not signal a relaxation in repression. The military uses these announcements to deceive international opinion on a regular basis. The military wants the outside world to think they are compromising. But the Burma military is not interested in dialogue, that much is clear from its 2021 coup and its decades of atrocities against ethnic people seeking autonomy.
AAPP Joint-Secretary U Bo Kyi said that The junta is using political prisoners for its hostage diplomacy, these releases are not acts of good will. On the same day of this so-called amnesty, the military junta continued its violent oppression of an entire country. In this past month, junta soldiers and supporters continued to terrorize the population, as evident in their detainment and killing of (144) and (101) people respectively. [AAPP data July 1, 2023 – July 31, 2023]..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-08-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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Sub-title:
The latest attacks come amid reports that the military is using the river to transport supplies to northern Sagaing Region
Description:
"At least 5,000 people have been displaced by recent military raids targeting villages along the Chindwin River in Sagaing Region, according to local relief workers.
The latest attacks come as seven cargo ships, accompanied by two gunboats, started making their way north from the Sit Pin Port in Monywa early Monday morning, locals reported.
“We assume they’re going to Homalin and Mawlaik townships with supplies, weapons and ammunition. Troops on the ground raided Say Thu, which is right on the river, this morning,” a resident of the area told Myanmar Now on Monday.
Many of the displaced civilians are from Sone Chaung, a large village located opposite Monywa on the western bank of the Chindwin. Most fled the village after junta troops massacred 14 residents on July 21.
Some who returned after that incident said they were forced to flee again after soldiers stationed nearby renewed their attacks.
“We went back, but we’re sure it’s not safe to stay overnight yet. Everyone’s been displaced since the military arrived,” said a Sone Chaung villager who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Other villages affected by the recent raids include Than Po, Sithu, Pan Tein Pyin, and Kyauk Hmaw, according to local relief workers.
Myanmar’s military often uses the Chindwin River to transport supplies to remote parts of northern Sagaing Region. The regime has faced fierce resistance to its rule throughout the region since it seized power in a coup in February 2021.
Military supply lines are a frequent target of anti-junta groups that have deployed guerrilla tactics as a means of weakening the junta’s ability to assert control over the country’s population.
According to the latest United Nations estimates, ongoing conflict in Myanmar has displaced at least 1.6 million civilians over the past two and a half years..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of publication:
2023-08-01
Date of entry/update:
2023-08-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Burma: Internal displacement/forced migration of several ethnic groups., Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
Language:
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Description:
"The German state prosecutor in Augsburg has launched a criminal investigation into MAN Energy Solutions, which supplied key components to the UMS Moattama warship, allegedly in violation of Germany’s Foreign Trade Law and European Union Dual Use Regulations. This follows a criminal complaint filed by Greenpeace Germany with the attorney Holger Rothbauer, using evidence and research provided by Justice For Myanmar. The opening of the investigation was first reported by Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The UMS Moattama is a landing platform dock/amphibious assault ship, boosting the Myanmar Navy’s capabilities to move troops, tanks, armoured personnel carriers and other arms and equipment to support its ongoing campaign of terror against the people.
Since the military’s illegal coup attempt, the UMS Moattama has reportedly been used to transport troops, rocket systems and heavy artillery to Rakhine State, where the military continues to commit atrocities. The Moattama is also used in the junta’s Sea Shield military exercises.
The UMS Moattama was built in South Korea and transferred to the Myanmar military in 2019, in the aftermath of its genocide against the Rohingya which involved the Myanmar Navy.
MAN Energy Solutions SE, a subsidiary of Volkswagen Group, supplied the ship’s main engine, power consumers, propellor and propellor control system, control and propellor equipment, and also gave training to Myanmar Navy personnel in South Korea, apparently involving its subsidiary in Denmark.
MAN Energy Solutions is just one of a number of German companies that supplied equipment and technology for the UMS Moattama. Other German companies include:
Raytheon Anschütz GmbH, which has recently restructured, supplied radar equipment, a gyro compass system, and the autopilot and steering control system,
Reintjes GmbH supplied the gearbox with parts from other German companies including Kracht GmbH,
Alfons Haar Maschinenbau GmbH & Co KG supplied the helicopter refuelling system,
Cassens & Plath GmbH supplied the magnetic compass system,
RHOTHETA Elektronik GmbH supplied the direction finder,
GEA Westfalia Separator Group GmbH provided separators with parts from other German companies including Boll & Kirch Filterbau GmbH,
DSB Deutsche Schlauchboot GmbH of Survitec Group provided rescue boats.
Justice For Myanmar calls on German authorities to also open criminal investigations into the remaining companies that supplied equipment and technology to the Myanmar Navy warship.
The action taken by German authorities was based on evidence from the Myanmar Navy Chief Petty Officer Myat Min Thu, a whistle-blower who is part of the Civil Disobedience Movement and who was a recipient of training by MAN in South Korea and served on the ship until 2021.
In 2021, South Korean police launched a police investigation into the illegal transfer of the Moattama to the Myanmar military, targeting Daesun Shipbuilding & Engineering, which built the ship; Posco International, which brokered the transfer; and Korea’s Ministry of Defence. The investigation remains ongoing.
In November 2020, Justice For Myanmar, Korean Civil Society in Solidarity with Rohingya and Korean Transnational Corporation Watch filed complaints with the OECD National Contact Point in Korea and the National Human Rights Commission of Korea against Daesun Shipbuilding & Engineering, Posco International and other businesses supporting the Myanmar military.
The complaint led to scrutiny of the warship export and the police investigation. The police investigation was later supported through the cooperation of Myat Min Thu.
Justice For Myanmar spokesperson Yadanar Maung says: “We welcome the action taken by the German public prosecutor in Augsburg in response to the criminal complaint by Greenpeace Germany.
“The Myanmar Navy is responsible for genocide against the Rohingya and continues to enforce the junta’s policy of apartheid, arbitrarily detaining Rohingya men, women and children who attempt to flee. The military and all those complicit in its international crimes are yet to be held accountable.
“The UMS Moattama, equipped with German technology, supports the Myanmar military’s capabilities to move troops and arms across coastal areas as it wages a campaign of terror against the people.
“Prosecution is an important step towards accountability for the transfer of arms and dual use goods to the Myanmar military, and to prevent future arms transfers from Germany and the European Union, but they need to be widened to all companies involved in the Moattama project.
“Both Germany and the EU have laws in place to prevent the transfer of arms and dual use goods to the genocidal Myanmar military, but governments have repeatedly failed to enforce them, enabling the military to gain access to equipment and technology that supports ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Germany must show that breaches of the law will not be tolerated, and we call on other EU member states whose companies have illegally transferred arms, equipment and technology to investigate and hold them accountable.
“We urge Danish authorities to swiftly investigate and take action against MAN’s Danish subsidiary for its role in the Myanmar Navy’s UMS Moattama project.”..."
Source/publisher:
Justice For Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-07-31
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-31
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Business and the Military, The Burmese military's role in the economy, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
Family members believe that transfers are an excuse to execute the prisoners without accountability.
Description:
"At least 13 political prisoners in Myanmar have been killed by the junta while transferring from one detention facility to another, family members and rights organizations told Radio Free Asia.
During the month of June alone, 37 political prisoners transferred from Daik-U prison, in the Bago region north of Yangon, went missing before reaching their destinations.
At least eight of these have been killed, the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, announced on July 19.
Several family members have suggested that the junta is transferring the prisoners as a pretext to execute them away from surveillance, and they doubt the official explanations of how the prisoners died.
In one such explanation seen by RFA’s Burmese Service, in a letter from prison authorities, a family was informed that the prisoner was shot while trying to escape after the prison transfer vehicle carrying him overturned in a road accident.
In another case, prison authorities notified the family of 31-year-old Nay Aye that he had died in a strikingly similar way, one of Nay Aye’s friends told RFA.
“The mail arrived after 3 p.m on the 14th. It was the notification letter from the Daik-U prison department signed by Kyaw Zay Ya,” Nay Aye’s friend said. “The letter said that he was shot dead while he and other prisoners were attempting to escape when the prison transfer vehicle transporting them from Daik-U to Tharyarwaddy Prison almost overturned on a road accident.”
He said that the report was not believable and that he considered it to be a deliberate and premeditated murder.
Nay Aye was arrested in Yangon on Nov. 24, 2021, sentenced to life imprisonment by the secret tribunal in Insein Prison under the Anti-Terrorism Act, and then sent to Daik-U Prison by the junta.
While at Daik-U, he was praised by the prisoners for trying to open an in-prison clinic, get access to clean water and secure the right for political prisoners to read.
Zin Win Htut, 27, is another prisoner who was killed in a transfer. He had been incarcerated since December 2021 and was serving a 15-year sentence for violating the Anti-Terrorism Act.
His family was informed of his death on July 18, sources close to him told RFA. A member of the Myingyan University Student Union which Zin Win Htut once vice-chaired, said he believes it was an intentional murder.
Anti-junta activities
According to AAPP, the eight prisoners killed on transfers in June are Zin Win Htut alias Ta Yoke Gyi, Nay Aye alias Arkar Htet, Paing Myo, Yar Lay alias Zin Myint Tun, Pyae Phyo Hein alias Ko Pyae, Wai Yan Lwin alias Jar Gyi, Khant Lin Naing alias Ko Khant, Bo Bo Win alias Htan Taw Gyi, and Aung Myo Thu.
According to a junta report issued on Dec. 12, 2021, all eight were arrested for their association with the Bago People’s Defense Force, or PDF, one of many grassroots militias formed by citizens after the Feb. 1, 2021 coup.
In addition to those eight, Aung Soe Moe alias Mae Lone died in Daik-U Prison on July 16. Maung Dee, a former lawmaker who was ousted during the coup from Waw township in the Bago region, died on July 17 after being transferred to Bago Hospital due to ill health, AAPP reported.
Earlier, in May, 19-year-old student activist Thant Zin Win and two other political prisoners whose names cannot be confirmed, were killed when 24 political prisoners from Daik-U Prison were taken out and interrogated again by the junta authorities, according to people close to the prison.
These incidents summed up the total deaths of 13 political prisoners in Daik-U Prison alone.
No bodies
Whenever the families of the dead political prisoners ask to see the body, the prison authorities always refuse, a person close to one of the families told RFA.
“They said that he died but we couldn’t see or know anything about the body,” the source said. “They issued notification letters to the families but we don't know what purpose they were issued for. We want to know the truth about what happened.”
RFA reached out to Naing Win, the spokesman and the deputy director general of the prison department for comment, but his phone rang unanswered.
An AAPP official told RFA that these killings are human rights violations. He said that AAPP urges the international community, including the United Nations, to investigate and take effective action as soon as possible.
“It was evident that the junta shot and killed the inmates from Daik-U prison outside,” he said. “ It is a really horrible and brutal violation of human rights.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Radio Free Asia" (USA)
Date of publication:
2023-07-28
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political History
Language:
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Description:
"Myanmar junta troops killed 11 civilians and three resistance fighters in Yinmabin Township, Sagaing Region, on Friday, according to residents.
Troops stationed in Yinmabin town raided Sone Chaung village before dawn on Saturday and beheaded three Bo Tun Tauk People’s Defense Force members, who were guarding the village.
They then killed 11 male villagers, the group said.
“First, we found the bodies of the three fighters in the village center. The other bodies were spread around. Some had been tortured,” said a villager.
Other villagers were taken away and their condition is unknown. The Irrawaddy could not independently verify the reports.
The three resistance fighters were named Ko Pyae Phyo Tun, Ko Sai Thu San and Ko Nay Min Tun.
The civilians killed were U Myo Myint Oo, U Kyaw Oo, U Yan Naing Soe, U Swe Gyi, U Aung Win Swe, U Naing Min, U Tote Kyi, U Lwin Moe Tun, U Htay Zaw, U Phoe Aung and U Aung Zaw Win, according to the resistance group.
Pro-junta Telegram channels released the same names but said they were all resistance fighters.
A funeral was held yesterday and the 14 bodies were cremated together.
Dr Sasa, the National Unity Government’s minister for international cooperation, posted on Facebook that the Yinmabin atrocity was one of around 80 massacres committed by the junta since the 2021 coup.
“The genocidal military junta hides behind secrecy, evading international scrutiny. But we cannot remain silent observers; we must take decisive action now,” he said.
Dr Sasa, known by only one name, called on the international community to cut the flow of money, weapons and legitimacy to the junta.
“Let us stand in solidarity with the loved ones, families and villagers of Yinmabin during this heart-wrenching time, deliberately created by the genocidal junta and supported by their partners in crime,” he said.
In March at least four civilians in Kone village, Yinmabin Township, were killed by junta troops after they torched the village..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-07-22
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights and international relations
Language:
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Sub-title:
Fighting increases in border states while junta continues to delay elections
Description:
"Fighting between the Myanmar army and anti-junta rebels has flared up in recent days, with local people in one village saying on Saturday that 14 people were killed in a single raid.
Deadly violence has engulfed Myanmar since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government in February 2021 and unleashed a bloody crackdown on dissent that has left thousands dead.
The junta has been battling anti-coup “people’s defence force” (PDF) militias and long-established ethnic rebel armies that control large areas of territory near the country’s borders.
A senior military source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP that fighting had been going on in recent days in the states of Kachin, Karen and Kayah, as well as Sagaing and Magway regions.
Two people from Sone Chaung village in Sagaing – a hotbed of opposition to junta rule – told AFP the army had killed 14 people in a raid in the early hours of Friday morning.
The villagers, who both spoke on condition of anonymity, said the army came looking for PDF leaders.
One said that six of the dead were PDF fighters, but the rest were civilians, and the bodies were found scattered over a wide area, apparently shot or cut down as they tried to flee.
“Fighting and raids of PDF places in Sagaing and Magway regions are ongoing these days,” another military source said without giving further details.
Access to the areas affected is extremely difficult for journalists, making it hard to independently verify local accounts.
Earlier this month, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told south-east Asian ministers that Washington and regional states must pressure the junta to put an end to violence and return to democracy.
But diplomatic and economic pressure on the generals has so far had no effect.
The junta, which justified its coup by alleging fraud in elections won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, has promised to hold fresh polls.
But it has delayed them once, and earlier this month hinted it would extend the state of emergency and postpone polls again..."
Source/publisher:
"The Guardian" (UK)
Date of publication:
2023-07-22
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights and international relations, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
more
Description:
"JAKARTA – The Myanmar military must be held accountable for their continued mockery of the rule of the law, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said today, marking one year since four political prisoners committed to the success of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar were executed at the order of junta leader Min Aung Hlaing. Former lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw and three other activists – Kyaw Min Yu, known as “Ko Jimmy,” Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw – were all sentenced to death in closed-door military courts during sham trials backed by junta-appointed judges.
“The executions of the four activists was a gross miscarriage of justice and a grave loss for the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. The fact that the military continues to sentence scores of people to death is evidence of their disregard for upholding any qualified measure of the law. ASEAN should take this for what it is – evidence of a brutal military regime with no intention of abiding by human rights principles, including the right to a free and fair trial. One year on, there has yet to be any justice for the victims’ families and the thousands of political prisoners detained,” APHR Chair and member of the Indonesian House of Representatives Mercy Barends said today.
The junta intended the executions to send a strong message to the pro-democracy movement but their cruelty has only propelled activists to amplify their calls to the international community to go beyond condemning the brutal military regime and respond with tangible actions that hold the junta to account, including an immediate referral by the United Nations Security Council to the International Criminal Court.
The situation in Myanmar remains volatile as the junta continues to torture, kill, arrest and detain people who resist their dictatorship. As indicated in the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar and other rights-based reports, crimes against humanity continue to be systematically perpetrated in the country by the junta.
“We stand in solidarity with the Myanmar people and pro-democracy movement and their courageous stand against the illegal military junta. We echo their calls and urge the international community, including ASEAN, to take concrete measures to hold the junta accountable for their terrible crimes, including by supporting the legal cases in the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice as well as ongoing efforts to assert universal jurisdiction,” said Barends..."
Source/publisher:
ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
Date of publication:
2023-07-21
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights and international relations, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Description:
"As Myanmar’s junta continues to lose ground to resistance forces, former army captain Lin Htet Aung, who joined the nationwide civil disobedience movement in March 2021, is helping others to defect.
He recently talked to The Irrawaddy about the revolution, how the junta’s tactics might change and the effect of the regime’s scorched earth attacks.
Why is the junta conducting so many airstrikes and shelling attacks on resistance and civilian targets?
The ground troops cannot meet the regime’s goals. Without shelling and airstrikes, the troops achieve nothing.
There is a slogan, “The military will fight with heavy explosives”.
They think they can win with explosives and they are prepared to use them plentifully whenever they are attacked.
Can the junta use any more extreme tactics?
The next step might be to use chemical weapons. The junta expected to have toppled the resistance by now. It is now also using politics and religion to break public support and stop supplies from reaching the resistance.
It is suffering badly militarily, which is why we see more shelling.
Junta forces burn people’s homes while arbitrarily arresting and killing civilians. These acts are among their high efforts.
Chemical weapons and cluster bombs are the next steps.
Does the junta have chemical weapons and cluster bombs?
The junta will not admit it but we have learned that its factories are producing those weapons.
Personnel who have defected from those factories said the military is designing and producing cluster bombs with 120mm explosives.
We hear the junta has produced chemical bombs but we have no documents.
Defectors from the factories say the regime has been collecting these weapons for several years.
How is the junta trying to reduce public support for the revolution?
The junta’s airstrike on Pazi Gyi village was a message that anyone who supported the revolution would be killed.
Troops burn villages based on accusations they are sheltering resistance fighters.
In Magwe Region, the regime banned oil drilling to stop supplies to the resistance.
This is nothing new. We used to use these tactics in conflict areas.
They follow stages: block off the whole conflict area, conduct violence to divide the revolutionary organizations from the people and, if that fails, kill civilians to increase fear. This is a familiar strategy.
Is it easy to conduct airstrikes?
In the past, the military used its air force sparingly. Helicopters were sometimes used in clashes with the Arakan Army in Rakhine State.
Now fighter jets and helicopters are used in every situation. Helicopters are deployed at many bases and fighter jets are always on standby.
The junta uses its aircraft for almost every incident, no matter how small because the routes for reinforcements are controlled by revolutionary forces. In the past, the use of helicopters was restricted due to the costs.
Does the junta consider any code of conduct to avoid harming civilians?
The regime does not follow any code of conduct. There are also rules about taking up positions near civilian areas but the regime ignores them.
They use civilians as human shields during operations.
There is no distinction between civilians and military targets. Anyone who opposes military rule is an enemy.
Does the regime worry about violating the Geneva Conventions?
There are war crimes and crimes against humanity committed but to the junta there is no such thing. It only respects its own rules. From the bottom to junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, they all have the same attitude.
Could the revolution succeed if the regime lost its airpower?
The resistance groups are much stronger now in tactics and capabilities. They have really improved while junta troops have weakened.
The regime is losing ground, despite using 120mm rounds or heavy machine guns that cause great damage.
Helicopters and fighter jets have become the main strike force.
Everything would change if we could stop the airstrikes.
But the revolutionary forces need weapons to match the junta troops. With their current weapons, revolutionary groups can still not counter and protect themselves from junta offensives..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-07-04
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Spring Revolution
Language:
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Sub-title:
Flash mobs, longyi campaign, and voices from the protest frontlines
Description:
"The pro-democracy movement in Myanmar continues to challenge the junta which grabbed power in a coup in February 2021. The opposition government, ethnic armed groups, urban activists, and exiled media are all demanding the end of the military dictatorship, restoring civilian leadership, and reviving the nation’s transition to democratic rule.
Massive rallies opposed the junta and a civil disobedience movement emerged against the military dictatorship immediately after the coup. The junta responded by violently suppressing protest actions, revoking the licenses of independent media outlets, and designating the opposition government as a terrorist group. A systematic crackdown on dissent targeted youth activists, opposition leaders, journalists, and ordinary citizens suspected of supporting the pro-democracy movement.
Despite the mass arrests and violence, opposition against the junta continues to garner public support as seen in the coordinated “silent strike” across the country. Activists either joined the armed resistance in rural communities or sustained the opposition in urban centers.
READ MORE: Myanmar's Spring Revolution
Through the help of a solidarity network, Global Voices interviewed the Yangon Revolution Force (YRF) and the Artists Collective about the status and prospect of the urban struggle against the junta.
After the violent dispersal of rallies, activists organized flash mobs to evade security forces while spreading the message of the resistance. Oakkar, a spokesperson of YRF, explained how flash mobs are organized.
Our flash mobs initially included 30–40 people, but when crackdowns became lethal, we downsized to groups of 10–20. Eventually, most of us were apprehended, and we had to operate in even smaller units.
The Artists Collective, a group of rebel artists, affirmed the value of flash mobs in the overall resistance.
Soft strikes and flash mobs are highly effective. We must always show the fascists that they're not in control. We believe these campaigns are gaining significance over time.
Images and videos of flash mobs often go viral reflecting the online support of Myanmar internet users. Oakkar shared how activists are maximizing multiple platforms to reach more people:
When the junta began brutally cracking down on peaceful protests and restricting internet access, we started organizing flash mobs. We didn't expect our campaigns to go viral or receive applause; we simply acted as necessary and relayed information to the media. The public's support has given us the strength to continue. We've also leveraged platforms like Telegram and Instagram. It's risky for people to engage with our Facebook posts due to potential repercussions, but we continue innovating ways to demonstrate that the junta cannot govern.
Another innovative protest is the Longyi campaign which involves the posting of protest messages in Myanmar’s traditional attire.
The Longyi campaign is a source of pride for us. Longyi is our traditional attire, a wrap-around skirt worn by both men and women. We wrote revolutionary messages on the fabric that would become visible when adjusting the Longyi in the crowd. The campaign received significant praise and global support, marking a proud moment for us.
Another risky form of protest is talking to strangers in the streets about the anti-junta campaign.
Another risky campaign involved our members approaching random people on the street to discuss the junta's upcoming sham election. This task was dangerous; if the people we approached were spies or junta supporters, we risked imprisonment. But we managed to execute it successfully.
Oakkar narrated the difficulties they face in waging guerilla tactics in urban centers:
It's extremely risky for our comrades to operate in Yangon. Increased patrolling, more spies, and advanced surveillance make it difficult and resource-intensive to operate in the city. Despite the ruined economy, locals are willing to rent safe houses to our members for a higher price. Operations cost is high due to the necessity of employing several scouts for safety.
The Artists Collective underscored the role of collaboration among different members of the pro-democracy movement:
As long as our comrades, who are in riskier situations, are willing to revolt, we're ready to help in any way to ensure the success of this spring revolution. For instance, during Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday, we stayed up all night on a video call to guide our comrades in Yangon on how to draw the banner.
Oakkar highlighted the sacrifices of those who decided to join the anti-junta resistance:
Our members have had to make tremendous sacrifices. Our security is a constant worry, day and night. Many of us are unable to sleep peacefully, as the threat of midnight raids looms large. One of the most heart-wrenching realities is being cut off from our families. Additionally, unlike most young adults in their 20s, we don't have the luxury of enjoying regular pastimes and leisure activities. Our commitment to this cause, however, makes these sacrifices bearable.
He also shared an appeal to the international community:
We understand that everyone has their own responsibilities and tasks. However, we would greatly appreciate it if they could provide donations to support war victims fleeing to the borders, assist immigrants, or offer free online education to students supporting the Civil Disobedience Movement
The Artists Collective cited the contribution of artists in the pro-democracy movement:
As artists, we knew we could contribute by creating artworks to support the revolution. The fact that people are printing our artwork or using the digital versions online brings us immense satisfaction. We support the revolution through our art. Working together, we create banners, convey important messages, and assist with designs. Seeing our art pieces printed, displayed in marches, and online during flash events fills us with pride.
The group is confident that the revolution against the junta will lead to success:
We've seen a significant number of women and people of diverse sexual orientations and identities in deadly combat. This unique situation has brought people of different ages together to fight against the regime that has systematically oppressed our nation for 70 years. We believe the world will witness the establishment of a new federal democratic order in our country..."
Source/publisher:
"Global Voices"
Date of publication:
2023-07-03
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Spring Revolution, Anti-coup protesters
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""They can kill my body, but not my belief." These famous words from our dear hero and brother, the late Salai Tin Maung Oo, continue to resonate with me. Indeed, the battle belongs to the LORD, and the victory belongs to the brave people of Myanmar. Justice belongs to the light of love, hope, peace, and freedom.
Dear leaders of the United States Chin Coalition (USCC), I extend my deepest gratitude for having me here today. It is a great honor to be with you once again, and I thank USCC for its significant contributions to the fight for freedom and federal democracy in Myanmar. Every day, the remarkable people of Myanmar draw closer to the dawn of freedom and federal democracy, which will liberate them from the oppressions and aggressions of the genocidal military junta and their acts of terrorism. Our people have suffered for far too long under this brutal reign of terror.
It has been more than two years since the formation of the United States Chin Coalition, and these two years have been challenging, especially in the pursuit of Federal Democracy. The coalition has faced numerous obstacles and difficulties along the way, but its members have remained resilient and committed to their cause. Despite the hurdles encountered, the coalition has made significant progress in advocating for the principles of democracy and working towards a federal system of governance. The journey has been arduous, but the coalition remains determined to continue their efforts in the fight for a democratic future.
The Myanmar Spring Revolution began 27 months ago with the revolutionaries of Chin TUMI. Through the help of God and the sacrifices of our people, the revolution that started from nothing has now developed into the creation of DRONES to defend our freedom and establish federal democracy—an extraordinary future that awaits us all. TUMI is an integral part of the Chin identity, historically protecting the Chin people from attacks by wild animals that could endanger their lives. However, when our fundamental freedom of expression came under attack by the genocidal military junta as consequences of their attempted coup on February 1, 2021, our courageous people once again resorted to using TUMI to defend our Fatherland and the lives of the Chin people known for their bravery and loyalty since the first world war.
This is not the first time our people have defended freedom. Even during the First World War in 1914, over 1,000 men from Chinland marched from our Motherland all the way to Europe to fight for freedom alongside their partners in the struggle. Similarly, in the Second World War, our forefathers did everything in their power to contribute to the freedom of the world, fighting alongside their fellow freedom fighters. Our forefathers were called for the mission of Burma’s independent, once again they gave everything they had for the independence of Burma.
The independence of Burma became possible through the cooperation and joint fight of our forefathers with our ethnic brothers and sisters under the leadership of our freedom fighter, General Aung San, the father of State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been unjustly arrested along with nearly 24,000 innocent people of Myanmar, including our President U Win Myint, by the genocidal military junta.
If the Burma’s Independent agreement known as the Palong agreement, signed by our forefathers together with ethnic leaders and General Aung San, had been fully implemented, Chin State would have thrived under the federal democratic values and principles of self-determination. However, due to the genocidal military dictatorships in Myanmar, a nation once considered one of the richest in Asia has become one of the poorest in the world. In the past, Burma was far ahead of Singapore in several dimensions, but now Myanmar has deteriorated even below the level of North Korea. If the genocidal military generals had been stopped long ago, Myanmar could have thrived like other Federal Democratic Nations such as Germany, UK, USA, or Australia and played its rightful place on the global stage to make this world a better place for all.
This last Revolution of Myanmar aims to end the genocidal military dictatorship once and for all and establish a federal democratic union where Chin State will play its part in nation-building, becoming a fully-fledged federal democratic society. This is Myanmar's final revolution, destined to write a new chapter in our nation's history, not only for this generation but also for generations to come. Myanmar will regain its rightful place not only in our beautiful Asia but also in the world.
Therefore, the genocidal military junta, the enemies of the people of Myanmar, and the enemies of Myanmar's freedom and federal democracy, have been relentlessly bombing us, killing over 4,000 civilians and destroying more than 67,000 houses, including schools, hospitals, churches, and monasteries. They have displaced nearly 2 million civilians, rendering them homeless, and caused more than 18 million people to suffer from hunger and starvation, in desperate need of life-saving aid. These atrocities have occurred in the past 27 months alone, perpetrated by the genocidal military junta, who commit these acts of terrorism because they despise the light of freedom and federal democracy. Their worship of darkness, tyranny, and oppression has no place in Myanmar's near future.
Despite these crimes against humanity committed by the genocidal military junta, the brave people of Myanmar have made it clear that they will never give up or rest until they bring the light of justice, freedom, and federal democracy to dispel the darkness of cruel genocidal attacks against our people. The genocidal military's darkness will be replaced by the light of federal democracy, their violence will be replaced by the light of peace, and the pain and suffering caused by their tyranny will be replaced by the joy of freedom and prosperity that awaits our courageous people.
The genocidal military junta cannot perceive the great light that awaits the brave people of Myanmar because they are blinded by their evil reign of terror against our people. They not only kill our people and destroy our homes, churches, schools, and hospitals, but they also weaponize life-saving aid, starvation, hunger, and pain through their evil "four cut policies." They have not only bombed, burned, and destroyed our homes, villages, and towns, such as Thatlang in Chin State, which has been wiped out, but they have also blocked humanitarian aid from reaching Chin State after the devastating Cyclone Mocha hit our state a few months ago. They want our people to surrender to their reign of terror, but they fail to understand the spirit of Salai Tin Maung Oo, which now resides in the hearts of all Chin people and beyond.
I would also like to take this opportunity to express our sincerest appreciation for all the advocacy work that you have done, especially regarding the Burma Acts NDAA of the USA. It is crucial that we continue to do everything that we can for the full implementation of the Burma Acts NDAA, ensuring that all its objectives, aimed at helping Myanmar remove the genocidal military junta once and for all and establishing federal democratic governance at the national, state, and local levels, are realized. It is imperative that the implementation strategies of the Burma Acts NDAA are well-coordinated and cooperated with ASEAN's five points on Myanmar and the historic UN Security Council Resolutions on Myanmar.
Together, we will do everything we can to enlist the support of the international community in ending the pain and suffering of humanity in Myanmar. This can be achieved through decisive, targeted, coordinated, and stricter sanctions against the genocidal military junta, such as an international arms embargo and the sanctioning of jet fuels and the military junta's financial banks and channels like MOGE. At the same time, it is crucial that the international community promptly recognizes the will of the people of Myanmar without further delay by officially recognizing the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG) as the legitimate and true democratic representative of the people of Myanmar. It is time to cease supporting the terrorist military junta known as SAC and start supporting the NUG and all pro-democracy movements. In order to prevent another genocide and hold the genocidal military junta and their partners accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity, it is imperative that the NUG rightfully represents Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regarding the Rohingya genocide case. Allowing the genocidal military junta, the perpetrators, to represent Myanmar at any international level is illegal, illegitimate, wrong, misleading, and an insult to the people of Myanmar, who are also victims of the junta's war crimes and crimes against humanity. Through international mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court (ICC) and international law, we must strive to hold the genocidal military junta and their partners in crimes accountable for all the crimes that they have openly and freely committed against the people of Myanmar. We will not rest until justice is delivered to our people.
Justice is the future of Myanmar, freedom is the future of Myanmar, and Myanmar's future lies in the hands of 54 million brave people of Myanmar. Countries that have been supporting the crimes against the people of Myanmar must halt their support to the genocidal military junta and instead support the bright future of Myanmar, where stability and prosperity await not only Myanmar but also the region and the world. Myanmar is a new fertile land for the world economy, and its potential will be realized once the genocidal military junta is removed. We are not far from that day of freedom and federal democracy, the day of joy of peace and prosperity.
Once again, we call upon the international community to invest in the pro-democracy movement, which will end the genocidal military junta's reign of terror to establish federal democracy and bring about peace and prosperity. Furthermore, we urge all freedom fighters, both inside and outside Myanmar, to maintain unity at the highest level and focus on our common goals rather than our differences. I take this opportunity to salute all the fallen freedom fighters; their sacrifices are about to bring the light, the stars of freedom and federal democratic Chinland, within the true federal democratic Union of the new Myanmar, for ALL the people of Myanmar, regardless of race, religion, culture, gender, language, background, and ethnicity.
Thank you! May God bless you! May God bless Myanmar!..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-07-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-02
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Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ ကျော်ကြားတဲ့ ပြောဆိုချက်ဖြစ်တဲ့ "မင်းတို့ ငါ့ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ကိုသာ သတ်လို့ရမယ်၊ ငါ့ယုံကြည်ချက်နဲ့ ရပ်တည်ချက်ကို သတ်လို့မရဘူး" ဆိုတဲ့စကားက ယနေ့အထိ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့အတွက် ခွန်အားစေဖြစ်သည်။ ဤတိုက်ပွဲသည် ထာရဝဘုရား၌သာမူတည်ပြီး အောင်မြင်မှုသည် မြန်မာပြည်သူများ၏ လက်ထဲတွင်ရှိသည်။ တရားမျှတမှုသည်လည်း မေတ္တာ၊ မျှော်လင့်ချက်၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် လွတ်လပ်ရေးအလင်းရောင်အတွက်ဖြစ်သည်။
ကျွန်တော့်ကို ယခုလို မိန့်ခွန်းပြောဖို့ ဖိတ်ကြားသည့်အတွက် ချစ်လှစွာသော United States Chin Coalition (USCC) ခေါင်းဆောင်များအား ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါသည်။ လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ တိုက်ပွဲအတွက် ကြီးမားသော အထောက်အပံ့များပေးတဲ့အတွက် USCC ကို ကျေးဇူးတင်ပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ဖိနှိပ်အကြမ်းဖက်ခြင်းများမှ လွတ်မြောက်မည့် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထု၏ နေ့ရက်တိုင်းသည် လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီနှင့် တဖြည်းဖြည်း နီးကပ်လာပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုများသည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်လက်အောက်တွင် ဒုက္ခခံစားခဲ့ရသည်မှာ နှစ်ပေါင်းအတော်ကြာပြီဖြစ်သည်။
United States Chin Coalition (USCC) ကို ဖွဲ့စည်းခဲ့တဲ့ နှစ်နှစ်အတွင်း အတားအဆီး အခက်အခဲပေါင်းများစွာ ရင်ဆိုင်ခဲ့ရသော်လည်း အဖွဲ့ဝင်များအနေဖြင့် မိမိတို့တိုင်းပြည် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီရရှိရေးအတွက် ကြံ့ကြံ့ခံပြီး ရပ်တည်ပေးကြသည့်အတွက် ကျေးဇူးတင် ဂုဏ်ပြုအပ်ပါသည်။ တော်လှန်ရေးခရီးစဉ်က ခက်ခဲကြမ်းတမ်းသော်လည်း USCC အဖွဲ့သားများသည် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီအနာဂတ်အတွက် ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်နေကြသည်ကို တွေ့ရပါသည်။
မြန်မာ့နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးသည် ချင်းတူမီးသေနတ်များဖြင့် လွန်ခဲ့သော (၂၇ )လက စတင်ခဲ့သည်။ ဘုရားသခင်၏အကူအညီနှင့် ပြည်သူလူထု၏ စွန့်လွှတ်အနစ်နာခံမှုများဖြင့် သုံညမှ စတင်ခဲ့သည့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးသည် လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီထွန်းကားသည့် ထူးခြားကောင်းမွန်သော အနာဂတ်သစ်အတွက် ယခုအခါ ဒရုန်းများဖြင့် တော်လှန်နိုင်သည့်အဆင့်သို့ ရောက်ရှိနေပြီဖြစ်သည်။ တူမီးသည် ချင်းလူမျိုးများအတွက် အရေးပါသောအစိတ်အပိုင်းဖြစ်ပြီး သမိုင်းအရ တောရိုင်းတိရိစ္ဆာန်များ၏ တိုက်ခိုက်မှုရန်မှ အသက်ကိုကာကွယ်ရာတွင် အသုံးပြုကြသည်။ သို့သော်လည်း ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီများက မတရားအာဏာသိမ်းပြီး ပြည်သူလူထု၏ အခြေခံလွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးကို တိုက်ခိုက်ခံရသည့်နေ့မှစပြီး ပထမကမ္ဘာစစ်ကတည်းက ရဲရင့်ခြင်းနှင့် သစ္စာရှိခြင်းအတွက် ရပ်တည်ခဲ့ကြသည့် မိမိတို့ချင်းလူမျိုးများ၏ အသက်အိုးအိမ်ကိုကာကွယ်ဖို့ရန်အတွက် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်ကို တူမီးဖြင့် ပြန်လည်တော်လှန်ခဲ့ကြသည်။
ဒါဟာ ကျွန်တော်တို့ပြည်သူတွေအတွက် လွတ်လပ်မှုကို ကာကွယ်ဖို့ ပထမဆုံးအကြိမ်မဟုတ်ပေ။ ၁၉၁၄ ခုနှစ် ပထမကမ္ဘာစစ်ကတည်းကပင် ချင်းအမျိုးသား ၁,၀၀၀ ကျော်တို့သည် အမိမြေမှ ဥရောပနိုင်ငံများအထိ ခရီးနှင်ပြီး လွတ်လပ်ရေးအတွက် အတူတကွတိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ အလားတူ ဒုတိယကမ္ဘာစစ်အတွင်းတွင်လည်း ကျွန်တော်တို့ ဘိုးဘေးများသည် အခြားလွတ်လပ်ရေးသူရဲကောင်းများနှင့်အတူ လွတ်လပ်ရေးအတွက် စွမ်းစွမ်းတမံ တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ လွတ်လပ်ရေးအတွက်လည်း ဘိုးဘေးများက အစွမ်းကုန်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ လွတ်လပ်ရေးရခဲ့ခြင်းသည် တိုင်းရင်းသားညီကိုမောင်နှမဘိုးဘေးများနှင့် လွတ်လပ်ရေးဖခင်လည်းဖြစ်သည့် နိုင်ငံတော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၏ဖခင် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်အောင်ဆန်းတို့၏ စည်းလုံးညီညွတ်စွာ တော်လှန်ခဲ့မှုကြောင့်ဖြစ်သည်။
တိုင်းရင်းသားခေါင်းဆောင်များနှင့် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်အောင်ဆန်းတို့ သဘောတူစာချုပ်ချုပ်ဆိုခဲ့သည် ပင်လုံစာချုပ်ပါအချက်များကိုသာ အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ဆောင်နိုင်ခဲ့လျှင် ယနေ့ချင်းပြည်နယ်သည် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ၏အနှစ်သာရများ၊ ကိုယ့်ကံကြမ္မာကိုယ့်ဖန်တီးခြင်း စံချိန်စံနှုန်းများနှင့်အတူ ချမ်းသာကြွယ်ဝသော ပြည်နယ်တစ်ခု ဖြစ်နေလောက်ပြီဖြစ်သည်။ သို့သော် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များ၏ မတရားအာဏာသိမ်းခြင်းကြောင့် တစ်ချိန်က အာရှတိုက်တွင် အချမ်းသာဆုံးနိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ခဲ့သည့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် ယနေ့ကမ္ဘာပေါ်တွင် အဆင်းရဲဆုံးနိုင်ငံတစ်ခု ဖြစ်လာခဲ့သည်။ သမိုင်းတွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် စင်ကာပူနိုင်ငံထက်ရှေ့ရောက်ခဲ့သော်လည်း လက်ရှိတွင် မြောက်ကိုရီးယားနိုင်ငံထက် နိမ့်သောအဆင့်ရောက်ရှိနေပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အကယ်၍ လွန်ခဲ့သောနှစ်များက အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များကသာ ၎င်းတို့၏ အကြမ်းဖက်လုပ်ရပ်များကို ရပ်တန့်ခဲ့လျှင် ယနေ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် ဂျာမနီ၊ ယူကေ၊ ယူအက်စ်အေ သို့မဟုတ် ဩစတြေးလျကဲ့သို့သော အခြား ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရက်တစ်နိုင်ငံများကဲ့သို့ အောင်မြင်နိုင်ခဲ့ပြီး ကမ္ဘာကြီးအတွက် ပိုမိုကောင်းမွန်သော နေရာတစ်ခုဖြစ်စေရန် ကမ္ဘာလုံးဆိုင်ရာစင်မြင့်ပေါ်တွင် ၎င်း၏ မှန်ကန်သောနေရာကို ထမ်းဆောင်နိုင်ခဲ့မည်ဖြစ်သည်။
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ နောက်ဆုံးတော်လှန်ရေးဖြစ်သည့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို အမြစ်ပြတ်ချေမှုန်းပြီး ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီပြည်ထောင်စုတည်ဆောက်ရေးအတွက် ချင်းပြည်သည်လည်း ၎င်း၏အခန်းကဏ္ဍမှ ပါဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ဖြစ်သည်။ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးသည် လက်ရှိမျိုးဆက်များအတွက်သာမကပဲ နောင်လာနောင်သားမျိုးဆက်များအတွက် သမိုင်းသစ်ရေးထိုးမည့် အရေးတော်ပုံလည်းဖြစ်သည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် အာရှတိုက်တွင်သာမက ကမ္ဘာ့အလည်တွင် နေရာမှန်ကို ပြန်လည်ရရှိစေရမည်။
လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ (၂၇) လကျော်အတွင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက နိုင်ငံတော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်နှင့် နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတဦးဝင်းမြင့်အပါအဝင် အပြစ်မဲ့ အရပ်သား ၂၃,၀၀၀ ကျော်ကို တရားမဝင် ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့ပါသည်။ ထိုစစ်ဗိုလ်ချုပ်များကပင် အရပ်သား ၄,၀၀၀ ကျော်သေဆုံးမှုနှင့် ဆေးရုံများ၊ ကျောင်းများ၊ ခရစ်ယာန်ဘုရားကျောင်းများနှင့် ဘုန်းကြီး ကျောင်းများအပါအဝင် နေအိမ်ပေါင်း ၆၇,၀၀၀ ကျော် ပျက်စီးဆုံးရှုံးခြင်းအတွက်လည်း တာဝန်ရှိသည်။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက အရပ်သားများအပေါ် အကြမ်းဖက်တိုက်ခိုက်မှုများကြောင့် ပြည်သူပေါင်း ၂ သန်းနီးပါး အိုးမဲ့အိမ်မဲ့ဖြစ်သွားခဲ့ရပြီး ပြည်သူပေါင်း ၁၈ သန်းကျော် လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုဆိုင်ရာ အကျပ်အတည်းသို့ရောက်ရှိရန် တွန်းအားပေးခဲ့သည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံလူဦးရေ၏ထက်ဝက်ကို ဆင်းရဲနွမ်းပါးမှုဘေးသို့ ရောက်ရှိစေခဲ့သည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များကိုးကွယ်သော အကြမ်းဖက်ခြင်း၊ မှောင်မိုက်ခြင်းနှင့် ဖိနှိပ်ချုပ်ခြယ်ခြင်းများသည် အနာဂတ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ပပျောက်ရတော့မည်ဖြစ်သည်။
လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုကျူးလွန်နေသည့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ် ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ နေ့စဉ်ကျူးလွန်နေသော်လည်း ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိရှိသော မြန်မာပြည်သူများသည် တရားမျှတခြင်း၊ လွတ်လပ်ခြင်းနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ မရမချင်း အရှုံးမပေး လက်မမြှောက်ပဲ ဆက်လက်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်သည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များ၏ အမှောင်ထုကို ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ အလင်းရောင်ဖြင့်အစားထိုးပြီး၊ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ နိုင်ထက်စီးနင်းမှုကြောင့် ခံစားနေရသည့် နာကျင်ခြင်းနှင့် ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခများကို လွတ်လပ်ခြင်းနှင့် သာယာဝပြောခြင်းများဖြင့် အစားထိုးသွားမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် သူတို့၏ အကြံအစည်ဆိုးများဖြင့် ပိတ်မိနေသဖြင့် မြန်မာပြည်သူများကို စောင့်ကြိုနေသည့် တောက်ပသော အနာဂတ်ကို ဘယ်တော့မှ မြင်ခွင့်ရမည်မဟုတ်ပါ။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များသည် ပြည်သူများ၏ အသက်အိုးအိမ်များကို ဖျက်ဆီးရုံသာမကပဲ ပြည်သူများ၏ ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခအမျိုးမျိုး၊ ငတ်မွတ်ခေါင်းပါးခြင်းများကို “ဖြတ်လေးဖြတ် ပေါ်လစီ”အောက်တွင် လက်နက်သဖွယ် အသုံးချနေခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ကောင်စီသည် ချင်းပြည်နယ်၊ ထန်တလန်မြို့ အပါအဝင် တိုင်းပြည်အနှံ့ရှိ မြို့ရွာများကို ပြာကျသည်အထိ မီးရှို့ဖျက်ဆီးကြသည့်အပြင် မိုခါမုန်တိုင်း၏ရိုက်ခတ်မှုကြောင့် လိုအပ်နေသည့် လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှု အကူအညီများကိုလည်း တားဆီးပိတ်ပင်နေကြသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ပြည်သူများကို ကြောက်ရွံ့စိတ်များမွေးစေလိုသော်လည်း ချင်းပြည်သူများနှင့် မြန်မာတနိုင်ငံလုံးရှိ ပြည်သူများ၏စိတ်ထဲတွင် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးလို ခံယူချက် အခိုင်အမာ ကိန်းဝပ်နေသည်ကို သူတို့အနေနဲ့ နားလည်နိုင်စွမ်းမရှိပေ။
The Burma Acts NDAA of the USA ကိစ္စ အပါအဝင် အခြားအရေးကြီးသော ထောက်ပံ့ကူညီမှုများအတွက် အားလုံးကို ကျေးဇူးတင်ကြောင်း ထပ်လောင်းပြောကြားလိုပါသည်။ Burma Acts of NDAA ပါ အချက်များအားလုံးကို မြန်မာမြေပြင်တွင် အပြည့်အဝ အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ဆောင်ပြီး ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီနိုင်ငံဖြစ်ထွန်းသည်အထိ အစွမ်းကုန် ကူညီပေးကြပါရန် မေတ္တာရပ်ခံလိုပါသည်။ Burma Acts of NDAA ပါ အချက်များသာမက အာဆီယံ၏ ဘုံသဘောတူညီချက် ၅ ချက်နှင့် UN လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီ၏ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံနှင့်ပတ်သက်သည့် သမိုင်းဝင် ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်များအားလုံးကို မြန်မာမြေပြင်တွင် အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ဆောင်ရန် အရေးကြီးပါသည်။
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် တွေ့ကြုံနေရသော ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခများနှင့် ပဍိပက္ခများအားလုံးကို အဆုံးသတ်နိုင်ရန် အတွက် လိုအပ်သည့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ သက်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ၏ အကူအညီများရရှိနိုင်ရန် အားလုံးအတူတကွ အစွမ်းကုန်ကြိုးစားလုပ်ဆောင်ရန် တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ ထိုကဲ့သို့ပြုလုပ်ရာတွင် စစ်ကောင်စီအား လေယာဉ်ဆီများထောက်ပံ့ပေးသော ဘဏ်များ၊ လုပ်ငန်းများ၊ MOGE နှင့် လက်နက်ရောင်းဝယ်မှု ဈေးကွက်များအပေါ် ထိရောက်သော ပစ်မှတ်ထား အရေးယူဒဏ်ခတ်ပိတ်ဆို့မှုများ ပိုမိုပြင်းထန်စွာပြုလုပ်နိုင်ရန် ကြိုးစားလုပ်ဆောင်သွားမည်။ တချိန်တည်းမှာပင် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာမှ သက်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် မြန်မာပြည်သူများ၏ လိုအင်ဆန္ဒကို လျစ်လျူမရှုပဲ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ (NUG) ကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ တရားဝင်အစိုးရအဖြစ် အသိအမှတ်ပြု ဆက်ဆံပေးကြဖို့ အလွန်အရေးကြီးပါသည်။ တရားမဝင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား ထောက်ပံ့ခြင်းများအားလုံး ရပ်တန့်ပြီး NUG နှင့်အတူ လွတ်လပ်ရေး လှုပ်ရှားမှုများအားလုံးကို စတင်ထောက်ခံအားပေးရန် အချိန်တန်ပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် နောက်ထပ် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုများဖြစ်ပွားခြင်းမှ ကာကွယ်ပြီး စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများနှင့် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သည့်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများအတွက် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီနှင့် အပေါင်းအပါများအား အရေးယူနိုင်ရန် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံး (ICJ) တွင်အမှုရင်ဆိုင်နေရသည့် ရိုဟင်ဂျာလူမျိုးများအပေါ် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်ခဲ့ခြင်းကိစ္စအတွက် NUG က မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကိုယ်စားပြုရန် အရေးကြီးပါသည်။ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာရှေ့မှောက်တွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို ကိုယ်စားပြုရန် အခွင့်အရေးပေးခြင်းသည် ဥပဒေကိုဆန့်ကျင်ခြင်း၊ မမှန်ကန်ခြင်း၊ တရားမဝင်ခြင်း၊ မှားယွင်းသည့်ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ဖြစ်သည့်အပြင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ၊ လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ် ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ၏သားကောင်ဖြစ်သည့် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအား စော်ကားရာရောက်သည်။ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ ယန္တရားများဖြစ်သည့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ ရာဇဝတ်မှုခုံရုံး (ICC) နှင့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေများမှတဆင့် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ ပေါ်ပေါ်တင်တင် ပွင့်ပွင့်လင်းလင်း လွတ်လပ်စွာကျူးလွန်နေသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များနှင့် အပေါင်းအပါများအားလုံးကို ၎င်းတို့အပြစ်များအတွက် ပြန်လည်ပေးဆပ်စေရမည်။ မြန်မာပြည်သူများအတွက် တရားမျှတမှုမရမခြင်း ဘယ်တော့မှ အနားယူမည် မဟုတ်ပါ။
တရားမျှတခြင်းသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏အနာဂတ်ဖြစ်ပြီး လွတ်လပ်မှုသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏အနာဂတ်ဖြစ်သည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏အနာဂတ်သည် မြန်မာပြည်သူ ၅၄ သန်း၏လက်ထဲတွင် တည်ရှိသည်။ မြန်မာပြည်သူများအပေါ် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကျူးလွန်နိုင်ရန် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီကို ထောက်ပံ့ပေးသော နိုင်ငံများအနေဖြင့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား ထောက်ပံ့မှုများအားလုံး ရပ်တန့်ပြီး ဒေသတွင်းနှင့် ကမ္ဘာတစ်ခုလုံးအတွက် တည်ငြိမ်အေးချမ်းရေးနှင့် ချမ်းသာကြွယ်ဝမှုများတည်ရှိသည့် အနာဂတ် ဖက်ဒရယ်မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွက် စတင်ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံကြရန် တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် ကမ္ဘာ့စီးပွားရေးအတွက် မြေသြဇာကောင်းသော မြေကွက်သစ်တစ်ခုဖြစ်ပြီး လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီကို ဖယ်ရှားလိုက်သည်နှင့်တစ်ပြိုင်နက် ၎င်း၏အလားအလာကို အကောင်အထည်ဖော်နိုင်ပါလိမ့်မည်။ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး၊ ကြွယ်ဝချမ်းသာခြင်း၊ လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ် ဒီမိုကရေစီနေ့ရက်များသည် ကျွန်တော်တို့နှင့် အနီးမဝေးတွင် စောင့်ကြိုနေပါသည်။
အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာရှင်စနစ်ကို ချုပ်ငြိမ်းစေပြီး ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် သာယာဝပြောရေးကိုယူဆောင်လာပေးမည့် အနာဂတ် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီနိုင်ငံတော်အသစ်အတွက် ဒီမိုကရေစီလှုပ်ရှားမှုများကို ထောက်ခံအားပေးရန် ထပ်လောင်းတိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ ထို့အပြင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်းရော ပြင်ပမှာပါ နေထိုင်ကြသည့် လွတ်လပ်ရေးအတွက် တိုက်ပွဲဝင်သူအားလုံးအနေဖြင့် စည်းလုံးမှုကိုဦးထိပ်ထားပြီး ကွဲလွဲမှုများထက် တူညီသည့် ပန်းတိုင်များကို အာရုံစိုက်ဖို့ တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ နိဂုံးချုပ်အနေဖြင့် မြန်မာပြည်သူအားလုံးအတွက် လူမျိုး၊ ဘာသာ၊ ယဉ်ကျေးမှု၊ ကျား/မလိင်ခွဲခြားမှု၊ ဘာသာစကား၊ တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးစုနှင့် နောက်ခံအကြောင်းတရား မခွဲခြားပဲ အားလုံးပါဝင်သည့် လွတ်လပ်သော ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ ချင်းပြည်နယ်နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွက် တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့ကြသည့် ကျဆုံးသွားသော သူရဲကောင်းများအားလုံးကိုလည်း အလေးပြု ဂုဏ်ပြုအပ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-07-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Format :
pdf
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"၁။ ကရင်နီပြည်လူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံ ပြည်သူ့လွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်ဦး (ကလလတ) သည် တောင်ပေါ်မြေပြန့် တော်လှန်ရေးအင်အားစုများအားလုံးနှင့်အတူ အကြမ်းဖက်(စကစ) စစ်အုပ်စု အား ပြန်လည်ခုခံတိုက်ခိုက်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇူလိုင်လ ၁ ရက်နေ့ ရက်စွဲပါ သဘောထားကြေညာချက်(၁/၂၀၂၃) ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့မှုသည် ပြည်သူလူထုနှင့်အတူ ရပ်တည်လျက် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးတွင် ပြတ်သားစွာ လက်တွဲပါဝင် ဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ကို ဖော်ညွှန်းသော သမိုင်းတွင်မည့် လုပ်ဆောင်ချက်ဖြစ်သဖြင့် ဂုဏ်ယူအားတက်ရပါသည်။
၂။ ယခုကဲ့သို့ ကရင်နီပြည်လူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံ ပြည်သူ့လွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်ဦးအနေဖြင့် နွေဦး တော်လှန်ရေးတွင် တက်ကြွစွာဖြင့် ကျရာအခန်းကဏ္ဍမှ ပူးပေါင်းပါဝင် ဆင်နွှဲနေကြသော တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံ ပြည်သူလူထုကြီးနှင့်အတူ ရပ်တည်ချက် ခိုင်မာစွာ မိမိတို့အားလုံး၏ ဘုံရန်သူ စစ်မိစ္ဆာအား အတူတကွ ပြန်လည် တော်လှန်ခုခံသွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း တရားဝင်ထုတ် ပြန်ကြေညာသည့်အတွက် လှိုက်လှဲစွာ ကြိုဆို ဝမ်းမြောက်သည်ကို ဖော်ပြလိုပါသည်။
၃။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်အား အပြီးတိုင် အမြစ်ဖြတ်ချေမှုန်းရာတွင် ကရင်နီပြည်လူမျိုး ပေါင်းစုံပြည်သူ့လွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်ဦး အနေဖြင့် တိကျသော ရည်မှန်းချက်များ ချမှတ်ကာ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ အပါအဝင် မိမိတို့ ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီ၊ အခြားတိုင်းရင်းသား တော်လှန်ရေးအင်အားစု အသီးသီးတို့နှင့် လက်တွေ့ကျကျ တော်လှန်ရေး လုပ်ငန်းများကို ပူးတွဲလုပ်ဆောင်သွားမည်ကို သိရှိရသည့်အတွက် ပြည်သူလူထု အားလုံး၏ ကိုယ်စား အားအင်သစ်များ ရရှိပါကြောင်းနှင့် မှန်ကန်သော ရပ်တည်ချက်နှင့် သဘောထားများ အတွက် ကဏ္ဍအလိုက် ချိတ်ဆက်ရပ်တည်ဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာပါသည်။
ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီ..."
Source/publisher:
Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw
Date of publication:
2023-07-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-02
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Individual Documents
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Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"WASHINGTON - A recent attempt by Thailand to reengage with Myanmar's junta appears to be aimed at creating an alignment with China, a close ally of the military regime in Myanmar, analysts said.
On June 19, the outgoing Thai government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, a former general who seized power in a 2014 military coup, hosted informal talks for foreign ministers from member nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Myanmar's foreign minister, Than Swe, appointed by the military junta that seized power in February 2021, was among those who attended. Top diplomats from some other countries in the 10-member regional bloc, such as Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, did not.
In August 2022, foreign ministers from ASEAN member states had agreed to bar Myanmar's ruling generals from the group's meetings until they made progress on the so-called Five-Point Consensus reached in April 2021 to end the violence that engulfed Myanmar after the coup.
Protests, a civil disobedience movement and fighting continue in Myanmar.
As China is currently the second-largest aid provider to the Myanmar junta after Russia, Beijing may want the junta to restore order to stabilize the China-Myanmar border and the pipelines running through Myanmar into China, according to Paul Chambers, lecturer and special adviser on international affairs at Naresuan University in Thailand.
Thailand, which is close to China diplomatically and geographically, has sought to take a similar stance, said Chambers.
"[The] Prayut government would want to include China in any ASEAN negotiations concerning Myanmar," he said.
Sek Sophal, a researcher at the Center for Democracy Promotion at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University in Japan, said Thailand's military-backed government sees China as a key player in the Myanmar issue.
The Thai government has continued to engage with Myanmar on a "business as usual" basis and has done "very little" to put pressure on the junta, Sophal said.
When asked by VOA about the informal talks hosted by Thailand, the Chinese Embassy in Washington said they were not aware of the matter and referred the question to the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar or Thailand instead and received no reply.
The United States called on Myanmar to comply with the Five-Point Consensus.
"As the secretary noted, Burma's military regime has repeatedly carried out horrific, and extensive violence against the people of Burma since the February 2021 military coup," a State Department spokesperson said last week in an email to VOA.
"We recognize and continue to welcome ASEAN's efforts to address the crisis in Burma. Given the regime's lack of progress on the Five-Point Consensus, we call on ASEAN members to hold Burma accountable for its actions," the spokesperson said.
The U.S. Treasury Department last week imposed sanctions on Myanmar's Defense Ministry and two state-owned banks, the Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanmar Investment and Commercial Bank.
The measure freezes any assets of the sanctioned entities that are in the U.S. or controlled by a U.S. person. It also prohibits all transactions by U.S. persons or entities carried out within or transiting the U.S. that the targeted entities would benefit from.
Chambers said that the U.S. could use its sanctions against Myanmar's junta and work with its ASEAN opponents, such as Indonesia, to slow down Bangkok's current cooperation with the junta.
"The U.S. is aware that Thailand has, since at least 2013, followed a realist policy of hedging or 'creating balance' between Beijing and Washington," he said.
After more than nine years of China-leaning rule under Prayuth, a surprise win by the Move Forward Party in the May 14 elections means Thailand is slated to have a new government installed in July, according to parliamentary procedure.
Pita Limjaroenrat, who leads the left-leaning, progressive Move Forward Party, is the front-runner to become Thailand's next premier. He has been vocal about how he would shift Thailand's foreign policy direction, including its stance on Myanmar.
"A stable Myanmar is a boon to the entire region, but if Myanmar sneezes, Thailand gets sick as well," Pita told VOA's Thai Service during an interview in April.
Educated at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pita is known to have a natural affinity for the U.S.
Analysts, however, say the Thai politician has to walk a fine line to engage constructively with China, given its economic clout and growing influence in Thailand's foreign policy.
"Thailand might have to continue to bandwagon with China for its economic interests," although Thailand has reset its foreign policy to work with the U.S.-led Western countries, said Sophal.
Chambers said a Pita-led Thailand would distance itself from China, work closely with Washington, and cease cooperating with the Myanmar junta..."
Source/publisher:
"VOA" (Washington, D.C)
Date of publication:
2023-07-01
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations
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"၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇွန်လ ၂၇ ရက်နေ့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီများမှ တိုက်လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း၊ ပုလဲမြို့နယ်တွင် ရဟန်းတစ်ပါးအပါအဝင် အပြစ်မဲ့ပြည်သူ (၁၀) ဦးကျော် အသက်ဆုံးရှုံးခဲ့ရပြီး ပြည်သူအများအပြား ဒဏ်ရာရရှိခဲ့သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်လုပ်ရပ်ကို ပြင်းပြင်းထန်ထန် ပြစ်တင်ရှုတ်ချပါသည်။ ထိုအကြမ်းဖက်တိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် အပြစ်မဲ့ပြည်သူများအသက်ဆုံးရှုံးသည်သာမက ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်း၊ စာသင်ကျောင်းများနှင့် အရေးပါသော လူထုအဆောက်အဦးများလည်း ပျက်စီးသွားခဲ့ပါသည်။ ဤကဲ့သို့သော ဖြစ်စဉ်သည် ယခုတစ်ကြိမ်သာ သီးခြားဖြစ်ပွားခြင်းမဟုတ်ဘဲ လွန်ခဲ့သော (၂၇) လ တစ်လျှောက်လုံး လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီမှ ပြည်သူများအပေါ် အကြိမ်ပေါင်း (၇၀) ကျော် အစုလိုက်၊ အပြုံလိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းများထဲမှ တစ်ခုသာဖြစ်ပါသည်။
မျက်မြင်သက်သေများက ၎င်းတို့ကြုံတွေ့ခဲ့ရသည့် ကြောက်မက်ဖွယ်ဖြစ်ရပ်ကို ကွင်းကွက်ကွင်းကွင်း ထင်ထင်ရှားရှား သက်သေထွက်ဆိုထားပါသည်။ ရုရှားတိုက်လေယာဉ်အမျိုးအစားများ ဖြစ်သည့် YAK-130 ၏ မြေပြင်ပေါ်တွင်ရှိသမျှကို ပစ်ခတ်မှုနှင့်အတူ အင်အားပြင်းဗုံးများဖြင့် ညောင်ကုန်းရွာ၊ ချင်းပြစ်ရွာနှင့် ပိတောက်ကုန်းရွာတို့ကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား တိုက်ခိုက်ခံရပြီး သေကြေပျက်စီးမှု ကြီးကြီးမားမားဖြစ်ပွားစေခဲ့ပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အာဏာရှင်များမှ ဆေးရုံများ၊ စာသင်ကျောင်းများ၊ ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်းများနှင့် ခရစ်ယာန်ဘုရားကျောင်းများကို တမင်တကာပစ်မှတ်ထား အကြမ်းဖက်သည့်လုပ်ရပ်သည် လူ့အသက်ကို တန်ဖိုးမထားပဲ အပြစ်မဲ့အရပ်သားပြည်သူများကို ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ တိုက်ခိုက်ဖျက်ဆီး သတ်ဖြတ်နေပြီး လူသားမျိုးနွယ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ ၎င်းအကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်မှ ပြောင်ပြောင်တင်းတင်းကျူးလွန်နေသည်ကို ဖော်ပြနေပါသည်။
အသက်လုထွက်ပြေးနေသော ရွာသားများကို ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ တိုက်ခိုက်ရေး လေယာဉ်များပေါ်မှ ကျည်ဆန်များဖြင့် ပစ်ခတ်ခဲ့ပြီး နောက်ထပ် သေဆုံးမှုများဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ကြောင်း မျက်မြင်သက်သေများက ထွက်ဆိုထားပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်သားများ၏ ကိုယ်ထိလက်ရောက် ကျူးလွန်မှုကြောင့် ပြည်သူလူထု၏ အသက်ပေါင်းများစွာဆုံးရှုံးသည်သာမကပဲ ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်ခြင်းနှင့် မီးရှို့ခြင်းများကြောင့် အိုးအိမ်များစွာ ဆုံးရှုံးပျက်စီးနေသည်။ အပြစ်မဲ့ပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ အကြမ်းဖက်ခြင်းများကြောင့် ပြည်သူများ၏အသက်အိုးအိမ် ပျက်စီးဆုံးရှုံးမှုများသည် အလွန်ဆိုးရွားသဖြင့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ၏ အာရုံစိုက်မှုနှင့် ထိရောက်သည့် အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်မှုများ ချက်ချင်းလိုအပ်နေပါသည်။
မဖော်ပြနိုင်လောက်အောင် နာကျင်မှုနှင့် ဝမ်းနည်းပူဆွေးမှုများခံစားရသည့် ကျန်ရစ်သူမိသားစုဝင်များနှင့်အတူ ထပ်တူထပ်မျှ ဝမ်းနည်းပူဆွေးရပါသည်။ ဒဏ်ရာရရှိသည့် ပြည်သူများလည်း အမြန်ဆုံးပြန်လည်သက်သာ ကျန်းမာလာစေရန် ဆုတောင်းပေးနေပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအနေဖြင့် အများပြည်သူကို တရားဓမ္မလမ်းပြပေးနေသော ရဟန်းသံဃာတစ်ပါး၏ အသက်ကိုပါ ဆုံးရှုံးစေခဲ့သဖြင့် ထိုလုပ်ရပ်အတွက်လည်း တာဝန်အပြည့်အဝယူရပါလိမ့်မည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီများက ယခုကဲ့သို့ လူသားမျိုးနွယ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကို ပြောင်ပြောင်တင်းတင်းပေါ်တင် ဆက်လက်ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းသည် ၎င်းတို့ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သမျှသော ဆိုးရွားသည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှူများအတွက် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ အသိုင်းအဝိုင်းက ထိရောက်သည့် အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်မှုများ မတွေ့ရသောကြောင့်ဖြစ်သည်။ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ ရာဇဝတ်သားများဖြစ်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီနှင့် ၎င်းတို့၏အပေါင်းအပါများ၊ မြန်မာပြည်သူအပေါ် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများပိုမိုကျူးလွန်နိုင်ရန် စစ်လက်နက်ပစ္စည်းထောက်ပံ့သူများကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားဥပဒေများအရ ထိရောက်စွာ အရေးယူရန်လိုအပ်ပါသည်။ ဤလုပ်ရပ်များ ချက်ချင်းရပ်တန့်ရမည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီက မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ ဆက်လက်ကျူးလွန်နိုင်ရန် ထောက်ခံအားပေးသည့် နိုင်ငံများရှိနေသေးသည်မှာ လွန်စွာရက်စက်ပြီး လက်နိုင်ခံစရာအကြောင်းမရှိပေ။ UN၏ နောက်ဆုံးထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာချက်အရ လွန်ခဲ့သော (၂၇) လအတွင်းတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် အနည်းဆုံး အမေရိကန်ဒေါ်လာ (၁) ဘီလီယံ တန်ဖိုးရှိ စစ်လက်နက်များနှင့် နှစ်မျိုးသုံးလက်နက်ပစ္စည်းများကို အထူးသဖြင့် ရုရှားနိုင်ငံမှ ဝယ်ယူခဲ့ကြောင်းတွေ့ရသည်။ ဆိုလိုရင်းမှာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ယူကရိန်းပြည်သူအပေါ် ရုရှားနိုင်ငံကစစ်တိုက်ခြင်းကို ငွေကြေးအားဖြင့် တိုက်ရိုက်ကူညီနေခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ ဤအာဏာသိမ်း အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ဗိုလ်ချုပ်များသည် ရိုဟင်ဂျာလူမျိုးများကို လူမျိုးသတ်ဖြတ်ခဲ့ခြင်းအတွက် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံး (ICJ) တွင် တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံနေရသည်။ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သည့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များနှင့် အပေါင်းအပါများသည် သူတို့ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သမျှသော ရာဇဝတ်မှုများအားလုံးအတွက် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားဥပဒေအောက်တွင် မုချအရေးယူခံရမည်။
လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်သော အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီက စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း ပုလဲမြို့တွင် ကျူးလွန်သည့် အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုသည် အာဆီယံ ဘုံသဘောတူညီချက်(၅)ချက်နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအပေါ်ချမှတ်သည့် UN လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီ၏ ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်များကို တိုက်ရိုက်ချိုးဖြတ်နေခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ ဤကဲ့သို့သော အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏လုပ်ရပ်ကို အာဆီယံနှင့် ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီက လစ်လျူရှုခြင်းကြောင့် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ်ကျူးလွန်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကို ပိုမိုတိုးပွားစေသည်။ ယင်းအစား ဗီတိုအာဏာပိုင်အချို့နှင့် UN လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီ၏ အမြဲတမ်းအဖွဲ့ဝင်အချို့တို့သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏တရားဝင်အစိုးရဖြစ်သည့် NUG ကိုအသိအမှတ်ပြုပြီး အတူတကွလုပ်ဆောင်မည့်အစား မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုများ ဆက်လက်ကျူးလွန်နိုင်ရန် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီကိုထောက်ပံ့နေကြပြီး ဤလုပ်ရပ်များသည် ဒေသတွင်း ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် လုံခြုံရေးကိုသာမက ကမ္ဘာ့ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့် လုံခြုံရေးကို ခြိမ်းခြောက်သော လူသားမျိုးနွယ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများ အမြောက်အမြားပါဝင်သည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား တိုက်ရိုက်သော်လည်းကောင်း၊ သွယ်ဝှိုက်သော်လည်းကောင်း ထောက်ပံ့ခြင်းများအားလုံး ချက်ချင်းရပ်တန့်ရမည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ် ဆန့်ကျင်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုအား ပုံမှန်ဖြစ်အောင် မည်သည့်အခါမှ ခွင့်ပြုမှာမဟုတ်ပါ။
ဤကဲ့သို့သော လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများကို ချက်ချင်းရပ်တန့်ရန်အတွက် သက်ဆိုင်ရာအပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများက လျင်မြန်ပြတ်သားစွာ အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်ရန် တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။ လူမဆန်သော အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ ဆက်လက်ကျူးလွန်နိုင်ရန် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား လေယာဉ်ဆီများ ထောက်ပံ့ပေးသည့်လမ်းကြောင်းများကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား အရေးယူဒဏ်ခတ်ပိတ်ဆို့ရန် တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။ စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း၊ ပုလဲမြို့နယ်တွင် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ အစုလိုက်၊ အပြုံလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သူ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား တရားစီရင်ပြီး ပြည်သူများအားလိုအပ်သည့် ထောက်ပံ့မှုများပေးနိုင်ရန် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ သက်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအား တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။
မျက်မြင်များ၏ သက်သေထွက်ဆိုချက်များသည် မြန်မာပြည်သူများ၏ အသက်အိုးအိမ်ကို ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်ရန် နိုင်ငံတကာမှ ကြားဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်မှု အရေးတကြီးလိုအပ်ကြောင်း သတိပေးနေပါသည်။ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများကို ရေရှည်တည်တံ့သော ဖြေရှင်းမှုများပြုလုပ်နိုင်ရန် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်သင့်သည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီရရှိပြီး အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများပပျောက်ကာ လူတိုင်း တန်းတူအခွင့်အရေး၊ ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာနှင့် လေးစားမှုရရှိသော အနာဂတ်ဆီသို့သွားနိုင်ရန် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်နေသော စစ်ကောင်စီကို အမြစ်ဖြတ်ချေမှုန်းရမည်။
မည်သည့်လူသားမဆို ယခုကဲ့သို့ ဖော်ပြရန်ပင်မစွမ်းသာတဲ့ ကြောက်စရာအတွေ့အကြုံများနှင့် ဆုံးရှုံးမှုများကို ဘယ်တော့မှ မခံစားသင့်ပေ။ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုနှင့် ဖိနှိပ်မှုများ ကင်းရှင်းပြီး ငြိမ်းချမ်းစွာ နေထိုင်နိုင်ရန် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့အားလုံး စုပေါင်းလုပ်ဆောင်ရန် လိုအပ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-06-29
Date of entry/update:
2023-06-30
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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"We strongly condemn the heinous massacre that occurred in Pale Township, Sagaing Division, Myanmar, on June 27th, orchestrated by the brutal genocidal military junta. This merciless act resulted in the deaths of at least 10 innocent villagers, including a revered monk and a student, and the wanton destruction of monasteries, schools, and other vital community structures. It is crucial to recognize that this is not an isolated incident but rather one among a series of over 70 massacres committed by the brutal genocidal military junta in the past 27 months alone.
The witness testimonies vividly recount the horrifying events that unfolded. The indiscriminate firing of Russian fighter jets YAK-130, along with the deployment of large bombs, deliberately targeted innocent villagers and villages such as Nyaung Kone, Chin Pyit, and Pi Tauk Kone villages, causing widespread devastation and claiming the lives of men, women, students, and monks. The deliberate targeting of civilians, homes, hospitals, schools, monasteries, and churches demonstrates a flagrant disregard for human life, openly committing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and a calculated effort to inflict suffering on innocent civilians.
According to witnesses, fleeing villagers were subjected to relentless attacks, with bullets fired from the fighter jets, resulting in additional casualties. The destruction caused by the military junta's assault extended beyond the immediate loss of life, with houses being consumed by fires sparked by the bombardment. The scale of violence and destruction inflicted upon the affected communities is deeply distressing and requires immediate international attention and action.
We offer our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims, who are enduring unimaginable pain and grief. Our thoughts and prayers are also with those who have been injured, and we fervently hope for their swift recovery. The loss of innocent lives, including a young student and a monk dedicated to spiritual guidance, is an irreparable tragedy that demands justice and accountability.
The brutal genocidal military junta has been openly and freely committing these heinous crimes against humanity because they see no real actions taken against them by ASEAN and the international community for the crimes they have been committing everyday, therefore they perceived no action against them as license to commit more crimes against humanity against the population of Myanmar. This has to stop!.
It is totally unacceptable that some countries are still supporting the genocidal military junta to commit more crimes against humanity against the population of Myanmar. According to the recent UN report, the genocidal military have received more than $ 1billion worth weapons and dual use from these countries knowing that this same genocidal military generals in Myanmar are facing the case of genocide against Rohingya population.The genocidal military junta and their partners in crimes must be hold accountable for their mass atrocities under the international laws.
This Pale Massacre is another textbook of the brutal genocidal military junta directly violating ASEAN's five points on Myanmar and the UN Security Council Resolution on Myanmar. The inaction from the ASEAN and the UN Security Council have led to more crimes against humanity . Instead of taking decisive actions against genocidal military junta and recognising and fully engaging with the true democratic representative of the people of Myanmar, the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG), some veto power holders and permanent members of the UN Security Council and some members of ASEAN countries are directly supporting the genocidal military junta, and their support is massively contributing to these crimes against humanity, which threaten not only peace and security in the region but the world. The people of Myanmar will never allow the normalisation of crimes against humanity.
To put an end to these grave human rights abuses, we implore the international community to take swift and decisive action. One effective measure would be to impose sanctions on the jet fuels used by the military junta, which would hinder their ability to carry out such ruthless attacks. We call upon international agencies and organisations to launch a thorough investigation into the Pale Township massacre, ensuring that the perpetrators are brought to justice and that the affected community is provided with adequate support and protection.
The witness testimonies stand as a stark reminder of the urgent need for international intervention to safeguard the lives and dignity of the people of Myanmar. The international community must unite to address these ongoing human rights abuses and work towards a sustainable solution. It is imperative to establish a federal democracy in Myanmar and remove the genocidal military junta to prevent further atrocities and uphold the principles of human dignity, justice, and respect for human rights.
No human being should ever have to endure such unspeakable terror and loss. Together, we must take collective action to ensure that the people of Myanmar can live in peace, free from the grip of violence and oppression..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-06-29
Date of entry/update:
2023-06-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Salai Tin Maung Oo's famous saying was, "They can kill my body but not my beliefs."
On this day in 1976, Salai Tin Maung Oo, a 25-year-old student leader, was brutally executed by hanging in Insein Prison. His execution marked one of the darkest chapters in Myanmar's struggle for inclusive federal democracy. Salai Tin Maung Oo's only "crime" was expressing his belief in federal democracy and his opposition to genocidal military dictatorships. He shared famous proverbs and wisdom that resonated with the people of Myanmar who sought freedom and federal democracy. Born on June 11, 1951, in Taungoo, Myanmar, Salai Tin Maung Oo was a beacon of hope for many during a challenging period in Myanmar's history.
At the young age of 11, Salai Tin Maung Oo witnessed the coup that took place in 1962, marking the beginning of a tumultuous era in his country. At the age of 21, Salai Tin Maung Oo was unlawfully arrested by genocidal military general Ne Win on December 5, 1972, for advocating federal democratic principles. After enduring brutal conditions, he was released from prison on January 3, 1974. He played a significant role in advocating for the use of "Salai" before Chin male names and "Mai" before Chin female names for the Chin people of Myanmar.
During the Burma crisis in 1974, known as U Thant's crisis, Salai Tin Maung Oo emerged as a prominent figure at the age of 23. U Thant, a Burmese diplomat, served as the third Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1961 to 1971. Salai Tin Maung Oo, an ethnic Chin zoological student at the University of Yangon, participated in student movements and labor strikes against military rule. He gained recognition in 1974 when students protested against brutal military dictator Ne Win's refusal to grant a state funeral to former United Nations secretary-general U Thant, who had passed away that year.
Tragically, on March 19, 1976, Salai Tin Maung Oo was unjustly rearrested along with his father, U Mya Din, his brother, Salai Hla Swe, and his sister, Mai Po Po, who actively participated in the struggle for freedom and federal democracy by the brutal military dictator Ne Win due to his unwavering struggle for freedom and federal democracy. He was sentenced to death. The brutal dictator offered him a chance to reduce his sentence if he expressed remorse and apologized for opposing military dictatorship. However, Salai Tin Maung Oo famously refused, stating, "I will never bow down before brutal military dictators. You can only kill my body, but you cannot kill my beliefs and hope." Consequently, he was executed by Ne Win on June 26, 1976. Before his execution, Salai Tin Maung Oo uttered his famous last words: "If I do not die quickly as planned by the execution of hanging, then I have defeated you dictators." He bravely prolonged his last breath as a symbol of his final struggle for Myanmar's freedom and federal democracy. His courageous spirit represented the true essence of the brave people of Myanmar. Salai Tin Maung Oo remains the only student known to have been hanged in the history of Myanmar. His opposition to military dictatorship has had a lasting impact on subsequent generations of students.
After 47 years, the courageous people of Myanmar continue to fight for their freedom and federal democracy, which brutal military dictators have suppressed by executing pro-democracy leaders. Just 12 months ago, four pro-democracy leaders, activists, and elected officials—Ko Jimmy, Phyo Zeya Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw—were brutally executed by the genocidal military junta. Their only "crime" was exercising their fundamental freedoms. Over the past 27 months, the entire population of Myanmar has endured unimaginable suffering. The genocidal military junta has escalated attacks on civilians, killing more than 4,000 and unjustly arresting more than 23,000 civilians, including State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint, and several hundred children. They have also destroyed more than 67,000 homes, including hospitals, schools, churches, and monasteries. Hundreds of airstrikes and dozens of massacres have been reported, and the Chin State, Salai Tin Maung Oo's ethnic region, has faced displacement and persecution. Tragically, approximately 30% of the Chin State's population has been uprooted by the military's brutal actions. Many Chin people have lost their lives, and entire towns and villages, like Thantlang Town, have been wiped out. Adding to the ongoing crisis, Cyclone Mocha devastated Rakhine State and Chin State last month, leaving an additional 5 million people in desperate need of life-saving assistance. The combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, the military coup, and the cyclone has plunged Myanmar into unspeakable pain, suffering, death, and destruction.
The brutal genocidal military junta has worsened the situation by blocking humanitarian aid and using starvation, hunger, pain, and suffering as weapons through their evil "four cuts" policies. Even before the recent cyclone, the humanitarian situation in Myanmar was dire, with approximately 18 million people, including 5 million children, in desperate need of life-saving aid. Additionally, nearly 2 million people were displaced, and 48 million individuals lived at or below the poverty line. Immediate international intervention is crucial to address this crisis.
Despite these atrocities and consecutive crises, the spirit of freedom that Salai Tin Maung Oo embodied decades ago still lives within the 54 million people of Myanmar. The brave people of Myanmar have made their unwavering decision clear—they will never give up or bow down before genocidal military dictators. The future they envision is a shining beacon of federal democracy that promotes, protects, and respects the freedom and rights of all people in Myanmar, regardless of their race, religion, culture, language, background, or ethnicity. The question is not if justice will triumph over injustice but when. The brave people of Myanmar will overcome the genocidal military junta once and for all. The military dictatorship will fade away, just as darkness fades before light. Brutal genocidal military dictatorships belong to the past, while freedom and federal democracy represent the future of Myanmar.
The brave people of Myanmar are fighting for freedom and federal democracy with all their might and every means available to them. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and democracy, just as Salai Tin Maung Oo did before them. We are not asking foreign soldiers to intervene in Myanmar, but we are once again calling upon the international community to impose tougher, coordinated, and targeted sanctions on individuals responsible for human rights violations in Myanmar. This includes military officials, associates, and their financial networks, such as MOGE. Additionally, countries and companies directly supporting the brutal genocidal military junta should face consequences. We urge the international community to advocate for the immediate referral of Myanmar's situation to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and to support the representation of Myanmar by the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG) at the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
We call upon the international community, especially Myanmar's neighboring countries, to support the NUG, NUCC, CRPH, EROs, pro-democracy movements, civil society organizations, human rights defenders, and independent media in Myanmar. They tirelessly work to promote human rights, federal democracy, and accountability. Most urgently, we need the borders to be open for humanitarian corridors, pressuring genocidal military generals to respect human rights, release all political prisoners, and restore federal democratic governance to achieve peace, prosperity, and stability not only in Myanmar but also in the entire region.
It is crucial for the international community and Myanmar's neighboring countries to do everything in their power to end the crisis in Myanmar for the good and interest of all regions. By increasing pressure on the foot soldiers of the Tatmadaw to lay down their arms and by rallying around the pro-democracy movement and the people of Myanmar, immediately engage and officially recognize the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG).
Similar measures and means, as seen in Ukraine, should be employed to help Myanmar achieve its freedom and put an end to this crisis, pain, and suffering that have persisted for far too long in the Asia-Pacific region. Furthermore, we must acknowledge the significance of the NDAA Burma Act of the USA, the UN Security Council Resolution on Myanmar, and the ASEAN five-point consensus on Myanmar. Supporting the implementation of these measures on the ground in Myanmar will play a vital role in addressing the humanitarian crisis, human rights crisis, restoring democracy, and establishing peace, stability, and justice.
The 47th Anniversary of the brutal execution of Myanmar student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo, coupled with the deepening situation in Myanmar, demands immediate attention and a robust international response. By taking decisive actions and standing up for human rights, freedom, and federal democracy, we can put an end to the crimes against humanity in Myanmar, advance justice, promote human dignity, and restore democracy in Myanmar.
May the dream of Salai Tin Maung Oo come true soon!
May God bless Myanmar!..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-06-26
Date of entry/update:
2023-06-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ ကျော်ကြားသည့် ပြောဆိုချက်မှာ "မင်းတို့ ငါ့ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ကိုသာ သတ်လို့ရမယ်၊ ငါ့ယုံကြည်ချက်နဲ့ ရပ်တည်ချက်ကို သတ်လို့မရဘူး"။
လွန်ခဲ့သော ၁၉၇၆ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇွန်လ ၂၆ ရက်နေ့တွင် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက အသက် ၂၅ နှစ်အရွယ် ကျောင်းသားခေါင်းဆောင် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးအား အင်းစိန်အကျဉ်းထောင်၌ ရက်ရက်စက်စက် ကြိုးပေးကွပ်မျက်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ သူ့အားကြိုးပေးကွပ်မျက်ခြင်းသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက်ရုန်းကန်မှုတွင် အမှောင်ဆုံး အခန်းကဏ္ဍတစ်ခုဖြစ်သည်ဟု မှတ်သားဖော်ပြခဲ့သည်။
ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ တစ်ခုတည်းသော"ရာဇဝတ်မှု"သည် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက် သူ၏ယုံကြည်ချက်ကို ဖော်ပြခြင်းနှင့် လူမျိုးတုံး သတ်ဖြတ်သည့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ သူသည် လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ် ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ခဲ့သော မြန်မာပြည်သူများအတွက် အထက်ပါ သမိုင်းဝင်စကားကို ရဲရဲဝံ့ဝံ့ဆိုခဲ့သူဖြစ်သည်။ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးကို ၁၉၅၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇွန်လ ၁၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် တောင်ငူမြို့၌ မွေးဖွားခဲ့ပြီး သူသည် မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် ခက်ခဲသောကာလအတွင်း လူများစွာအတွက် မျှော်လင့်ချက် မီးရှူးတန်ဆောင် ဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်။
၁၉၆၂ ခုနှစ်တွင်ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့သော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ စစ်အာဏာရှင်လက်အောက်သို့ကျရောက်သည့် ခေတ်ကာလအစ ပထမအကြိမ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုကို သူ့အသက် (၁၁) နှစ်အရွယ်တွင် တွေ့မြင်ခဲ့သည်။ ၁၉၇၂ ခုနှစ်၊ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၅ ရက်နေ့ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး အသက် (၂၁) နှစ်အရွယ်တွင် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီမူများကို ထောက်ခံအားပေးသည့်အတွက် အာဏာရှင်ဗိုလ်ချုပ်နေဝင်းရဲ့ မတရားဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းကိုခံခဲ့ရသည်။ ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်သော အခြေအနေများကို ကြံ့ကြံ့ခံရပ်တည်ပြီးနောက် ၁၉၇၄ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်နေ့တွင် ထောင်မှလွတ်လာခဲ့သည်။ ထို့ပြင် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးသည် ချင်းအမျိုးသားများ၏ အမှတ်အသားဖြစ်သည့် ချင်းအမျိုးသားများ၏နာမည်ရှေ့တွင် “ဆလိုင်း”ဟူ၍ သော်လည်းကောင်း၊ ချင်းအမျိုးသမီးများ၏အမည်ရှေ့တွင် “မိုင်” ဟူ၍လည်းကောင်း ခေါ်ဝေါ်သုံးစွဲရန်အတွက် အဆိုပြုခဲ့ပြီး ထိုအဆိုပြုချက်ကို အတည်ပြုနိုင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။
၁၉၇၄ ခုနှစ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အကျပ်အတည်းကာလအတွင်း ဦးသန့်အရေးခင်းတွင် အသက် (၂၃) နှစ်အရွယ် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးသည် အထင်ကရလှုပ်ရှားသူများထဲ ပေါ်ထွက်လာခဲ့သည်။ ရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်မှ ချင်းကျောင်းသားတစ်ဦးဖြစ်သူ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးသည် ကျောင်းသားလှုပ်ရှားမှုများနှင့် စစ်အုပ်ချုပ်မှုကိုဆန့်ကျင်သည့် အလုပ်သမားသပိတ်မှောက်မှုများတွင်ပါဝင်ခဲ့သည်။ ထိုနှစ်တွင် ကွယ်လွန်ခဲ့သော ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထွေထွေအတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ်ဟောင်း၏ဈာပနအခမ်းအနား ကျင်းပခွင့်ပေးရန် ငြင်းဆန်ခဲ့သည့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်နေဝင်းကို ဆန့်ကျင်ဆန္ဒပြခဲ့ခြင်းအတွက် ၁၉၇၄ ခုနှစ်တွင် စတင်ထင်ရှားလာခဲ့သည်။
ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးသည် ၁၉၇၆ ခုနှစ်၊ မတ်လ ၂၃ ရက်တွင်ပြုလုပ်မည့် သခင်ကိုယ်တော်မှိုင်း၏ အသက် ၁၀၀ ပြည့် မှိုင်းရာပြည့်အခမ်းအနားဖြစ်မြောက်အောင် ဦးဆောင်ကြိုးပမ်းနေစဉ် ၁၉၇၆ ခုနှစ်၊ မတ်လ ၁၉ ရက်တွင် ကမာရွတ်၊ ပတ္တမြားခြံတွင် ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။ ထိုလှုပ်ရှားမှုတွင် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးအပါအ၀င် ဖခင်ဖြစ်သူ ဦးမြဒင်နှင့် အစ်ကိုဖြစ်သူ ဆလိုင်းလှဆွေတို့လည်း အဖမ်းခံရသည်။ သူတို့အဖမ်းခံရပြီး ညီမဖြစ်သူ မိုင်ပိုပို ခေါ် မလှမြိုင်လည်း မှိုင်းရာပြည့်အရေးအခင်းတွင် တက်ကြွစွာပါ၀င်လှုပ်ရှားခဲ့သဖြင့် အဖမ်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးကို ဆိုရှယ်လစ်အစိုးရကိုဆန့်ကျင်ခြင်းသည် မှားယွင်းတဲ့လုပ်ရပ်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း၊ တော်လှန်ရေးလုပ်ငန်းစဉ်ကို စွန့်လွှတ်ကြောင်းနှင့် နောင်တရကြောင်းဖော်ပြပြီး အသနားခံစာရေးလျှင် ပြစ်ဒဏ်လျှော့ပေးမည်ဟုဆိုသော်လည်း “မင်းတို့စစ်ဖိနပ်အောက်မှာ ငါဘယ်တော့မှ ဒူးမထောက်နိုင်ဘူး၊ မင်းတို့ ငါ့ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ကိုသာ သတ်လို့ရမယ်၊ ငါ့ယုံကြည်ချက်နဲ့ ရပ်တည်ချက်ကို သတ်လို့မရဘူး” ဟု ပြန်ပြောခြင်းကြောင့် ၁၉၇၆ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇွန်လ ၂၆ ရက်နေ့တွင် အာဏာရှင်နေဝင်း၏အမိန့်ဖြင့် ကြိုးပေးကွပ်မျက်ခံခဲ့ရသည်။ သူ၏ကွပ်မျက်ခြင်းမတိုင်မီ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးက သူ၏ကျော်ကြားသော နောက်ဆုံးစကားကို ကြိုးပေးသတ်ဖြတ်သောအချိန်တွင် စီစဉ်ထားသည့်အတိုင်း ချက်ချင်းမသေလျှင် အာဏာရှင်များကို ငါအနိုင်ယူခဲ့ပြီဟုပြောပြီး နောက်ဆုံးအချိန်ထိ တောင့်ခံတော်လှန်ခဲ့သည်။ သူသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ အတွက် သူ၏နောက်ဆုံးထွက်သက်အထိ သက်သေပြခဲ့သည်။ သူ၏ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိက မြန်မာတို့၏ စစ်မှန်သော ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိကို ကိုယ်စားပြုသည်။ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးသည် မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းတွင် ကြိုးပေးကွပ်မျက်ခံရသည့် တစ်ဦးတည်းသော ကျောင်းသားဖြစ်ခဲ့သည်။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်အပေါ် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ဆန့်ကျင်မှုသည် ကျောင်းသားမျိုးဆက်များအပေါ် ရေရှည်အကျိုးသက်ရောက်မှုရှိခဲ့သည်။
(၄၇)နှစ်ကြာပြီးသည်တိုင် မြန်မာပြည်သူများသည် ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေးလှုပ်ရှားသည့် ခေါင်းဆောင်များကို ကွပ်မျက်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များကို ဆန့်ကျင်ပြီး လွတ်လပ်ရေးနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက် ဆက်လက်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်နေကြသည်။ လွန်ခဲ့သော (၁၂)လတွင် ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေးတက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသည့် ခေါင်းဆောင်များဖြစ်ကြတဲ့ ကိုဂျင်မီ၊ ကိုဖြိုးဇေယျာသော်တို့နှင့်အတူ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုကိုဆန့်ကျင်သူ ကိုလှမျိုးအောင်နှင့် ကိုအောင်သူရဇော်တို့အား အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက ရက်စက်စွာ ကွပ်မျက်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ သူတို့၏ တစ်ခုတည်းသော "ရာဇဝတ်မှု" သည် အခြေခံလူ့အခွင့်အရေးလွတ်လပ်မှုဖြစ်သည့် သူတို့၏နိုင်ငံရေးခံယူချက်ကို ကျင့်သုံးခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
လွန်ခဲ့တဲ့ (၂၇)လကျော်အတွင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ စစ်အာဏာရှင်များက အပြစ်မဲ့အရပ်သား ၂၃,၀၀၀ ကျော်ကို တရားမဝင် ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့ပါသည်။ နိုင်ငံတော်အတိုင်ပင်ခံပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်နှင့် နိုင်ငံတော်သမ္မတဦးဝင်းမြင့်အပါအဝင် အပြစ်မဲ့အရပ်သား ၂၃,၀၀၀ ကျော်ကို ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းခဲ့သည်။ ထိုစစ်ဗိုလ်ချုပ်များကပင် အရပ်သား ၄,၀၀၀ ကျော်သေဆုံးမှုနှင့် ဆေးရုံများ၊ ကျောင်းများ၊ ခရစ်ယာန်ဘုရားကျောင်းများနှင့် ဘုန်းကြီးကျောင်းများအပါအဝင် နေအိမ်ပေါင်း ၆၇,၀၀၀ ကျော် ပျက်စီးဆုံးရှုံးခြင်းအတွက်လည်း တာဝန်ရှိသည်။ ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ လူမျိုးတို့နေထိုင်ရာ ချင်းပြည်နယ်အပါအဝင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏နေရာအနှံ့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ လေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်မှုများနှင့် မရေတွက်နိုင်သော အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများကြောင့် ပြည်သူလူထု တစ်ရပ်လုံး နေရပ်စွန့်ခွာပြီး အသက်ဘေးလွတ်ရာသို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့နေထိုင်ကြရသည်။ လက်ရှိအကျပ်အတည်းအပြင် ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်နှင့် ချင်းပြည်နယ်တွင် မိုခါမုန်တိုင်း၏ရိုက်ခတ်မှုကြောင့် ပြည်သူ (၅)သန်းခန့် အသက်ကယ်ဆယ်ရေး အကူအညီ လိုအပ်လျက်ရှိသည်။ COVID-19 ကူးစက်ရောဂါ၊ မတရားစစ်အာဏာသိမ်းခြင်းနှင့် မိုခါမုန်တိုင်းတို့ကြောင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် နေ့စဉ်နှင့်အမျှ နာကျင်ခြင်း၊ ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခ၊ ပျက်စီးခြင်းနှင့် သေဆုံးခြင်းများ ရင်ဆိုင်နေရသည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် လူသားချင်း စာနာထောက်ထားမှုအကူအညီများကို ပိတ်ဆို့ခြင်းနှင့် ငတ်မွတ်ခေါင်းပါးခြင်း၊ နာကျင်မှု၊ ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခများကို “ဖြတ်လေးဖြတ်” ပေါ်လစီတွင် လက်နက်သဖွယ် အသုံးပြုခြင်းကြောင့် အခြေအနေကို ပိုမိုဆိုးရွားစေသည်။ မိုခါဆိုင်ကလုန်းမုန်တိုင်းမတိုင်မီကပင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုအခြေအနေမှာ ဆိုးရွားလာခဲ့ပြီး ကလေး (၅) သန်းအပါအဝင် ပြည်သူပေါင်း (၁၈) သန်းနီးပါးသည် အသက်ကယ်ဆယ်ရေးအထောက်အပံ့ အလွန်လိုအပ်နေသည်။ ဒါ့အပြင် ပြည်သူပေါင်း (၂) သန်းနီးပါး အိုးမဲ့အိမ်မဲ့ဖြစ်နေပြီး၊ (၁၈) သန်းကျော်သည် လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုဆိုင်ရာ အကျပ်အတည်းနှင့် ရင်ဆိုင်ကြုံတွေ့နေရပြီး (၄၈) သန်းမှာ ဆင်းရဲမွဲတေမှုဒဏ်ခံစားနေကြရသည်။ ဒီအကျပ်အတည်းကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာမှ ကြားဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်မှုဟာ အလွန်အရေးကြီးပါသည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်မှု အကျပ်အတည်းများဆက်တိုက်ရှိလင့်ကစား လွန်ခဲ့သောဆယ်စုနှစ်များက ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး၏ လွတ်လပ်ရေးအတွက် စိတ်ဓာတ်ခံယူချက်သည် မြန်မာပြည်သူ (၅၄) သန်း အတွင်း ၌ ရှင်သန်နေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိရှိတဲ့ မြန်မာပြည်သူတွေဟာ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်နေသည့် အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်ကောင်စီရှေ့မှောက် လက်လျှော့အရှုံးပေးမှာ မဟုတ်တဲ့အကြောင်း မယိမ်းယိုင်တဲ့ ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်ကို ရှင်းရှင်းလင်းလင်း သက်သေပြနေကြသည်။ သူတို့ စိတ်ကူးထားသော အနာဂတ်သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ ပြည်သူများအားလုံး၏ လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် အခွင့်အရေးများကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ လူမျိုး၊ ဘာသာတရား၊ နောက်ခံအပေါ်မူတည်ပြီး ခွဲခြားခြင်းမရှိသော နိုင်ငံသားတိုင်းကို တန်းတူ လေးစား၊ ကာကွယ်မှုပေးသော ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီဖြစ်သည်။ ထိုတရားမျှတမှုအတွက် အောင်မြင်မှုရရှိခဲ့လျှင်ဟု မဟုတ်ဘဲ ဘယ်အချိန်မှာ အောင်မြင်မှာလဲဟုသာ မေးရမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုသည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီကို မုချအနိုင်ပိုင်းပြီး လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီ အနာဂတ်ဆီသို့ ချီတက်လိမ့်မည်။
ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦးကဲ့သို့ပင် ရဲစွမ်းသတ္တိနှင့်ပြည့်စုံသော မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုသည် လွတ်လပ်မှုနှင့် ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက် တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ရာတွင် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ သက်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှုများအတွက် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီနှင့် သူ၏အပေါင်းအပါများအား ပြင်းထန်သော ပစ်မှတ်ထား အရေးယူဒဏ်ခတ်ပိတ်ဆို့မှုများ ပြုလုပ်ရန် တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများအနေဖြင့် International Criminal Court (ICC) ရှိ မြန်မာ့အရေးနှင့်ပတ်သက်သည့် စွဲတင်ချက်ကို International Court of Justice (ICJ) သို့ ချက်ချင်းလွှဲပြောင်းပေးဖို့နှင့် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ (NUG)၏ ကိုယ်စားပြုမှုကို ထောက်ခံရန် တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။
လူ့အခွင့်အရေးနှင့် ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီတို့အတွက် အဆက်မပြတ် တိုက်ပွဲဝင်နေကြသော NUG, NUCC၊ CRPH၊ EROs၊ ဒီမိုကရေစီလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများနှင့် လွတ်လပ်သောသတင်းမီဒီယာများကို ထောက်ခံအားပေးရန် အိမ်နီးချင်းနိုင်ငံများနှင့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာအဖွဲ့အစည်းများအား တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။ လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားသည့် အကူအညီများရရှိနိုင်ရန်အတွက် နယ်စပ်များဖွင့်ပေးရန်နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသာမက ဒေသအတွင်း၌ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး၊ ကြွယ်ဝချမ်းသာခြင်းနှင့် ငြိမ်သက်နိုင်ရန် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးကို လေးစားပြီး တရားမဝင်ဖမ်းဆီးသူများအားလုံးကို လွှတ်ပေးရန် စစ်ကောင်စီအား ဖိအားပေးဖို့ တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။
နိုင်ငံတကာအသိုင်းအဝိုင်းနှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအိမ်နီးချင်းနိုင်ငံများအနေဖြင့် ဒေသအတွင်းကောင်းကျိုးနှင့် တည်ငြိမ်ရေးအတွက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အကျပ်အတည်းကို အဆုံးသတ်ရန် တတ်နိုင်သမျှ လုပ်ဆောင်ရာတွင် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရအား အသိအမှတ်ပြုဖို့ အရေးကြီးပါသည်။ ယူကရိန်းနိုင်ငံတွင်တွေ့ရသည့်အတိုင်း အလားတူ ဆောင်ရွက်ချက်များနှင့် နည်းလမ်းများကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ လွတ်လပ်မှုရရှိရန်အတွက် ကူညီပေးရန်နှင့် အာရှ-ပစိဖိတ်ဒေသတွင် ကြာမြင့်စွာ ဆက်လက်တည်ရှိနေသော ဤအကျပ်အတည်း၊ နာကျင်မှုနှင့် ဆင်းရဲမှုဝေဒနာများကို အဆုံးသတ်ရန် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို ကူညီပေးဖို့ရန် တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စု NDAA Burma Act၊ UN Security Council Resolution on Myanmar နှင့် ASEAN five-point consensus တို့၏ အရေးပါမှုကိုလည်း အသိအမှတ်ပြုရမည်။ ဤဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်များကို မြန်မာ့မြေပြင်တွင် အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ရေးကို ထောက်ပံ့ပေးခြင်းသည် လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှု အကျပ်အတည်း၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး အကျပ်အတည်း၊ ဒီမိုကရေစီ ပြန်လည်ထူထောင်ရေး၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး၊ တည်ငြိမ်ရေးနှင့် တရားမျှတမှုကို တည်ထောင်ရေးတွင် အရေးပါသော အခန်းကဏ္ဍမှ ပါဝင်ပါလိမ့်မည်။
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသား ကျောင်းသားခေါင်းဆောင် ဆလိုင်းတင်မောင်ဦး ရက်ရက်စက်စက် ကွပ်မျက်ခံခဲ့ရခြင်း (၄၇)ကြိမ်မြောက် နှစ်ပတ်လည်နေ့မှာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ ပိုမိုနက်ရှိုင်းလာတဲ့အခြေအနေတွေနဲ့အတူ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာမှ အရေးပေါ်အာရုံစိုက်မှုနဲ့ အားကောင်းတဲ့ တုံ့ပြန်မှုကို တောင်းဆိုပါသည်။ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး၊ လွတ်လပ်မှုနဲ့ ဖက်ဒရယ်ဒီမိုကရေစီအတွက် ရပ်တည်ခြင်းအားဖြင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ စစ်အာဏာရှင်နှင့် ၎င်း၏စစ်တပ်မှ လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ် ကျူးလွန်နေသည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွေကို အဆုံး သတ်ပြီး တရားမျှတမှုနှင့် ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာကို ပြန်လည်မြှင့်တင်ပေးခြင်းအားဖြင့် ဒီမိုကရေစီကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ပြန်လည်ထူထောင်နိုင်မည်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-06-26
Date of entry/update:
2023-06-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
A series of violent events in Sagaing
Description:
"WARNING: GRAPHIC - This report contains extremely graphic imagery and links to graphic imagery shared online. While efforts have been made to blur details, the report contains information which some readers may find distressing.
To read the full report, download the PDF.
Key Event Details
Location of Incidents:
Ma Le Thar village (မလဲသာ) (22.115030, 95.455742) in Ayadaw township
Pa Dat Taing village (ပဒတ္တိုင်း) (22.074770, 95.448303) in Myinmu township
Kan Taw village (ကန်တော်) (22.027901,95.569941) in Myinmu township
Tar Taing village (တာတိုင်) (21.933220, 95.644867) in Sagaing township
Let Ka Pin village (လက္ကပင်) (21.87949944, 95.48097992) in Myinmu township
Swea Lwe Oh village (ဆွဲလွဲအို) (21.79330063, 95.3681488) in Myaung township
Than Bo village (သံဘို) (22.72942924, 95.67418671) in Khin-U township
Ta Ga Nan village (တဂဏန်း) (22.53455925, 95.68533325) in Shwebo township
Date/Time of Incident:
Multiple events between 23 February and 2 April 2023
Alleged Perpetrator(s) and/or Involvement:
Light Infantry Division (LID) 99, based in Meikhtila
LID Commander: Major General Than Htike
No. 8 Military Training School, Shwebo township
Summary of Investigation:
Myanmar Witness has investigated allegations related to 8 incidents of violence in Sagaing. 6 of these incidents involved the beheading of at least one individual.
One mass killing in Tar Taing led to the deaths of 17 individuals, including one beheading.
Myanmar Witness has found that at least 33 people were killed in the 8 incidents investigated, 12 of whom were beheaded.
Myanmar Witness identified, and where possible verified, imagery and video footage associated with these events, including images showing dismembered and beheaded bodies. Myanmar Witness also identified and geolocated footage of a beheading near Myaung.
Many sources claim that the Light Infantry Division (LID) 99, under the command of Major General Than Htike, is responsible for six of the incidents.
Locals report that the beheadings in Than Bo (incident 7) was carried out by the Security Administrative Council (SAC) No. 8 Military Training School from Shwebo township.
Images showing SAC soldiers were identified but not verified in association with events in Let Ka Pin.
The SAC released a statement admitting that SAC soldiers were responsible for a clash in Tar Taing.
Executive Summary
Between 23 February and 2 April 2023, a Myanmar military column reportedly traversed through part of the Sagaing region, conducting mass killings, fires, rapes, and raids in several villages. Myanmar Witness has identified, and where possible verified, imagery and video footage associated with a number of these events, which show bodies that were tortured, beheaded and dismembered. Myanmar Witness has found that at least 33 people were killed in the 8 incidents investigated, 12 of whom were beheaded.
This report investigates claims related to the following events:
Airstrike and ground troop incursion: Ma Le Thar
Myanmar military raid: Pa Dat Taing
Beheadings: Kan Taw
Mass killing and beheading: Tar Taing
Detention, mass killing and beheadings: Let Ka Pin
Beheading: Swea Lwe Oh
Beheadings: Than Bo
Beheading, dismembering and rape: Ta Ga Nan
Sagaing has been a focal point of resistance since the Coup. These 8 incidents identified, and where possible verified, by Myanmar Witness, show a pattern of excessive violence by the perpetrators. In a number of these cases the individuals were killed and then beheaded. As the beheadings serve no functional purpose, they represent a dramatic and horrific warning to those resisting military rule..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Witness
Date of publication:
2023-05-13
Date of entry/update:
2023-05-13
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Military History, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
An excerpt from Advox research on digital authoritarianism in Myanmar
Description:
"Authoritarian regimes have long had a complicated relationship with media and communications technologies. The Unfreedom Monitor is a Global Voices Advox research initiative examining the growing phenomenon of networked or digital authoritarianism. This extract is of the executive summary of the report on Myanmar, from the series of reports to come out of the research under the Unfreedom Monitor. Read the full report here.
The classic debate about whether technology is neutral or not has continued to be widely discussed in the 21st century. Alongside the rise of authoritarianism in general, digital authoritarianism has become a phenomenon of note throughout the world. This report is going to explore characteristics of digital authoritarianism in Myanmar. First, in order to provide the political context of Myanmar, a brief history of democratisation of the country is discussed. After that, the political aggressions that came along with the military coup in 2021 are explained in detail.
Then, the report analyses the situation of digital authoritarianism in Myanmar, discussing the oppressive behaviour of the government in cyberspace at length. There are five categories of digital repression of the Myanmar military: internet shutdowns, online censorship, surveillance, targeted persecution of online users, and social media manipulation and disinformation. Against this backdrop comes the digital resistance to the dictatorship by the people of Myanmar through circumvention, migration to and from platforms, and innovative crowdfunding initiatives by the resistance, among others.
The intent of this report is to provide a general understanding of digital authoritarianism in Myanmar amid the political unrest as well as a sense of technology’s role in repression by and resistance to a dictatorship.
***
By learning about both the repression and resistance sides of Myanmar’s Spring Revolution, it is evident that digital technology is playing a critical role in this revolution. The military is using every possible technology to repress people, inject fear into society and manipulate it. The revolutionists are also employing digital technology to circumvent the restrictions of the military and to employ innovative ways to build the state. The digital resilience of its society will be one of the determining factors of the revolution of Myanmar. This scenario of digital repression is one of the many manifestations that indicate that cyberspace has become a new sovereign territory different from land, sea and air. Information freedom, internet freedom, digital literacy, and media literacy cannot be taken for granted anymore as they now have an impact on people’s physical and digital survival. Therefore, Myanmar’s ongoing revolution to fight against the military’s dictatorship is not just physical anymore — the fact is that whoever harnesses the power of technology in the right way will become the game changer of the revolution..."
Source/publisher:
Global Voices
Date of publication:
2023-05-08
Date of entry/update:
2023-05-08
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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2.78 MB (Original version) - 19 pages
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Description:
"On Wednesday, Myanmar’s military junta announced it would release 2,153 prisoners. These include some convicted under section 505A of the Penal Code, which the junta has used to suppress peaceful dissent in the country. Families will welcome the releases of their loved ones, but the junta’s oppressive policies and practices remain unchanged.
Section 505A is a sweeping law that makes any criticism of the junta a criminal offense punishable by up to three years in prison. Many political activists arrested since the coup in February 2021 have been convicted by junta courts under section 505A.
The junta stated that the releases were based on “humanitarian grounds” and “for the peace of mind of people” ahead of a Buddhist holiday. It is not clear how many of those released are political prisoners: people arrested for the peaceful exercise of their political rights.
Myanmar traditionally marks Buddhist holidays by granting amnesties to prisoners, but data suggests that political prisoners make up only a small fraction of those released. In November last year, the junta released 402 political prisoners out of more than 5,000 prisoners amnestied, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). In January, another amnesty released 7,000 prisoners, including 306 political prisoners. In April, just 13 political prisoners were among 3,000 prisoners released.
The junta should immediately be releasing all its political prisoners: 17,000 people who should not have been arrested in the first place. The relatively few released each amnesty really just shows that the junta still does not recognize their detentions are unlawful.
Myanmar’s military juntas have long used amnesties as a tool to gain credibility and deflate international pressure ahead of global events. It is unsurprising that the latest amnesty comes ahead of an important meeting of the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
ASEAN foreign ministers should not be fooled when they meet in Indonesia on May 9. They should avoid lending credibility to the military junta and instead press for the release of all political prisoners, an end to abuses against the junta’s critics, and the return of Myanmar to civilian democratic rule..."
Source/publisher:
Junta’s Gesture No Substitute for Lasting Human Rights Changes
Date of publication:
2023-05-06
Date of entry/update:
2023-05-06
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Description:
"Joint Statement on action taken against illegal acts of some members o f the Village
People’s Defence Force Chaung Oo Township, Sagging Division
1. On 8th August 2023, in Chaung Oo Township, Sagging division, one male, two
young adolescent males, one female and three young adolescent females, a total of 7
people, purported to be intelligence personnel from the terrorist military council, was
arrested by the Village PDF responsible person and his team. Subsequently, all of them
were unlawfully killed on 30th August 2022.
2. Four members of the Village PDF team, including the responsible person, were
detained instantly on 30th August 2022, and the remains were excavated, and necessary
investigations were carried out on 31st August 2022 morning.
3. On September 22, 2022, the People's Defence Team of Chong U Township
transferred the arrested persons to the People's Administration Group of Chong U Township.
Then the People’s Security Forces opened a case and detained them separately.
4. As soon as a complaint was received on 26th January 2023, the Ministry of
Women, Children and Youth Affairs of the National Unity Government started working on
the case together with the Ministry of Defence, Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration,
Ministry of Justice, regional defence teams, People’s Security Force, People’s Administration
Group, to take legal actions.
5. This incident not only breaches the military’s Code of Conduct but also violates
women’s and children’s rights and human rights. Using the military/civilian judicial
platforms, the National Unity Government is consistently working to reveal the truth and
to take legal actions as soon as possible in accordance with the law, and we will inform
you about the progress of the actions taken.
6. To enforce the rule of law, the National Unity Government will punish anyone
who commits a crime in accordance with the existing laws, regardless of their background..."
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-05-04
Date of entry/update:
2023-05-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Reporting torture: resources, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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30.93 KB
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Description:
"Today marks the second anniversary since ASEAN agreed on the Five Point Consensus in response
to the military coup in Myanmar. The Myanmar military has ignored calls from the international
community to stop the violence. Moreover, since the coup, the Myanmar military has committed war
crimes and possible crimes against humanity. ASEAN leaders must step up and address the situation
in Myanmar without further delay. Amnesty International has assessed ASEAN’s five points
consensus using concrete evidence as examples where relevant, and highlights its failures:
1) First, there shall be immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar and all parties shall exercise
utmost restraint.
The Myanmar military authorities executed at least four people, sentenced at least 123 people to
death, and arrested 21,334 people – with 17,446 people still detained, according to the Assistance
Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). The security forces tortured detainees, killed at least 3,239
people, including unlawful attacks killing and injuring civilians through the use of deadly air strikes,
extrajudicial executions, artillery shelling, banned landmines, and cluster munitions. According to the
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), since the coup, the
fighting has displaced 1.4 million people inside the country, burned or destroyed 60,000 civilian
properties and pushed 75,400 people to seek refuge in neighboring countries. The military authorities
also detained and imprisoned at least 2,000 Rohingyas since the coup for ‘unauthorized travel’
outside of Rakhine State. These numbers illustrate the fact that the Myanmar military does not plan to
cease violence or exercise restraint against civilians.
2) Second, constructive dialogue among all parties concerned shall commence to seek a
peaceful solution in the interests of the people.
In July 2022, the Myanmar military executed four people, including an activist and one member of
the National League for Democracy (NLD). As of December 2022, the Myanmar military sentenced
Aung San Suu Kyi to 33 years in prison in grossly unfair trials, in completely untransparent
procedures. In October, Magway District Court sentenced ex-NLD parliamentarian Win Myint Hlaing
to 148 years in prison on terror-related charges. Around the same time, activists Aung Khant, Kyaw
Thet and Hnin Maung were sentenced to prison terms of between 95 and 225 years under the Counter-Terrorism Law. Likewise, the Myanmar military continues to target and imprison politicians
from the opposition groups. The Myanmar military authorities are using the justice system as an
oppressive tool to silence and collectively punish any voice of dissent. On 7 April 2023, Reverend
Samson, Kachin religious and community leader, was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of
unlawful association, defamation and terrorism. These charges are used as a tool by the Myanmar
military to silence and punish people for exercising their freedom of speech. A constructive dialogue
is not possible if people are unfairly imprisoned and arbitrarily detained. The Myanmar military must
release all those detained and imprisoned for their peaceful opposition to the coup and to the
military’s human rights violations.
3) Third, a special envoy of the ASEAN Chair shall facilitate mediation of the dialogue process,
with the assistance of the Secretary General of ASEAN.
In March 2022, the ASEAN Special Envoy for Myanmar visited Myanmar for the first time. The
Special Envoy met with Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, but the military reportedly denied him to
meet with any civil society groups, or members of the NLD, which had won the most seats in the
2020 election. The Myanmar military also rejected the Special Envoy’s request to meet with Aung San
Suu Kyi. This failure to meet with anyone other than the Myanmar military leadership shows that
ASEAN has not been able to facilitate mediation.
4) Fourth, ASEAN shall provide humanitarian assistance through the AHA Centre.
In October 2022, the Myanmar military enacted the Organization Registration Law, severely restricting
the right to freedom of association by imposing criminal penalties on national and international
humanitarian organizations if they do not register with the authorities. The enactment severely
impedes desperately needed humanitarian aid. Amnesty International has documented the military
authorities obstructing lifesaving humanitarian aid through cumbersome administrative restrictions
and attacking camps for internally displaced people. Massive aerial bombing, indiscriminate shelling,
and massacres by the military are causing large numbers of casualties and displacements – further
increasing the need for humanitarian assistance. UNOCHA estimates that a total of 17.6 million
people, including more than nine million women and girls, would require humanitarian assistance in
2023. In December 2021, two humanitarian workers were among those killed in a massacre by the
military in Kayah State. UNOCHA’s end year report also indicates that “Myanmar recorded the
second highest number of aid workers killed globally in 2022, and the fourth highest number of aid
workers injured”. The AHA Centre has also failed to provide anywhere close to adequate
humanitarian assistance to the population in need.
5) Fifth, the special envoy and delegation shall visit Myanmar to meet with all parties concerned.
See point 2 and 3 above.
In response to ASEAN’s failure to implement the five-point consensus, Amnesty International urges
ASEAN and ASEAN member states to make the following recommendations to the Myanmar military:
1) Immediately stop dropping aerial bombs on civilians and carrying out indiscriminate attacks by
ground and air in violation of international humanitarian law.
2) Lift internet blackouts, administrative and other arbitrary restrictions on humanitarian aid, stop
attacks on humanitarian workers, and allow unimpeded access to national and international
humanitarian organizations, so that they can reach all civilians in need.
3) Release all detainees arbitrarily detained or unjustly imprisoned through grossly unfair trials
since the coup.
4) Immediately halt acts of intimidation, arrests, or torture and other ill-treatment of media
workers, healthcare workers and others who peacefully joined the Civil Disobedience
Movement.
5) Release all Rohingyas arbitrarily detained for exercising their right to freedom of movement
and halt the military’s role in any plans to forcibly return Rohingyas from Cox’s Bazar and
Bashan Char camps..."
Source/publisher:
Amnesty International (UK)
Date of publication:
2023-04-24
Date of entry/update:
2023-04-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Crimes Against Humanity
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"Nein 2013, April la° (10) daò taulai Kayanphao
maonnu(23)blan akau, Sukanphao tadwan tapein acoya,bakyapralau tabanau pán wundau nu , Khau Bahanhtan tatailan tamangaò..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Human Rights - NUG
Date of publication:
2023-04-10
Date of entry/update:
2023-04-11
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
Rebels say drones are effective, safe, accurate and require little manpower to operate.
Description:
"Two years into Myanmar’s civil conflict, civilian drones refitted to drop explosives on junta troops are helping turn the tide against the country’s better-equipped military, rebel groups say.
Drones were once used exclusively by the army to detect and crack down on pro-democracy protests on the streets of Myanmar’s largest city of Yangon in the days after the Feb. 1, 2021, takeover.
When the anti-junta People’s Defense Force first formed in the months following the coup, its members were forced to fight Southeast Asia’s second-largest army using only slingshots and the same crude flintlock “Tumee” rifles their forefathers used to fight British colonizers in the 1880s.
The rebel groups started using homemade landmines to target their enemy’s convoys, and about a year ago added drones to their arsenal. They have proved effective, safe, accurate and require little manpower to operate during clashes, the fighters say.
“To tell you the truth, drone strikes could end up being a decisive tool in some areas,” said a member of the Wings of the Irrawaddy, the PDF’s drone unit. “In 2023, the junta troops will be hurt [by this weapon] even more. Junta soldiers are extremely scared of our drone attacks. When they see drones coming their way, they run for cover.”
Statements recently issued by three drone units operating against the military said they had carried out a total of 642 drone attacks in Sagaing and Magway regions and in Kayin and Kayah states last year.....Difficult to defend...Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, which is made up of former military officers, acknowledged the threat PDF drones pose and said the military is deploying technologies to defend against the attacks.
“We can limit the number of drones entering our areas and shoot some down as well ... [using] drone guns and [frequency] jammers,” he said.
“Some of our weapons can shoot them down from a distance of 700-1,000 meters (2,300-3,300 feet),” he said. “There are many ways to defend against them.”
But Zay Thu Aung, a former Air Force captain in the military who defected to the armed resistance, told RFA that while the junta can purchase equipment to defend against drone attacks, it requires a high learning curve and is difficult to deploy effectively.
“The junta has unlimited financial resources and since some developed countries are supporting them with technology, they can buy drone protection systems,” he said.
“But its ground troops are not educated enough to operate such high-tech equipment and it’s too hard to deploy these to all the frontline battlefields throughout the country.”
The drone fleets have allowed the PDF to achieve a degree of air superiority, even without the helicopters and fighter jets available to the military, he added.....Drawbacks...Despite the success the rebel drone units had enjoyed against the military, there are still drawbacks to the equipment they have available, said the Wings of the Irrawaddy fighter.
It requires a significant number of parts to upgrade a commercial drone used to record video into an attack drone and the cost of producing one is still higher than that of one automatic rifle, he said. Other PDF members acknowledged to RFA in September that drones are also susceptible to being shot out of the sky.
PDF drone units are also limited in their operations by daylight, the Wings of the Irrawaddy fighter said, adding that the units plan to equip their aircraft with night vision cameras in 2023.
Kyaw Zaw, the spokesperson for the office of shadow National Unity Government President Duwa Lashi La, told RFA that it plans to add additional funding in 2023 for drone units through a program initiated through its ministry of defense named Project Skywalk.A Jan. 4 report released by the Falcon Wings – a PDF drone unit which operates from within territory controlled by the anti-junta ethnic Karen National Union in Kayin state – claimed that it had carried out 437 attacks in 2022, killing about 200 military soldiers.
On Jan. 9, a Falcon Wings PDF drone unit in Kayah’s Loikaw township reported that it carried out 125 drone attacks in 2022, although it did not provide numbers of military casualties.
The Wings of the Irrawaddy group claims to have carried out about 80 drone attacks last year, killing about 80-100 junta troops.
RFA was unable to independently verify the casualty numbers claimed by the drone units.
“With the resources that we have, we are working to make more high-tech drones,” he said.
“We have not yet been able to supply the full range of drones and weapons [for drones]. But you will see that we will be able to destroy the junta’s tanks as we can supply a certain number of weapons.”
A Jan. 4 report released by the Falcon Wings – a PDF drone unit which operates from within territory controlled by the anti-junta ethnic Karen National Union in Kayin state – claimed that it had carried out 437 attacks in 2022, killing about 200 military soldiers.
On Jan. 9, a Falcon Wings PDF drone unit in Kayah’s Loikaw township reported that it carried out 125 drone attacks in 2022, although it did not provide numbers of military casualties.
The Wings of the Irrawaddy group claims to have carried out about 80 drone attacks last year, killing about 80-100 junta troops.
RFA was unable to independently verify the casualty numbers claimed by the drone units.
A PDF official in Kayin state said that not only are drones effective in attacking the military, they can be relied upon as air support for paramilitaries on the ground.
“Drones have served as air support for our ground troops and are a huge threat to our enemy as well,” said the official, adding that they allow the PDF to “completely dominate the air of the enemy camp.”..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of publication:
2023-01-29
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Sub-title:
Raid appears to breach ceasefire between group and military
Description:
"Myanmar’s junta jets dropped bombs over the weekend on the home of the leader of an ethnic Karen group that has not been fighting the military, appearing to violate an 8-year-old ceasefire, local residents told Radio Free Asia.
The strike destroyed the home of Major Saw A Wan, commander of the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army’s, or DKBA, Tactical Operation Command, but he and his family were away at the time. It also destroyed a nearby guest house, high school and two employee quarters, the residents added.
No one was killed in the early Saturday bombing, but one DKBA soldier was reportedly injured.
The strike comes despite the group being a signatory to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, signed under the previous military government of Thein Sein in 2015 with various ethnic armed rebel armies.
Colonel Saw Sein Win, chief of staff at the DKBA, told RFA that his group is neutral and hasn’t been involved in helping resistance to junta rule since the February 2021 coup.
"We are neutral. We maintain a close relationship with the military. On the other hand, we have occasional contact with the Karen National Union,” the colonel said, alluding to one of the major Karen rebel groups in Myanmar. “Despite our close ties and all the diplomacy, this (attack) happened, and we were surprised.``
He also suggested that the attack could have been carried out by a separatist faction from the DKBA, saying the group saw fighters defecting to the military last year.
“They still have all the DKBA uniforms. They were fighting with the military wearing our uniforms, we would normally be accused of being involved in anti-junta activities,” he said. “Arm badges can also be bought at shops as well.”
The DKBA was one of the groups that responded to the military’s peace talks invitation in the coup’s aftermath, with DKBA Commander-in-Chief General Saw Steel personally attending the talks with coup leader and Myanmar’s de facto leader Min Aung Hlaing.
Analysts told RFA that the attack was a unilateral breach of peace between the ruling military and the DKBA.
One eyewitness close to the DKBA said that the attack lasted almost 15 minutes.
“All I could see was the light. I could not see the jets nor did I hear their sound. The guest house, which was about a hundred feet away from his house, collapsed and was destroyed,” the witness said. “The bomb didn’t hit his home directly but its stairs and handrails were cut in half just by blisters of the bombs.”
Since the coup, the military has been frequently conducting airstrikes on areas where ethnic armed groups and anti-junta People’s Defense Force militias are located.
Military spokesperson General Zaw Min Tun did not respond to RFA’s telephone request for comments on the attack today, and neither the junta nor the DKBA have released official information on the strike..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of publication:
2023-01-23
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
Language:
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Description:
"Summary: On 5 January 2023, according to the Irrawaddy, PDF 3 Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) (under the control of Sagaing PDF 8 Light Infantry Division (LID)) alongside the Da Pa Yin Kwe PDF attacked Kywei Pon village where SAC and Pyu Saw Htee forces were camped. During the attack one Pyu Saw Htee member was shot and killed by the PDF.
Following this, SAC armed forces (reportedly the 33 LID) allegedly raided the village of Da Pa Yin Kwe (တပုရင်းကွဲ/ဒီပဲယင်းကွဲ). According to Khit Thit, from 0500 on 6 January 2023, there was a continuous exchange of fire and the use of heavy weapons by the joint Pyu Saw Htee and SAC armed forces. The SAC allegedly shot and killed four people, including Ashin Gandhasara (အရှင် ဂန္ဓသာရ), a Buddhist monk and graduate of Thitagu Buddhist University, and Ma Khaing Su Mon (မခိုင်စုမွန်), a teacher who was allegedly associated with the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). Ashin Gandhasara had reportedly travelled from Mandalay to Da Pa Yin Kwe village on the evening of 5 January and was staying at the Shwe Gugyi monastery.....Myanmar Witness has been able to verify: Myanmar Witness geolocated user-generated content (UGC) showing the deceased monk and teacher to the basement of the Da Pa Yin Kwe village monastery.
Using NASA’s FIRMS and Sentinel Hub, Myanmar Witness was able to verify that a fire took place on 6 January 2023 in Da Pa Yin Kwe village.....Background: Sagaing Township, in Sagaing State, has been the site of an ongoing conflict between the PDF, the SAC, and the pro-SAC Pyu Saw Htee. Da Pa Yin Kwe is reportedly a pro-democracy village, while Kwei Pon, only 1.5 kilometres away, is a pro-SAC village.
Notable clashes have occurred between the villages. In July 2022, Mandalay Free Press reported that the SAC armed forces raided Da Pa Yin Kwe Village, allegedly setting five houses on fire. They also claimed that one individual, 37-year-old Ko Zaw Lin (ကိုဇော်လင်း), was arrested, tortured, and burnt to death. Clashes also reportedly broke out in December 2022, according to Sagaing Township True News. The events between the 5-6 January 2023, which were investigated by Myanmar Witness, represent the latest round of conflict between pro-democracy forces and the SAC and Pyu Saw Htee in this location..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Witness
Date of publication:
2023-01-20
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters
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Description:
"Ever since Hnin Si Hlaing joined the armed revolution against the military regime, she said she would do anything she could to kill the junta soldiers she referred to as “military dogs”.
The 20-year-old member of the logistic group of Kawlin Township’s People’s Defence Force (PDF) in Sagaing Region proved her words on January 7, when she and her comrade blew themselves up when confronted by regime troops.
The two women were riding a motorcycle and transporting homemade bombs for the resistance when they unexpectedly encountered a regime column patrolling in Kawlin Township, one of the strongholds of the resistance to the military dictatorship.
Rather than surrender and face brutal interrogation which might have led them to give up information about their comrades, the women blew themselves up as the soldiers approached them.
A number of soldiers were injured in the bombing, while the remains of the two women have yet to be returned to their families, according to local PDF the Kawlin Revolution Team (KRT).
Hnin Si Hlaing worked as a sales clerk in a Kawlin store and was preparing to take the parallel National Unity Government’s (NUG) matriculation exam, while also serving in the Kawlin PDF.
Her comrade who died alongside her was Daw Su Su Yee. The 45-year-old is survived by her 20-year-old son and 70-year-old mother. Before the coup, Daw Su Su Yee worked as a betel nut seller in Kawlin Township.
But after the military takeover, she took part in anti-junta protests and then became a member of the Kawlin PDF logistics group, as well as acting as a scout for the KRT.
Daw Su Su Yee said she felt sorry for young comrades who gave their lives for the revolution, saying she would rather die instead of them, according to KRT.
Her house was sealed off by the regime the day after she died. Her son and mother are now under the protection of the Kawlin People’s Administrative Body, the NUG’s administration in the township.
The PDF said in a statement that Daw Su Su Yee and Hnin Si Hlaing had sacrificed their lives for the revolution and honoured them as heroes.
The attack by the two women stands out as the latest example of the fighting spirit of the revolutionary forces battling to restore democracy to Myanmar.
But there are other resistance fighters who have also sacrificed their lives for their comrades and the revolution. These are some of them.
Ko Moe, Yesagyo Revolution Group (YRG)
Ko Moe attacked regime soldiers by blowing himself up with hand grenades in Magwe Region’s Yesagyo Township in early July last year.
The father of two was a member of local PDF the Yesagyo Revolution Group (YRG) and a village defense force volunteer. The 45-year old encountered junta troops near Thae Taw Village monastery on the border of Yesagyo and Pakokku townships on July 8. Ko Moe did not know that nearly 80 Myanmar military soldiers were deployed at the monastery.
After being shot and injured by regime troops near the monastery, he fell off his motorcycle. As the soldiers approached him, Ko Moe exploded three hand grenades, killing seven soldiers instantly. Another eight troops died later in hospital, according to YRG.
“He wasn’t a combatant. He was in the supply force, but he always carried three grenades. He always said that he would rather die than be captured,” said Ko Zero, a YRG spokesperson.
YRG leader Ko Pathay told The Irrawaddy that Ko Moe helped scout for the PDF when it laid mines to ambush junta forces.
“We have all thought about how to kill as many soldiers as possible if we were captured by them,” he said.....
Eze, Moe Nyo Revolution Force: Eze, 19, a student who passed the matriculation exam with two distinctions, joined the Moe Nyo Revolution Force in Myinmu Township, Sagaing Region last year in order to topple the military dictatorship.
He wanted to be an engineer and his parents intended him to go and work in Japan. But he said that he would go to Japan only after the revolution succeeded, said Ko Tay Zar, a spokesperson for the Moe Nyo Revolution Force.
“He said that he would never surrender as long as the revolution is ongoing. He refused to return home when his parents asked him to come back,” said Ko Tay Zar.
Eze was a mine technician and led the mine attacks on the Sagaing-Myinmu Road. He died in late October 2022 while he was covering his comrades during a clash with junta forces. He and four other comrades were surrounded as they prepared to detonate a mine to attack a column of 150 regime soldiers.
After being hit in the thigh, he refused attempts from his comrades to rescue him and instead told them to retreat and to leave him. His friends left him a homemade shotgun with five bullets. Just one bullet was left when his body was found.
“He might have been captured alive, but he didn’t let himself be interrogated,” said Ko Tay Zar, who told The Irrawaddy the resistance group wasn’t raided after the attack.
Eze’s corpse was found the day after the attack far away from where he was captured. Three gunshot wounds were found in his chest and heads, while his legs were torn from being dragged by the soldiers.
“He told us that if he was arrested by the military dogs, he would not talk to them but only spit in their faces,” recalled Ko Tay Zar.
His fellow fighters remember Eze as a young man with a good attitude who always smiled, and as someone who sacrificed his life in order to save his comrades.
“People like Eze are a rare breed. Although he was young, he was also mature,” Ko Tay Zar told The Irrawaddy.....Bo Thanmani, Shwebo Defense Force (SBDF): Bo Thanmani sacrificed his life to save his comrades during a clash last June in Sagaing Region’s Wetlet Township.
The 49-year-old founder of the Shwebo Defense Force (SBDF) was killed in action along with a fellow fighter. More than two dozen junta soldiers opened fire on Bo Thanmani and his troop of 15 fighters. Bo Thanmani and fellow fighter Ko Soe Paing were injured.
With the regime troops just 20 feet away, Bo Thanmani ordered his comrades to retreat while he and Ko Soe Paing covered them, according to Ko Yan Gyi, the commander of Battalion 23 of the SBDF.
“If Sayar [Bo Thanmani] and Ko Soe Paing hadn’t covered us, we wouldn’t be alive now,” Ko Yan Gyi told The Irrawaddy.
The pair were found dead and holding hands. Bo Thanmani had been shot twice, once in the heart and again in the head.
“The death of Sayar [Bo Thanmani] is an irreplaceable loss for us,” Ko Yan Gyi told The Irrawaddy.
Bo Thanmani treated his SBDF comrades like his own children. His fighters wanted him to command them from their base camp, but he insisted on leading missions from the front.
“He thought about his comrades until his last breath and he gave his life for us,” said Ko Yan Gyi.
Along with his comrades, Bo Thanmani resisted the regime forces with only MA-1 rifles and homemade weapons.
A lack of sufficient arms is one of the reasons why resistance fighters are dying in battle. Ko Yan Gyi urged the NUG, which is responsible for arming the over 300 PDF battalions currently operating, to provide them with more weapons as soon as possible.
He explained that if SBDF had had around 10 automatic weapons, the group would have been able to defeat the junta soldiers and save the life of their leader Bo Thanmani.
Ko Tay Zar of the Moe Nyo Revolution Force in Myinmu Township also called for more and better arms. “If we had automatic rifles, our comrades like Eze might not have died,” he said.
The NUG has admitted that while it can’t supply the resistance with all its needs, it is trying to support them as much as possible.
“We will have to give more lives until we get better weapons,” said Ko Tay Zar..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-01-20
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Description:
"ပုသိမ်အကျဉ်းထောင်အတွင်း ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၅ ရက်နေ့ ညပိုင်းတွင် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများနှင့် ထောင် အာဏာပိုင်တို့ကြား ပြဿနာြဖစ်ခဲ့ပြီး ထောင်အာဏာပိုင်တို့ဘက်မှ လူကိုသေစေနိုင်သည့် လက်နက်များဖြင့် ပစ်ခတ်ခြင်း၊ အသံဗုံးခွဲခြင်း၊ အုပ်စုလိုက်ဝိုင်းဝန်းရိုက်နှက်ခြင်း၊ လက်ပြန်ကြိုးတုပ်ပြီးအပြင်းအထန်ရိုက်နှက်ခြင်း တို့ကြောင့် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားအနည်းဆုံးတစ်ဦး သေဆုံးခဲ့ရပြီး နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားအများအပြား အပြင်း အထန် ဒဏ်ရာရရှိခဲ့ကြောင်း သတင်းရရှိခဲ့ပါသည်။ ထိုလုပ်ရပ်များသည် အကျဉ်းထောင်လုပ်ထုံးလုပ်နည်း များကို ကျော်လွန်၍ လုပ်ဆောင်ခြင်းဖြစ်ပြီး မတရား ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုနှင့် ဥပဒေမဲ့သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည့် ကြီးမား သောရာဇဝတ်မှုကိုပါကျူးလွန်လိုက်သည့်လုပ်ရပ် ဖြစ်သည်ဟု နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ရေး အသင်း (အေအေပီပီ)မှ ထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်သည်။
၁။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုအာဏာသိမ်းပြီးချိန်မှစပြီး တရားဥပဒေ စိုးမိုးရေးပျက်ပြယ်သွားခဲ့ပြီး အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု ၏ အမာခံထောက်တိုင်များဖြစ်ကြသည့် တရားသူကြီးများ၊ စစ်သားများ၊ ရဲများ၊ အကျဉ်း ဦးစီးဝန်ထမ်းများက စစ်အုပ်စုအလိုကျ မတရားဖမ်းဆီးခြင်း၊ ဥပဒေမဲ့မတရားပြစ်ဒဏ်များချမှတ်ခြင်း၊ အကျဉ်း ထောင်အသီးသီးတွင်လည်း နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိဖြင့် ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်း၊ အနိုင်ကျင့်စော်ကားခြင်းများ ပြုလုပ်လျက်ရှိနေပါသည်။
၂။ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၅ ရက်နေ့ မှစတင်ခဲ့သောပုသိမ်ထောင်ဖြစ်စဉ်တွင် အင်အားအလွန်အကျွံသုံး၍ အသက်သေဆုံးစေသည့် ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှု ပြုမူဆောင်ရွက်ခြင်းကြောင့် အနည်းဆုံး နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား တစ်ဦးသေဆုံးပြီး နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား အများအပြား ဒဏ်ရာပြင်းထန်စွာရရှိခဲ့သည်။ အဆိုပါဖြစ်စဉ်သည် အကျဉ်းထောင်တွင်း မတရား ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်း နှင့် ဥပဒေမဲ့မတရားသတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းကို ကျူးလွန်လိုက် ကြောင်း ထင်ရှားနေပါသည်။ ထိုသို့ကျူးလွန်မှုသည် ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုနှင့် အခြားရက်စက်၍ လူမဆန်သော သို့မဟုတ် လူ့ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာကျဆင်းစေသော ဆက်ဆံမှု သို့မဟုတ် ပြစ်ဒဏ်ပေးမှုဆန့်ကျင်ရေး နိုင်ငံတကာ သဘောတူစာချုပ် (UNCAT) ကို အတိအလင်းချိုးဖောက်ရာရောက်သည်။
၃။ အဆိုပါဖြစ်စဉ်နှင့် ပတ်သက်ပြီး ပုသိမ်အကျဉ်းထောင် တာဝန်ခံအရာရှိ နေမင်းထက်၊ ပုသိမ်မြို့မရဲစခန်မှူး မြင့်အောင်၊ နယ်မြေစခန်းမှူး ကျော်ဦးတို့အပါအဝင် အမိန့်ပေးစေခိုင်းသူများ၊ သက်ဆိုင်ရာထောင်အာဏာပိုင်များ၊ ကိုယ်တိုင်ကျူးလွန်သူများအားလုံးအနေဖြင့် တာဝန်ခံရမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
၄။ ထိုကဲ့သို့ ဥပဒေမဲ့မတရားသတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းနှင့် မတရားညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်းများအပေါ် မိမိတို့ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်း သားများကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်အသင်း အနေဖြင့် ပြင်းပြင်းထန်ထန်ကန့်ကွက်ရှုံ့ချလိုက်ပြီး မတရားကျူးလွန်ခံခဲ့ရ သည့် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအားလုံးအတွက် တရားမျှတမှုရရှိနိုင်ရေး အစွမ်းကုန် ကြိုးစားအကောင်အထည် ဖော်ဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည် ဖြစ်သည်။
၅။ နိုင်ငံတကာအသိုင်းအဝိုင်းအနေဖြင့်လည်း ပုသိမ်ထောင်ဖြစ်စဉ်အပါအဝင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်း နေ့စဉ်ကြုံတွေ့ နေရသည့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများ၊ ဥပဒေမဲ့သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများနှင့် မတရားညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုများသည် နိုင်ငံတကာလူ့အခွင့်အရေးဆိုင်ရာဥပဒေများအား ကျူးလွန်နေခြင်းဖြစ်ပြီး အဆိုပါကျူးလွန်မှုများကို ပြည်တွင်း တရားစီရင်ရေးကဏ္ဍအတွင်း ကိုင်တွယ်အရေးယူနိုင်ခြင်းမရှိသည့်အတွက် နိုင်ငံတကာတရားစီရင်ရေးယန္တရားတွင် အရေးယူနိုင်ရေး ဝိုင်းဝန်းကြိုးပမ်းပေးကြပါရန် အလေးအနက်တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါသည်။
ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုနှင့်အခြားသောရက်စက်၍လူမဆန်သည့်(သို့)လူ့ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာညှိုးနွမ်းစေသည့်ပြုမှုဆက်ဆံမှု (သို့) ပြစ်ဒဏ်ပေးမှုတို့ကိုတားမြစ်ဆန့်ကျင်သည့်သဘောတူစာချုပ် (UNCAT)
အပိုဒ်(၂) (၂) စစ်မက်ဖြစ်ပွားသည့်ကာလ(သို့)စစ်ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ကျရောက်နိုင်သည့်ကာလ၊ ပြည်တွင်း နိုင်ငံရေး မငြိမ်သက်မှု(သို့) အခြားသောအများပြည်သူအပေါ် သက်ရောက်သည့် အရေးပေါ်အခြေအနေ တို့အပြင် မည်သည့် အခြေအနေမျိုးတွင်မဆို ညှင်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှု ပြုလုပ်ကျူးလွန်ခွင့်မပြု။
အပိုဒ်(၂)(၃) အထက်အရာရှိ(သို့) အစိုးရအရာရှိများထံမှအမိန့်တစ်ရပ်ရပ်အား နှိပ်စက်မှုပြုလုပ်ကျူးလွန်ရန် အကြောင်းပြချက်အဖြစ် သုံးခွင့်မပြု။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-08
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-08
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"On January 4, the junta announced they would release a total of 7,012 prisoners in “accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 401, Sub-Section (1)”. AAPP has been monitoring the situation and understands that around 300 political prisoners from at least (19) prisons were released. Throughout the day, AAPP has been able to confirm the release of 223 identified political prisoners. The exact identities and total figures of the prisoners released remain to be verified, but AAPP will continue to monitor and document these releases as more information becomes available.
Since the February 1, 2021, military coup and the emergence of the Spring Revolution, a total of (2707) people, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed through military crackdowns following pro-democracy movements.
Since the coup, a total of (13,272) people are currently under detention, (1911) of whom are serving sentences. There are a total of (100) post-coup death row prisoners as of January 6, 2023. (121) people have been sentenced in absentia, of whom (42) have been sentenced to death. This makes a total of (142) people who have been sentenced to death. (24) people have been released on bail and (3696) people have already been released. These are the numbers verified by AAPP. The actual numbers are likely much higher. We will continue to update accordingly.
According to information gathered today, on the night of January 5 political prisoners were severely tortured by prison staff and many police forces in Pathein Prison. The beatings are still continuing today. It is reported that a political prisoner Win Min Thant (aka Mae Gyi) was killed from the assault, though the death is still being confirmed. 8 political prisoners are reportedly receiving medical treatments in the new Pathein Hospital and are in life-threatening condition. Such kind of torture is a serious and blatent violation of human rights.
Among the prisoners released from Myeik Prison in Tanintharyi Region on January 4 was Dr. Min Htet Paing, a political prisoner who was sentenced to serve 3 years in prison under Penal Code Section 505 A. However, another charge was then made against Dr. Min Htet Paing and he was rearrested in front of the prison entrance. He was accused of writing false information on social media to create unrest and “terrorism”, and arrested in early April 2021 on Kyay Nan Taing Bridge in Pathaung Village Tract, Myeik Township.
AAPP will continue to inform on verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update the lists with details of these alleged offences. If you receive any information about detentions of, or charges against, CSO leaders, activists, journalists, CDM workers, other civilians and fallen heroes in relation to the military and police crackdown on dissent, please submit to the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected].....ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်နေ့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုမှ အကျဉ်းသား၊အကျဉ်းသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၇၀၁၂) အား ရာဇဝတ်ကျင့်ထုံး ဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၄၀၁၊ ပုဒ်မခွဲ (၁) အရ ပြန်လည် လွှတ်ပေးမည်ဟု ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာခဲ့သည်။ AAPP မှ အဆိုပါ အကျဉ်းထောင်လွှတ်ပေးမှု အခြေအနေနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ စောင့်ကြည့်မှတ်တမ်းတင်လျက်ရှိရာ လက်ရှိအချိန်ထိရရှိထား သော အချက်အလက်များအရ အကျဉ်းထောင် (၁၉) ခုထက်မနည်းမှ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား (၃၀၀) ဝန်းကျင် လွတ်မြောက်လာကြောင်းသိရှိရသည်။ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများ ကူညီစောင့် ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း (AAPP) မှ အဆိုပါ အကျဉ်းသားလွှတ်ပေးမှုဖြစ်စဉ်မှ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသော နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား (၂၂၃) ဦးကို ယနေ့အထိ မှတ်တမ်းပြုနိုင်ခဲ့သည်။ လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေအတိအကျနှင့် အမည်စာရင်းမှာ ချက်ချင်းရရှိရန် လက်လှမ်းမမီနိုင် သည့်အတွက် အတည်ပြုရန် လိုအပ်နေဆဲဖြစ်ပြီး အတည်ပြုနိုင်သည့် အမည်စာရင်းများကို ဆက်လက်ဖော်ပြပေးသွား ပါမည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ မတရားစစ်အာဏာလုမှုဖြစ်စဉ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခဲ့ကြသော ဒီမိုကရေစီရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများ နှင့် ပြည်သူများ၏ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရသူ စုစုပေါင်းမှာ (၂၇၀၇) ဦး ရှိခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်မှ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၆ ရက်နေ့ထိတိုင် ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၃၂၇၂) ဦးရှိပြီး ၎င်းတို့အနက်မှ (၁၉၁၁) ဦးမှာ ထောင်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသည်။ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၆ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်အထိ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရပြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်များတွင် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်ကွယ်သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ (၄၂) ဦး အပါအဝင် (၁၂၁) ဦးမှာ မျက်ကွယ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံ ထားရသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၄၂) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အာမခံဖြင့် လွတ်မြောက်သူ (၂၄) ဦးရှိပြီး၊ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေမှာ (၃၆၉၆) ဦး ရှိသည်။
ဖော်ပြပါ ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များသည် AAPP မှ ကောက်ယူရရှိထားသည့် အရေအတွက်ဖြစ်ပြီး မြေပြင်တွင် ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့်အချက်အလက်နှင့် ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များမှာ ယခုထက်ပိုမိုများပြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ အချက်အလက်များကို ထပ်မံကောက်ယူရရှိလာပါက ဆက်လက်ထည့်သွင်းဖော်ပြသွားပါမည်။
ယနေ့ရရှိသော အချက်အလက်များအရ ယမန်နေ့ (ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၅ ရက်) ညအချိန်တွင် ပုသိမ်အကျဉ်းထောင်၌ ထောင်ဝန်ထမ်းနှင့် ရဲအင်အားအများအပြားမှ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား ပြင်းထန်စွာ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခဲ့သည်ဟု ကြားသိရသည်။
ယနေ့တွင်လည်း ဆက်လက်၍ ရိုက်နှက်နေဆဲဖြစ်ပြီး နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားဖြစ်သူ ဝင်းမင်းထက်(ခ) မဲကြီးမှာ ရိုက်နှက်ခံရမှုကြောင့် သေဆုံးသွားကြောင်း ကြားသိရပြီး ထိုသေဆုံးမှုအား ဆက်လက်အတည်ပြုနေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ ၈ ဦး မှာ ပုသိမ်ဆေးရုံအသစ်တွင် ဆေးကုသမှုခံနေရသည်ဟု သိရှိရသည်။ ဆေးကုသမှုခံနေရသူများမှာလည်း အသက်အန္တရာယ် စိုးရိမ်ဖွယ်ရာ အခြေအနေဖြစ်ပေါ်နေသည်။ ထိုကဲ့သို့ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်းသည် အလွန်ပြင်းထန် သော လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှုဖြစ်သည်။
ထို့ပြင် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်နေ့၌ တနင်္သာရီတိုင်း၊ မြိတ်အကျဉ်းထောင်မှ လွတ်မြောက်လာသူများတွင် ရာဇသတ်ကြီးဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၅၀၅-က ဖြင့် ထောင်ဒဏ် သုံးနှစ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသော နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား ဒေါက်တာ မင်းထက်ပိုင် ပါဝင်ခဲ့သော်လည်း ၎င်းအား အခြားအမှုကပ်ပြီး ထောင်ဘူးဝရှေ့၌ ပြန်လည် ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့ကြောင်း သိရှိရသည်။ ဒေါက်တာမင်းထက်ပိုင်သည် လူမှုကွန်ရက်စာမျက်နှာပေါ်တွင် မဟုတ်မမှန်ရေးသားပြီး ဆူပူအကြမ်းဖက်မှု များဖြစ်ပေါ်လာစေရန် စည်းရုံးလှုံ့ဆော်သည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲခြင်းခံရကာ မြိတ်မြို့နယ်၊ ပသောင်းကျေးရွာအုပ်စု၊ ကြေးနန်းတိုင် တံတား၌ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဧပြီလဆန်းပိုင်းတွင် ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။
အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းမှ ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ အရပ်သားများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ CDM လှုပ်ရှားနေသည့် ဝန်ထမ်းများစသည့် နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှ မည်သူမဆို ဖမ်းဆီး၊ ထိန်းသိမ်း၊ တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံထားရ ခြင်းများနှင့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးသွားသူများ၏ အချက်အလက်များကို သိရှိပါက အောက်ပါလိပ်စာ များသို့ ဆက်သွယ်၍ အသိပေး၊ အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ကျဆုံးအချက်အလက်များကို ဖော်ပြပါ [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အဖမ်းအဆီးအချက်အလက်များကို [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း တိုက်ရိုက်ပေးပို့၍ ဆက်သွယ်အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-06
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-06
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters
Language:
more
Description:
"On January 4, the junta announced they would release a total of 7,012 prisoners in “accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 401, Sub-Section (1)”. AAPP has been monitoring the situation and understands that around 300 political prisoners from at least (19) prisons were released. Throughout the day, AAPP has been able to confirm the release of 193 identified political prisoners. The exact identities and total figures of the prisoners released remain to be verified, but AAPP will continue to monitor and document these releases as more information becomes available.
Since the February 1, 2021, military coup and the emergence of the Spring Revolution, a total of (2702) people, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed through military crackdowns following pro-democracy movements.
Since the coup, a total of (13,284) people are currently under detention, (1912) of whom are serving sentences. There are a total of (100) post-coup death row prisoners as of January 5, 2023. (121) people have been sentenced in absentia, of whom (42) have been sentenced to death. This makes a total of (142) people who have been sentenced to death. (24) people have been released on bail and (3667) people have already been released. These are the numbers verified by AAPP. The actual numbers are likely much higher. We will continue to update accordingly.
According to information gathered today, on January 3, at around 7:30 PM, the junta fired heavy artillery, despite no clash occurring, at Demoso Township in Kayah State. One of the artillery shells exploded on a hut near Daw Tangoo Village, resulting in the death of an internally displaced woman called Soe Myar, who was struck in the thigh.
On January 3, Aung Kyawl, NLD Township Secretary of Wakema Township in Ayeyarwady Region, was sentenced to serve 10 years imprisonment with hard labour. Aung Kwyal was charged under Counter-Terrorism Law Section 50 (j) and sentenced by the Myaungmya Prison Special Court in Ayeyarwady Region. He is over 70 years old and already spent over a year under detainment.
AAPP will continue to inform on verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update the lists with details of these alleged offences. If you receive any information about detentions of, or charges against, CSO leaders, activists, journalists, CDM workers, other civilians and fallen heroes in relation to the military and police crackdown on dissent, please submit to the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected].....ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်နေ့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုမှ အကျဉ်းသား၊အကျဉ်းသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၇၀၁၂) အား ရာဇဝတ်ကျင့်ထုံး ဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၄၀၁၊ ပုဒ်မခွဲ (၁) အရ ပြန်လည် လွှတ်ပေးမည်ဟု ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာခဲ့သည်။ AAPP မှ အဆိုပါ အကျဉ်းထောင်လွှတ်ပေးမှု အခြေအနေနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ စောင့်ကြည့်မှတ်တမ်းတင်လျက်ရှိရာ လက်ရှိအချိန်ထိရရှိထား သော အချက်အလက်များအရ အကျဉ်းထောင် (၁၉) ခုထက်မနည်းမှ နိုင်ငံရေး အကျဉ်းသား (၃၀၀) ဝန်းကျင် လွတ်မြောက်လာကြောင်းသိရှိရသည်။ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများ ကူညီစောင့် ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း (AAPP) မှ အဆိုပါ အကျဉ်းသားလွှတ်ပေးမှုဖြစ်စဉ်မှ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသော နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား (၁၉၃) ဦးကို ယနေ့အထိ မှတ်တမ်းပြုနိုင်ခဲ့သည်။ လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေအတိအကျနှင့် အမည်စာရင်းမှာ ချက်ချင်းရရှိရန် လက်လှမ်းမမီနိုင် သည့်အတွက် အတည်ပြုရန် လိုအပ်နေဆဲဖြစ်ပြီး အတည်ပြုနိုင်သည့် အမည်စာရင်းများကို ဆက်လက်ဖော်ပြပေးသွား ပါမည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ မတရားစစ်အာဏာလုမှုဖြစ်စဉ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခဲ့ကြသော ဒီမိုကရေစီရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများ နှင့် ပြည်သူများ၏ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရသူ စုစုပေါင်းမှာ (၂၇၀၂) ဦး ရှိခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်မှ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၅ ရက်နေ့ထိတိုင် ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၃၂၈၄) ဦးရှိပြီး ၎င်းတို့အနက်မှ (၁၉၁၂) ဦးမှာ ထောင်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသည်။ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၅ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်အထိ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရပြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်များတွင် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်ကွယ်သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ (၄၂) ဦး အပါအဝင် (၁၂၁) ဦးမှာ မျက်ကွယ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံ ထားရသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၄၂) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အာမခံဖြင့် လွတ်မြောက်သူ (၂၄) ဦးရှိပြီး၊ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေမှာ (၃၆၆၇) ဦး ရှိသည်။
ဖော်ပြပါ ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များသည် AAPP မှ ကောက်ယူရရှိထားသည့် အရေအတွက်ဖြစ်ပြီး မြေပြင်တွင် ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့်အချက်အလက်နှင့် ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များမှာ ယခုထက်ပိုမိုများပြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ အချက်အလက်များကို ထပ်မံကောက်ယူရရှိလာပါက ဆက်လက်ထည့်သွင်းဖော်ပြသွားပါမည်။
ယနေ့ရရှိသော အချက်အလက်များအရ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်နေ့၊ ည ၇ နာရီခွဲခန့်အချိန်တွင် ကယားပြည်နယ်၊ ဒီးမော့ဆိုမြို့နယ်၌ တိုက်ပွဲဖြစ်ပွားခြင်းမရှိဘဲ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏တပ်မှ လက်နက်ကြီးဖြင့် ပစ်ခတ်ခဲ့ရာ အဆိုပါလက်နက်ကြီးကျည်မှာ ဒေါတငူးကျေးရွာအနီးရှိ တဲအိမ်ပေါ်ကို ကျရောက်ပေါက်ကွဲခဲ့သောကြောင့် စစ်ရှောင် အမျိုးသမီးတစ်ဦးဖြစ်သူ စိုးမြာသည် ပေါင်ကို ထိမှန်ခဲ့ပြီး သေဆုံးခဲ့သည်။
ထို့ပြင် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်နေ့တွင် ဧရာဝတီတိုင်း၊ မြောင်းမြအကျဉ်းထောင်တွင်းအထူးတရားရုံးမှ ဝါးခယ်မမြို့နယ် အမျိုးသားဒီမိုကရေစီအဖွဲ့ချုပ်၏ မြို့နယ်အတွင်းရေးမှူး ဦးအောင်ကြွယ်ကို အကြမ်းဖက်မှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေပုဒ်မ ၅၀(ည) ဖြင့် အလုပ်ကြမ်းနှင့် ထောင်ဒဏ် ၁၀ နှစ်စီ ချမှတ်ခဲ့သည်။ ဦးအောင်ကြွယ်သည် အသက် ၇၀ ကျော်အရွယ် ရှိပြီဖြစ်ပြီး တစ်နှစ်ကျော်ကြာဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရပြီးနောက် အမိန့်ချမှတ်ခံခဲ့ရခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းမှ ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ အရပ်သားများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ CDM လှုပ်ရှားနေသည့် ဝန်ထမ်းများစသည့် နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှ မည်သူမဆို ဖမ်းဆီး၊ ထိန်းသိမ်း၊ တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံထားရ ခြင်းများနှင့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးသွားသူများ၏ အချက်အလက်များကို သိရှိပါက အောက်ပါလိပ်စာ များသို့ ဆက်သွယ်၍ အသိပေး၊ အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ကျဆုံးအချက်အလက်များကို ဖော်ပြပါ [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အဖမ်းအဆီးအချက်အလက်များကို [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း တိုက်ရိုက်ပေးပို့၍ ဆက်သွယ်အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-05
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-05
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters
Language:
more
Description:
"AAPP Secretary U Tate Naing said “the junta’s propaganda mouthpiece Myawaddy media today stated that 7,012 prisoners would be released. An illegal regime cannot announce an amnesty – since its coup the junta has announced several so-called amnesties to distract international attention. AAPP has been monitoring the situation and understands that over 200 political prisoners from at least (19) prisons were released today. We have so far confirmed 43 identities and will continue to monitor the situation. In fact, today on January 4, 2022 – an additional (22) political prisoners were arrested across the country but mostly in Sagaing”
Since the February 1, 2021, military coup and the emergence of the Spring Revolution, a total of (2701) people, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed through military crackdowns following pro-democracy movements.
Since the coup, a total of (13,356) people are currently under detention, (1923) of whom are serving sentences. There are a total of (100) post-coup death row prisoners as of January 4, 2023. (121) people have been sentenced in absentia, of whom (42) have been sentenced to death. This makes a total of (142) people who have been sentenced to death. (24) people have been released on bail and (3517) people have already been released. These are the numbers verified by AAPP. The actual numbers are likely much higher. We will continue to update accordingly.
According to information gathered today, on January 1, junta troops stationed in Htan Ma Kauk Village, Seikphyu Township, Magway Region indiscriminately fired into the village. A 12-year-old called, A Mu Mu Aung, was killed while gathering firewood on the hill to the southwest of the village.
In addition, on January 3, Ashin Arsar Ya (aka Thabeik Khin) from Sangha Union Mandalay who was involved in anti-dictatorship protests in Mandalay City, was detained by the armed wing of the junta. He was arrested whilst carrying out a photo campaign at Kyauk Taw Gyi Pagoda, near the foot of Mandalay Mountain.
AAPP will continue to inform on verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update the lists with details of these alleged offenses. If you receive any information about detentions of, or charges against, CSO leaders, activists, journalists, CDM workers, other civilians and fallen heroes in relation to the military and police crackdown on dissent, please submit to the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected] .....“အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုရဲ့ဝါဒဖြန့်သတင်းမီဒီယာတစ်ခုဖြစ်တဲ့ မြဝတီသတင်းဌာနကနေ ပြစ်ဒဏ်ကျခံနေရတဲ့ အကျဉ်းသား/အကျဉ်းသူ ၇၀၁၂ ဦးကို လွှတ်ပေးမယ်လို့ ဒီနေ့မှာ ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့ပါတယ်။ အကြမ်းဖက်အာဏာလု စစ်အုပ်စုအနေနဲ့ လွတ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းသာခွင့်ပေးဖို့ရာ တရားဝင်ဘာအခွင့်အာဏာမှမရှိနေပေမယ့် သူတို့အနေနဲ့ နိုင်ငံတကာအသိုင်းအဝိုင်းကို အာရုံလွှဲဖို့ရာအတွက် အမည်ခံလွတ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းသာခွင့်တွေကို အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက်မှာ ပြုလုပ်နေပါတယ်။ AAPP က ဒီနေ့လွတ်မြောက်လာတဲ့ အခြေအနေနဲ့ပတ်သက်ပြီး စောင့်ကြည့်မှတ်တမ်း ပြုစုလျက်ရှိရာမှာ လက်ရှိအချိန်ထိ ရထားတဲ့အချက်အလက်တွေအရ အကျဉ်းထောင် (၁၉) ခုထက်မနည်းကနေ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား (၂၀၀) ကျော် လွတ်မြောက်လာတယ်လို့ သိထားရပါတယ်။ အဲ့ဒီထဲကမှ အမည်စာရင်းနဲ့တကွ မှတ်တမ်းကောက်ယူထားနိုင်သူဦးရေ (၄၃) ဦးရှိနေပြီး အချက်အလက်တွေကို ဆက်လက်ကောက်ယူနေဆဲပါ။ စစ်အုပ်စုက အကျဉ်းထောင်တွေကနေ အကျဉ်းသားတွေကိုလွှတ်ပေးနေတယ်လို့ ပြောပေမယ့်လည်း ဒီနေ့မှာ နိုင်ငံရေးအရ အဖမ်းခံရတဲ့သူ (၂၂) ဦးရှိနေပြီး အဲ့ဒီထဲက အများစုဟာ တိုက်ပွဲအရှိန် ပြင်းထန်နေတဲ့ စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်းကပါ” ဟု နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများ ကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း (AAPP) ၏ အတွင်းရေးမှူးဖြစ်သူ ဦးတိတ်နိုင်မှ ပြောကြားခဲ့သည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ မတရားစစ်အာဏာလုမှုဖြစ်စဉ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခဲ့ကြသော ဒီမိုကရေစီရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများ နှင့် ပြည်သူများ၏ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရသူ စုစုပေါင်းမှာ (၂၇၀၁) ဦး ရှိခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်မှ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်နေ့ထိတိုင် ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၃၃၅၆) ဦးရှိပြီး ၎င်းတို့အနက်မှ (၁၉၂၃) ဦး မှာ ထောင်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသည်။ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၄ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်အထိ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရပြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်များတွင် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်ကွယ်သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ (၄၂) ဦး အပါအဝင် (၁၂၁) ဦးမှာ မျက်ကွယ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံ ထားရသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၄၂) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အာမခံဖြင့် လွတ်မြောက်သူ (၂၄) ဦးရှိပြီး၊ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေမှာ (၃၅၁၇) ဦး ရှိသည်။
ဖော်ပြပါ ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များသည် AAPP မှ ကောက်ယူရရှိထားသည့် အရေအတွက်ဖြစ်ပြီး မြေပြင်တွင် ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့်အချက်အလက်နှင့် ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များမှာ ယခုထက်ပိုမိုများပြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ အချက်အလက် များကို ထပ်မံကောက်ယူရရှိလာပါက ဆက်လက်ထည့်သွင်းဖော်ပြသွားပါမည်။
ယနေ့ရရှိသော အချက်အလက်များအရ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် မကွေးတိုင်း၊ ဆိပ်ဖြူမြို့နယ်၊ ထမ္မကောက်ကျေးရွာ၌ တပ်စွဲထားသော အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏တပ်မှ ရမ်းသန်းပစ်ခတ်ခြင်းကြောင့် ရွာ၏ အနောက်တောင်ဘက်ရှိ တောင်ကုန်းပေါ်တွင် ထင်းခွေနေသော အသက် ၁၂ နှစ်အရွယ် ဧမူမူအောင်သည် ကျည်ထိမှန်ပြီး သေဆုံးခဲ့သည်။
ထို့ပြင် မန္တလေးမြို့တွင် စစ်အာဏာရှင်ဆန့်ကျင်သော ဆန္ဒပြလှုပ်ရှားမှု၌ ပါဝင်သည့် သံဃသမဂ္ဂ (မန္တလေး) မှ အရှင်အာစာရ (ခ) သပိတ်ခင်ကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏တပ်မှ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်နေ့၌ ဖမ်းဆီးခဲ့သည်။ အရှင်အာစာရသည် မန္တလေးတောင်ခြေအနီးရှိ ကျောက်တော်ကြီးဘုရားတွင် ဓာတ်ပုံကမ်ပိန်းပြုလုပ်နေစဥ် ဖမ်းဆီး ခြင်း ခံခဲ့ရသည်။
အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းမှ ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ အရပ်သားများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ CDM လှုပ်ရှားနေသည့် ဝန်ထမ်းများစသည့် နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှ မည်သူမဆို ဖမ်းဆီး၊ ထိန်းသိမ်း၊ တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံထားရ ခြင်းများနှင့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးသွားသူများ၏ အချက်အလက်များကို သိရှိပါက အောက်ပါလိပ်စာ များသို့ ဆက်သွယ်၍ အသိပေး၊ အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ကျဆုံးအချက်အလက်များကို ဖော်ပြပါ [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အဖမ်းအဆီးအချက်အလက်များကို [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း တိုက်ရိုက်ပေးပို့၍ ဆက်သွယ်အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-04
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters
Language:
more
Description:
"Myanmar’s military regime has released the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government’s Minister of Religious Affairs and Culture, Thura U Aung Ko, philanthropist and writer Daw Than Myint Aung and ex-NLD information officer, writer U Htin Lin Oo, along with some detained journalists, as part of the junta’s prisoner amnesty to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Myanmar’s independence from the UK.
The junta announced on Wednesday that 7,021 prisoners were freed from jails across the country. It is not yet clear how many political prisoners were among those released.
Family members said that former Brigadier General Thura U Aung Ko was released from Yangon’s Insein Prison on Tuesday night. The 75-year-old was arrested after the February 2021 coup and charged with alleged corruption. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison with labor in March 2021.
Relatives of Daw Than Myint Aung and U Htin Lin Oo were waiting at the gate of Insein Prison on Wednesday morning to welcome them. The pair were released Wednesday afternoon.
Daw Than Myint Aung was a member of the Yangon City Development Committee during the NLD’s time in power. She was arrested on the first day of the military takeover and sentenced to three years in prison for incitement.
Former NLD information officer U Htin Lin Oo faced the same charge as Daw Than Myint Aung, and was also sentenced to three years by the Insein Prison Court.
U Tun Kyi, the head of a political prisoners group, said that Thura U Aung Ko is known to be in poor health and that his release was a cynical ploy by the regime.
“The junta released the political prisoner hostages for its own political gain,” said U Tun Kyi, referring to international pressure on the regime to free political prisoners.
On Wednesday, Kyaw Zay Ya, the chief reporter of Mawkun Magazine, was released from Daik-U prison in Bago Region, but was then detained again by police for unknown reasons.
Family members of other detained journalists were eagerly awaiting the release of their relatives. The husband of Thuzar, a journalist arrested in September 2021 and sentenced to two years in prison under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code for spreading false news, said that she had been freed.
“I am now on my way to East Dagon Police Station to get her,” said her husband Ko Ye Ko.
Another journalist Sai Ko Ko Tun, a former reporter from the now defunct 7 Days News, was released from Dawei prison, too.
As of Tuesday, some 16,862 people have been detained by the junta since the coup, of whom 3,463 have been released, according to the rights group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
The AAPP’s joint secretary Ko Bo Kyi said that with many political prisoners still locked up, the regime’s amnesty does not herald any meaningful changes for Myanmar.
“That will happen only when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, U Win Myint and all the other political prisoners are freed,” he added.
Both Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Myint were arrested on the first day of the coup. Former State Counselor Suu Kyi has been sentenced to a total of 33 years in prison, while ousted President U Win Myint has been given 12 years by the regime..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2023-01-04
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
more
Description:
"Since the February 1, 2021, military coup and the emergence of the Spring Revolution, a total of (2692) people, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed through military crackdowns following pro-democracy movements.
Since the coup, a total of (13,375) people are currently under detention, (1947) of whom are serving sentences. There are a total of (100) post-coup death row prisoners as of January 3, 2023. (121) people have been sentenced in absentia, of whom (42) have been sentenced to death. This makes a total of (142) people who have been sentenced to death. (24) people have been released on bail and (3463) people have already been released. These are the numbers verified by AAPP. The actual numbers are likely much higher. We will continue to update accordingly.
On December 29, Nang Twal Tar Oo, Joint-Secretary of Yangon University of Education Students’ Union (ABFSU), and Yu Yu Mon, a former member of Yangon Institute of Economics Students’ Union and current Vice-Chief Statistician of Nay Pyi Taw Central Statistical Organization, were each sentenced to serve 10 years imprisonment. Yu Yu Mon had joined CDM and the pair were sentenced by Mon State Mawlamyine District Court under Counter-Terrorism Law Section 50 (j). They were arrested while evading capture in Mawlamyine Town on June 9.
On January 2, 2023, at around 9 AM, junta forces, stationed at Budalin Township in Sagaing Region, raided Shwe Taung Village in Budalin Township. The junta troops killed a couple of over 70-years-old. Military soldiers also detained a local called Nga Hmay for just wearing long pants, then tortured before killing him in a corn field outside the village.
AAPP will continue to inform on verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update the lists with details of these alleged offenses. If you receive any information about detentions of, or charges against, CSO leaders, activists, journalists, CDM workers, other civilians and fallen heroes in relation to the military and police crackdown on dissent, please submit to the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected].....၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ မတရားစစ်အာဏာလုမှုဖြစ်စဉ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခဲ့ကြသော ဒီမိုကရေစီရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများ နှင့် ပြည်သူများ၏ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရသူ စုစုပေါင်းမှာ (၂၆၉၂) ဦး ရှိခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်မှ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်နေ့ထိတိုင် ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၃၃၇၅) ဦးရှိပြီး ၎င်းတို့အနက်မှ (၁၉၄၇) ဦး မှာ ထောင်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသည်။ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်အထိ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရပြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်များတွင် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်ကွယ်သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ (၄၂) ဦး အပါအဝင် (၁၂၁) ဦးမှာ မျက်ကွယ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံ ထားရသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၄၂) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အာမခံဖြင့် လွတ်မြောက်သူ (၂၄) ဦးရှိပြီး၊ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေမှာ (၃၄၆၃) ဦး ရှိသည်။
ယနေ့ရရှိသောအချက်အလက်များအရ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၂၉ ရက်နေ့တွင် မွန်ပြည်နယ်၊ မော်လမြိုင်ခရိုင်တရားရုံးမှ ရန်ကုန်ပညာရေးတက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားများသမဂ္ဂ (ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ်)၏ တွဲဖက်အတွင်းရေးမှူး နန်းတွယ်တာဦးနှင့် ရန်ကုန်စီးပွားရေးတက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ဝင်ဟောင်း၊ အာဏာဖီဆန်ရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှု (CDM) ပြုလုပ်ထား သော နေပြည်တော် ဗဟိုစာရင်းအင်းအဖွဲ့၏ ဒု-စာရင်းအင်းမှူး မယုယုမွန်တို့ကို အကြမ်းဖက်မှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၅၀ (ည) ဖြင့် ထောင်ဒဏ် ၁၀ နှစ်စီ ချမှတ်ခဲ့သည်။ ဇွန်လ ၉ ရက်နေ့တွင် မနန်းတွယ်တာဦးနှင့် မယုယုမွန်တို့သည် မော်လမြိုင်မြို့၌ တိမ်းရှောင်နေစဉ် ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။
ထို့ပြင် ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၃၀ ရက်နေ့တွင် ဧရာဝတီတိုင်း မအူပင်ခရိုင်ထောင်တွင်းအထူးတရားရုံးမှ မအူပင်နည်းပညာ တက္ကသိုလ်၏ နောက်ဆုံးနှစ်ကျောင်းသူ မရွှေခြူးဝိုင်းကို အကြမ်းဖက်မှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေပုဒ်မ ၅၀ (ည)ဖြင့် ထောင်ဒဏ် ဆယ်နှစ်ချမှတ်ခဲ့သည်။ မရွှေခြူးဝိုင်းသည် ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မအူပင်) ၏ သတင်းနှင့် ပြန်ကြားရေး တာဝန်ခံ တစ်ဦး ဖြစ်ပြီး ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ အောက်တိုဘာလတွင် ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။
ဖော်ပြပါ ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များသည် AAPP မှ ကောက်ယူရရှိထားသည့် အရေအတွက်ဖြစ်ပြီး မြေပြင်တွင် ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့်အချက်အလက်နှင့် ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များမှာ ယခုထက်ပိုမိုများပြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ အချက်အလက် များကို ထပ်မံကောက်ယူရရှိလာပါက ဆက်လက်ထည့်သွင်းဖော်ပြသွားပါမည်။
အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းမှ ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ အရပ်သားများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ CDM လှုပ်ရှားနေသည့် ဝန်ထမ်းများစသည့် နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှ မည်သူမဆို ဖမ်းဆီး၊ ထိန်းသိမ်း၊ တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံထားရ ခြင်းများနှင့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးသွားသူများ၏ အချက်အလက်များကို သိရှိပါက အောက်ပါလိပ်စာ များသို့ ဆက်သွယ်၍ အသိပေး၊ အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ကျဆုံးအချက်အလက်များကို ဖော်ပြပါ [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အဖမ်းအဆီးအချက်အလက်များကို [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း တိုက်ရိုက်ပေးပို့၍ ဆက်သွယ်အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-03
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters
Language:
more
Description:
"Since the February 1, 2021, military coup and the emergence of the Spring Revolution, a total of (2689) people, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed through military crackdowns following pro-democracy movements.
Since the coup, a total of (13,300) people are currently under detention, (1940) of whom are serving sentences. There are a total of (100) post-coup death row prisoners as of January 2, 2023. (121) people have been sentenced in absentia, of whom (42) have been sentenced to death. This makes a total of (142) people who have been sentenced to death. (24) people have been released on bail and (3463) people have already been released. These are the numbers verified by AAPP. The actual numbers are likely much higher. We will continue to update accordingly.
According to information gathered today, on December 30, an artillery shell fired by junta forces exploded in San Khar Village, Lone Khin Village Tract, Hpakant Township, Kachin State; injuring six locals. Kun Jar Naw was one of six injured locals and he died on arrival at the hospital.
On December 30, Kaung Khant Kyaw, a primary school teacher of a high school branch in Htate Pote Kone Village, Myanaung Township, Ayeyarwady Region, was given a death sentence by a special court inside Hinthada Prison. He was charged under Section 51 (a) of the Counter-Terrorism Law and Section 302 (1)(c) of the Penal Code. In August 2022, Kaung Khant Kyaw had previously been sentenced to serve 5 years in prison under Section 50 (j) of the Counter-Terrorism Law. Kaung Khant Kyaw had taken part in the Civil Disobedience Movement and he was arrested in October 2021, on suspicion of being involved in the death of junta informant Win Nyunt Aung from Thabyay Kone Village.
AAPP will continue to inform on verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update the lists with details of these alleged offenses. If you receive any information about detentions of, or charges against, CSO leaders, activists, journalists, CDM workers, other civilians and fallen heroes in relation to the military and police crackdown on dissent, please submit to the following addresses: [email protected] [email protected].....၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ ၁ ရက်နေ့ မတရားစစ်အာဏာလုမှုဖြစ်စဉ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်ခဲ့ကြသော ဒီမိုကရေစီရေးလှုပ်ရှားသူများ နှင့် ပြည်သူများ၏ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရသူ စုစုပေါင်းမှာ (၂၆၈၉) ဦး ရှိခဲ့ပြီဖြစ်ပါသည်။
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် အာဏာသိမ်းချိန်မှ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၂ ရက်နေ့ထိတိုင် ဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၃၃၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီး ၎င်းတို့အနက်မှ (၁၉၄၀) ဦး မှာ ထောင်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသည်။ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၂ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်အထိ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးနှင့်ဆက်စပ်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရပြီး အကျဉ်းထောင်များတွင် ထိန်းသိမ်းခံနေရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၀၀) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်ကွယ်သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရသူ (၄၂) ဦး အပါအဝင် (၁၂၁) ဦးမှာ မျက်ကွယ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံ ထားရသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသူ စုစုပေါင်း (၁၄၂) ဦးရှိပြီဖြစ်သည်။ အာမခံဖြင့် လွတ်မြောက်သူ (၂၄) ဦးရှိပြီး၊ ပြန်လည်လွတ်မြောက်လာသူဦးရေမှာ (၃၄၆၃) ဦး ရှိသည်။
ယနေ့ရရှိသောအချက်အလက်များအရ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၃၀ ရက်နေ့တွင် ကချင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ဖားကန့်မြို့နယ်၊ လုံးခင်း ကျေးရွာအုပ်စု၊ ဆန်ခါကျေးရွာအတွင်းကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုမှ ပစ်ခတ်သော လက်နက်ကြီးကျည် ကျရောက် ပေါက်ကွဲခဲ့သောကြောင့် အရပ်သားခြောက်ဦး ကျည်ထိမှန်ခဲ့သည်။ ကျည်ထိမှန်ခဲ့သော အရပ်သား ခြောက်ဦးအနက် တစ်ဦးဖြစ်သော ကွန်ဂျာနော်မှာ ဆေးရုံအရောက်၌ သေဆုံးခဲ့သည်။
ထို့ပြင် ဧရာဝတီတိုင်း၊ မြန်အောင်မြို့နယ်၊ ထိပ်ပုတ်ကုန်းကျေးရွာတွင်ရှိသည့် အထက်တန်းကျောင်းခွဲ၏ မူလတန်းပြ ကျောင်းဆရာတစ်ဦးဖြစ်သော ကိုကောင်းခန့်ကျော်ကို ဟင်္သာတအကျဥ်းထောင်တွင်း အထူးတရားရုံးမှ အကြမ်းဖက်မှု တိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၅၁ (က)၊ ရာဇသတ်ကြီးဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၃၀၂ (၁)(ဂ) တို့ဖြင့် ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၃၀ ရက်နေ့တွင် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခဲ့သည်။ ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ်၊ ဩဂုတ်လတွင် ကိုကောင်းခန့်ကျော်သည် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေ ပုဒ်မ ၅၀ (ည) ဖြင့် ထောင်ဒဏ် ငါးနှစ် ချမှတ်ခြင်းခံထားရပြီးဖြစ်သည်။ ကိုကောင်းခန့်ကျော်သည် အာဏာဖီဆန်ရေး လှုပ်ရှားမှု (CDM) တွင် ပါဝင်သူဖြစ်ပြီး သပြေကုန်းကျေးရွာမှ စစ်တပ်သတင်းပေး ဦးဝင်းညွန့်အောင် သတ်ဖြတ်ခံရမှု ဖြစ်စဥ်နှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ သံသယဖြင့် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ အောက်တိုဘာလတွင် ဖမ်းဆီးခြင်းခံခဲ့ရသည်။
ဖော်ပြပါ ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များသည် AAPP မှ ကောက်ယူရရှိထားသည့် အရေအတွက်ဖြစ်ပြီး မြေပြင်တွင် ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့်အချက်အလက်နှင့် ကိန်းဂဏန်းအရေအတွက်များမှာ ယခုထက်ပိုမိုများပြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ အချက်အလက် များကို ထပ်မံကောက်ယူရရှိလာပါက ဆက်လက်ထည့်သွင်းဖော်ပြသွားပါမည်။
အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းမှ ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ အရပ်သားများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ CDM လှုပ်ရှားနေသည့် ဝန်ထမ်းများစသည့် နယ်ပယ်အသီးသီးမှ မည်သူမဆို ဖမ်းဆီး၊ ထိန်းသိမ်း၊ တရားစွဲဆိုခြင်းခံထားရ ခြင်းများနှင့် နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးကာလအတွင်း ကျဆုံးသွားသူများ၏ အချက်အလက်များကို သိရှိပါက အောက်ပါလိပ်စာ များသို့ ဆက်သွယ်၍ အသိပေး၊ အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။ ထို့ပြင် ကျဆုံးအချက်အလက်များကို ဖော်ပြပါ [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း၊ အဖမ်းအဆီးအချက်အလက်များကို [email protected] အီးမေးလ်သို့လည်းကောင်း တိုက်ရိုက်ပေးပို့၍ ဆက်သွယ်အကြောင်းကြားနိုင်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2023-01-02
Date of entry/update:
2023-01-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Anti-coup protesters, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
more
Description:
"Myanmar endured a second year under the military dictatorship of Min Aung Hlaing in 2022, a year marked by worsening atrocities by the junta, but also by an increasingly organized and successful resistance against it, as the civilian National Unity Government and its armed wing, the People’s Defense Force, went on the diplomatic and military offensive, with help on the battlefield from of a number of the country’s oldest ethnic armed organizations. The people of Myanmar continued to draw inspiration from the courage displayed by the country’s thousands of striking civil servants and political prisoners—including four martyred activists hanged by the regime—as well as detained elected leaders U Win Myint and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the latter having been moved by the regime to solitary confinement in prison in June. While the last month of the year offered a few rays of hope in the international arena with stepped up action by the US and UN, for the most part, in 2022 the international community continued to do little more than pay lip service to the need for a return to democracy in Myanmar, as the regime continued to thumb its nose at regional bloc ASEAN while drawing practical support from India, China and, in particular, Russia.
Here, The Irrawaddy looks at some of the individuals and groups who shaped the events of 2022.....Immortal heroes who gave their flesh, bones and lives...
The events of July 23, 2022 are a dark mystery. Many Myanmar people wonder how the country’s respected and devoted democracy fighters Ko Jimmy and Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw reacted as they were led up to the gallows at Insein Prison, how they responded when the ropes were placed around their necks, and what their last words were before they were hanged. The next day, two more anti-regime protesters, Ko Hla Myo Aung and Ko Aung Thura Zaw, faced the same fate on the same gallows.
They were killed. But they will never die. General Aung San is still alive; the 32-year-old independence leader’s assassination in 1947 ensured that he will be remembered always. Win Maw Oo is also alive, though the 16-year-old girl was shot dead by military troops during the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. Salai Tin Maung Oo lives on, though the 25-year-old ethnic Chin student leader was hanged in 1976. They are just a few of a long list of heroes who put their flesh, bones and lives in the hands of successive regimes in the interest of their country and compatriots.
Such stories of sacrifice are not new in Myanmar. Successive military regimes have openly or secretly killed countless people since their first coup in 1962. Before and after the second coup in 1988, about 3,000 pro-democracy protesters and students were killed. Since the latest putsch last year, the regime has killed more than 2,600 people, including young students, politicians and members of various professions, to date, on streets, in schools, in their own homes, in torture chambers and also in prisons. They are all national heroes, as they died great deaths.
Among these great deaths, those of veteran 88 Generation pro-democracy activist Ko Jimmy (Kyaw Min Yu), 53, former National League for Democracy lawmaker and hip-hop star Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw, 41, and anti-coup protesters Ko Hla Myo Aung and Ko Aung Thura Zaw stand out, as they were killed by hanging in the first such executions in more than 30 years. The hangings showed once and for all that coup leader Min Aung Hlaing is even more evil than his predecessors—they, at least, refrained from hanging political activists after the execution of Salai Tin Maung Oo in 1976.
Min Aung Hlaing’s decision to execute the four activists was intended to extinguish the flame of the people’s democracy. But the act was counterproductive; their deaths have emboldened the spirit and strength of the Myanmar people to fight the military dictatorship, and those he killed have become heroes of the country. No one really died at the hands of the most evil man. They gave their flesh, bones and spirits to help build a beautiful, peaceful and prosperous country. They are all immortal......Min Aung Hlaing: The face of evil...If you want to know what evil looks like, look closely at Myanmar military junta chief Min Aung Hlaing. Since his coup last year, he has commissioned his troops to kill thousands of his countrymen simply because they reject his rule. As of December this year, troops acting on his orders have killed more than 2,600 civilians, including schoolchildren and elderly people, in artillery and air strikes. His subordinates enjoy immunity to commit extrajudicial killings of dissidents in torture chambers while locking up thousands of others. It is not just that his regime does nothing good for the country; Min Aung Hlaing is the most devious and bloodthirsty man in Myanmar today.
Under his rule, Myanmar, whose return to prosperity had been gaining momentum in the years before he seized power, has made a dramatic U-turn and is now on its way to becoming a failed state. Young people have joined the country’s established ethnic armed groups in droves to topple his regime, while others have left Myanmar in search of greener pastures. The country is now backsliding socially and economically into the sorry state it endured in the late 1990s, when people had electricity for a few hours a day. Lawlessness is rampant, even in the major cities including commercial hub Yangon.
Internationally—his increasingly cozy relations with Russia notwithstanding—Min Aung Hlaing is mostly an outcast. Even the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, refuses to invite him to its summits due to his failure to cooperate with the bloc’s efforts to mediate the crisis. Under his rule, several Western democracies including the US and UK have downgraded their diplomatic relations with Myanmar.
In the coming years, historians of Myanmar will unanimously depict him as the leader of a failed coup, one whose brutality is matched only by his stupidity. He is clearly the most inept dictator the country has ever known, having failed to assert control nearly two years after the takeover, unable to contain an unwavering and unprecedented popular armed resistance against him. In desperation he has resorted to air strikes and a scorched earth policy against civilians, especially in resistance strongholds, hoping to rule through fear. Rather than forcing Myanmar’s people into submission, however, his atrocities have only turned them into more committed revolutionaries, who are dying to see him hang at any cost. In their view, there can be no sympathy for a man as devious as Min Aung Hlaing. He deserves only the worst!.....People’s Defense Force: Myanmar’s ‘People’s Army’ evolves....There has been little or no progress in people’s lives after 21 months of military rule in Myanmar, but the People’s Defense Force (PDF) offers a rare ray of light. The young and energetic folks who traded their comfortable lives to join the armed struggle against the regime have proven themselves on the battlefield—in stark contrast to their pre-coup image as a generation largely obsessed with online video games and Korean dramas—successfully engaging the Myanmar military while fighting alongside the country’s seasoned ethnic armies.
In contrast to the homemade hunting rifles they wielded in the summer of 2021, many but not all are now properly equipped with automatic assault rifles thanks to the Myanmar people’s crowdfunding support. It’s encouraging for the people to see the young PDF members, whom they affectionately call “our boys and girls,” cradling M-16s—though some are dressed in their favorite football team jersey and dusty sandals to supplement their insufficient uniforms.
One thing that hasn’t changed is their steely determination to topple the regime and fight for democracy—a quality that moved the country’s detained democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to express her pride in them.
Furthermore, they have earned respect from international observers who initially thought the PDF’s armed struggle against the regime, with its superior firepower, wouldn’t last long. The PDF groups across the country are now more organized, united under the command of the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), and using more creative tactics, such as the deployment of commercial drones for combat purposes. They are now inflicting heavy losses on junta forces daily.
As there are now over 300 PDF battalions nationwide, supplemented by township-level defense forces in 250 of the 330 townships across the country, the PDF groups in 2022 took on a more offensive role, increasingly raiding and occupying—sometimes in collaboration with ethnic armed groups—army outposts and police stations in resistance strongholds.
But this has required considerable sacrifice on the PDFs’ side. Some fighters have lost their lives in action, and others have been maimed by explosions while testing or producing improvised weapons, too impatient to wait for arms from the NUG, which has been struggling to keep all PDF members supplied.
There have been some missteps. Some PDF groups have admitted involvement in extrajudicial killings when dealing with accused junta informants. Those responsible have been severely criticized by their peers, who associate such actions with the regime. The NUG announced that those found guilty would be punished.....National Unity Government: Progress on multiple fronts despite shortcomings...Heavy blows struck this year by the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) against the brutal military regime of Min Aung Hlaing—including creative and successful fundraising schemes for the revolution; battleground victories of its armed wing, the People’s Defense Force (PDF), and allied ethnic armed groups (EAOs); and increased diplomatic presence, engagement and recognition on the international front—have heartened the people of Myanmar amid the ongoing shocking news stories and images of the junta’s atrocities.
Under its command, PDF groups across the country are becoming more sophisticated and organized, undergoing advanced military training and launching offensives against regime troops. NUG Minister of Planning and Finance U Tin Tun Naing has also developed a reputation as a fundraising genius, introducing innovative projects such as lotteries, bond issuances, online auctions of houses and properties acquired by regime leaders, sales of land plots, and digital payments. While some of his plans didn’t impress some observers at first, he has proven his ability to successfully reach targets within a few days with the help of his teammates across the world. To date, his ministry has raised about US$100 million, around 95 percent of which has been used for the armed struggle.
NUG Foreign Minister Daw Zin Mar Aung has also earned well-deserved praise for her diplomatic victories over the junta. The passage of the Burma Act by the US Congress, the UN Security Council’s adoption of its first-ever resolution on Myanmar, the UN’s retention of NUG-backed U Kyaw Moe Tun as the permanent representative to the world body, the increasing treatment by ASEAN and the international community of the junta as an outcast, and fresh sanctions on the generals and related businesses are among the latest welcome developments in the international arena.
International online news magazine The Diplomat wrote in September that with the NUG increasingly acting as the government of Myanmar and providing a viable plan for Myanmar’s future, the world is fast running out of excuses for not recognizing it. However, it is still not perfect, and challenges abound, as it is still struggling to work with ethnic armed groups and collaborate effectively on building a federal union—something both the NUG and all ethnicities of Myanmar have dreamed of. Its inability to distribute arms to all of its PDF groups has also drawn complaints. Furthermore, reckless comments from some wayward ministers to the effect that victory is just around the corner have given people false hope.
Overall, the revolutionary government led by ethnic Kachin former lawyer and community leader Duwa Lashi La and comprising democratically elected lawmakers, civil society leaders and activists of various ethnicities commands loyalty and support from the vast majority of Myanmar people and international friends, and is trying its best to lead the people’s revolution to uproot the dictatorship, one of the most notorious and ruthless regimes on this planet.....The people of Myanmar...When it comes to democracy, Myanmar people don’t compromise. The nationwide popular demonstrations against military rule that erupted in the wake of the coup last year and the ongoing anti-regime resistance movement are the best examples of this focused determination to wipe out the military dictatorship. The regime has still not been able to crush the movement, and to keep it going Myanmar people contribute whatever they can, from arming the resistance forces to joining silent strikes against the regime to funding the National Unity Government (NUG), which they take as their rightful government. In other words, so far, the revolution against the regime has been sustained solely by the Myanmar people, without outside help.
However, supporting a revolution is not easy, especially when your enemy is as ruthless as the Myanmar military regime. The junta shuts down individual bank accounts of those inside the country who are accused of financing the resistance forces or who are arrested for anti-regime activities. To bypass the restrictions, resistance supporters have turned to crowdfunding with the help of likeminded Myanmar people in other countries. Among other achievements, early this year, a US$2.2-million project to arm resistance forces met its target within a few days, much to organizers’ surprise. When resistance forces continued to launch offensives, Myanmar people at home and abroad were motivated to donate more to purchase ammunition and other necessities for the front lines, and those engaged in fundraising abroad have had little sleep, as they struggle to cope with a surge in transactions.
Clearly viewing the armed struggle as the only means to root out the military dictatorship, Myanmar migrant workers in Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore have worked extra shifts and taken additional jobs to contribute to the revolution. In resistance strongholds upcountry where the regime’s atrocities are rampant, grandmothers in their 80s have handed their golden earrings and bracelets to resistance members, saying, “Take this and fight till they [the regime] are gone.”
The Myanmar people’s solidarity and self-reliance developed of necessity after their calls for international help to topple the regime were ignored, as all eyes have been on the Ukraine war. Whenever they learn about military assistance from other countries for Ukraine, all Myanmar people can do is look on and murmur, “What we could do with just a fraction of that support!” Rather than dwelling on their disappointment, however, they have kept the revolution moving forward on their own for nearly two years. However, the passage of the so-called Burma Act (a component of the National Defense Authorization Act) by the US Congress to support Myanmar’s anti-regime movement offers some reason to be positive. Hopefully it is the light at the end of the tunnel.....The international community...Since Myanmar people embarked on their fight against the military dictatorship nearly two years ago, they have been on their own, as the international community has been good for nothing except expressing concern as the regime kills its own people, including schoolchildren, despite the people’s repeated calls for tangible assistance.
In December, the passage of the Burma Act by the US Congress to provide non-lethal support to Myanmar regime opponents, and the UN Security Council’s adoption of a resolution on Myanmar calling for an end to the military regime’s escalating repression and violence against civilians, provided some hope. Both actions are just first steps, however, and much work needs to be done if they are to bear fruit.
Regionally, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, has been completely ineffective, including its adoption of a peace plan for Myanmar, which the junta has completely ignored. The bloc has yet to even unanimously condemn the regime, as some members have ties to the junta.
China, India and Russia have consistently engaged with the regime militarily, diplomatically and economically, providing breathing space for the junta, which has been largely shunned by Western democracies. Its warming ties with China and Russia have also enabled the regime to access military assistance to use in crushing anti-regime resistance forces in Myanmar.
All in all, it’s undeniable that Myanmar’s suffering under the military regime has been made worse by the international community’s divided approach to the country, which has emboldened the regime to commit more atrocities. It’s likely that if there had been earlier and more concerted international action taken against the regime, we would be closer to the restoration of democracy in Myanmar and there would have been fewer air strikes on civilians. Such action would also have prevented the junta’s hangings of Ko Jimmy, Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and two other democracy activists. The hell hound that is the Myanmar regime remains loose in the absence of any genuine international effort to bring it to heel.....International friends of Myanmar...While countries like Russia, China and India have made the most of their ties with Myanmar under military rule and ignored the people’s suffering, some individuals have stood along with the people of Myanmar in their fight against the regime.
The most remarkable is Sean Turnell. When he was released by the regime after 650 days in captvity, mainly for being deposed leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s adviser on economic reform in Myanmar, the Australian economist didn’t complain about having been locked up. Instead, he said bluntly, “It is a tragic and terrible thing that the nicest people I have encountered anywhere are ruled over by such knaves and fools.”
In media interviews, he warned that the coup has severely damaged Myanmar’s economy and that the regime wouldn’t give up power easily. He revealed the inhumane treatment he experienced in prison along with other political detainees such as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom he met during their trial proceedings and who urged him to tell everyone the truth about Myanmar.
Toru Kubota, a Japanese filmmaker who was released after nearly four months of detention by the regime, urged his government to take a strong proactive approach to human rights violations in Myanmar by protecting people who flee authoritarian rule. He warned the world not to be fooled by the junta’s mass amnesty in which he was released, dismissing it as a mere propaganda stunt and pointing out that some 10,000 political prisoners remain locked up.
And there are others, like former US ambassador to Myanmar Scot Maricel and European human rights campaigner Igor Blazevic. With their unique understanding of the complexity of Myanmar’s politics, they have spoken the truth on behalf of the people of Myanmar. Their assessments of the country’s ongoing issues have turned out to be far closer to reality than those of some so-called native Myanmar scholars who blame the people for the country’s instability while kowtowing to the regime.....EAOs: Myanmar’s divided ethnic armed groups...Arguably, one benefit of the military coup for the Myanmar people is that it has allowed them to draw distinctions between the various ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) in the country.
Some of the oldest EAOs, including the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Chin National Front (CNF), have shown their support for the anti-regime movement since the coup. They have not only provided shelter for those fleeing the junta’s persecution, but also provided military training and armed those fighting the regime. The KIA alone has trained more than 4,000 members of the anti-regime People Defense Force.
Furious, the regime has retaliated against the KIA with numerous air strikes, including one on an open-air concert celebrating the Kachin Independence Organization’s anniversary, killing several KIA officials and scores of civilians.
On the other hand, 10 EAOs—seven signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement and three non-signatories—declined to join the anti-regime movement and agreed to attend so-called peace talks with the regime in an effort to promote their own interests.
Among the signatories are the Restoration Council of Shan State, the New Mon State Party, the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army-Peace Council, the Arakan Liberation Party, the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army, the Pa-O National Liberation Organization, and the Lahu Democratic Union.
The three non-signatories that joined the peace talks were the United Wa State Army, the National Democratic Alliance Army (also known as the Mongla Group), and the Shan State Progress Party.
Unlike other EAOs, the 10 groups have no tensions with the Myanmar military.
Min Aung Hlaing invited EAOs to peace talks in April 2022. Observers said he organized the talks to give his regime, which has been overwhelmed by resistance forces in many parts of the country, some breathing space and to sow discord among EAOs.
The KNU, KIA, KNPP and CNF refused to attend the junta-organized peace talks, dismissing them as a sham and not inclusive. The Arakan Army and its allies the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army also stayed away.
Min Aung Hlaing has urged ethnic leaders to stand for election in an already discredited vote he plans to organize in 2023, and to press their demands in the parliament instead of fighting. He suggested EAOs could transform into Border Guard Forces if they want to keep their arms. He also promised separate legislative power for parliaments in ethnic states, to make the so-called election more attractive.
In the 1990s, the previous regime offered incentives to some EAOs to drive a wedge between them and other ethnic armed groups. Certain EAOs exchanged their arms for lucrative concessions to run businesses, legal and otherwise, including logging, drug running and mining.
However, the Myanmar military broke its promises in 2009, reviving the vicious circle of armed conflicts.....Civil Disobedience Movement: Peaceful but strong blow to the junta...Like the civilian National Unity Government (NUG) and the People’s Defense Force groups (PDFs), Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) poses a serious challenge to the regime, which is still reeling from its impact nearly two years on. While the NUG and PDF wage an armed struggle, CDM participants utilize the power of peaceful resistance. Formerly employed in the state’s medical, education, administrative and defense sectors, their refusal to work under military rule had an immediate impact from the moment the movement was launched two days after the coup, bringing the government administration to a halt.
Almost two years on, the CDM is recognized as the longest-running movement of its kind in the world, and was nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace prize. It has turned out to be one of the pillars of the revolution against the junta, as participants continue to defy the regime while coping with many hardships as the junta targets them with threats and arrests. Some have even been beheaded and had their limbs cut off.
Striking civil servants who try to flee abroad are frequently arrested at airports. CDM teachers have been sentenced to up to 10 years’ imprisonment and a CDM police officer was sentenced to a maximum of 26 years. To evade the junta’s atrocities against them, many CDMers have gone into hiding or fled to border areas, taking jobs completely unrelated to their previous careers. Amid such hardships, they still refuse to go back to work for the government.
While some have gone back to work after facing threats from the regime, others, notably in the health and education sectors, have kept their anti-regime mission alive by joining the relevant operations of the NUG. Some run online classes for students refusing to study under the regime while others now work at community schools operating in resistance stronghold areas.
CDM health workers have also joined resistance groups as medics. When they are not at the front line, they treat internally displaced people and other civilians who need medical assistance, strongly supporting the goal of removing the junta. The same determination keeps their detained comrades, who have been unjustly thrown into jails for their anti-regime activism, alive.....Political prisoners: Jailed but unbowed...Another force that we mustn’t forget to honor for their bravery, sacrifice and commitment to the cause of democracy is Myanmar’s unbowed political prisoners. Myanmar now has the largest number of political prisoners in its history, as the junta has detained more than 16,500 people in less than two years during its harsh crackdowns against those who oppose its rule. Among the junta’s prisoners are elected leaders, state and regional chief ministers, prominent protest leaders, lawmakers, activists, students, doctors, nurses, health workers, teachers, professors, lawyers, engineers, reporters, writers, charity volunteers, company workers, filmmakers, actors and other citizens.
Despite being thrown into the junta’s deadly prisons and facing inhumane conditions, brutal punishments, torture and horrific human rights violations behind bars, brave and resilient political prisoners across the country are unbroken and their revolutionary spirit remains strong.
They continue to stage protests against the junta and maintain their defiance, despite knowing that they will be crushed brutally and face severe punishment in the form of beatings, torture, additional sentences or being put into solitary confinement, being banned from receiving family visits—their only source of food and other supplies from outside—being moved to remote prisons, or even death.
Despite these threats, they never fail to mark important political dates such as the silent strikes, the anniversaries of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising or the start of the ongoing revolution against the regime, and detained leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday, and to show solidarity with fellow anti-junta activists who are still free in denouncing the junta’s execution of political prisoners, handing down death penalties to student activists and other actions. They yell anti-regime slogans and sing revolutionary songs from behind bars, risking their lives. Political prisoners are often referred to as “chickens in the coop” by the generals. But they have proved that while the regime may imprison them physically, it is impossible to lock up their spirit, determination and bravery. And most importantly, that the regime can’t impose its rule at all, even inside prisons.....Tayzar San—‘Tayzar the extraordinary’...Among prominent individuals resisting the regime, one figure comes to mind immediately: Tayzar San—the man who led the first anti-coup protest in Mandalay three days after the coup and has since become a prominent revolutionary—is the face of the Myanmar people’s anti-regime movement and resistance. The skinny, bespectacled doctor and librarian intimidates the ruthless regime like few others. The generals have been hunting him for months for his leading role in anti-regime activities and have even offered a reward of 10 million kyats (nearly US$5,000) for information leading to his arrest.
Despite being in hiding, the physician-turned-democracy activist continues to carry out his mission of eliminating the military dictatorship from Myanmar. He challenges the junta leaders on social media almost daily, organizes protests and encourages citizens to continue the fight against military rule. He has also been traveling extensively to meet resistance groups and civilians on the ground. Last month, he even led a street protest against the military dictatorship in Upper Myanmar, marching at the front of the protest column holding a megaphone—the device has come to symbolize him since the coup—and openly defying the junta and the arrest warrant it has issued for him on an incitement charge.
Tayzar San is also involved in the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC), an anti-regime coalition that offers policy guidance to the parallel National Unity Government (NUG), which is leading efforts to lay the groundwork for the creation of a federal democratic union.
His most exquisite characteristic is his friendly and cheerful smile, which never leaves his face, a reflection of his faith in the prospects of the people’s revolution.
In a personal manifesto on his Facebook account, the protest leader declared: “Whatever I need to sacrifice, including my life and body [in the revolution], I believe it is worth it. Because what we get back from this revolution is a new era, new system and new state that we wish for.”.....The people’s legitimate leaders—yet again, prisoners of a regime...They are as immoveable as a rocky mountain when it comes to their dedication to their convictions, their commitment to the mandate entrusted to them by the people, their loyalty to the people of Myanmar, their defiant defense of the truth and their resilience in the face of persecution by the ruling generals.
They are the legitimate leaders—State Counselor and President—of Myanmar. They were democratically elected by a majority of Myanmar voters, twice. The party they have dedicated most of their lives to has won every election it has contested over the past three decades, since 1990. Currently, they are prisoners of the ruthless regime—one in solitary confinement inside a prison, the other held in an unknown location, like a hostage.
The harshness of the conditions in prison and the brutality of their captors would be life threatening for anyone, let alone people of advanced age such as 77-year-old Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and 70-year-old U Win Myint. To date, the former has been sentenced to 26 years’ imprisonment and the latter to five years. The two leaders are the oldest of the 16,500 political prisoners the regime has incarcerated since its coup.
Surviving in prison is tough—physically, mentally, intellectually, even ideologically. They are not first-time prisoners. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was a long-term prisoner of the previous regime, kept under house arrest for 15 years, while U Win Myint spent several years as a political prisoner in the 1990s.
Their strong spirit and resilience in the face of their lengthy imprisonment by the regime since the coup last year shows us yet again who they are, and the strength of their commitment to the country and its citizens—to a genuine democratic federal nation.
Three days after her 77th birthday on June 19, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was transferred from house arrest in Naypyitaw to solitary confinement in a prison in the city. It’s a tougher punishment than she was subjected to in the past; she was mostly kept under house arrest under the previous regime. The new regime is harsher, but she is still the Iron Lady of Myanmar.
The people of Myanmar hailed U Win Myint when they learned of his reaction to his captors on the first day of the coup. After he refused their request that he step down as President, one of the generals asked U Win Myint to reconsider, saying he could be harmed. He said he would rather die than resign.
Recently released Australian economist and adviser to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government Sean Turnell said, “She’s strong; she remains as she always was.” A court source who saw the hostage President recently said that U Win Myint is “as fit as a fiddle.”
The regime’s harsher punishments this year have done nothing at all to diminish their mettle, their principles and their spirit. They may be beaten, but they do not bow; they do not take, but give. These are the virtues of a leader..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-12-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Description:
"Tomorrow it will be one year since 30 people, including at least one child, were killed and their bodies burnt on a road near Moso Village, Hpruso Township. For the past year, the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar has been actively collecting and analysing information about this and other alleged serious international crimes committed across Myanmar to help ensure that the perpetrators one day face justice.
In the year since the 24 December tragedy, we have collected and analysed evidence of an array of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Myanmar, from Rakhine state in the west to Kayah in the east, including evidence of murder, rape, torture, unlawful imprisonment, and deportation or forcible transfer. The evidence concerns crimes committed over many years, including persecution of Rohingya and attacks on other minorities since 2011, to more recent events affecting almost all parts of the country. Tragically, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian locations like schools, hospitals and churches over the course of the year. Armed attacks that target civilians or indiscriminate attacks that affect civilians are prohibited by international laws of war and can be punished as war crimes or crimes against humanity.
International justice can be a slow and painstaking process. Criminal investigation requires a long-term commitment to gathering evidence. Collecting this information while it is fresh is essential to see justice served. The evidence is not meant to gather dust in an archive, but to eventually be used in a court of law where perpetrators will be prosecuted. We are already sharing evidence, with the consent of people who gave us the information, with those working on ongoing cases concerning the Rohingya at the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.
The Mechanism is very grateful and inspired by the courage of those individuals who come forward with information concerning the crimes that they have suffered or witnessed. The testimonies of witnesses and survivors of any crimes we are investigating, or their families, friends or colleagues, are vital for us to build criminal cases. Equally important are people with knowledge of illegal orders or policies. We encourage anyone who has information about serious international crimes in Myanmar to contact us through our secure and confidential channels.
Information on how to communicate securely and confidentially with the Mechanism can be found at https://iimm.un.org/contact-us/confidential-and-sensitive-communications/
The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM or Mechanism) was created by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2018 to collect and analyse evidence of the most serious international crimes and other violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011. It aims to facilitate justice and accountability by preserving and organizing this evidence and preparing case files for use in future prosecutions of those responsible in national, regional and international courts. For more information visit https://iimm.un.org/ or contact [email protected]..."
Source/publisher:
Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
Date of publication:
2022-12-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Children, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Sub-title:
The dead men had worked at a local motorbike repair shop and had no political affiliations, residents say.
Description:
"Residents in central Myanmar made a grisly discovery on Wednesday when they stumbled upon the corpses of six civilians who worked at a local motorbike repair shop.
Their bodies bore signs of torture and their hands had been tied behind their backs, apparently executed by junta troops.
“It appeared as if [the soldiers] struck their necks with a sword. We found that their throats were cut,” said a resident of Ywar Thit village in the Mandalay region who was among those that found the bodies. He spoke to Radio Free Asia on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal by the military.
Photos provided to RFA of the bodies appeared to confirm the source’s description. All six of the men’s hands are bound and their throats are slit.
Three of the men have wounds to their throats that suggest they were made with a heavy weapon, such as a machete, while a fourth has a similar wound on the top-left of his head that has penetrated his skull. The heads of two of the men appear to have been crushed, while the chests of two others show as many as eight stab wounds.
No political affiliation
The source said two of the bodies were found between Myingyan’s Thar Paung and Gaung Kwe villages, another two near the intersection of Thin Pyun Road on the outskirts of Natogyi township, and the last two just west of Natogyi’s Ywar Gyi village.
“The cuts of the bodies found west of Ywar Gyi village and those near Thar Paung village were exactly the same,” he said. “It appeared to me that the junta soldiers made them kneel, tied their hands behind their backs, and delivered a blow to their necks when they were tired of torturing them.”
The victims were “innocent civilians” who were employed by a local motorbike repair shop, said a resident of Ywar Thit village, who also declined to be named.
“[They] were just simple villagers who weren’t involved in any political activities,” he said. “They weren’t members of any political parties or organizations … But the pro-military Pyu Saw Htee militia and junta troops arrested and cruelly killed them.”
The junta has yet to release any information about the killings of the six men. Attempts by RFA to contact the junta’s spokesman for Mandalay region, Thien Htay, went unanswered on Thursday.
Sources from the two townships identified the six dead as Min Thu and Kaung Kaung, both 20; Aung Than Kyaw and Zayar Phyo, both 30; and Aung Naing Win and Zaw Naing Win, both 43.
Inflicting terror
Residents said that the discovery of the bodies followed a Nov. 29 raid on Ywar Thit village in which junta troops from the No. 88 Light Infantry Division and members of the pro-military Pyu Saw Htee militia detained six civilians.
The families of the deceased retrieved their bodies on Wednesday from the Myingyan township mortuary and buried them in the township’s Su Phyu Kone cemetery, residents told RFA. Due to the graphic nature of their deaths, family members were unable to inspect the bodies of the victims and confirm their identities, they said.
A political activist in Myingyan township, who gave his surname as Soe, told RFA that the junta hopes to gain control of the region through fear by arresting and killing innocent civilians.
“When they lose their military bases and informers [to anti-junta forces], or suffer losses in battles, they attack unarmed civilians as revenge, since they cannot crush the resistance,” he said.
“Myingyan-based junta troops and the … pro-junta militia try to cow the people by torturing and killing innocent civilians they accuse of being supporters of the [deposed National League for Democracy] NLD party and [anti-junta] People’s Defense Forces [paramilitaries],” he said.
“In fact, as they cannot crush the armed resistance, they are abducting and killing innocent and unarmed civilians who become caught in the middle.”
According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), junta troops have killed at least 2,604 civilians and arrested more than 16,500 others in the 22 months since the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup, mostly during peaceful anti-junta demonstrations..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-12-15
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-15
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma
Language:
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Sub-title:
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီက ကျူးလွန်လျက်ရှိသည့် ကျေးလက်၊မြို့ပြနေ ပြည်သူများ၏ နေအိမ်များဖျက်ဆီး၍ မြေယာများလုယူနေခြင်းနှင့် စပ်လျဉ်း၍ အထူးသတိပေးတားမြစ်ခြင်း
Description:
"၁။ မင်းအောင်လှိုင်ဦးဆောင်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုသည် နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာကို လက်နက်အားကိုး၊လုယူပြီးနောက် ကျေးလက်နေ ပြည်သူပိုင်နေအိမ်များ၊ ကျေးရွာများကို မီးရှို့ဖျက်ဆီးခြင်းပြုလုပ်နေရုံသာမက၊ မြို့ပြနေ ပြည်သူများ၏ နေအိမ်များကိုပါ အတင်းအဓမ္မ ဖျက်ဆီး၍ မြို့ပြမြေယာများအား အဓမ္မလုယက်လျက်ရှိသည်။
၂။ ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ် နိုဝင်ဘာလအတွင်း ရန်ကုန်နှင့် မန္တလေးမြို့ကြီးများအပါအဝင် မြို့ကြီးအချို့တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုက မြို့ပြနေ အခြေခံလူတန်းစားများ၏ နေအိမ်များအား အတင်းအဓမ္မ ဖြိုဖျက်ကာ မြေယာလုယက်မှုများကျူးလွန်လျက်ရှိရာတွင် မင်္ဂလာဒုံမြို့နယ်ရှိ ရပ်ကွက် ၅ ခုမှ အိမ်ခြေပေါင်း ၁ သောင်းကျော်၊ လူဦးရေ ၅ သောင်းကျော် အိုးမဲ့အိမ်မဲ့ဖြစ်စေခဲ့သကဲ့သို့ မရမ်းကုန်းမြို့နယ်တွင် အိမ်ထောင်စုပေါင်း ၁၀၀ ကျော်၊ မန္တလေးမြို့တွင် အိမ်ထောင်စုပေါင်းများစွာ အား အိမ်မဲ့ရာမဲ့ဘ၀သို့ ရောက်စေခဲ့သည်။
၃။ ကိုဗစ်ကူးစက်ရောဂါနှင့် နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာလုယူမှုကြောင့် လူမှုဒုက္ခအ၀၀ကို ခံစားနေကြရသည့် အခြေခံပြည်သူများ၏ ဘ၀ကို စာနာနားလည်မှုမရှိ၊ ဖေးမကူညီမှုမရှိဘဲ ၎င်းတို့၏ ကျောတခင်းစာ နေရာများကို ဖျက်စီးခြင်း၊ ပြည်သူများ၏ အသိုက်အမြုံအားဖျက်စီးခြင်း၊ ၎င်းတို့၏ မြေယာများကို လုယူခြင်းသည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏ အရပ်သားပြည်သူများအပေါ် ယုတ်မာရက်စက်မှုကို ထပ်လောင်း အတည်ပြုပေးနေသည်။ ထိုသို့ ရက်စက်ယုတ်မာခြင်းသည် အခြေခံလူ့ကျင့်ဝတ်ကို ချိုးဖောက်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်သာမက နိုင်ငံတကာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးဆိုင်ရာ ပြဌာန်းချက်များပါ လူတိုင်း လုံလောက်သော အိမ်ရာ၊ စားနပ်ရိက္ခာ နှင့် အခြေခံဝန်ဆောင်မှုများ ရရှိခွင့်ကိုလည်း ပြောင်ပြောင် တင်းတင်း ချိုးဖောက်လျက်ရှိနေသည်။
၄။ ထို့အပြင် ကျေးရွာများကို မီးရှို့ဖျက်ဆီးခြင်း၊ စစ်ဘေးရှောင်ကာ လူအစုအလိုက်အပြုံလိုက် ရွေ့ပြောင်းစေခြင်းများဖြင့် ကျေးလက်နေပြည်သူများကို တော်လှန်ရေးနှင့် ကင်းကွာစေရန် အကြောက်တရားနှင့် ခြိမ်းခြောက်ကျူးလွန်နေသကဲ့သို့ မြို့ပြနေ ပြည်သူများ၏ အိုးအိမ်များ ဖျက်ဆီးခြင်းဖြင့် မြို့ပြများကို ပိုမိုကျပ်တည်းခက်ခဲစေကာ ပြည်သူ့တော်လှန်ရေးအပေါ် အားပျော့ လာစေရန် ဆောင်ရွက်နေခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
၅။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီနှင့် ၎င်းလက်အောက်ရှိ စည်ပင်သာယာရေးကော်မတီအပါအဝင် ဝန်ထမ်းများနှင့် ၎င်းစစ်ကောင်စီ၏ အပေါင်းပါများအနေဖြင့် ယခုကဲ့သို့ မြို့ပြနေပြည်သူလူထု၏ နေအိမ်များကို အတင်းအဓမ္မဖျက်စီးခြင်း၊ မြေယာများအား လုယက်ခြင်းများကို ချက်ချင်းရပ်ဆိုင်းရန်၊ ပြည်သူလူထု၏ နေအိမ်များ ဖျက်စီးခြင်းကို ဆက်လက်မပြုလုပ်ရန် ပြင်းထန်စွာသတိပေး တားမြစ်လိုက်သည်။ တားမြစ်ချက်ကို မလိုက်နာဘဲ ဆက်လက်ကျူးလွန်နေပါက အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရအနေဖြင့် ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်သူများ၊ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများအား ထိရောက်စွာအရေးယူသွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်းနှင့် နစ်နာဆုံးရှုံးခဲ့သည့် ပြည်သူတစ်ဦးချင်းဆီအတွက် တရားမျှတမှုနှင့် ပြန်လည်တည်ထောင်ရေး လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်များကို မဖြစ်မနေအာမခံဖော်ဆောင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း အသိပေးထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်သည်။..."
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of publication:
2022-12-10
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-10
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"On 7 September 2021, the National Unity Government’s (NUG) acting president Duwa Lashi La declared a people’s war against the Tatmadaw. He stated that in waging war against the junta, People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) should operate in accordance with the NUG’s Military Code of Conduct for People’s Defence Forces, which had been laid out on 21 July 2021. The NUG claimed that the Code of Conduct was established in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. However, there are some controversial areas in the Code of Conduct, which if left unaddressed, could undermine the NUG’s credibility. The political analyst Benjamin Mok has examined the Code of Conduct in an article on the Diplomat. However, there has not yet been an analysis of the Code of Conduct through the lens of International Humanitarian Law.
In this article, I will discuss some issues with how “legitimate targets” of PDF action might be defined and interpreted in the NUG’s Code of Conduct. First, I will evaluate the definition of civilians used in the NUG’s Code of Conduct and compare it with Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (1977) which applies specifically to non-international armed conflicts. In so doing, I will inquire what constitutes a legitimate military target in the Myanmar context. Then, I will highlight some contentious issues on the ground, particularly targeting alleged informants, the junta-appointed civil servants, and political opponents. Finally, I will come up with recommendations for the main actors mentioned in this article.....
Who exactly are civilians?.....
One of the major actors in the Spring Revolution is “informants”. In this article, I use informants to refer to civilians who side with the junta and reveal the whereabouts of the resistance figures to the State Administration Council (SAC). They could be the SAC-appointed administrators or regular civilians and they have been one of the main targets of the PDFs. The moral justification for killing them has been debated since the beginning of the resistance. The NUG also does not specify if the informants qualified as military targets in their Code of Conduct for PDFs.
Under the ‘Targeting’ section of the Code of Conduct, Article 1 says PDFs are to target only “mechanisms of the dictatorship”, while Article 2 reads, “Civilians shall not be targeted, threatened, and attacked”. These two articles are in line with the basic principles of the Geneva Conventions. However, a question arises if we compare Article 2 against Article 1: Who does the Code of Conduct really count as civilians? According to the ICRC’s Interpretive Guidance, “all persons who are not members of State armed forces or of organized armed groups belonging to a party to an armed conflict are civilians.” This implies that to the ICRC, informants could be classified as civilians. The ICRC continues to state that civilians, so defined, are “protected against direct attack unless and for such time as they directly participate in hostilities”. Now, it is important to identify what constitutes “direct hostilities”.
While there’s no official definition of direct hostilities in International Law, the ICRC’s Interpretative Guidance, while not legally binding, also is helpful for this matter and serves as the standard procedure for states. According to the ICRC’s Interpretative Guidance,
“Persons participate directly in hostilities when they carry out acts, which aim to support one party to the conflict by directly causing harm to another party, either directly inflicting death, injury or destruction, or by directly harming the enemy’s military operations or capacity.”
By this definition, it’s hard to decide whether or not informants are partaking in direct hostilities. It may be tempting to put informants under the indirect hostility category. After all, what they are doing is simply revealing the location of their enemies. But, in this Spring Revolution, the informants do really “harm the operations” of the resistance groups. For example, informants reportedly revealed the whereabouts of Ko Phyo Zeyar Thaw and Ko Jimmy, responsible for overseeing the Yangon operations, leading to their arrests and snowball arrests of other members. A large number of arms and ammunition were also seized during the arrest.
However, I acknowledge the subjectiveness of such a matter, and one could argue targeting informants is not justified if they are only revealing the whereabouts of resistance figures under threat. This also highlights areas for improvement in international humanitarian law and such unique scenarios under the Myanmar context should be discussed more to better define “direct and indirect hostilities”....Attacks on SAC-appointed civil servants and political opponents....While informants blur the line between “direct and non-direct hostilities”, it is easier to determine whether or not civil servants working for the SAC should go under the “indirect hostility” category. The ICRC’s Interpretative Guidance says that “administrative and political support” is considered indirect participation in hostilities. Hence the ICRC views SAC-appointed civil servants as civilians that enjoy all the protections under Common Article 3 and Additional Protocol II. However, in Myanmar, the situation on the ground could be considered not yet in line with the ICRC’s standard.
As of November 2021, about 200 SAC-appointed administrators were killed by PDFs. It’s not surprising, to some extent, if some PDFs, not affiliated with the NUG, have their own agenda and would target the civil servants working for the junta, but it becomes problematic if the NUG itself would publicly recognize such operations as legitimate. In April 2022, Yangon Regional Command (YRC) under the NUG’s Ministry of Defense (MoD) shot the Central Bank’s Deputy Governor, as part of Operation Byan Hlwar Aung, which was conducted by NUG-affiliated PDFs under the directive of the NUG’s MoD. This sort of incident is not justified by the Geneva Conventions, which the NUG claims to abide by. While the NUG could argue that targeting informants is justified due to their significant damage to the resistance, International Law does not justify for military actions against civil servants.
One of the Soldier’s Rules under the NUG’s Code of Conduct reads: “Shall not discriminate any individual based on their ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation”, but there’s no mention of non-discrimination based on “political or other opinions” as included in Additional Protocol II. While it’s possible that the NUG simply overlooked this phrase in the article, it could also be assumed that the NUG intentionally phrased the rule in a way that could somehow enable the PDFs to target the regime-friendly civil servants or even civilians politically supporting the junta without facing legal restraints. In a recent interview with BBC, the USDP (a military’s proxy party) chairman U Than Htay claimed that “over 1,500 USDP members and supporters [were] killed (since the beginning of the coup)”. While it’s possible that the USDP has inflated this number, if true it could pose a threat to the NUG’s legitimacy if there’s no clear explanation on why and how it could happen from its side.....Potential risks and recommendations.....As the NUG is still competing for representation at the UN Human Rights Council with the SAC, it should consider the consequences of targeting those considered civilians in the eyes of the international community. Some international actors like ASEAN, except countries like Malaysia, lean towards keeping their distance from the parallel civilian government. ASEAN could justify its relative inaction against the SAC based on the claim that the NUG-led resistance inflicted “civilian damage”.
While targeting alleged informants is understandable for strategic purposes, it should always be the last resort and the PDFs should make sure that their targets are heavily involved in the military operations. While engaging with the international community, the NUG should make it clear from the start why alleged informants are not the same as ordinary civilians and how they are critical to the SAC’s counterinsurgency plans. And, at the same time, the NUG, as the government, should distance itself from the killing of the informants. In other words, they should not take credit for such operations. Otherwise, the NUG risks not looking credible in the eyes of the international community, within which many assume that ground realities contradict the NUG’s Code of Conduct.
The NUG could come up with alternatives to deal with the alleged informants and the junta-appointed civil servants rather than killings. There have been some good initiatives with the NUG setting up People’s Police Forces and township courts in different regions and states. With clear policies and measures, they could establish an effective justice mechanism to impose judicial measures against pro-SAC civilians rather than resorting to armed violence. The success of such a mechanism also relies on support from the international community.
The international community should also recognize that current conditions on the ground pose limitations on what the NUG can do. After all, many PDFs and LDFs (Local Defense Forces) operating are not yet directly under its command. The NUG’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Daw Zin Mar Aung recognized this reality while meeting with the diaspora community during her visit to Washington DC when she said, “PDFs need to follow rules of engagement (ROE) but on-ground situations could be complicated sometimes.” In order for the PDF to be more compliant with the NUG’s Code of Conduct, the NUG needs to first gain leverage over them. For now, the people’s government has little leverage over the majority of the PDFs due to its lack of capacity to provide financial and weapons support, and it simply cannot command the PDFs to do this or that.
While it is clear at this point that the West would not provide arms to the NUG, other forms of non-lethal support are still feasible. By having more financial leverage over the PDFs, the NUG could have more bargaining power in requiring them to engage in warfare and operations more in line with the Code of Conduct. What the West could do in this case is provide financial support to the NUG. The US could allow the NUG to access the 1 billion USD in Myanmar assets which the US froze at the beginning of the coup. This money could assist the NUG in coordinating its resistance, so that it can follow the standards of International Law. The US could also accelerate the legislative process of the Burma Act of 2021, which once passed, would provide humanitarian aid and assistance to civil society impacted by the coup, including “participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement, and government defectors”, hence, lifting weight off the NUG, so that it could redirect more resources to the resistance.
They could also support the parallel government in setting up administrative mechanisms, building the capacity of civil servants that refuse to work for the junta, developing administrative policies, providing joint educational programs, helping set up an effective tax system, and channelling aid through the NUG-initiated programs. At the moment, ASEAN is channelling aid through the SAC’s task force but the US could use its influence over ASEAN members to be more inclusive with aid management. In order to navigate the risk of targeting non-CDM civil servants, the international community could provide financial and technical support to the people’s administrations in PDF strongholds to create more incentives for those joining CDM. I recommend that the NUG also revise the Code of Conduct and make it more concrete with a well-defined set of rules and instructions to follow. More than a year since the publication of the Code of Conduct, it is important that the NUG and the international community revisit it..."
Source/publisher:
"Tea Circle" (Myanmar)
Date of publication:
2022-12-05
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-05
Grouping:
Individual Documents
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2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Spring Revolution, Anti-coup protesters, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Myanmar’s junta on Wednesday handed down death sentences to seven Dagon University students in Yangon who took part in anti-regime protests.
Dagon University Students’ Union confirmed that Ko Khant Zin Win, Ko Thura Maung Maung, Ko Zaw Lin Naing, Ko Thiha Htet Zaw, Ko Hein Htet, Ko Thet Paing Oo and Ko Khant Linn Maung Maung were sentenced in closed trials by a military tribunal.
The seven were arrested in April for alleged involvement in the shooting of Global Treasure Bank branch manager Saw Moe Win, a former military officer.
Ko Nan Lin from the University Students’ Union Alumni Force condemned the sentences as unjust.
“We are deeply worried for our seven comrades,” he said, given the junta hanged four pro-democracy activists, ignoring international appeals and public objections.
The regime, which has killed more than 2,500 people since the February 2021 coup, has used the death penalty to intimidate opponents as it struggles to control the country.
It carried out the country’s first execution in nearly four decades in July by hanging veteran activist Ko Jimmy, Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw, former National League for Democracy lawmaker Ko Phyo Zeya Thaw and activists Ko Hla Myo Aung and Ko Aung Thura Zaw. It has since handed down more death penalties.
Around 100 dissidents, including students, professionals and medics, have been sentenced to death..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-12-01
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
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2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports
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" ပြည်သူ့ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေးတော်ပုံတွင် ပါဝင်ကာ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို ဆန့်ကျင်တိုက်ဖျက်ခဲ့သည့်အတွက် ဒဂုံတက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသားများဖြစ်ကြသည့် ကိုခန့်ဇင်ဝင်း၊ ကိုသူရမောင်မောင်၊ ကိုဇော်လင်းနိုင်၊ ကိုသီဟထက်ဇော်၊ ကိုဟိန်းထက်၊ ကိုသက်ပိုင်ဦး နှင့် ကိုခန့်လင်းမောင်မောင် တို့အား အာဏာသိမ်းဖက်ဆစ်တပ်က နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၃၀ ရက်နေ့တွင် သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်လိုက်ကြောင်း သိရသည်။
ယနေ့ကာလသည် အာဏာသိမ်းဖက်ဆစ်ဘီလူး မင်းအောင်လှိုင် ဦးဆောင်သည့် စစ်အုပ်စုက ပြည်သူလူထုအား အကြမ်းဖက် နှိပ်စက်သတ်ဖြတ်ကာ ဖိနှိပ်အုပ်ချုပ်နေသည့် ကာလဖြစ်သည်။ စစ်အုပ်စုသည် အစုလိုက်အပြုံလိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများကို ကျူးလွန်လျက်ရှိသည်။ ပြည်သူလူထု၏ အသက်၊ အိုးအိမ်၊ ပိုင်ဆိုင်မှုများကိုလည်း ပေါ်ပေါ်ထင်ထင် ဖျက်ဆီးနေမှု၊ လုယက်နေမှုများမှာ မျက်ဝါးထင်ထင်ပင်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ဒဂုံတက္ကသိုလ်ကျောင်းသား (၇) ဦးကို သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခြင်းသည်လည်း စစ်အုပ်စု၏ မတရားသဖြင့် တဖက်သတ်စီရင်ချက်ဟုသာ ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ်မှ ယူဆသည်။ ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့/ကျူးလွန်ဆဲ တရားမဲ့သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများ၊ တရားမဲ့ဖမ်းဆီးထောင်ချမှု အလုံးစုံတို့ကို ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ်မှ ပြင်းပြင်းထန်ထန် ကန့်ကွက်ရှုတ်ချသည်။ စစ်အုပ်စုအနေဖြင့် ၎င်းတို့ကျူးလွန်သမျှ ဖိနှိပ်မှုတိုင်းအတွက် မုချတာဝန်ခံရမည်။
ဤကာလတွင် စစ်အစိုးရ၊ စစ်အုပ်စု၊ စစ်ဗျူရိုကရေစီယန္တရား (စစ်သုံးစစ်) ဖြင့် အခိုင်အမာ တည်ဆောက်ထားသည့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို အမြစ်ဖြတ်ချေမှုန်း သုတ်သင်ရန်မှာ တောင်ပေါ်/မြေပြန့် ဒေသအားလုံးရှိ လူထုလူတန်းစားပေါင်းစုံ အဖိနှိပ်ခံပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံး၏ အရေးအကြီးဆုံး တာဝန်တရပ်ဖြစ်သည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် (စစ်သုံးစစ်) ကို အဖိနှိပ်ခံပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံးက ထိရောက်မှန်ကန်သည့် နည်းလမ်းပေါင်းစုံဖြင့် ဆက်လက်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ကြပါရန် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ်က တိုက်တွန်းနှိုးဆော်အပ်ပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ ဗကသများအဖွဲ့ချုပ်သည်လည်း တောင်ပေါ်/မြေပြန့် ဒေသအားလုံးရှိ အဖိနှိပ်ခံပြည်သူလူထုနှင့် လက်တွဲကာ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် (စစ်သုံးစစ်) အား အမြစ်ပြတ်ချေမှုန်းနိုင်သည်အထိ ဆက်လက်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက်က ဒီမိုကရေစီတိုက်ပွဲများတွင် မြင့်မြတ်ဂုဏ်ပြောင်စွာ ကျဆုံးသွားခဲ့သည့် ပြည်သူလူထုအား တိုင်တည်ကာ ကတိသစ္စာပြုအပ်ပါသည်။
သေဒဏ်ပေးခြင်း၊ ဖမ်းဆီးနှိပ်စက်သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်း၊ ရွာလုံးကျွတ် မြို့လုံးကျွတ် မီးရှို့ဖျက်ဆီးခြင်းများဖြင့် တော်လှန်ရေးကို တားဆီး၍ရမည်မဟုတ်။
“စစ်သုံးစစ်ကို အမြစ်ပြတ်ချေမှုန်းကြ”
“ပြည်သူ့ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေးတော်ပုံ မုချအောင်ရမည်”..."
Source/publisher:
All Burma Federation of Student Unions
Date of publication:
2022-12-01
Date of entry/update:
2022-12-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
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2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"The head of the Myanmar military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) described resistance fighters battling the military dictatorship as “thoughtless” on Monday during a meeting with USDP members in Sagaing Region’s Monywa.
U Khin Yi vowed also to “wipe away tears, grip the sword, move a step forward and fight” the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), according to the USDP’s Facebook.
The hardline nationalist also challenged the PDFs during a November 3 meeting with USDP members in Tatkon Township in Naypyitaw: “You can kill me. I am a former military officer. I am in charge of the USDP. I’m the true pillar [of the regime]. I am the hardcore. Why don’t you come and kill me?” the 70-year-old said as he condemned the killing of USDP members.
Led by former generals, the USDP took the lead role in organizing pro-military rallies before and after the February 2021 coup and has helped the regime arrest opponents and dissidents. USDP members have also joined the junta-backed Pyu Saw Htee militia.
The USDP said that over 1,600 of its members and supporters have died at the hands of anti-junta forces since the military takeover.
While meeting USDP members in Sagaing, a stronghold of the resistance and the Spring Revolution against the military regime, U Khin Yi called for better security arrangements for USDP offices and members. He comforted the relatives of slain party members and told members to be ready to fight the PDFs when the time is ripe.
“I’ve come here to help you, to listen to your concerns and solve your problems,” U Khin Yi told the USDP members.
But despite his challenge to the PDFs, U Khin Yi did not dare to travel to Sagaing by road, instead arriving by air.
Since being appointed as the USDP chair last month, U Khin Yi has travelled extensively in Yangon, Mandalay and Ayeyarwady regions, devoting himself to inflaming nationalism, slamming the National League for Democracy (NLD) and encouraging party members to fight the PDFs.
Echoing the claims of the Myanmar military, the former brigadier general accused the ousted NLD government of electoral fraud and of failing to protect Buddhism in Myanmar.
“[If the Myanmar military had not seized power], you might not have a Buddha altar in your house now,” said U Khin Yi.
A henchman of successive military dictators, U Khin Yi oversaw the brutal 2007 crackdown on the nationwide anti-regime movement known as the Saffron Revolution. He also oversaw the house arrest of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under the previous regime.
He served as Minister for Immigration and Population in U Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian administration. U Khin Yi was also involved in planning the 2021 coup while serving as a vice chair of the USDP, organizing pro-military rallies in which so-called military sympathizers went on the rampage in Yangon, punching and stabbing those who denounced them.
After the coup, U Khin Yi was again appointed Minister for Immigration and Population, before taking over as USDP chair. It is thought he was put in place by regime chief Min Aung Hlaing to oversee the election the junta plans to hold next year, which Min Aung Hlaing hopes will enable him to seize the presidency..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-11-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-11-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"The military coup that took place on February 1, 2021, in Myanmar sparked a civic uprising as millions demonstrated against the coup. The military junta has now renamed itself the State Administration Council (SAC) and is made up of junta appointed officials and corrupt generals and officers. Today, Myanmar’s democracy movement is on the march, the junta is losing ground, the People Power Movement-known as the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM)– has spread to the entire country and the regime is resorting to unspeakable acts of violence in a vain attempt to maintain control over the shrinking amount of Myanmar they control.
The very first example of the CDM striking back at the junta occurred just one day after the coup attempt at Mandalay General Hospital (MGH). A group of healthcare workers and government civil servants posted statements on social media saying they would not serve or work under the illegal SAC. Dr. Zwe Min Aung, a surgeon, was interviewed by Voice of America that day. He reiterated that he and his colleagues have rejected the junta’s attempted takeover. This act of peaceful defiance was the spark lighting a fire of civil disobedience that quickly began to rage across the country. The term CDM had become widely popular in Myanmar. In fact, the CDM preceded street protests by a few days with the goal of crippling the military’s economic and political infrastructure—utilities, telecommunications, railways to name a few that are owned by the state. Together with the street protests, CDM became the symbol of an uprising that incorporated Myanmar’s entire civil society.
The military’s response was brutal to this outpouring of collective rejection. Demonstrators were gunned down and beaten. Those participating in the CDM were fired from their jobs, hunted down, and jailed. Organizers faced especially brutal treatment if caught—including jailing where heavy torture was, and remains, standard treatment. Consequently, many participants went into hiding. As time went on, with no income, they faced extreme hardships. There has been some monetary support primarily from the Myanmar diaspora for them but much more is needed.
Many protestors have now decided to switch tactics and resort to armed struggle and have formed units known as the People Defense Force (PDF). The public interest and monetary contributions have shifted towards supporting PDF units. There is still a big demand for funding those committed to the CDM. We can’t let these individuals drift from our time, attention, and especially our financial support. They face similar hardships, sometimes more so, as Myanmar’s internally displaced people (IDP) since more frequently than not, the whole family had to relocate as well in avoiding harassment by the junta.
Our National Unity Government (NUG) recognizes the critical contribution of the CDM movement and is seeking social, financial, and educational support for this branch of the democracy movement. In April of this year, Ministry of Health, NUG carried out an on-line survey to further identify the needs and circumstances faced by the CDM participants. The report came out in May. A total of 6,576 CDM participants responded with 34% of them formers members of the staff from the Ministry of Education and 27% from Ministry of Health making up a big chunk of respondents. Key findings include: 84% of the respondents were fired from work; 38% were unable to continue working in their trade or profession; 31% have been displaced from home for more than 6 months; 80% were facing financial difficulty; 26% were finding it difficult to access healthcare from their location; 48% were facing security threats and 53% were facing mental health issues such as depression. It is estimated that there are about 300,000 CDM workers and close to 1.5 million of IDP.
The NUG has set up a “CDM Success Committee” and has been working hard to support CDM participants. Strategies include improving income generating activities of CDM staff, providing financial assistance, helping find job opportunities, implementing measures to reduce security issues and attempting to create psychosocial rehabilitation programs. A “Spring Lottery” has been set up. It is a creative program run by the Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investments of the NUG where the bulk of the proceeds are focused on CDM activists. Still, the needs are huge and much more needs to be done.
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) can play a critical role in assisting this important group. Afterall, they are IDPs under a different name. The NUG is ready and willing to collaborate if such an overture is made. Our policy has always been “People First”. Despite NGOs, both international and domestic, having to register with the SAC in areas controlled by the military, if there is transparency and equitable distribution and good communication with the NUG, we want them to be active in their roles. We may also have useful data to share as long as confidentiality can be guaranteed.
The SAC prohibits NGOs from operating in conflict zones which is almost 71% of the country , a tactic clearly meant to inflict suffering on those who oppose their rule. In another demonstration of callous brutality, in October 2022, the SAC issued a new law further restricting the registration and operations of NGOs. All of this suggests that the suffering of those associated with the CDM movement, as well as IDPs, are soon to increase exponentially.
Despite needing to walk a tightrope, the NGOs should not lose sight of what they were initially founded for and find creative ways to deliver help to those who need it most. They should pay more attention to delivering assistance through cross-border routes where many CDM participants are located together with IDPs. This would free them from the junta’s brutal restrictions which are handcuffing their ability to provide badly needed assistance to the people who need it most.
All NUG ministries, including mine, stand ready to work with any group to provide assistance to CDM members and those suffering so badly in Myanmar both inside the country and along cross-border areas..."
Source/publisher:
"East Asia Forum" (Australia)
Date of publication:
2022-11-21
Date of entry/update:
2022-11-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders, Anti-coup protesters
Language:
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Description:
"An attack and fire between 18-20 July 2022 allegedly left over 10 dead and homes
incinerated across Kyi Su village, Kanbalu Township Sagaing. There are claims these homes were specifically targeted for belonging to
Muslim civilians; however, this cannot currently be confirmed.
Myanmar Witness has verified the presence of a large fire via NASA FIRMS on 19 July 2022
(figure 3), with additional imagery from 18 August 2022 giving an indication on the level of
destruction Kyi Su village sustained (figure 4). Myanmar Witness has also geolocated footage
of burned motorcycles and matched them to before and after satellite imagery of the area.
Key points:
On 18 July 2022, a fire occurred in Kyi Su village, Kanbalu, resulting in the destruction of
civilian homes as well as, allegedly, at least 10 human casualties, whose bodies were burned.
It cannot be confirmed if this burning occurred pre or post mortem. Other sources claim around
70 people were killed during this incident.
Myanmar Witness has identified user-generated content (UGC) depicting burned bodies,
although this content cannot be independently verified at this time due its inability to undergo
geolocation. Allegations of burned bodies during this event were pervasive, leading Myanmar
Witness to include them in this reporting.
Myanmar Witness has also geolocated images of burned-out motorcycles in Kyi Su.
Myanmar Witness has also investigated claims of troop movements to verify the presence of
State Administration Council (SAC) forces at the time of the alleged attack.
Although reports of this village, and certain homes within it, being intentionally targeted due to
the village’s large Muslim population are startling, Myanmar Witness is unable to verify this at
present.....Summary: Local media reports allege that across 18-20 July 2022 the village of Kyi Su was raided by
SAC and Pyu Saw Htee forces, involving both ground and aerial based assaults. The reporting
specifically mentions the use of two Mi-35 attack helicopters and three Mi-17 transport
helicopters; however, a lack of geolocatable UGC depicting these air assets leads this
assertion to remain unverified.
Reporting from around 18-20 July claims that around ten individuals (at least) were killed, with
their bodies being burned by SAC and/or Pyu Saw Htee forces.
Myanmar Witness has geolocated footage to verify:
● An area where motorcycles had been burned-out in Kyi Su village
Myanmar Witness is actively monitoring:
● The alleged presence of burned bodies following this verified fire incident;
● Conflict around the area to establish if these burnings are a pattern of attacks on the
civilian or muslim population in Kanbalu;
● Footage and images related to the burning and destruction of homes in this case; and
● Any evidence that the villages were attacked based on their relation to being Muslimmajority..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Witness
Date of publication:
2022-11-17
Date of entry/update:
2022-11-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Military History, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
391.52 KB (8 pages) - Original version
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"Few countries have suffered so much hardship as Myanmar. Throughout
its recent history, Myanmar has suffered endless civil wars, poverty and
the tyrannical rule of a military more dedicated to defending its own
interests and imposing by force, on an extraordinarily diverse society, an
ethnocentric idea of national unity than to protecting its own people.
The latest episode in a long string of tragedies started on 1 February 2021,
when, after a decade of democratic reforms that offered some glimmers
of hope for the future development of the country, the military asserted
itself again with a senseless coup d’état that would throw the country into
chaos over the coming months. The great mass of the Myanmar population
has valiantly opposed the coup from the very beginning with strikes and
peaceful demonstrations organized by a civil disobedience movement
(CDM) which emerged spontaneously out of the burning desire of the
Myanmar people to prevent at all costs a return to military rule.
At first, most of the global community seemed to take the side of the
people against the junta established by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing,
the Commander in Chief of the Myanmar armed forces. As the military
launched a brutal campaign of repression, many government and
international institutions issued statements of concern condemning the
coup and the violence, but little else.
The international attention on Myanmar soon faded away, as crises
elsewhere displaced it from the headlines. Policy-makers throughout the
world seemed to forget about the Myanmar people’s plight. That neglect
was taking place as the situation in Myanmar only kept worsening. Since
the coup, the military has steadily ramped up its repression, committing
all kinds of atrocities against the Myanmar people in order to consolidate
its power. Failing, however, to do so, the junta has merely accomplished
to drive the country into a civil war that is devastating the economy,
displacing hundreds of thousands, throwing millions into poverty, and
generating a humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions.
We, eight Parliamentarians from seven countries all over the world who had
been observing with concern the worsening situation in Myanmar, decided
that more needed to be done. At the initiative of ASEAN Parliamentarians
for Human Rights (APHR), we formed an international coalition to launch
the International Parliamentary Inquiry (IPI) into the global response to
the crisis in Myanmar. Our aim has been to find out how and why the
global community has failed to address the crisis, with the view to offering
recommendations on what it should do.
The result of such work is this report, drafted to persuade the international
community to substantially increase their support for the Myanmar
people. We are convinced that such support is not only necessary as a
consequence of the crucial geopolitical importance of Myanmar, but also
because, as authoritarianism seems to be on the ascendance throughout
the world, the struggle of the Myanmar people for democracy is also the
struggle of all people who love democracy and justice everywhere.
A common theme often repeated by our witnesses has been that, in the
face of such a horrible tragedy, the countries and international institutions
that claim to support democracy in Myanmar have reacted with a timidity
that puts in serious doubt their alleged commitment to the country.
The inquiry has also given us a better understanding of the political
complexities of Myanmar, particularly its multiple ethnic conflicts, which
are crucial to understand the prominent role of the military, and the
true extent of the crimes against humanity committed by the military.
But the inquiry has also shown us the determination and courage of
those fighting for democracy in Myanmar; the heroism of civil society
organizations, most often led by admirably resilient women, working to
tackle the humanitarian crisis; and the commitment and selflessness of
those activists, particularly the youth, who refuse to give up in working to
realize their dream of a better and more just Myanmar.
We are deeply grateful for their testimonies and invaluable help in
conducting this inquiry. We are also firmly convinced that the future of
Myanmar belongs to all of them, and to millions of Myanmar people of
all ethnicities who fight everyday for their rights in many different ways,
many of them unacknowledged. They are the ones who can break the
tragic cycle of violence that has brought so much misery and misfortune
to the country, not a military that is acting as a brutal force of occupation
in its own territory. But they need our help. Let’s not fail them again..."
Source/publisher:
ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
Date of publication:
2022-11-03
Date of entry/update:
2022-11-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf pdf pdf pdf
Size:
2.42 MB 184.71 KB 134.17 KB 155.09 KB
Local URL:
2022-11-03-IPI-APHR-final-report_Time-is-not-on-our-side_-The-failed-international-response-to-the-Myanmar-coup-en.pdf- 2022-11-03-IPI-APHR_Report-executive-Summary-and-Recommendations-bu.pdf
- 2022-11-03-IPI-APHR_Report-executive-Summary-and-Recommendations-indo.pdf
- 2022-11-03-IPI-APHR_Report-executive-Summary-and-Recommendations-Malay.pdf
- 2022-11-03-IPI-APHR_Report-executive-Summary-and-Recommendations-thai.pdf
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Description:
"London, UK - The 23 October air bombing of a concert in Hpakant, Kachin State, that killed 60 people demands an immediate and harsh response from the international community. The concert was part of a celebration of the anniversary of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the political wing of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Large parts of the crowd and those killed were civilians. Many more were injured.
“The Burmese military knows exactly what they are doing, and we have no doubt this bombing was widespread and systematic attack on civilians, which is clearly a crime against humanity. The junta’s goal remains to terrorize the people and demoralize support for any resistance to their illegitimate rule. This horrifying act is one of the most brazen since the coup, and the international community can no longer sit on their hands while these atrocities occur. The response must be immediate and devastating to the criminal regime,” said BHRN’s Executive Director, Kyaw Win.
The attack comes just days before a meeting is scheduled in Indonesia where ASEAN ministers are to discuss a five-point plan which the junta agreed to last year to resolve the conflict in Burma. The Tatmadaw has recently increased its attacks on civilians and should be denied any legitimacy by ASEAN or any other international body. This attack is clearly defying the five-points plan and disregard the efforts of ASEAN leaders.
The junta maintains its power through the flow of cash and weapons in the country. The international community must cut their access to these two assets as much as possible. Military interests must be severely sanctioned, and the international community must take greater action to pressure countries to stop providing weapons to the Burmese military. The international community must also consider how to better support the people of Burma in their struggle against the military. No moral nation can remain neutral in a fight between a genocidal military dictatorship and a civilian population. International accountability mechanism cannot protect civilians from airstrike. This is the duty of international community to step in to protect the civilians from being butchered by the junta.
Organisation’s Background
BHRN is based in London and operates across Burma/Myanmar working for human rights, minority rights and religious freedom in the country. BHRN has played a crucial role in advocating for human rights and religious freedom with politicians and world leaders..."
Source/publisher:
Burma Human Rights Network
Date of publication:
2022-10-26
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
94.55 KB
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"Quotes attributed to SAC-M founding members in response to the deadly junta airstrike in Hpakant Township, Kachin State on 23 October:
Chris Sidoti: “The Myanmar military is emboldened to commit such heinous and cowardly acts against the Myanmar people and Myanmar’s ethnic minorities in particular, because it knows the international community will not take action to stop it. In failing to act the international community is shielding the Myanmar military generals from accountability. This makes it complicit in the junta atrocity at Hpakant. The International Criminal Court urgently needs to act on the National Unity Government of Myanmar’s article 12(3) declaration so that Myanmar military leaders face justice for their horrific crimes.”
Marzuki Darusman: “To launch an airstrike on civilians attending a music concert is the ultimate act of junta cowardice and inhumanity. Sadly, it is entirely consistent with the campaign of scorched-earth that the Myanmar military has been waging against the peoples of Myanmar, including the Kachin, with impunity not just for the last 20 months but for decades. It’s completely unacceptable that ASEAN has wasted 20-months trying to reason with Min Aung Hlaing and persisting with its failed Five Point Consensus while his junta burned Myanmar to the ground and brutalised its people. ASEAN leaders must urgently chart a new course in coordination with the National Unity Government of Myanmar and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations to end the mass suffering being caused by the junta. The upcoming ASEAN Summit must be a turning point to speedily, effectively and irreversibly lead to the end of the junta’s erratic behaviour and the whole conflict.”
Yanghee Lee: “The horrific junta airstrike in Kachin State demonstrates how far Min Aung Hlaing and his barbaric junta are beyond reason. Junta fighter jets deliberately attacked a night time music concert attended by hundreds of civilians knowing it would likely cause catastrophic loss of life, an act that constitutes a war crime. When will the international community, including the UN and ASEAN, stand with the people of Myanmar and support the democratic revolution?”..."
Source/publisher:
Special Advisory Council for Myanmar
Date of publication:
2022-10-26
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
Language:
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Description:
"HURFOM: Today, the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM), releases our latest report: “The junta wiped us out again”: Socio-economic impacts post-coup in Southeastern Burma. Our findings confirm that the Burma Army has deliberately derailed prospects for democracy in the country and has embarked on a campaign of targeted and wide-spread abuse in an attempt to terrorize the population into submission. Their volatile and unlawful actions have resulted in widespread displacement resulting in a refugee crisis alongside crippling social and economic impacts on innocent civilians. In areas of Mon State, Karen State and Tanintharyi region, the military junta has continued to act with impunity. HURFOM condemns the ongoing attacks and calls for immediate international intervention.
Since the attempted coup on 1 February 2021, HURFOM has been documenting the human rights violations committed against local people by various battalions of the Burma Army. Through focus groups and interviews conducted by HURFOM for this report, witnesses and victims of various crimes perpetrated by the junta have voiced feelings of insecurity and fears of their future. Economic mismanagement has led to inflation, which has priced basic goods including cooking oil and rice, outside of the financial means of local people. Electricity blackouts are common, leaving many people without power for hours during the day. Compounded with limited work opportunities and ongoing bribery and extortion by the regime, civilians across Southeastern Burma are worried about their futures.
Our findings include evidence of serious disregard for civilian safety and their livelihoods by the military junta. Education has been interrupted, risking a generation of children growing up illiterate and unable to provide for themselves. Young people have been forced to abandon their studies or seek opportunities abroad. As the junta unleashes their campaign of terror, resistance movements are adapting and using various tools and organizing methods to overcome them.
The uptick in violence has also led to protracted displacement. HURFOM observed rising numbers of displacement as the presence of the Burma Army has led to more villagers fleeing to safer areas in search of refuge and protection. Across HURFOM’s documentation, it is evident that the junta is using the same policies of scorched earth, divide and rule as well as the four cuts strategy to deploy their villainous acts.
The international community must be inspired by the will and power of the people and act with integrity and moral conviction on their behalf. There have been multiple calls by civil society organizations who are calling for diplomats and global actors to use their power to protect the lives of those inside Burma. It is imperative that they respond beyond words of condemnation but with actions that will finally make clear to the Burma Army once and for all that they are not above the rule of law and will be punished at the highest international level..."
Source/publisher:
Human Rights Foundation of Monland
Date of publication:
2022-10-26
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
HURFOM and other human rights material about the Mon, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Burma: Internal displacement/forced migration of several ethnic groups.
Language:
Format :
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Size:
4.26 MB (Original version) - 72 pages, 4.61 MB (Original version) - 81 pages
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"For Immediate Release Tuesday 25th October 2022
Burma Military Airstrikes Kill At Least 80 - Aviation Fuel Sanctions Needed Now The Women's League of Burma and Burma Campaign UK send condolences to the family and friends of all those who were killed by Burmese military airstrikes in Kachin State on the evening of 23rd October.
As around a thousand people attended a music festival to celebrate the founding of the Kachin Independence Organisation, the Burmese military sent jets to bomb the audience.
Initial reports are that more than 80 people have been killed. More than 100 were seriously injured. When they tried to reach hospitals for treatment, they were blocked by the Burmese military at Ginsi village and turned back.
Three Burmese military jets attacked the music festival, which featured famous Kachin artists such as Aurai and Galau Yaw Lwi. The festival was celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Kachin Independence Organisation.
Over the past four days, the Burmese military has also been carrying out airstrikes at Kawkereik, Karen State, with reports of two people killed and ten injured, including six children.
Since the attempted coup began on 1st February last year, more than a million people have been forced to flee their homes because of attacks by the Burmese military. A large
proportion of these people were forced to flee because of airstrikes, or because the threat of airstrikes means it is unsafe to return home. This has created a humanitarian crisis.
Women's League of Burma and Burma Campaign UK call on the international community: To immediately impose aviation fuel sanctions on Burma. Limiting the Burmese military's access to aviation fuel will reduce its ability to carry out airstrikes and kill civilians.
Enact targeted sanctions against the Burmese military and its proxies to effectively cut off financial flows;
Institute a comprehensive global arms embargo, with robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, to end the direct and indirect supply, sale, or transfer of all
weapons and other equipment that may be used for training, intelligence and military assistance; Refer the situation on human rights in Burma to the International Criminal Court for their crimes against humanity, which have been perpetrated against innocent civilians, including peaceful protests and ethnic groups.
The Burmese military are deliberately and indiscriminately targeting civilians with airstrikes as part of their campaign to attempt to terrorise the people of Burma into submission. This is a war crime and a crime against humanity.
We have repeatedly called for action to cut the supply of revenue, arms and equipment to the Burmese military. The failure to do so has meant that the Burmese military are still able to carry out airstrikes like the one in Kachin State yesterday.
"Every day ethnic communities are the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity. We are witnessing daily atrocity crimes perpetrated by the same military junta that has already committed genocide. The international community needs to start enforcing international laws
and rules with regard to Burma. Decisive action is needed to uphold international law, to preserve international peace and security and to fulfil mandates contained in Resolution 1674 regarding the protection of civilians," said Nang Moet Moet, Joint General Secretary (1) of Women's League of Burma.
"The British government, EU and USA have decided that trying to stop airstrikes like this is not a priority, and have failed to act on calls for aviation fuel sanctions. They can and must do more. Imposing sanctions to stop the supply of aviation fuel to the Burmese military is the single most effective action that can be taken to address the humanitarian crisis caused by airstrikes against civilians," said Anna Roberts, Executive Director of Burma Campaign UK..."
Source/publisher:
Women’s League of Burma and Burma Campaign UK
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
Language:
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"1. International Humanitarian Law, which also governs non-international armed conflict,
forbids the belligerent parties to attack non-military objectives. International Law defines
military objectives as follows:
Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions
Article 52(2) of the 1977 Additional Protocol I provides:
In so far as objects are concerned, military objectives are limited to those objects which by their
nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose
total or partial destruction, capture or neutralization, in the circumstances ruling at the time,
offers a definite military advantage.
Hague Rules of Air Warfare
Article 24 (1) of the 1923 Hague Rules of Air Warfare provides: “Aerial bombardment is
legitimate only when directed at a military objective, that is to say, an object of which the
destruction or injury would constitute a distinct military advantage to the belligerent.”
2. In spite of the fact that whatever aerial bombing must be carried out strictly targeting only
military objectives, the belligerent party must calculate the possible civilian casualties that are
likely to result due to the attack. If there are civilians in the immediate vicinity, the belligerent
party must refrain from such aerial attack since it could cause many casualties.
3. On October 23, 2022, the military council conducted an airstrike targeting an outdoor concert
being held to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of KIO in A Nang Pa village in Kachin State,
causing hundreds of casualties, mostly civilians. The military had a clear knowledge about civilians1 participating in the celebration since the access to the village was controlled by its
check points. As such, the concert clearly wasn’t military objective and thus the attack is a
blatant war crime. Moreover, the patterns of the junta’s aggressive operations clearly indicate
the commission of crimes against humanity because the attack was widespread and systematic,
inducing fear among the population.
4. Aerial attacks using fighter jets cannot be carried out without the authorization from the
central command, Office of the Commander in Chief. Following the airstrike in A Nang Pa
village, the junta’s information team reported that the airstrike was conducted in compliance
with the Rules of Engagement. Therefore, the command for carrying out the bombing came
directly from the central command and is planned and systematic. 2 Min Aung Hlaing and his
top generals3 are therefore directly responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
5. Now is the time for all political and legal entities, ethnic resistance groups and CSOs, both
at home and abroad, to unitedly put all efforts to seek justice for the victims by firmly adhering
to the principle of substantive justice and to restore the rule of law in the country. The impunity,
primarily enjoyed by successive military perpetrators, must be ended once and for all.
6. The responsibility for such brutal crimes also extends to those so-called ethnic resistance
organizations that entered a ceasefire agreement with the junta under the failed NCA or,
otherwise, to the political parties that are preparing to run for office in the announced juntacontrolled
elections, thereby knowingly supporting the resurgence of the 2008 Constitution and
the military dictatorship. Also, the United Wa State Party should reconsider its position in
relation to the junta’s crimes.
7. Legal Aid Network calls on the above-mentioned organizations to review their political
determinations and unanimously combine forces under the principle of the rule of law, so that
the military perpetrators including Min Aung Hlaing and his top accomplices can be brought
before international justice mechanisms and hold accountable for their evident and consistent
commission of international crimes..."
Source/publisher:
Legal Aid Network
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Rule of Law - Burma/Myanmar-specific
Language:
Format :
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584.4 KB
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"၀၂၂ ခုနှစ်၊ အောက်တိုဘာလ ၂၃ ရက်နေ့ ညတွင် ကချင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ဖားကန့်မြို့၌ ကချင်လွတ်မြောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့ ၏ ဖွဲ့စည်းတည်ထောင်ခြင်း ၆၂ နှစ်မြောက် အကြို တေးဂီတ ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ ကျင်းပနေစဉ် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုမှ တိုက်လေယာဉ်များဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲ တိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် အပြစ်မဲ့ ပြည်သူအများအပြား ထိခိုက် ဒဏ်ရာရ၊ သေဆုံးခဲ့ရပါသည်။
ထိုဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်မှုကြောင့် ယခုအချိန်အထိ အနည်းဆုံး ကချင်တိုင်းရင်းသားများအပါအဝင် ပြည်သူ ၆၀ ကျော်သေဆုံးခဲ့ရပြီး ၁၀၀ ကျော် ဒဏ်ရာရရှိခဲ့ကြောင်း ကနဦး သိရှိရပါသည်။
တေးဂီတပွဲအား လူအများ ငြိမ်းချမ်းစွာ စုဝေးဆင်နွဲနေချိန်တွင် ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်စွာ ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ အစုအလိုက်အပြုံလိုက် တိုက်ခိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းသည် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်စုအပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှု၊ အရပ်သားများကို ပစ်မှတ်ထားတိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှု မြောက်ကြောင်း သက်သေခံလျှက်ရှိသည်။
ထို့အပြင် ဒဏ်ရာရ လူနာများအား ဆေးကုသမှု မရနိုင်အောင် စစ်အင်အားဖြင့် လမ်းများပိတ်ဆို့ တားမြစ် ထားခြင်းသည် လူတစ်ဦးချင်း၏ လွတ်လပ်စွာ အသက်ရှင်သန်ခွင့်ရှိရမည် ဟူသည့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးကြေညာစာတမ်းကို ပြောင်ပြောင်တင်းတင်း ငြင်းဆန် ချိုးဖောက်လိုက်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
အထက်ပါလုပ်ရပ်သည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုက ပြည်သူတရပ်လုံးအား ရန်သူအဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ကာ လက်နက်အားကိုးဖြင့် လူမဆန်စွာ အနိုင်ကျင့် စော်ကားမှု၊ တရားလက်လွတ် ရမ်းကား သတ်ဖြတ်များ ကျူးလွန်လျှက်၊ တတိုင်းပြည်လုံးကို စစ်ကျွန်အဖြစ် သွတ်သွင်းရန် ကြိုးပမ်းနေမှု၏ လုပ်ရပ်ပင်ဖြစ်သည်။
မိမိတို့ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း အနေဖြင့် အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်အုပ်စု၏ အကြမ်းဖက်မှု လုပ်ရပ်မှန်သမျှကို ပြင်းထန်စွာ ကန့်ကွက် ရှုံ့ချလိုက်သည်။ ထို့အတူ ထိုကဲ့သို့ အပြစ်မဲ့ ပြည်သူများ၏ အသက် အိုးအိမ် များကို နေ့စဉ်နဲ့အမျှ တရားလက်လွတ် သတ်ဖြတ် ဖျက်ဆီး နေမှုများအား နိုင်ငံတကာ အသိုင်းအဝိုင်းမှ ချက်ခြင်း ထိရောက်စွာ အရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်ကြပါရန် တိုက်တွန်း တောင်းဆိုလိုက်သည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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pdf
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349.48 KB
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Description:
"၁။ ပြည်တွင်းစစ်ပွဲများတွင်ပါ သက်ရောက်မှုရှိသော နိုင်ငံတကာ စစ်ဥပဒေအရ ဘက်နှစ်ဘက်
စစ်ဆင်တိုက်ခိုက်နေစဉ် စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်ကိုသာ တိုက်ခိုက်ခွင့်ရှိသည်။ စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်အားအောက်ပါအတိုင်း
ဖွင့်ဆိုထားသည်။
နိုင်ငံတကာစစ်ဥပဒေ (ခေါ်) ဂျီနီဗာကွန်ဗင်းရှင်း1
နိုင်ငံတကာစစ်ဥပဒေ (ခေါ်) ဂျီနီဗာကွန်ဗင်းရှင်း၏ နောက်ဆက်တွဲစာချုပ် (၁)၊ အပိုဒ် ၅၂ အပိုဒ်ခွဲ
(၂) တွင် အရာဝတ္ထု၊ အဆောက်အအုံတို့နှင့်စပ်လျဉ်းပြီး စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ် (Military Objective) ဟူသည်မှာ
၎င်းအရာဝတ္ထု၊ အဆောက်အအုံ၏ သဘာဝအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ တည်နေရာအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊
၎င်း၏ရည်ရွယ်ချက်အရသော်လည်းကောင်း သို့မဟုတ် အသုံးချပါက စစ်ရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှုကို ထိရောက်စွာ
အကျိုးပြုနိုင်ခြင်းရှိရမည်။ ထိုအရာဝတ္ထု၊ အဆောက်အအုံအား အလုံးစုံသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ တစိတ်တပိုင်း
သော်လည်းကောင်း ဖျက်ဆီးပစ်ပါက သို့တည်းဟုတ် သိမ်းပိုက်ပါက သို့တည်းမဟုတ် ဖြိုချဖျက်ဆီး
လိုက်ပါက အဆိုပါအချိန်အတောအတွင်း တိကျသည့်စစ်ရေးအသာစီးရမှု ရှိနေရမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
လေကြောင်းတိုက်ပွဲများဆိုင်ရာ ဟိဂ်စည်းမျဉ်း2
၁၉၂၃ လေကြောင်းတိုက်ပွဲများဆိုင်ရာ ဟိဂ်စည်းမျဉ်း၏ အပိုဒ် ၂၄ အပိုဒ်ခွဲ (၁) တွင်ဖော်ပြထား
သည်မှာ လေကြောင်းမှ ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်ရာတွင် စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်ကို ဦးတည်တိုက်ခိုက်မှသာလျှင် တရားဝင်
ဖြစ်သည်။ ဆိုလိုသည်မှာ ပစ်မှတ်တခုကို တိုက်ခိုက်ပျက်စီးအောင်ပြုလုပ်ရာတွင် ပြုလုပ်သည့်အဖွဲ့အတွက်
တိကျသေချာသည့် စစ်ရေးအကျိုးအမြတ် ရှိနေရမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
၂။ စစ်လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်ရာတွင် စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်ကို တိုက်စေဦး၊ ဗုံး၏ကျရောက်
ပေါက်ကွဲမည့်နေရာနှင့် အရပ်သားလူထုများရှိနေမည့်နေရာကို တွက်ချက်ရသည်။ စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်ကို
တိုက်ခိုက်သော ဗုံး၏ပြင်းအားကြောင့် ပြန့်ထွက်သွားမည့် အကွာအဝေးနေရာတွင် အရပ်သားလူထု
ရှိနေလျင် အဆိုပါ စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်အား တိုက်ခိုက်ခွင့်မရှိ။
၃။ စစ်ကောင်စီက အောက်တိုဘာ ၂၃ ရက်ည ကချင်ပြည်နယ် ဖားကန့ြ်မို့နယ် အနန်ပါကျေးရွာတွင ်
ကေအိုင်အို အထိမ်းအမှတ်နေ့အကြို လူထုအခမ်းအနားကျင်းပနေစဉ် လေယာဉ်ဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်မှု
ကြောင့် သေဆုံးဒဏ်ရာရသူ ရာဂဏန်းနီးပါးရှိခဲ့သည်။ အရပ်သားလူထုများသည် အခမ်းအနားပြုလုပ်သည့်
အဆိုပါနေရာသို့ စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ဂိတ်စခန်းကိုဖြတ်ပြီး သွားရောက်ရသည့် နေရာဖြစ်၍ စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်
အနေဖြင့် အရပ်သားလူထုများ ရောပြွန်းလျက်ရှိကြောင်းသိပါလျက်3နှင့် စစ်ရေးပစ်မှတ်အလျဉ်း
မဟုတ်သည်ကို တိုက်ခိုက်ခဲ့ခြင်းဖြစ်သောကြောင့် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုကို အတိအလင်း ကျူးလွန်ရာရောက်သည်။
ထို့အပြင် အဆိုပါသတ်ဖြတ်မှုအား တနိုင်ငံလုံးကို အကြောက်တရားဖန်တည်းသည့်အခြေအနေကို
သက်ရောက်စေရေးအတွက် ကျယ်ကျယ်ပြန့်ပြန့်နှင့် စနစ်တကျ (widespread and systematic)
ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းဖြစ်သဖြင့် လူသားဆန့က် ျင်ပြစ်မှု (Crimes against humanity) လည်းမြောက်သည်။
၄။ ဂျက်လေယာဉ်များဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်မှုသည် အောက်ခြေတပ်ဖွဲ့တခုခုက ၎င်းတို့၏ သဘောဆန္ဒ
သက်သက်မျှဖြင့် ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းမဟုတ်။ ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်၏ အမိန့် (သို့မဟုတ်) အတည်ပြုချက်
ဖြင့်သာ စစ်ဆင်ရေးဆောင်ရွက်ရသည်။ စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်ချက်အရ ဤစစ်ဆင်ရေးကို
ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်ရုံးကနေ တိုက်ရိုက်အစီအစဉ်တကျ ဖော်ဆောင်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်ကို တွေ့ရသည်။4
သို့ဖြစ်၍ ဤနိုင်ငံတကာရာဇဝတ်မှုကြီး နှစ်ခုအတွက် မင်းအောင်လှိုင်ခေါင်းဆောင်သည့် ထိပ်ပိုင်းစစ်အရာရှိ5
ကြီးများအားလုံးတွင် ပထမဆုံးအနေဖြင့် တိုက်ရိုက်တာဝန်ရှိသည်။
၅။ ယင်းသို့သော ဆိုးဝါးပြင်းထန်လွန်းသည့် နိုင်ငံတကာပြစ်မှုကြီးများကို အဆက်မပြတ်ကျူးလွန်နေသော
စစ်အာဏာရှင်များအား ဥပဒေစိုးမိုးရေးအခြေခံအရ ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်သူကို အပြစ်ပေးကာ တရားမျှတမှု
ရှာဖွေရမည့် (Substantive Justice) မူက ို ပြတ်ပြတ်သားသားကိုင်စွဲလျက ် မင်းအောင်လှိုင်နှင့ ် အပေါင်းပါ
စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်များအား အရေးယူအပြစ်ပေးနိုင်ဖို့ ကြိုးပမ်းဖော်ဆောင်ရန် နိုင်ငံတကာ နှင့် ပြည်တွင်း
အင်အားစုများအားလုံးတွင် တာဝန်ရှိပါသည်။
၆။ တနိုင်ငံလုံးအပစ်ရပ်စာချုပ်ကို အခြေပြု၍ဖြစ်စေ၊ အခြေမပြုဘဲဖြစ်စေ စစ်ကောင်စီ နှင့် အပစ်အခတ်ရပ်စဲ
မှုက ို ပုံသဏ္ဍာန်မျိုးစုံဖြင့် အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ခဲ့ကြသည့ ် တိုင်းရင်းသား ခုခံစစ်ဆင်အဖွဲ့ အစည်းတချို့ နှင့်
စစ်ကောင်စီက ဦးစီးကျင်းပမည့် ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်ရွေးကောက်ပွဲသည် ၂၀၀၈ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံကိုသာ ပြန်လည်အသက်
သွင်းပြီး စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် ဆက်လက်တည်မြဲသွားလိမ့်မည် ဟူသည်ကို သိပါလျက်နှင့် ရွေးကောက်ပွဲ
3 Myanmar Now: စစ်ကောင်စီ ဗုံးကြဲမှုအပေါ် KIA ပြောခွင့်ရ ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီးနော်ဘူ နှင့် ဆက်သွယ်မေးမြန်းချက်။
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xtynN8ZmBo
4 ဖားကန့်မြို့နယ်အတွင်း လုံခြုံရေးတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်များက လိုအပ်သည့် လုံခြုံရေးလုပ်ငန်းများအား ထိတွေ့တိုက်ခိုက်မှု
ဆိုင်ရာစည်းမျဉ်း (Rules of Engagement-ROE) အတိုင်းဆောင်ရွက်။ နေပြည်တော်၊ အောက်တိုဘာ - ၂၄။
http://www.dsinfo.org/node/5381?d=1
5 မင်းအောင်လှိုင်(ကြည့် - ၁၄၂၃၂/စတသ-၁၉)၊ စိုးဝင်း (ကြည့်း - ၁၆၄၈၉/စတသ-၂၂)၊ မောင်မောင်အေး (ကြည်း -
၁၈၁၃၁/စတသ-၂၅) - ညှိနှိုင်းကွပ်ကဲရေးမှူး (ကြည်း၊ ရေ၊ လေ)၊ ထွန်းအောင် (လေ - ၁၉၈၂/ - ကာကွယ်ရေးဦးစီးချုပ်
(လေ)၊ တေဇကျော် (ကြည်း - ၂၀၂၇၈/ဗသက-၇၃) - အမှတ်(၁) စစ်ဆင်ရေးအထူးအဖွဲ့မှူး။
၀င်ရန်ပြင်ဆင်နေကြသည့် နိုင်ငံရေးပါတီများ၊ အဓိကအားဖြင့် ဗမာပြည်ကွန်မြူနစ်ပါတီထံမှ အာဏာသိမ်း
ကာ ဖွဲ့စည်းပေါ်ပေါက်လာသည့် ဝပြည်သွေးစည်း ညီညွတ်ရေးပါတီတို့သည်လည်း ယခုကဲ့သို့သော
စစ်ကောင်စီက အလားတူဆန့်ကျင်ကျူးလွန်မှုမျိုးကို ပြောင်ပြောင်တင်းတင်းချို့ဖောက်နေမှုတွင် တာဝန်ရှိ
ပါသည်။
၇။ အဆိုပါအင်အားစုများအားလုံးသည် မိမိတို့၏ ရပ်တည်ချက်များကို ပြန်လည်သုံးသပ်ကာ ဥပဒေစိုးမိုးရေး
အခြေခံကို အတိအကျကိုင်စွဲပြီး နိုင်ငံတကာအဆင့်ပြစ်မှုကြီးများ အဆက်မပြတ်ကျူးလွန် လျက်ရှိသော
မင်းအောင်လှိုင်နှင့် ထိပ်ပိုင်းစစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်များအားဖမ်းဆီးပြီး နိုင်ငံတကာတရားရုံးများတွင် တင်သွင်း
အရေးယူနိုင်ရေးအတွက် စုပေါင်းကြိုးပမ်းကြရန် တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Legal Aid Network
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Rule of Law - Burma/Myanmar-specific, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"၁။ အာဏာသိမ်း စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ စစ်တပ်သည် ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ် အောက်တိုဘာလ(၂၃)ရက်နေ့ ည(၈း၃၀)နာရီခွဲ ကျော် အချိန်တွင် ကချင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ဖားကန့်မြို့နယ်၊ အနန့်ပါ တွင် ပြုလုပ်ကျင်းပနေသည့် ကချင်လွတ်လပ်ရေး အဖွဲ့ KIO ဖွဲ့စည်းတည်ထောင်ခြင်း (၆၂)နှစ်မြောက်အထိမ်းအမှတ် အကြိုတေးဂီတ ဖျော်ဖြေပွဲပြုလုပ်ကျင်းပ နေစဉ် ဂျက်တိုက်လေယာဉ်(၃)စင်းဖြင့် လေကြောင်းတိုက်ခိုက်ဗုံးကြဲခဲ့သဖြင့် အပြစ်မဲ့အရပ်သား ပြည်သူလူထုများ၊ အနုပညာရှင်များ (၈၀)ကျော်ခန့် သေဆုံးခဲ့ကြရပြီး ထိခိုက်ဒဏ်ရာရသူ (၁၀၀)ကျော်ကိုလည်း ဆေးကုသခွင့် မရရှိအောင် ဂင်စီကျေးရွာ တွင် ပိတ်ဆို့တားမြစ်သည့်အတွက် အသက်သေဆုံးမည့်အန္တရယ်များ နှင့် ရင်ဆိုင် နေရကြောင်း ကြားသိရပါသဖြင့် ကေအဲန်ယူ-ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံးအနေဖြင့် ကျန်ရစ်သူ မိသားစုနှင့် သော်လည်းကောင်း၊ ကချင်ပြည်သူ တစ်ရပ်လုံးနှင့်သော်လည်းကောင်း၊ KIO ကချင်လွတ်လပ်ရေး အဖွဲ့နှင့် ထပ်တူ ဝမ်းနည်းကြေကွဲ ရပါသည်။
၂။ အာဏာသိမ်း စစ်ကောင်စီ သည် တေးဂီတပွဲအား လူအများငြိမ်းချမ်းစွာ စုဝေးဆင်နွဲနေချိန်တွင် ရက်စက် ကြမ်းကြုတ်စွာ လူသားမဆန်စွာဖြင့် ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ အစီအစဉ်ရှိရှိဖြင့် အစုလိုက် အပြုံလိုက် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းသည် လူသားမျိုးနွယ်စုအပေါ်ကျူးလွန်သည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှု နှင့် အရပ်သားများကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား တိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုမြောက်ကြောင်း သက်သေခံလျက်ရှိသည်။ အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ကောင်စီ သည် စနစ်တကျ ကျူးလွန်သည့် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများအတွက် တာဝန်ရှိပြီး ကျူးလွန်ခံရသူ အပြစ်မဲ့ပြည်သူလူထုများ အတွက်လည်း တရားမျှတမှုကို ရရှိရန် တောင်းဆိုပါသည်။
၃။ အာဏာသိမ်း စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ပြည်တွင်းစစ်တွင် အသုံးမပြုရဟု ပိတ်ပင်တားမြစ်ထားသည့် စစ်ဆင်ရေးသုံး စစ်ဂျက်လေယာဉ်များဖြင့် တော်လှန်ရေးအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ အရပ်သားပြည်သူလူထုများ ဟူ၍ ခွဲခြားမှုမရှိဘဲ ရန်ငါ စည်းခြားလျက် ငါနဲ့မတူ ရန်သူဟူ၍ သိမ်းကြုံးသတ်မှတ်ကာ ပစ်မှတ်ထား ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်သည့် လုပ်ရပ်သည် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှု(War Crime)အား ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။
၄။ နိုင်ငံတကာအစိုးရများနှင့် နိုင်ငံတကာတရားရေးဆိုင်ရာ ယန္တယားများကလည်း ဤသို့သော နိုင်ငံတကာ လူသားခြင်းစာနာထောက်ထားသည့် ဥပဒေများ (International Humanitarian law) ကို ပြောင်ပြောင် တင်းတင်းကျူးလွန်သူ နှင့် အမိန့်ပေးစေခိုင်းသည့် အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ကောင်စီအား တာဝန်သိစွာဖြင့် ပြစ်ဒဏ်ပေး အရေးယူ ဆောင်ရွက်ရန် တောင်းဆိုသည်။
၅။ အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ကောင်စီသည် ပြည်သူများတို့အား ပစ်မှတ်ထား တိုက်ခိုက်နေခြင်းသည် ၎င်းတို့အာဏာ ဆက်လက်ဆုတ်ကိုင်ရေးကိုသာ ပြုလုပ်နေသည့်အတွက် စစ်တပ်အပေါ် ရွံ့ရှာနာကျည်း မုန်းတီးမှုများကိုသာ ပိုမိုဖြစ်ပေါ်စေပြီး မိမိပြည်သူအား ပြန်လည်သတ်ဖြတ်နေသည့် စစ်တပ်အား တိုင်းရင်းသား ပြည်သူတရပ်လုံးက ပိုမိုစည်းလုံးညီညွတ်စွာဖြင့် အတူတကွ ဝိုင်းဝန်းဆန့်ကျင်မှုပြုကြရန်လိုအပ်ပါသည်။
၆။ အာဏာသိမ်း စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ဤသို့သော လုပ်ရပ်များသည် ပြည်တွင်းစစ်အား ပိုမို နက်ရှိုင်းစွာ ဖြစ်ပေါ်ရေးသို့ တွန်းပို့နေသည် နိုင်ငံ၏အလုံးစုံ ပျက်သုန်းရေးသို့ ဦးတည်နေသော လုပ်ဆောင်ချက်များ ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် တိုင်းရင်းသား ပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံးအနေဖြင့် ဤသို့သော အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ကောင်စီ ၏ လူမဆန်သည့် လုပ်ရပ် အား ဝိုင်းဝန်းဆန့်ကျင်ပြီး စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် အမြစ်ဖြတ်ရေးတွင် ပိုမိုပါဝင်တိုက်ပွဲဝင်ရန်ကိုလည်း တိုက်တွန်း ပါသည်။
၇။ မိမိတို့ ကေအဲန်ယူ-ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံး အနေဖြင့် (၆၂)နှစ်မြောက် ကချင်လွတ်လပ်ရေးနေ့ တွင် ကချင်ပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံးနှင့်အတူ ထပ်တူထပ်မျှ အထူးဝမ်းနည်းကြေကွဲရပြီး အပြစ်မဲ့လက်နက်မဲ့ အရပ်သား ပြည်သူများတို့အား တတ်စွမ်းသရွေ့ အကာအကွယ်ပေးမှုများ ကို ဆထက်ထမ်းပိုး လုပ်ဆောင်ပေးသွားမည် ဖြစ်ပြီး မဟာလူမျိုးကြီး ဝါဒ နှင့် အာဏာရှင်စနစ် အပြီးပိုင် ချုပ်ငြိမ်းရေးအတွက် တော်လှန်သူအင်အားစုများ အားလုံးနဲ့ အတူ တိုက်ပွဲဝင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ထုတ်ပြန် လိုက်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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Source/publisher:
National Unity Consultative Council
Date of publication:
2022-10-25
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"(Bangkok) – On the evening of October 23, 2022, the Myanmar military carried out an airstrike on a music concert in Hpakant, Kachin State, organized by the opposition Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) to commemorate the ethnic organization’s 62nd anniversary. Local media reported that at least 60 people were killed and 100 injured, and that the Myanmar military blocked access to medical care for those harmed. The concert was held at a base also used for military training by the KIO’s armed wing, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
The following quote can be attributed to Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch:
The Myanmar military’s airstrike on hundreds of concertgoers in Kachin State is an apparent violation of the laws of war, which prohibit attacks causing indiscriminate or disproportionate civilian harm. Myanmar military operations in ethnic minority areas have long been characterized by a near total disregard for civilian lives and property and a failure to abide by international law. The military’s entrenched impunity underlines the need for an international investigation of those responsible for this attack and the many others committed by security forces since the February 2021 military coup.
For over a year and a half, the junta has carried out grave abuses against the millions of people who oppose military rule, amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes. How high does the death count need to reach before governments around the world impose consequences that will impact the junta’s behavior?
This horrific attack should trigger renewed efforts by concerned states to enforce tougher sanctions on the junta, including cutting off its access to foreign currency revenues as well as arms and aviation fuel. The United Nations Security Council should urgently pass a resolution imposing a global arms embargo on the junta and referring the situation to the International Criminal Court. Southeast Asian leaders meeting this week and at the ASEAN Summit in November should signal their support for such efforts to bring justice to the victims of the junta’s abuses across the country..."
Source/publisher:
Human Rights Watch (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, International Criminal Court, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations
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"Kachin Alliance strongly condemns the coup regime’s air strike in A Nang Pa, Hpakant on October
23, 2022 around 8:30 PM local time. The air strike targeted a public cultural event commemorating
the founding of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), and killed scores of civilians,
including Kachin artists, businessmen and local elders, and local KIO leaders, and injured many
more.
In the aftermath of the massacre, families were scrambling to obtain news about their loved ones
due a prolonged internet blackout in Hpakant. We are also concerned to learn the report of blocking
of medical access to victims of massacre.
We are extremely saddened by the loss and suffering of innocent lives. We pay tribute to the
commitment and sacrifices of those who were slayed in this brutal and deliberate attack. Our
sincerest condolences to the families and loved ones of the victims. You are in our thoughts and
prayers.
The coup regime, its leader Min Aung Hlaing, and their collaborators will be held responsible for
this heinous crime. Peace in Burma is not possible without the annihilation of this coup regime
once and for all. We call upon the international community to end the policy of muted response
and take serious action against the terrorist regime which has committed every known war crime
against the people of Burma..."
Source/publisher:
Kachin Alliance
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"The Kachin National Organisation (KNO ) condemns the airstrike/massacre carried out by the Burmese military terrorists
against the Kachin people who had gathered together to celebrate the 62nd Anniversary o f the founding o f the Kachin
Independence Organisation (KIO) Day at the A Nang Pa, Brigade 9 o f the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) on Sunday, 23rd
Octobcr 2022.
The tragic incident killed over 100 civilians, well known musicians, local officials and officiating personnel from the KIA
and KIO. The terrorist military ju n ta restricted and stopped the injured people in Gin Si areas from getting medical treatment at
Hpakan and Myitkyina hospitals. The terrorist military cut the phone and internet lines to the area as well.
We send our deepest condolences to the family members who lost their loved ones. May their lives, musical and artistic
contributions never be forgotten and live on in the hearts and memories o f all Kachin peoples by inspiring others to express their
songs, ballads, and art for generations to come.
The launching o f an airstrike by the terrorist Burmese Military Junta against a peaceful civilian gathering was a most
despicable and cowardly act. Unfortunately, from the beginning, the Burmese Military Junta has been committing genocidal
atrocities, war crimes, and crimes against humanity for decades in an attempt to control the political opposition and subjugate the
civilian population. It is reported that the Burmese Military Junta has launched over 240 airstrikcs killing over 200 civilians,
including women and children, and destroying many homes, public buildings including schools, temples, businesses, and clinics
throughout Burma in areas under the control o f the ethnic Burman, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Shan, Chin, and the Rakhinc. The air
strikes violate international law as spelled out in the Geneva Convention regarding the protection o f civilians.
We arc calling on all countries to protest against the atrocities. We call on freedom loving nations to support and supply
practical anti- air craft equipment and weapons to the Kachin Independence Army and other armed forces fighting against the
Burmese military to prevent more such tragic massacres and loss o f life in the future..."
Source/publisher:
Kachin National Organization
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"In the evening of October 23 2022, terrorist Myanmar military launched targeted airstrikes
against civilians who were gathering at a live music event that mark the upcoming 62nd
Anniversary of the founding of Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in Ah Nant Par
village of Hpakant Township in Kachin State. Many innocent civilians including prominent
Kachin ethnic singers and artists were killed and injured during the indiscriminate arial
attacks and deliberate bombing by junta’s fighter jets.
The village is located in an area within Kachin’s Hpakant Township where internet and
telecommunication blackout have been imposed since August 20, 2021, more than 15
months ago. By the time of the release of this statement, estimated 60 people have died
while over 100 injured people are facing a life-threatening situation having been blocked
by the terrorist military troops at a checkpoint in Ginsi village to deny them any chance
of getting treatment.
We, the undersigned resistance forces, would like to declare our position as follow
regarding this tragic event.
1. We are deeply sorry for the Kachin people who have suffered from this inhuman
attack.
2. We consider this attack by terrorist junta on 62nd anniversary ceremonial event
of the KIO as an attack on all revolutionary forces and actors who are engaging
in political and armed resistance against the terrorist junta for the establishment
of a genuine federal democracy.
3. These deliberate bombing attacks on large civilian gathering which have resulted
to mass killing is a serious commission of war crime. Moreover, such targeted
mass killing of the Kachin ethnic people in particular during such gathering of
ethnic ceremonial event implies that the junta could have genocidal intent.
4. We condemn the terrorist military council in the strongest terms possible for
such attack on civilians.5. We are always proud of the commitment and effort of KIO in their struggle for
federal democracy and Kachin people’s liberation, and we vow to collaborate
more closely with them and increased the intensity of our fight against the military
junta.
6. We call on the international governments and community to block supplies of
aviation fuel to the terrorist junta, sanction its main source of revenue Myanma
Oil and Gas Enterprise, step up efforts for stripping of any form of legitimacy and
recognition that the junta is receiving on international stage, and urgently and
consistently advocate for he people of Myanmar..."
Source/publisher:
All Kachin Students’ Federation, Anti Junta Mass Movement Committee, Blood Money Campaign, General Strike Committee, General Strike Committee of Nationalities, Kachin National Youth Network, Kachin State Civilian Movement and Women’s League of Burma
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
Language:
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Size:
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Local URL:
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- 2022-10-24-Statement-regarding-Myanmar-junta’s-deliberate-bombing-on-civilians-gathering-site-in-Kachin-State-pio-en.pdf
- 2022-10-24-Statement-regarding-Myanmar-junta’s-deliberate-bombing-on-civilians-gathering-site-in-Kachin-State-pio-bu.pdf
- 2022-10-24-Statement-regarding-Myanmar-junta’s-deliberate-bombing-on-civilians-gathering-site-in-Kachin-State-pio-kachin.pdf
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Source/publisher:
Karenni State Consultative Council
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"ကချင်လွတ်မြောက်ရေးအဖွဲ့ (KIO) အထိမ်းအမှတ် အကြိုနေ့အဖြစ် ဖားကန့်မြို့နယ်၊ အနန်ပါ ကျေးရွာအနီး တေးဂီတဖျော်ဖြေပွဲ ကျင်းပနေစဉ် အောက်တိုဘာလ ၂၃ ရက် ညပိုင်းက စစ်ကောင်စီ လေတပ်မှ ဂျက်တိုက်လေယာဉ် (၃) စီးဖြင့် ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်ခဲ့သဖြင့် ကချင်အနုပညာရှင်များ အပါအဝင် အရပ်သားပြည်သူ အများအပြား သေဆုံး၊ ထိခိုက်ဒဏ်ရာ ရရှိခဲ့ကြောင်း ဝမ်းနည်းဖွယ် ကြားသိရပါသည်။
ထိုသို့ တိုက်ပွဲအချိန်လည်း မဟုတ်ဘဲ အရပ်သားများပါဝင်သော တေးဂီတပွဲ အခမ်းအနားတစ်ခုအား ပစ်မှတ်ထား၍ အစုလိုက်၊ အပြုံလိုက် သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်းသည် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကို ပြောင်ပြောင်တင်းတင်း ကျူးလွန်ချိုးဖောက်နေသည့် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ အကြမ်းဖက် ဖက်ဆစ်ဝါဒအား ပြသသည့် ထပ်လောင်းသက်သေပင် ဖြစ်ပါသည်။
စစ်ကောင်စီသည် စာသင်ကျောင်းများ၊ ဆေးရုံများ၊ ဘာသာရေး အဆောက်အဦးများ၊ မြို့ပြကျေးရွာ လူနေအိမ်ခြေများ စသည့် အရပ်ဘက်ပစ်မှတ်များအား ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ လေကြောင်းမှ ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်ခြင်းများကြောင့် နိုင်ငံအနှံ့ အပြစ်မဲ့ အရပ်သားပြည်သူများ နေ့စဉ်နှင့်အမျှ ထိခိုက်သေဆုံးနေကြရပါသည်။
စစ်ကောင်စီ လေတပ်အရာရှိများအနေဖြင့် စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၏ အမိန့်ကို တသွေမတိမ်း လိုက်နာပြီး အရပ်သားပြည်သူများအပေါ် လေကြောင်းမှ ဗုံးကြဲ တိုက်ခိုက်နေခြင်းများသည် စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုများအား ကိုယ်တိုင်ပါဝင်ကျူးလွန်နေခြင်းပင် ဖြစ်ပြီး တချိန်ချိန်တွင် တရားစီရင် အပြစ်ပေးအရေးယူခံရမည် ဖြစ်ကြောင်း သတိပေးလိုပါသည်။
စစ်ကောင်စီလေတပ်၏ ဗုံးကြဲတိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် ထိခိုက်သေဆုံးခဲ့ရသည့် မိသားစုဝင်များနှင့်အတူ ထပ်တူ ဝမ်းနည်းကြေကွဲရပါကြောင်း နှင့် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုကျူးလွန်နေသည့် လုပ်ရပ်များအား ရှုတ်ချကြောင်း ပြည်သူ့ပန်းတိုင်အဖွဲ့မှ သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်အပ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
People's Goal
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
Language:
Format :
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"" စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ လူမဆန်သော အကြမ်းဖက်တိုက်ခိုက်မှုကို ကရင်နီအမျိုးသားတိုးတက်ရေး ပါတီ KNPP အနေဖြင့် ပြင်းပြင်းထန်ထန် ရှုံ့ချပါသည်။ ပစ်ခတ်မှု ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့သည့် နေရာဒေသသည် စစ်ရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှုနှင့် စစ်ပွဲများ ဖြစ်ပွားနေသည့် နေရာဒေသ မဟုတ်သည့်အတွက် စစ်ကောင်စီ အနေဖြင့် တမင်သက်သက် အရပ်သားများကို ပစ်မှတ်ထားတိုက်ခတ်ခြင်း ဖြစ်သလို စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှု (War Crime) အား ကျူးလွန်ခြင်း ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ထင်ရှားပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Karenni National Progressive Party
Date of publication:
2022-10-24
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Military History, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
343.64 KB
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Description:
"Executive Summary: Anti-junta protests constitute 99 % of mass protests, with some socioeconomic protests including
protests organized by thousands of garment laborers in the compounds of the Zaykabar company’s
factory, strikes of Food Panda riders, PMG bottle refinery factory workers’ strikes calling for the
increase of bonus and riots-like pro-military rallies.
Following the burning of civilian homes, markets, and public property near flash mobs, the military
junta has accelerated its tactics to divide the public and strike organisers.
In total, military and private vehicles were rammed into peaceful protests and struck 19 times,
including eight times in Mandalay Region, five times in Yangon Region, three times in Sagaing
Region, and once in each of Shan State, Kachin State, and Tanintharyi State.
Prison strikes include hunger strikes against the junta, prisoner strikes calling for their rights in
prisons and strikes showing solidarity with the oppressed outside. Inmate protesters were beaten,
kept in solitary confinement, denied access to letters and family, restricted in security, and tortured
to death.
In many cases, the charges against the detained protesters were replaced with more severe offenses. Demonstrators who have been arrested face criminal prosecution under the Penal Code or the
Counter-Terrorism Act rather than under the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law,
which is less intense.
The lawyers defending and providing legal assistance to the detained protesters, politicians, and
activists were also jailed. A number of young female lawyers providing legal assistance to the detainees have been sexually harassed by both junta forces and police.
Despite the violent crackdowns and oppression, anti-coup flash mobs have continued to persist in
major cities with peaceful protests such as the main strike of Kalay township, Yinmabin Shwenwethway strike, the “Our Village Searches No Savior” strike in Yinmabin and multi-village strike
of eastern Yinmabin and northern Salingyi Sagaing Region..."
Source/publisher:
Athan - Freedom of Expression Activist Organization
Date of publication:
2022-10-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Anti-coup protesters, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
11.86 MB (Original version) - 29 pages
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Description:
"Executive Summary: Anti-junta protests constitute 99 % of mass protests, with some socioeconomic protests including
protests organized by thousands of garment laborers in the compounds of the Zaykabar company’s
factory, strikes of Food Panda riders, PMG bottle refinery factory workers’ strikes calling for the
increase of bonus and riots-like pro-military rallies.
Following the burning of civilian homes, markets, and public property near flash mobs, the military
junta has accelerated its tactics to divide the public and strike organisers.
In total, military and private vehicles were rammed into peaceful protests and struck 19 times,
including eight times in Mandalay Region, five times in Yangon Region, three times in Sagaing
Region, and once in each of Shan State, Kachin State, and Tanintharyi State.
Prison strikes include hunger strikes against the junta, prisoner strikes calling for their rights in
prisons and strikes showing solidarity with the oppressed outside. Inmate protesters were beaten,
kept in solitary confinement, denied access to letters and family, restricted in security, and tortured
to death.
In many cases, the charges against the detained protesters were replaced with more severe offenses. Demonstrators who have been arrested face criminal prosecution under the Penal Code or the
Counter-Terrorism Act rather than under the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law,
which is less intense.
The lawyers defending and providing legal assistance to the detained protesters, politicians, and
activists were also jailed. A number of young female lawyers providing legal assistance to the detainees have been sexually harassed by both junta forces and police.
Despite the violent crackdowns and oppression, anti-coup flash mobs have continued to persist in
major cities with peaceful protests such as the main strike of Kalay township, Yinmabin Shwenwethway strike, the “Our Village Searches No Savior” strike in Yinmabin and multi-village strike
of eastern Yinmabin and northern Salingyi Sagaing Region..."
Source/publisher:
Athan - Freedom of Expression Activist Organization
Date of publication:
2022-10-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Anti-coup protesters, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
10.3 MB (Original version) - 31 pages
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Description:
"22 October, 2022: The beheading of a National Unity Government (NUG) school teacher by Myanmar junta forces is an act of terror under international and Myanmar law. The United Nations (UN) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must take urgent action to hold the junta accountable for atrocities committed against school children and teachers in Myanmar, says the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M).
According to reports, U Saw Tun Moe, a teacher at a civilian NUG-funded school in Thit Nyi Naung village in southern Pauk Township, Magwe Region, was abducted by junta troops on Sunday, 16 October. The next day his body was found decapitated leaning against the gate of a school in the nearby village of Taung Myint. His head was impaled on a spike on the school gate above his body and three of his fingers had been cut off and placed between his thighs.
“The atrocities being committed by the junta in Myanmar have reached a new level of inhumanity,” said Marzuki Darusman of SAC-M. “The junta is escalating its barbaric attacks against children and teachers in a vain attempt to break the morale of the population who steadfastly reject it and for whom education is a pillar of the society they are sacrificing so much to create. If ASEAN supports the Myanmar peoples’ vision of the future, it must take urgent action to end the senseless junta-violence.”
Education in Myanmar is increasingly becoming a target for junta atrocities. A school headmaster who was taking part in the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement was reportedly stabbed to death on Monday in Ayeyarwady Region while on 16 September, junta attack helicopters fired heavy weapons into a school in a monastery in Sagaing Region killing at least 11 children and injuring 17. Such attacks are gross violations of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.
The junta has been committing systematic and widespread atrocities against the civilian population of Myanmar ever since its failed coup attempt in February 2021. Despite this, the alliance of democratic resistance forces, represented by the NUG, have the greatest claim to effective control in Myanmar. The NUG, people’s administration bodies and Ethnic Resistance Organisations (EROs) are delivering government services, including education, to millions of people across the country in areas under their control.
“Beheading someone and putting the body on display for the public to see is a clearly defined act of terror,” said Chris Sidoti of SAC-M. “The Myanmar military leaders have waged a bloody campaign of terror against the Myanmar people for more than 20-months. They must face international accountability. The ICC urgently needs to act on the NUG’s article 12(3) declaration and the military needs to be declared a terrorist organisation under international law.”
The Myanmar military meets the criteria of a terrorist organisation under both Myanmar and international law. SAC-M continues to call on the international community to designate and treat it as such.
“The junta shells schools, massacres school children and decapitates teachers in Myanmar with impunity. This is a deliberate attack on Myanmar’s future,” said Yanghee Lee of SAC-M. “The Myanmar people know the military has no future in Myanmar. When will the United Nations wake up to this reality and finally hold military leaders accountable for their horrific crimes? The UN’s current approach to engagement with the junta makes it complicit in the atrocities being committed against the Myanmar people.”
To protect the lives of the Myanmar people and bring the leaders of the military junta to justice, SAC-M is calling on:
– The UN Security Council to put to a vote a resolution on Myanmar to impose a comprehensive global arms embargo on the junta, financial and economic sanctions against the junta, to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC), and to commence the process of declaring the Myanmar military a terrorist organisation and require UN members states treat it as such;
– The UN General Assembly to fully accept the credentials of Myanmar’s representative to the UN, NUG appointee Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, with all the rights and privileges of any other member state, including representation in all other UN bodies and forums;
– ASEAN to engage formally with the NUG, accept the NUG as the representative of Myanmar in ASEAN meetings and forums, and use the ASEAN Summit in November to reach a new agreement on how to respond to the junta-made crises in Myanmar, developed in consultation with the NUG;
– UN officials, agencies and other humanitarian actors to cease all activities that grant legitimacy to the junta, including presenting credentials to Min Aung Hlaing and participating in photo opportunities with the generals and their collaborators, and adhere to humanitarian principles by engaging primarily with the NUG and resistance organisations;
– The ICC to accept the NUG’s article 12(3) declaration accepting ICC jurisdiction in Myanmar dating back to 2002 and urgently expand the current investigation on the basis of the declaration..."
Source/publisher:
Special Advisory Council for Myanmar
Date of publication:
2022-10-22
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, National Unity Government (NUG), Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Size:
212.62 KB
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Sub-title:
Three prison staff and five visitors died after the bombs hit a crowd queuing to drop off parcels for inmates at prison housing political detainees
Description:
"At least eight people have been killed in explosions at Myanmar’s main prison for political detainees after two bombs exploded on Wednesday morning.
Three prison staff and five visitors, including a 10-year-old girl, died after the bombs hit a crowd queueing to drop off parcels for inmates at Insein Prison, junta authorities said in a statement.
The visitors were delivering parcels to prisoners when the explosion occurred at about 9.40am, according to News of Myanmar, an online news service sympathetic to the country’s military government.
The blasts occurred inside and outside the parcel reception office near the main iron gate of the prison in Yangon.
State-owned MRTV said the explosions were caused by “mines inside parcels” while the military’s information office said an unexploded bomb had also been found in a parcel. At least 13 visitors, including a nine-year-old boy, and five prison personnel were reported to be being treated for injuries at Insein township hospital.
The prison has been notorious for decades for holding political prisoners under various military governments whom often rely on friends or family for food and medicine supplies.
Several resistance groups engaged in struggle against the military government, including the Yangon revolution force, Yangon urban guerrillas and the general strike committee, quickly released statements condemning the attacks for hurting civilians.
However, a little-known anti-government group known as the special task agency of Burma later posted a statement on Telegram saying it had carried out the attack as “retaliation against (junta chief) Min Aung Hlaing” and the continued oppression of revolutionary fighters by prison personnel. The group said the civilian casualties were caused by indiscriminate gunfire by security forces after the blasts.
“Today … the special task agency of Burma (STA), carried out two attacks to execute the prison head. We’re retaliating against Min Aung Hlaing and … the prison officers for continuously oppressing our revolution comrades,” Reuters cited the statement as saying.
The south-east Asian nation has been in turmoil since a military coup last year, with swathes of the country engulfed by fighting.
About 2,367 civilians have been killed in a crackdown on resistance, according to detailed lists compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights watchdog group.
Photos of Wednesday’s bombings distributed by the military’s information office show items scattered by the blasts and blood on the floor inside the building where parcels for prisoners are received.
A resident who lives near the prison’s entrance gate told The Associated Press by phone that he heard about 10 gunshots after hearing the two explosions but did not know if they caused any casualties.
One witness queueing at the parcel counter told Agence France-Presse the first blast hit at about 9.30am (0300 GMT). “Then another two went off quickly. After that we heard shooting as well,” said the witness, who requested anonymity. “I saw some people bleeding. The glass around the counter was all shattered.”
According to another witness, security forces locked down the area around the sprawling colonial-era prison after the explosions..."
Source/publisher:
"The Guardian" (UK)
Date of publication:
2022-10-20
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders
Language:
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Title: Pregnant woman and her mother-in-law killed in Myanmar army ground and air assault in Sagaing
Sub-title:
Junta troops capture civilians who were seeking refuge in a monastery and displace thousands of locals from six villages across Yinmabin and Pale townships
Description:
"Two women were killed when Myanmar military forces launched a two-pronged attack on villages on the border between Yinmabin and Pale townships in Sagaing Region on Wednesday morning, firing on the area from above and sending soldiers to attack on foot, locals said.
Two fighter jets carried out an airstrike on the area before a pair of helicopters dropped soldiers off at a site near the village of Nyaung Tan at 10am. They proceeded to raid the neighbouring communities of Pyar Oh and Yin Paung Taing.
A 35-year-old woman named Ma Soe—who was five months pregnant—and her mother-in-law Nyunt Nyunt, in her 60s, were killed in the attack on Pyar Oh.
The raiding troops captured displaced villagers who had been taking refuge in the Pyar Oh monastery and brought them to Yin Paung Taing, which they occupied next.
A local said that the junta forces were “using that village as a meeting point” and noted that they had blocked all roads in and out of the area.
Local anti-junta defence teams confirmed that two columns of Myanmar army soldiers had set up a base in Yin Paung Taing.
The village was targeted in both ground and air assaults by the military in August that killed some 19 civilians. Several nearby communities were also torched.
“They fired heavy weapons from aircrafts during the previous airstrike, but this time, the sound was not as loud, so I think they were using light weapons,” the local man said. “The aircrafts were hovering around an area several miles long and firing shots.”
Thousands of villagers from Yin Paung Taing, Pu Htoe Thar, Ywar Thit, Non Tan, Pyar Oh and Nyaung Tan villages were displaced by the military’s recent assaults despite there being no battles with resistance forces in the immediate area.
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of publication:
2022-10-20
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Discrimination/violence against women: reports of violations in Burma
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"Yaw Defense Force (YDF) Deputy Commander Ko Phyo Wai Soe was returning with two comrades from a front-line guerilla operation in Gangaw township when they were ambushed by regime forces on the afternoon of Oct. 9.
The three YDF fighters were riding motorbikes when they encountered a group of eight junta policemen near Kyun Khone Thar village, 40 kilometers north of Gangaw town in Magwe Region — a resistance stronghold. Of the three, only Ko Phyo Wai Soe was armed.
The YDF deputy commander had only his 9 mm pistol as he and his comrades confronted the heavily armed police squad. He was hit in his chest and thigh, while his comrade Pwar Lay was shot in the head. Both died in the firefight. The third resistance fighter, Naing Thein, managed to escape back to base to deliver news of their deaths.
The untimely death of the 21-year-old technological university student-turned-guerrilla leader was a severe blow to fellow YDF fighters and supporters of the armed anti-regime resistance.
YDF Commander Ko Myat Thu said Ko Phyo Wai Soe’s passing was a big loss for the resistance force but also further motivation to uproot Myanmar’s military dictatorship as this was what their deputy commander had fought for.
“His final words were, ‘I do nothing without the consent of the people,’” Ko Myat Thu said.
“We will just try harder to achieve what he wanted.”
‘Outstanding young man’, ‘a person of untold bravery’
At least a dozen local resistance groups, ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) – including the Arakan Army and Chinland Defense Force – and two ministries of the National Unity Government (NUG) have released statements of condolence, praising the YDF deputy commander as “an outstanding young man” and “a person of untold bravery.”
In a condolence letter from the NUG’s Ministry of International Cooperation, Union Minister Dr. Sasa described Ko Phyo Wai Soe as “one of the heroes who sacrificed themselves for the future of the country”, calling his death a big loss not only for the YDF but also for the whole of Myanmar.
The powerful Arakan Army (AA) ethnic armed group described him as a “model” leader in the country’s fight against the junta, commonly known as “Myanmar’s Spring Revolution.” The AA praised him not only for his talent on the battlefield but for leading the push to reopen schools in areas outside of junta control where the YDF operates.
“He was one of the leaders, involved in the revolution since the earliest days. He was decisive and strong-minded in military affairs. I salute him with sadness and praise,” said Ma Grace, platoon commander of the Myaung Women Warriors, a regiment of the Civilian Defense Security Organization Myaung (CDSOM) in Magwe Region.
Known as Ko Phyo by his comrades, the deputy commander not only led troops on the ground but also networked and cooperated with other armed groups, including EAOs, since their early days of operation. He forged friendships with many other armed resistance groups that emerged in the region after the February 2021 coup, and as well as with EAOs that had been fighting military dictatorship for decades.
Rich kid leading fight against brutal junta
YDF is a people’s armed resistance group founded and based in Yaw Territory, Gangaw district, covering the Gangaw, Htilin, Saw and Kyaukhtu townships bordering Chin State. The area is now a hotbed of armed resistance to the junta’s military forces.
YDF is among the area’s largest resistance groups formed since last year’s coup, and now boasts 15 units.
It was founded just days after the Feb. 1 coup by Ko Phyo, Ko Myat Thu and two other Yaw residents.
A university student and the youngest son of a wealthy family, Ko Phyo had a happy life with a bright future until the military takeover. Unlike many rich kids of his age, he loved reading and getting involved in social activities and the student union, his colleagues said.
When street protests against the coup first broke out, he and Ko Myat Thu, three years his senior, organized the rallies in Gangaw.
From the beginning, Ko Phyo believed that only armed struggle could root out military dictatorship. Having made their decision to resist the coup regime, he and Ko Myat Thu immediately traveled to EAO-controlled areas for basic military training.
They returned to Yaw territory a couple of months later, and the YDF was born with support from EAOs in Kachin, Chin and Karen States.
The YDF has offered strong resistance to regime forces in several operations and claims to have killed over 700 junta troops. Ko Phyo was responsible for directing most of the battles on the ground. The Irrawaddy is unable to verify the number of casualties claimed.
Ko Phyo was also the first to smuggle Pakistan-made automatic rifles through regime checkpoints to resistance fighters in Yaw territory. But still faced with a shortage of automatic rifles, he helped produced homemade guns and was working on manufacturing contact-explosion cannons.
But he was constantly at risk of arrest.
In September last year, Ko Phyo was returning from a meeting to buy weapons when he was arrested at a junta outpost.
Police and military personnel found out he was a YDF member and interrogated him. Ko Phyo told them he was merely a subordinate and had no serious information about the resistance group. Three days of torture followed, during which was stabbed in the ears by a screwdriver, beaten all over his body, and had his crushed by bamboo, Ko Myat Thu recalled.
Fortunately, his young age and stoicism convinced his captors he was telling the truth and they released him on parole.
Following his release, he spent one month in hospital. When he had recovered from his torture injuries, he headed straight back to the front line and his YDF comrades.
Escaping peril until the last fight
In February, the YDF joined up with the Myaing People’s Defense Force (Myaing – PDF) to attack a junta outpost in Min Ywar village, Gangaw Township. Though it was described as a police station, the outpost was housing military troops who were waiting for reinforcements before deploying in the area.
Led by Ko Phyo, the resistance operation was a success with at least 20 junta forces killed and about 30 injured.
But when Ko Phyo was hit by a bullet that pierced his jaw, entered his chest and severed an artery, his comrades thought he would die on the spot.
“But though badly injured, he gave a thumbs-up and an order to keep fighting,” said a YDF comrade who was fighting alongside him.
Luckily, he survived the battle and recovered from his wounds.
Ko Phyo recalled the experience in an online speech to mark the YDF’s one-year anniversary in May.
“I was wounded, so our medics rescued me and took me back to the base. My comrades kept fighting for an hour, and we were almost able to capture the station. But reinforcements arrived, so they had to fall back. I still feel regret today about not managing to seize the station,” he said.
Ko Myat Thu said injuries to arteries usually take years to heal but Ko Phyo recovered in just three months after a strict regime of daily exercise and determination.
However, Ko Myat Thu and other leaders urged him to take a back seat and command from behind the lines rather than fighting on the ground.
But he refused and had just resumed front-line action when he was caught in the Oct. 9 ambush with just his 9 mm pistol.
This time there was no escape.
Another who knew Ko Phyo well was Maung Saungkha, commander of the Bamar People’s Liberation Army (BPLA) resistance group. He expressed his sorrow over losing a revolutionary comrade and seeing yet another young life sacrificed in resisting the military regime.
“To achieve our goal, we pay with losses like these. Those of us who remain alive need to keep up the fight to get the genuine federation we expect,” Maung Saungkha told The Irrawaddy, referring to the democratic federal Union that anti-regime forces are fighting for..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-10-20
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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"At least eight people have been killed in explosions at Myanmar's notorious Insein prison in Yangon.
Locals told BBC Burmese two parcel bombs went off at the entrance to the jail on Wednesday morning, killing three prison staff and five visitors.
Insein prison is the country's largest jail housing about 10,000 prisoners, many of whom are political prisoners.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet. Eighteen other people were injured, officials confirmed.
The authorities said the bombs had gone off in the prison's post room. Another bomb - which did not detonate - was later found there wrapped in a plastic bag.
All five of the visitors who were killed were women and relatives of prisoners, the authorities confirmed.
One was the mother of student leader Lin Htet Naing, alias James, who was arrested by Myanmar's military authorities last June. She had been visiting the prison to deliver a rice box to her son during the week of his court hearing.
Lin Htet Naing's father-in-law, Nay Win, said he'd been allowed to see her body in the morgue.
"I feel very sad. Her husband died quite a while ago and she was the only one who always went and dispatched food and necessities to her son," he said.
Lin Htet Naing, 35, has been arrested several times since coming to prominence as a student leader more than a decade ago. His arrest in June was for opposing last year's military coup, which toppled Aung San Suu Kyi's elected civilian government.
Lin Htet Naing's wife, Phyo Phyo Aung, a mother of two, has been on the run since she took part in the protests following the coup.
Insein prison is a vast, heavily-guarded complex on the outskirts of the former capital.
The century-old prison is infamous for its harsh conditions and inhumane treatment of prisoners, rights groups say.
Tortured to death: Myanmar mass killings revealed
Why is Myanmar's military so brutal?
However the junta faces stiff resistance in large parts of the country where there is an active guerrilla front known as the People's Defence Force (PDF).
In Yangon, there have been frequent bomb attacks, most of them small, since the military crushed the mass protest movement against its coup last year.
These have usually targeted individuals viewed as collaborating with the military - such as government officials, alleged informers and more recently air force pilots accused of taking part in aerial attacks on villages which are resisting military rule.
There have also been assassination attempts, drive-by shootings and, as attitudes have hardened, beheadings in rural areas which are blamed on both sides
The extent of deadly fighting and battles this year have been indicative of a civil war, observers say..."
Source/publisher:
"BBC News" (London)
Date of publication:
2022-10-19
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-19
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders
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"Ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) based in northern Myanmar, which are long under the influence of neighboring China, are paying close attention to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) congress as changes in Beijing’s leadership and policies can impact them.
President Xi Jinping is due to be confirmed as president and CCP general secretary for a third term and head of the powerful Central Military Commission.
China is a major investor in Myanmar and has important projects as part of the Belt and Road Initiative that will give it access to the Indian Ocean.
Xi visited Myanmar in 2020 and signed 33 memorandums of understanding, agreements, exchange letters and protocols with the then National League for Democracy government.
During the visit Xi acknowledged that Myanmar was an important partner.
Following the coup last year, Beijing said it will support Myanmar’s regime “no matter how the situation changes”. China and Russia are protecting the regime at the United Nations Security Council.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in April that Beijing “has always placed Myanmar in an important position in its neighborly diplomacy” and wants to “deepen exchanges and cooperation”.
Political analyst on China Dr. Hla Kyaw Zaw recently talked to The Irrawaddy about how the congress could impact Myanmar.
Will there be a change in China’s policy regarding Myanmar?
I don’t think there will be significant changes. China is looking at the whole Asian continent for its economic recovery. Xi Jinping has recently visited central Asian countries.
And China is in the ASEAN Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership together with the 10 ASEAN countries. It plans to turn the entire Asia continent into its trade routes.
Myanmar is in the network and there won’t be significant policy changes.
As to the peace process in Myanmar, China is facilitating it as best it can. In the aftermath of the coup, China sent an envoy and called for a meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
China is pushing for dialogue to build peace. It appears that China also supports the peace talks between the regime and EAOs based in northern Myanmar.
China tends to keep a low profile in what it does.
It might have been taking steps that we don’t see.
The Chinese authorities have reportedly told EAOs in northern Myanmar to make sure there is no gunfire along the border during the congress. Is it true and why did China demand this?
It is nothing new. Since the Kokang incidents in 2015-17 [clashes between Myanmar’s military and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army], when shells landed in its territory, China has warned that it would respond if stray bullets and artillery landed in China’s territory.
It has repeatedly warned both the military and EAOs against fighting near the border.
The national security strategy rolled out by US President Joe Biden on October 12 seeks to contain China’s rise and calls it the largest threat to the global order.
Will the CCP respond at its congress?
China will only view it as a seasonal US statement and Biden setting off fireworks to attract voters for the mid-term elections in November. Republicans and Democrats may have different views on other things but they both take aim at China.
Despite the war in Ukraine, the US plan says China is the main threat.
It is seasonal. They are just playing the China card to win votes. This is how Beijing views it.
Will there be more friction between Washington and Beijing and how could that affect Myanmar?
There has been constant friction between China and the US. Economically, the US cannot shun China. Their economies are intertwined and there are many US companies in China.
Chinese analysts think relations between US and China will somewhat improve after the mid-term elections.
The US is playing the Taiwan card. But China apparently is not concerned much.
China believes it can threaten Taiwan a lot with its air force and navy. As long as Taiwan does not declare independence, China will not attack and it will keep the status quo.
Will China change its policy on Taiwan? Will it use force?
The general policy of China regarding Taiwan is the peaceful reunification of the Chinese people. China said it will consider various means, including the use of force, for reunification.
Some pro-independence groups are taking action with the help of certain countries.
China is unlikely to do anything unless Taiwan declares independence. But China has made preparations to take control of Taiwan by force if it declares independence.
How can revolutionary forces in Myanmar succeed without being stuck between China and the US?
It is a good opportunity for our revolution. But don’t oppose China by placing all the reliance on the US. Don’t expect anything from China and don’t curse the US with the hope of receiving help from China.
We have to take whatever we can get from the US. The US politically supports us.
And Myanmar’s ambassador [to United Nations] can speak freely from the US and we have to make use of it.
On the other hand, China has close ties with EAOs in Myanmar, including the United Wa State Army, Mongla (National Democratic Alliance Army), Kokang (Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army) and the Arakan Army.
We need to attract those forces into our revolution. It is important to attract all the ethnic armed groups into the revolution. And we should avoid being fiercely critical of China. We should be as flexible as we can be in dealing with China and persuade it.
We should take the cue from Indonesia regarding our diplomacy. Indonesia attended the Nato summit organized by the US and after it went to China and invited it to attend the G20 summit [in Bali next month]. And it also told China what it discussed at the Nato summit.
We must learn how to act between big powers. It is not good for us to take sides with one country and make another an enemy..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-10-19
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-19
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Anti-coup protesters, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sequel Report: Civilians, including children, were allegedly hit with artillery in different incidents
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"Since the military attacked M’dat (မဒပ်) village with artillery shells in May 2022, leading to a 10-year-old boy and his mother being seriously injured (Child Injured in M’dat Village, Mindat Township), it has been alleged that villages in Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်) have suffered from further artillery shelling, the destruction of houses and the killing of civilians.
In one such case, the older brother of the child originally reported on by Myanmar Witness was allegedly killed by artillery fire a little over a month after the original incident.
In this report, Myanmar Witness has investigated reports of civilian damage and deaths in Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်) as a result of artillery fire from the Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 274 military base. This included:
reports of homes destroyed and villagers killed in Mui Tui (မွီတွီ) village on 16 June;
the reported death of the older brother of the child whose injuries were investigated in a previous report on M’dat village, on 29 June 2022; and,
the destruction of homes in Kyam Ain Nu (ကာအိမ်း) village, also on 29 June 2022.
These villages are all located within a 7 or 8km firing range from the LIB 274 military base, located in Mindat Town (မင်းတပ်). Myanmar Witness was able to previously verify the location of the LIB 274 base in Mindat Town (မင်းတပ်), Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်), Chin State (ချင်းြပည်နယ်).
On 16 June 2022, there were reports of villagers killed by artillery fire in Mui Tui (မွီတွီ) village, in Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်). No user-generated content (UGC) could be verified of the dead individuals in Mui Tui (မွီတွီ), but their images match those described to have died and
Myanmar Witness geolocated other images of destruction to the village.
On the morning of 29 June 2022, the Chindwin News Agency, reported that the 274th Light Infantry Battalion in Mindat fired medium artillery mortar rounds at civilian areas in Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်), Chin State (ချင်းြပည်နယ်) killing a 13 year old boy in M’dat village (မဒပ်).
The boy was reportedly the elder brother of a 10-year-old boy who was seriously injured, also by artillery fire, along with his mother on 23 May 2022. This event has been described in more detail in Myanmar Witness’ report Child Injured in M’dat Village, Mindat Township.
Myanmar Witness was not able to thoroughly verify images of the dead child, but analysed images of a deceased child alleged to be the child in question, with wounds consistent with those described in eye-witness reports provided to Myanmar Witness by a partner.
There was no verifiable footage of the attack itself, meaning it was not possible for Myanmar
Witness to independently verify how the child was killed. However, Myanmar Witness has
geolocated images alleged to be of the child’s home in M’dat (မဒပ်) village. The hole in the wooden wall and the inside structure of the house, as well as some damaged foliage close to the home all indicate a strike of some sort that had caused this destruction. This was the same house geolocated by Myanmar Witness in the incident involving the child’s brother (see: Child Injured in M’dat Village, Mindat Township).
Images of ammunition reportedly found in M’dat (မဒပ်) village after the attack are consistent with locally produced 120mm mortar rounds known to be used by the Myanmar military. Myanmar Witness verified the presence of a military base within firing range of the village and identified a mortar present at the base in our last report, although it was not possible to verify whether it was a model capable of firing the particular rounds alleged. Attribution is difficult without verified UGC to confirm the munitions were found in M’dat (မဒပ်), their origin, or images of the deceased child.
While Myanmar Witness was able to identify a likely location for images of a destroyed home in Kyam Ain Nu consistent with media reporting, it was not possible to confirm this with 100% certainty or independently verify that the home was destroyed on 29 June 2022.
These collective incidents in Mindat Township (မင်းတပ်မိနယ်) are some of many monitored and analysed by Myanmar Witness documenting alleged indiscriminate attacks in civilian areas in Myanmar since the coup which has - in this case - allegedly led to the deaths of civilians.
To read the full report download the PDF.
[Warning: Graphic] has been inserted ahead of links to sources that show graphic and distressing images of injured or dead persons..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Witness
Date of publication:
2022-10-04
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Chin State, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
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8.88 MB (Original version) - 27 pages
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"At least 68 civilians have been killed and over 2,100 houses in 64 villages torched by the Myanmar military and pro-junta Pyu Saw Htee militia in Sagaing Region’s Taze Township since last year’s coup, according to local People’s Defense Forces (PDF).
Regime troops belonging to Division 33 and Pyu Saw Htee groups raided and torched more than 20 villages in the north of Taze in September alone, said Taze PDF.
Pyu Saw Htee militia have a strong presence in Kantbalu, Kyunhla and Taze townships in Sagaing Region. Taze has been hit hardest by the junta’s arson attacks in Sagaing, and more than 10,000 people made homeless by them have yet to receive any humanitarian assistance from the international community and are in urgent need of emergency relief supplies, added Taze PDF.
Five of the villages torched by regime forces were completely burned to the ground. Two Buddhist monasteries and a rural healthcare center were also razed. Ka Baung Kya Village was torched at least 12 times, while Chaungzon Village was torched at least seven times, according to Taze News, a group documenting junta atrocities in the township.
One resident of Ka Baung Kya Village said: “My house was burned to ashes. I don’t have any supplies of rice or even any plates and bowls now. We had to flee frequently because junta troops often came to our village. We don’t want to see them because they arrest anyone on sight and torch houses once they enter the village. My village is almost ruined.”
Some 200 junta troops guided by Pyu Saw Htee militia started raiding villages in the north of Taze on September 16. They reportedly killed two civilians and 12 resistance fighters and looted numerous houses during the raids.
A member of Taze PDF said: “They torch villages to instill fear in people. But it has only fueled their desire for vengeance. Now young people are only eager to fight back. They are determined to fight until the revolution succeeds. It is fair to say that the revolution has reached the next level. Revolutionary spirit can’t be burned to ashes.”
Displaced people need shelter, food, medicine and other emergency relief supplies, said an official from Taze Support Organization.
“As it is rainy season now, they need proper shelter even if it is temporary. The assistance they are receiving locally is not enough. If they don’t receive supplies soon, they are going to go hungry,” said the official.
Many villages were torched for no apparent reason as there were no clashes taking place near them. Over 20,000 people from 35 villages displaced by junta raids and arson attacks still can’t return to their homes. Internet access in Taze Township was cut off by the military regime over eight months ago.
A Taze resident said: “I am lost for words watching them [junta forces] torching and destroying our ancestral homeland and we can do nothing about it. We don’t know where we can live and our livelihoods have been completely destroyed.”..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-10-04
Date of entry/update:
2022-10-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Burma: Internal displacement/forced migration of several ethnic groups.
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"“Mom, it hurts so bad. I can’t bear it anymore. Just put me out of my misery”. These were the actual last words of Phone Tayza, a seven-year-old Myanmar boy, to his mom just a few minutes before he passed away from gunshot wounds by Myanmar soldiers who stormed his school. The massacre took place on 16 September 2022 at Let Yet Kone village, in De Pe Yin Township, Sagaing division where at least 10 others were killed.
Since the military coup in February 2021, Myanmar has witnessed the birth of People’s Defense Forces (PDF) all across the country. Despite their overwhelming disadvantages in weapons and ammunition, the clashes between PDFs and Myanmar military have escalated drastically in the past eighteen months afflicting significant casualty to Myanmar military troops. Given their inferior armaments, PDFs have resorted to ambushes and roadside IEDs to great effect forcing Myanmar military to use helicopter and jets to attack villages and in troop movements.
In the school attack, two Russian made Mi-35 helicopters appeared on the horizon, raining down machinegun fire and rockets toward the school and the adjacent Buddhist monastery. According to the witnesses, the firing lasted about 30 minutes. At about the same time, two other helicopters dropped infantry troops who stormed the school compound shooting indiscriminately. They also warned villagers not to approach the school. As the soldiers entered the school, instead of the armed men, they encountered crying school children with fatal or near fatal gunshot wounds. The soldiers ordered everyone to come out of the school with hands above their heads. Terrified, many children despite their wounds, dragged themselves out of the building, crying and moaning.
When a teacher tried to help a girl, whose thigh was shattered and bleeding, the soldiers threatened to shoot the teacher if she moved. Many villagers whose children were in the school came running only to be blocked by the soldiers at the school entrance. When the mother of Phone Tayza recognized her son’s moans and cries she pleaded to be allowed in.
Finally, the soldiers relented. And when she found her son, those were his last words before he died a few minutes later in her hands. Later the dead and the wounded were taken away by the military. The village wasn’t even given a chance to retrieve or bury the bodies of the loved ones. At the end of the hellish episode, eleven students and villagers were killed while another twenty were wounded that day.
Sadly, for Myanmar such a tragic event is not the first or the last of its kind. The only thing certain is these atrocities are going to become worse as long as the military junta remains in power. Hasn’t the world learned yet? This is the same military command who committed genocide towards Rohingya population in 2017. And the one who fired indiscriminately time and again into unarmed protesters on the city streets in 2021 when people rose up against the coup. It also is responsible for the murder of unarmed NGO workers and civilians on Christmas 2021.
The people of Myanmar tried to protest the coup through peaceful civil disobedience, but the brutal crackdown of the military left them with no choice. The military only understands the language coming out of a gun barrel as explained here. Myanmar military leaders don’t understand the term negotiation. In July 2022, the junta carried out death sentences on four political prisoners despite the international pleas. These were the first in more than 30 years. When the international community condemned this outrage, Britain being the loudest, the junta in turn arrested a British national Ms. Vicky Bowman, the former British ambassador to Myanmar, who is now married to a Myanmar man in Yangon on flimsy immigration charges.
All of these past instances raise a question why the international community, both the west and neighboring ASEAN countries, can’t see to the fact that the military junta will not be influenced by the usual diplomatic and political means. If what is happening in Myanmar doesn’t amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity, what does? The usual targeted sanctions and the diplomatic condemnation is not working and is not going to work. How many more children need to die before the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is considered?
Thankfully some countries and leaders have reached to this conclusion as witnessed in the recent remarks by UN Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews, Malaysian prime minister Mr. Yaakob and the President of East Timor who questioned why no such aid has come to Myanmar (compared to Ukraine) when both are similarly fighting against tyranny.
The dictatorial Myanmar military regimen is heavily contributing to regional instability. Fighting against the ethnic armed resistant group Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar’s military has fired multiple rounds and motor shells into Bangladesh and its helicopters entering the airspace has led to tension between the two neighboring countries. The systemic torching of civilian villages by the Myanmar military has also created a large population of internally displaced people in the states of Sagaing, Kachin, Karen, Chin and Kayah with many refugees fleeing into neighboring Thailand and India. It is a humanitarian and regional catastrophe in the making.
The main arms supply to the Myanmar military is Russia. For example, Myanmar has just received two Su-30 fighter jets from Russia with four more on the way in the next few months. Many Myanmar officers get trained at various Russian military institutes yearly. The international outcast Mr. Putin has newly found an ardent supporter and a minion in General Min Aung Hlaing of Myanmar. Yet according to an air force pilot who defected from the military, Myanmar’s air force has only 13 functioning Mi-35 helicopters. It should not take much assistance to the parallel government, National Unity Government (NUG) of Myanmar and the PDFs under its chain of command, for a victory against the military. A recent report by the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar stated that the NUG and affiliated EROs already control about 52% of the country’s territory. A dozen 1980’s era shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, like those used in Afghanistan, could quickly reset the balance of power in the Myanmar. Currently PDFs and EROs have no anti-aircraft capability. Ironically, it is the same old adversary from Afghanistan, Russia, whose helicopters are doing the killing in Myanmar. PDFs rely on homemade single bolt-action rifles and very few automatic weapons purchased at exorbitant prices. Some assistance in upgrading their small arms arsenal would go far.
A significant interruption of cash flow to Myanmar Military’s coffers, such as sanctioning the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) that serves as its lifeline of foreign currency could also be effective. The usual argument has been that such a sanction might also create hardship towards the ordinary Myanmar population. This opposition is invalidated as the energy needs and delivery of the country are already in the hands of the junta which has diverted all the available resources to the military. To think that a military regimen that slaughters children considers the needs of the citizens of the country over its own is delusional. Finally, removing the Myanna Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB) from the international SWIFT code banking system should also be used to punish the junta. The U.S. has done this to some Russian banks.
Myanmar is withering away while the world silently watches. The world needs to wake up and think outside of the box when dealing with this murderous Myanmar military regimen. Being a beacon of democracy, the U.S. should take a leadership role in rallying international action. Drastic times call for drastic measures. Time is running out before we hear a repeat cry of a Myanmar child asking to be put out of his misery..."
Source/publisher:
EurAsia Rewiew
Date of publication:
2022-09-27
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
Language:
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Description:
"Myanmar is in a state of revolution. It is a society in an existential fight against a single institution: a military that has brutalized generations of Myanmar’s people. In the early months after the junta’s February 2021 coup, peaceful protests emerged across the country. Predictably, the Myanmar military responded, as it has done for decades, with widespread, barbarous violence to crush the protests by unarmed civilians. Subsequently, and understandably, armed resistance to military rule emerged.
Amid all of this, the phrase thway-ma-aye, which translates as ‘Never Cold Blooded’, began to be used by protesters, whether the flash mobs in the cities or the demonstrators in rural areas. The phrase first emerged in Sagaing Region, notably in Monywa, Kalay and Yinmabin townships, and is most associated with a village named Shwe Nwal Thway in Yinmabin known for its strident, ongoing anti-regime protests. Now it is used across Myanmar.
In English, the term ‘cold blooded’ is generally used to describe actions done with intent but without emotion. Often, it connotes particularly cruel violence. If someone kills in cold blood, they kill in a way that seems especially cruel because the perpetrator displays no emotion. If one wishes to understand the ethos, or spirit, of Myanmar’s revolution, it is useful to peel away the layers of what ‘Never Cold Blooded’ means and why the term has become so important to the country’s revolutionaries.
Subtly distinct from the English meaning, the use of the term ‘Never Cold Blooded’ by Myanmar’s protesters has important nuances; it is more akin to being ‘warm blooded’ by continuing to strive and persevere and to keep one’s heart in the fight. But whether in Burmese or English, the phrase and its multiple meanings captures the essence of so much of what Myanmar’s revolution is about and stands in stark contrast to the junta’s tactics and objectives.
To make better sense of Myanmar’s revolution – its intents, actors, and prospects – it is useful to explore the works of one of the 20th Century’s most brilliant political theorists, Hannah Arendt. Her 1963 book On Revolution is justifiably considered one of the most comprehensive and thoughtful detailings of what revolution means and how and why it emerged as a driving political phenomenon of modern history. Core to Arendt’s conceptualization of revolution is the “idea that freedom and the experience of a new beginning should coincide.” Her use of the term freedom connotes “participation in public affairs, or admission to the public realm.” Critically, her emphasis on freedom is additional to liberation or liberty, namely “to be free of oppression” in one’s personal life. This basic dialectic still defines the political tensions between the world’s liberal democracies, which speak of freedom, and authoritarian regimes that seek legitimacy through economic growth and domestic stability.
As Arendt so eloquently summarized, revolution fundamentally “aimed at freedom and that the birth of freedom spelled the beginning of an entirely new story.” Echoing the acting President of the National Unity Government Duwa Lashi La’s statement that this revolution is a “second war for independence”, it seeks not a return to anything but rather a new beginning. This is what defines the country’s events since February 2021 in simplest terms as a revolution. It is to be the break from the past. When protesters proclaim ‘Never Cold Blooded’, what they affirm is the conviction to persevere towards that new beginning, whatever the cost. This is why, despite all the horrors and atrocities thrown at them by the junta, they persist, and will continue doing so. Juxtaposed against this determination is the military regime’s archaic desire for the restoration of a mythologized past of Bamar nationalism. Who but a senior general of the Myanmar military could now sit in that ridiculous throne hall in Naypyitaw and not be ashamed of such backwardness?
Moreover, the intent of Myanmar’s revolutionaries contrasts with the toxic phrase thrown around by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), with international backing, that the bloc supports a “return to normalcy” for Myanmar requiring dialogue and mediation with the military. This is not a new beginning, but simply an attempt at restoring a flawed process. ASEAN and the rest of the world delude themselves by believing that the decade of ‘transition’ represented some type of ‘normal’ leading to a more permanent, more democratic order. The country was effectively held hostage by the military and its self-serving 2008 Constitution, meaning it was always able and willing to stage a coup.
The rage of the Myanmar public since the putsch is that they nonetheless peacefully engaged in the military’s process for ‘discipline-flourishing democracy’ and were then cheated via the coup, with thousands of people subsequently murdered. Moreover, what can ever be ‘normal’ about expecting a ‘peaceful transition’ back to [quasi/coerced] democracy when that requires engagement with a regime that is genocidal. Exactly how many genocides and massacres must a regime commit before they are no longer to be engaged with but simply ended? ‘Never Cold Blooded’ means ending a toxic disgrace of a military that has denied the Myanmar people both liberty and freedom for over six decades.
Another key insight of Arendt’s framing of revolution is the notion of a “point of no return”, namely when enough of a society feel that they are “agents in a process which spells the definite end of an old order and brings about the birth of a new world.” One outcome of the preceding decade of ‘transition’ which was actually positive was that it socialized the Myanmar public, and particularly its youth, to the notion that a different future was in fact possible except for one thing. Arendt summarized this nicely when she notes that what is sought by revolution is a “citizen’s right of access to the public realm, in his share in public power.”
As Arendt notes, the concept of rage is central to revolutions, particularly “the rage of naked misfortune pitted against the rage of unmasked corruption.” These emotive, competing forces compel a society, like Myanmar’s, to rise in revolution after experiencing, at least partially, a better future. One where, at least conceivably, the military did not wrap the country’s people around its own greed, coerced through unending violence and division. As such, Myanmar’s military laid the foundation for the revolution through the decade of quasi-democracy and economic growth and then lit the flame for it through the 2021 coup.
This in turn builds upon Arendt’s emphasis on “revolutionary spirit”, which is the “the most impressive facet of modern revolutions.” Key to Arendt’s emphasis on revolutionary spirit are themes that link more closely with the English language connotations of ‘Never Cold Blooded’ but inherently sync with the ethos of Myanmar’s revolution. Uniting revolutionaries is the “notion of novelty and newness” of the endeavor. Moreover, key to this is the awareness of the agency of collective action for common good. As Arendt explained, successful revolutions only occur when a sufficient number of citizens are willing to act knowing that they may fail, but nonetheless are “eager to organize and to act together for a common purpose.” This stands in contrast to societies that prioritize personal well-being, most often in terms of affluence, at the price of public good, namely democracy and basic liberties. It is telling that Myanmar’s revolution is driven by its youth, who have risen in massive numbers to say that they want a different country for theirs and future generations.
‘Never Cold Blooded’ is in effect a declaration that indifference to the sufferings of others has been one of the country’s ‘original sins,’ most recently by widespread indifference to the Rohingya genocide. While there is still much to do, there has been more societal reckoning and reconciliation in the 20 months since the coup than in the preceding decades. That Bamar heartland regions, specifically Sagaing and Magwe, are core areas of armed resistance and are actively supported by partner ethnic armed organizations is but one example of the shifting parameters of how and who to define what is Myanmar.
Another important dynamic in this regard is the oft-stated declaration by the country’s youth that they wish to participate in the revolution precisely because it is a responsibility they must bear so that future generations do not. This is surely one of the purest meanings of ‘Never Cold Blooded’. Ending the military’s dominance is the most immediate goal of the revolution and creating a federal democracy the clear political outcome sought, but there are other major societal shifts being driven along by the churning forces raging across the country.
Revolution is a process. It is a societal reckoning. What is sought in Myanmar, to quote Arendt on modern revolutions, is “the foundation of freedom and the establishment of lasting institutions.” In simplest terms, this means a new beginning. ‘Never Cold Blooded’ is the fitting ethos of a society attempting to start anew. The revolution must be won and then a new, stable political settlement enacted around federal democracy. At its core will be a basic but fundamental notion that so exemplifies what is sought during these turbulent, violent months of revolution. As Arendt wisely summarized, we must be able “to grasp the enormous difference in power and authority between a constitution imposed by a government upon a people and the constitution by which a people constitutes its own government.”
This awareness seems self-evident to Myanmar’s revolutionaries but sorely missing amongst the international community. Outsiders who wish to support the Myanmar people in their revolution should support it as a sprawling, dynamic process rather than nitpick or over-generalize inevitable failings and challenges. It will never be as clean or obvious as anybody would want, but the international community, and especially its democracies, owes the Myanmar people real support in their just endeavor to secure a new future free of military dictatorship. To do otherwise is simply cold blooded..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-09-27
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
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2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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As UN aid agencies line up to sign deals with the junta, local groups fighting “for victory and humanity” continue to be the country’s real saviours
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"The recent rush of UN agencies to sign memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with Myanmar’s military junta has raised important questions about who is really carrying the burden of humanitarian assistance in the country—international aid agencies, or local relief groups engaged in resisting the regime?
In a recent paper, Hugo Slim, a UK-based expert on the ethics of humanitarian aid, offers some valuable insight on this issue, which has been the subject of often passionate debate in Myanmar. Titled “Humanitarian resistance: Its ethical and operational importance,” this paper examines the respective roles of local civil society organisations and activist groups participating in the Spring Revolution on the one hand, and UN agencies and the INGO aid community on the other.
There is growing frustration on both sides. Those who work for international aid agencies, especially foreign nationals, feel that they are being unfairly criticised for trying to assist vulnerable populations. While they lament that this may mean making “many hard and unpleasant compromises in order to serve higher humanitarian imperatives,” as one such individual put it to me recently, they insist that this is necessary in order to function in a very complex situation.
On the other side, local activists feel that they are speaking for most in Myanmar when they say that the country has been largely abandoned by the international community—not least by the UN and its humanitarian agencies. Looking back over the past 19 months, what they see is the failure of UN agencies and INGOs to provide aid where it is needed most. Only a trickle of aid has come into the country, and it has only reached areas where the regime has allowed them to operate.
In Slim’s terminology, this is a dispute between what he calls the “local humanitarian resistance community” and the community of “conventional international humanitarian agencies.” The first term in particular is helpful in understanding the core of the disagreement, because it highlights the emergence of an alternative to more traditional thinking about the place of humanitarian relief work in the context of conflict.
Since its attempt to seize power in February of last year, Myanmar’s military has faced protests, civil disobedience and armed resistance; in response, it has unleashed harsh, indiscriminate, large-scale and systematic violence. Its sole aim is to crush dissent at any cost, and its inability to achieve this goal has only made it more brutal. Currently in control of less than 50% of the country’s territory, and vulnerable to attack even in areas where it has a strong presence, it routinely deploys jets, helicopters and ground troops to carry out “clearance operations” anywhere that it cannot impose its rule. The result has been a huge and growing humanitarian crisis.
This crisis has been created by the junta, and nobody else. As it continues to worsen day by day, week by week, the people of Myanmar have responded with an impressive display of what Slim calls “humanitarian resistance,” which doesn’t just address immediate needs, but also recognises that inflicting suffering on the civilian population is not just an unfortunate side effect of the country’s conflict, but an integral part of the military’s strategy. Thus, no amount of international aid will help as long as the regime continues with its systematic dislocation of civilians and destruction of their property and livelihoods.
Within Myanmar, local humanitarian resistance groups enjoy the trust and appreciation of the general population, while international aid agencies are increasingly regarded with frustration and even anger. Conversely, people outside of the country, who have little knowledge or recognition of the value of resistance humanitarianism, continue to hold the international agencies in high esteem, if only because these agencies have been so skillful at promoting themselves on the world stage.
There are a number of reasons that many in Myanmar take such a dim view of international agencies. One is that they are seen as remote, top-down organisations. They are also far less numerous and diverse than local, grass-roots groups. But perhaps the most important reason is that they see themselves as obliged to remain “neutral” and “non-partisan”—unlike local humanitarian resistance groups, which, according to Slim, “simultaneously [take] sides for human life and human freedom” and “combine a desire for victory and humanity.”
In his paper, Slim looks at Myanmar and Ukraine as examples of humanitarian resistance in action. In both countries, he sees evidence of how the humanitarian response to their respective political crises aims to serve “the cause of victory”:
“In Myanmar, people committed to the resistance are boycotting government institutions and have either created new associations for the rescue and relief of people suffering from the dictatorship’s violence and increasing poverty, or they are surging existing social and religious institutions for the same effect. In Ukraine, where an entire nation is fighting for survival against outside aggression, people have come together en masse as volunteer auxiliaries to dramatically expand the provision of food relief, emergency housing and education, social work, civil defence and ambulance and fire services.”
According to Slim, “All these welfare activities combine a humanitarian and a resistance purpose in the same activity. Being a resistance humanitarian in Myanmar or Ukraine means playing your part in the struggle. Working as a medic, a firefighter or an emergency teacher is experienced and understood as a valuable form of civil resistance.”
The fact that many see their humanitarian activities as part of a political struggle in no way detracts from the effectiveness of their efforts, says Slim. Indeed, he observes that humanitarian resistance has had a “significant” impact in terms of meeting people’s needs:
“Tens of thousands of people have been rescued from Ukrainian cities under Russian attack by informal groups using their own cars and covert routes in a continuous relay of rescue runs. These rescuers see their humanitarian work as part of the political struggle against the Russian invasion. In Myanmar, hundreds of thousands of people are being helped with food, healthcare and emergency education by rescue committees and relief committees formed by people from the [Civil Disobedience Movement] who have left their government jobs to work for alternative, resistance institutions.”
Unlike international aid organisations, which are relatively generously funded by donor countries, the local humanitarian resistance community is primarily financed by members of the public who are in many cases struggling with hardships of their own due to the economic fallout of the coup. An energized and self-organised diaspora is also making a contribution.
Another difference is that local humanitarian resistance work relies heavily on volunteers, whereas international aid agencies are mostly staffed by well-paid professionals. Expats employed to do international aid work typically follow a career path that takes them from one “crisis spot” to another. Most currently working “on Myanmar” do so from a safe distance—from neighbouring Thailand or even farther afield. And while they can expect to advance in their careers even under these circumstances, many humanitarian resistance workers actually inside the country have had to abandon their professions to oppose the injustice and repression of the military regime.
Needless to say, “resistance humanitarians” don’t just sacrifice their careers—they also risk their lives. On numerous occasions people providing aid have been arrested, tortured and imprisoned. Some have been killed.
Meanwhile, conventional humanitarian agencies have been struggling to respond to the suffering in Myanmar. Their mode of operations requires the explicit or implicit consent of the regime, which has hugely restricted what they can do. But beyond this, they have also been constrained by their own bureaucratic character, which makes them extremely slow and expensive, as well as prone to self-censorship.
In short, there has been an enormous disproportionality between these two very different aid communities, in terms of their cost, effectiveness, and risk. This raises the question of which side actually receives the most money from international donors. The answer, of course, is that almost all funding flows to major agencies or organisations, while virtually none reaches groups engaged in humanitarian resistance.
This is not a new situation. It has long been the case that local groups have had to operate on shoestring budgets, while international aid agencies have been far more lavishly funded. This has been a source of some resentment among local aid groups, but most have hesitated to speak out about it, as they see the international aid agencies as being at least potential allies against the real enemy—Myanmar’s repressive military.
More recently, however, many have become more outspoken about this disparity, as they watch multiple UN agencies hasten to sign MOUs with the junta. In effect, according to those who are now witnessing this spectacle from the trenches of Myanmar’s ongoing humanitarian catastrophe, these agencies have broken their long-held principle of neutrality by reaching agreements with a regime that has no legitimacy in the eyes of the country’s people.
This cannot be defended as pragmatism. A genuinely pragmatic approach would be one that involves deals with both the regime and with the National Unity Government and governing entities in liberated ethnic territories. This would enable a more fair and balanced distribution of aid into areas that are currently being served almost entirely by humanitarian resistance organisations.
At this point, there are few in Myanmar who believe that the UN agencies are primarily motivated by a desire to deliver aid more effectively. Rather, they are seen as acting mostly out of institutional self-interest. Meanwhile, resistance organisations and networks continue to do what they have been doing to save the country from the coup regime. They need to be noticed, recognised and supported by donor countries. Yangon-based UN agencies and INGOs will not provide for them.
Igor Blazevic is a prominent human rights campaigner based in the Czech Republic. He is a lecturer at Educational Initiatives, a training program for Myanmar activists, and a senior adviser with the Prague Civil Society Centre..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of publication:
2022-08-27
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Civilian Harm Report (Part Two): Violent civilian deaths in North-West Myanmar
During Myanmar Witness’ investigation into fires and military activity in the North-West regions of Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း), Chin (ချင်းပြည်နယ်) and Magway (မကွေးတိုင်း), reports of civilian harm and multiple violent deaths emerged.
Following on from Myanmar Witness’ joint investigation with the BBC into killings in Kani Township, Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိ) in May 2021, Myanmar Witness has identified and analysed a number of incidents involving the discovery of significant numbers of corpses, allegedly the victims of mass killings by the Myanmar military. Each of these followed reports of anti-regime protests and clashes between the military and defence forces in the local area.
This short article provides an overview of Part Two of Myanmar Witness’ report ‘Civilian Harm: An investigation into the impact of two military operations in North-West Myanmar’. This analysed and verified evidence of multiple killings in the same areas that the military operations widely known as Anawrahta (အနော်ရထာ စစ်ဆင်ရေး) and Alaungmintayar (အလောင်းမင်းတရား စစ်ဆင်ရေး) occurred.
Part One revealed how the use of fire and destruction of villages in these North-West regions aligned closely with these military operations. To read the full report, download the PDF here.
Killings of multiple people
Myanmar Witness verified three separate incidents alleged to be mass killings committed by the Myanmar military in the north-west region:
18 people found dead in Myin Thar (မြင်သား), Gangaw (ဂန့်ဂေါ) Township, Magway (မကွေးမြို့) in September 2021 (partially verified). The dead reportedly included minors, the elderly and the physically disabled.
11 people found dead in Done Taw (ဒုံးတော), Salingyi (ဆားလင်းကြီး), Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိ) in December 2021 (fully verified). The dead reportedly included minors and an elderly women.
Six people found dead in Thit Seint Gyi (သစ်ဆိမ့်ကြီး), Wetlet (ဝက်လက်) township, Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိ) in January 2022 (fully verified).
This summary report focuses on the case study of Salingyi (ဆားလင်းကြီး) Township in the Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း) Region. To read the other case studies, download the full report.
Salingyi Township, Sagaing - December, 2021 (fully verified)
Background
[Warning: Graphic] On 7 December 2021, Myanmar military troops reportedly raided the village of Done Taw (ဒုံးတော), Salingyi (ဆားလင်းကြီး) Township in Sagaing (စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း) Region. . This was, according to a report by Myanmar Now, following a mine ambush on military vehicles on the Monywa-Pathein highway near North Yamar bridge, located about 300 metres from the village. Salingyi (ဆားလင်းကြီး) is an area which was reportedly targeted by a convoy-centred military operation in November 2021. Salingyi (ဆားလင်းကြီး) residents have reportedly engaged in anti-regime protests - one of which occurred just days before this incident.
Locals interviewed by Myanmar Now state that military soldiers entered the village from near the Pathein-Monywa road at 0800. Done Taw (ဒုံးတော) has only one entrance and exit route, through the Shwe Myin Tin farm on the bank of the Chindwin River. According to villagers and a local PDF leader (reported by Myanmar Now and The Irrawaddy), 11 villagers were reportedly captured, set on fire, and burned to death. A video uploaded to social media by various media outlets shows the aftermath of the attack, including the burnt remains of bodies (graphic footage – available on request). The video’s voiceover states: “They were shot and stabbed while forced to kneel, with their hands tied”.
Verification
Myanmar Witness can verify that the location where these bodies were found was just outside of Done Taw (ဒုံးတော) village, in farmland located at 22.142916, 95.062057 (Figure 48). However, it cannot be verified that this was the area where the people were killed, whether they had their hands tied, or whether they were dead before or after the fire started.
It’s also reported by the Irrawaddy, as well as elsewhere online, that a Done Taw (ဒုံးတော) resident, Daw Win Yi, who was over 50, was also killed by the Myanmar military in farmland outside the village. While images of a deceased elderly woman have been collected, Myanmar Witness could not verify where these particular photos were taken.
According to the official NUG twitter account, the NUG were supplied with a victim’s list by a local PDF group (Figure 49). This included f
our victims under the age of 18 : Arkar Soe (14), Hsan Min Oo (17), Than Myint Aung (17), Kyaw Thet (17). Most of the victims were unrecognisable as a result of the impact of the fire, except for 17-year-old Than Myint Aung, who was identifiable from his ear piercing, according to Myanmar Now.
To read the other two case studies, download the full report here.
Conclusion
Through a detailed investigation, this report demonstrates the grave civilian impacts of military operations in north-west Myanmar. The widespread destruction of communities along military routes represents a worrying trend. The verified reports of civilian deaths, which eye witnesses attribute to the military, indicates the precarious situation everyday citizens face across Myanmar.
Myanmar Witness is still verifying footage related to further alleged killings in the north-west and other regions. These will be documented in a forthcoming report. Many trends documented in this report have been seen across the country more broadly, for example, see Myanmar Witness’ published reports: Burning Myanmar, Moso Village Christmas Eve Killings, and Using Pamphlets for Propaganda, Misinformation, Intimidate and Division.
To read a summary of Part One of the report - on the use of fire and the destruction of civilian property - go to the reports page of the Myanmar Witness website. To read the full report, download the PDF.
Myanmar Witness continues to document and investigate evidence of possible human rights abuses in Myanmar. These findings will be made available on the Myanmar Witness website, as and when they are completed..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Witness
Date of publication:
2022-09-23
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-23
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
A freelance television presenter who worked for the BBC's charity branch has been sentenced to three years hard labour in Myanmar.
Description:
"Htet Htet Khine, the presenter of a programme produced by BBC Media Action for local audiences, was arrested in August 2021.
Many journalists and activists have been jailed since the military seized power in a coup in February 2021.
BBC Media Action's director of programmes said the move was alarming.
"This, and other detentions of media workers in the country, runs counter to basic principles of human rights and freedom of expression," Richard Lace said.
The authorities said Htet Htet Khine's reporting amounted to incitement and illegal association, charges her family said were unjust.
Her contact with family and access to legal representation has been limited since her arrest, BBC Media Action says.
Since the coup, 12 media outlets have been forcibly shut and 142 journalists arrested, according to the independent Myanmar Now website.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), which keeps a toll of those killed, jailed or detained by the military, says that more than 14,000 people have been arrested, with an estimated 2,114 killed by military forces.
Htet Htet Khine became well known in the country as the face of Khan Sar Kyi, described by the charity as a national television peace programme.
She had travelled across the country showing the impact of internal conflicts.
BBC Media action is an independent charity that operates separately from BBC News. It follows the corporation's editorial standards but is distinct from BBC News Burmese language news programmes..."
Source/publisher:
"BBC News" (London)
Date of publication:
2022-09-17
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports
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Sub-title:
Six Cases Highlight Alleged Torture, Junta’s Failure to Investigate
Description:
"(Sydney) – Myanmar’s military and police are responsible for scores of deaths in custody since the February 1, 2021 military coup, Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch documented the deaths of six detained activists that involved apparent torture or the denial of adequate medical care. The junta authorities have not seriously investigated these deaths or taken action against those responsible.
“The six deaths Human Rights Watch documented are just the tip of the iceberg of suffering and torture of those detained by Myanmar’s military and police,” said Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Given the junta’s cruelty in all aspects of its rule, there’s little surprise that no evident action has been taken to investigate deaths in custody and bring those responsible to justice.”
The junta should immediately end its abuses against those opposed to military rule, including arbitrary arrests and detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trials. Deaths in custody should be immediately reported with proper documentation to the person’s family, the body should be returned, and those responsible for abuses held to account.
The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners estimates that at least 73 people have died in police or military custody in police stations, military interrogation centers, and prisons since the coup, which effectively ended the democratic transition under Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). These deaths are only a small percentage of the at least 690 people that have been killed shortly after being apprehended by the security forces, often during military operations in ethnic minority areas. The military junta has only acknowledged a few custodial deaths but attributes them to illness or heart failure. However, human rights activists, witnesses, and sources close to the victims said that the physical evidence available indicates that many died from torture or other mistreatment, including poor detention conditions and a lack of access to adequate medical care.
Human Rights Watch documented the six deaths between May and July, remotely interviewing 10 witnesses and others familiar with the cases, reviewing 40 photographs and 5 videos posted to social media platforms, and obtaining independent medical analysis of the visual evidence by an emergency physician with expertise in torture.
The six men were all political activists or vocal opponents of the military junta in Yangon, Mandalay, and Sagaing Regions. Khin Maung Latt, 58, Zaw Myat Lynn, 46, and Than Tun Oo, 48, were NLD members apparently arrested for their political affiliation. Khet Thi, 43, Tin Maung Myint, 52, and Kyaw Swe Nyein, 55, joined or led protest movements after the coup. Five died within 24 hours of being arrested and interrogated, while Kyaw Swe Nyein, died two months after his arrest.
Myanmar police and soldiers arrested five of the six victims during night raids; they arrested the sixth, Than Tun Oo, in Mandalay during the day. In all but one of the cases, the arrests were carried out during joint military-police operations. A law enacted in March formally brought the police under junta control, requiring police officers to comply with all military orders, including taking part in military operations.
Photographs of five of the victims show physical marks on their bodies or heads that indicate torture. There are no photographs of Than Tun Oo’s body since junta authorities said he was cremated soon after he died.
Dr. Rohini Haar, an emergency physician whom Human Rights Watch consulted, analyzed images of the bodies: “Having reviewed photographs and videos of the five victims after their deaths, it is clear from the physical marks on the bodies and faces that these men suffered immensely, and that torture occurred.… There are so many signs of abuse and torture that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what killed these individuals.”
None of the men’s families received official medical certificates, cause of death, or autopsy reports, despite evidence that autopsies were conducted on four of the six bodies. The junta should issue medical certificates for all death-in-custody cases and provide autopsy reports to families if autopsies were performed.
Four of the victims’ families said they felt pressured by officials to have the bodies cremated immediately, presumably to hide evidence of wrongdoing. Two families said they buried their loved ones quickly out of fear the authorities would confiscate the body.
The UN special rapporteur on Myanmar said in October 2021 that he had received credible reports of “over 8,000 arbitrarily detained with many tortured, including dozens who were tortured to death.” At the UN Human Rights Council in March, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she had received credible reports that at least 21 percent of deaths by the security forces had occurred while victims were in custody.
Human Rights Watch has found that the junta’s widespread and systematic abuses since the coup amount to crimes against humanity, which include murder, torture, and wrongful imprisonment.
The UN Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death (2016) sets out that all death-in-custody cases should be subjected to “prompt, impartial, and effective investigations into the circumstances and causes” of the death. In addition, “family members should be informed immediately and thereafter a notification of death posted in an easily accessible way. To the extent possible, family members should also be consulted prior to an autopsy. They should be entitled to have a representative present during the autopsy … [H]uman remains should be returned to family members, allowing them to dispose of the deceased according to their beliefs.”
The UN, regional bodies, and governments – including the European Union, United States, United Kingdom, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – should specifically raise concerns about deaths in custody and press the junta to end them, Human Rights Watch said. They should strengthen targeted sanctions against military-owned businesses, the military and the State Administration Council (SAC) junta leadership under Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
The UN Security Council should urgently take measures against the junta, including by referring the situation in the country to the International Criminal Court and passing a resolution to impose a global arms embargo.
“The deaths of people in custody are among the hidden atrocities that junta security forces are committing every day,” Maung said. “Concerned governments should be ensuring global condemnation of these horrific abuses.”
For detailed accounts of the deaths in custody, please see below.
Deaths in Custody
The following case histories are based on remote interviews with family members of the victims and witnesses and other sources of information. In all but one of the cases, witnesses said they were afraid to be named due to fear of reprisals from the Myanmar military or police.
Kyaw Swe Nyein, Nyaung-U town, Mandalay Region
Plainclothes policemen and a military intelligence unit arrested Kyaw Swe Nyein, 55, at his home in Mandalay Region on January 30, 2022, after he joined protests in Nyaung-U, Mandalay Region.
The authorities accused Kyaw Swe Nyein of spreading “fake news” and sharing a Facebook post supporting anti-coup protests. A closed court in March sentenced him to six months in prison for incitement under section 505A of the penal code. This section, amended by the junta shortly after the coup, makes it a criminal offense to make comments that “cause fear” and spread “false news,” and is punishable by up to three years in prison.
On March 9, Kyaw Swe Nyein sounded well when he spoke to his family on a mobile phone borrowed from one of the prison guards at Nyaung-U prison. However, he told a family member that he had been badly beaten at the Myingyan interrogation center, where he was held for the first 10 days. He told his family that he had experienced some dizziness as a result. On March 11, prison authorities informed Kyaw Swe Nyein’s wife that he had died that evening after complaining of dizziness. Doctors at Nyaung-U hospital, where his body was taken, told relatives that he had died of heart failure.
The family did not receive a death certificate or an autopsy report, even though authorities conducted an autopsy. A family member said a police official told the family to sign a blank document acknowledging they were informed of Kyaw Swe Nyein’s death.
A family member said:
I was so distressed. I just signed the document, but I don’t know what it was, and I don’t have a copy.… If he died from natural causes, then I could forgive myself [that he died in prison] but now, it’s the unknown that is unsettling. Of course, it’s very difficult for us to accept his death with so few answers but we can’t do anything about it now.
After reviewing images of Kyaw Swe Nyein at his funeral, Dr. Haar said a photograph showed evidence of trauma to the head from bruising around the eyes and ears.
Than Tun Oo, Mandalay town, Mandalay Region
On September 26, 2021, at about 3:30 p.m., soldiers and police arrested Than Tun Oo, 48, a former political prisoner and activist, at his home in Mandalay and took him to the No. 7 Area Police Station. Neighbors and family members watched as security forces beat him with his hands tied behind his back and then shot him in the legs, supposedly for being slow to respond to orders. A witness said:
There were around 50 to 100 soldiers and police with army trucks and private cars. Some soldiers were from the LID [Light Infantry Division] 33 command and there were police from the local station here in Mandalay.… They told [Than Tun Oo] to kneel but he weighed 400 pounds, so they shot him in his leg to make him kneel.
The witness said the next day, September 27, police and military officials told Than Tun Oo’s family that he had died in the police station from heart failure. The authorities did not give the family a medical certificate, a witness said, but security forces made family members sign a document acknowledging they had been informed of Than Tun Oo’s death.
The family said Than Tun Oo was in good health prior to his arrest. When the family demanded his body, junta authorities said they had cremated the body immediately because Than Tun Oo had tested positive for Covid-19 while in custody.
A family member said:
Everyone has dreams, so did [Than Tun Oo]. He was interested in art and loved writing. Many people liked him. I could endure the pain of loss if he died while fighting against the [junta]. But he died during interrogation where they have the power to do whatever they wanted. It is painful to accept that he died in this way.
Khet Thi, Shwebo city, Sagaing Region
Khet Thi, 43, a popular poet known for his sharp political wit, took on a leadership role opposing the military coup. He organized protests and spoke at rallies to encourage dissent against the military. His poetry became part of his resistance to military rule. “They shoot in the head, but they don't know that revolution is in the heart,” he wrote.
On May 8, 2021, about 40 soldiers and police arrested Khet Thi at his home in the city of Shwebo, Sagaing Region, and accused him of leading a plan to lay landmines targeting the security forces. Junta authorities also arrested Khet Thi’s wife, Chaw Suu, and her brother-in-law, Aye Pyo, for allegedly helping to plan the attack.
A witness said that police handcuffed all three, then took them in a police vehicle to Myo Ma, the main police station in Shwebo, where they were separated into male and female cellblocks for interrogation.
After hours of interrogation overnight, Chaw Suu and her brother-in-law were released on the morning of May 9. A police officer informed Chaw Suu that her husband had been taken to Monywa General Hospital, almost 90 kilometers from Myo Ma police station. Sources familiar with the case said that Chaw Suu thought her husband was ill and asked the head of the police station to take her to the hospital so she could care for him. The officer in charge then told her that Khet Thi was dead.
On May 9, at about 2 p.m., junta officials at Monywa hospital told Khet Thi’s family that he had died of a heart attack. However, family members deny that he had any heart problems, and say he was in good health apart from poor eyesight. A source said hospital staff pressured the family to have the body cremated at the hospital the same day. Fearing junta officials would force them to immediately cremate Khet Thi, the family took his body to prepare for burial the next day.
Junta officials failed to provide the family a medical certificate or autopsy report, and there was no investigation into his death.
A family member said:
We rushed back to another township with his body because we were afraid that they would take the body back.… When we went to prepare the body, his head moved slightly and that’s when blood came out of his head. They had performed an autopsy on his head and there was a wound but there were also two bruises on the right side of his face and black marks on his nose. He had square shaped burn marks on his thighs. We didn’t check his back because we were afraid the sutures from the autopsy might burst open.
Khet Thi was buried on May 10, 2021, less than 48 hours after his arrest.
Dr. Haar, the emergency physician, said that images of Khet Thi taken after his death showed likely head trauma.
Zaw Myat Lynn, Shwe Pyi Thar township, Yangon
Zaw Myat Lynn, 46, was a former NLD member who ran a vocational education school named after Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon’s Shwe Pyi Thar township. He and his family lived with the students.
On March 9, 2021, at about 1 p.m., police and soldiers arrived at the school, appearing to target Zaw Myat Lynn for arrest due to pro-democracy posts on his Facebook account. He ran and jumped over a fence but was surrounded by police and soldiers who took him into a military vehicle.
A teacher said:
I heard from students around 2 a.m. on March 9, 2021. [They told me] about 40 police and soldiers were at the Suu Vocational School. Some students were arrested first when military forces came in from the front door. Zaw Myat Lynn jumped over the fence and cleared it, but the building was surrounded, and he was arrested. Neighbors from next door also told me they heard Zaw Myat Lynn say, “Don’t shoot, I’ll surrender and come with you.” He didn’t get any injury from jumping over that fence.
Zaw Myat Lynn’s family was told the next day to come and identify his corpse.
Dr. Haar, who reviewed 12 photographs and 2 videos of Zaw Myat Lynn’s body, said visible injuries suggested scalding liquid was poured onto his face.
After examining similar photographs, The Guardian newspaper concluded that the nature of Zaw Myat Lynn’s injuries were consistent with torture: “It appears that boiling water or a chemical solution had been poured into his mouth. The tongue was melted, his teeth missing. Facial skin was peeling off. The body had been wrapped up to conceal further traumatic injuries.”
A source close to the family said that junta officials told Zaw Myat Lynn’s family that he had died from heart failure. The officials failed to provide the family with a medical certificate or autopsy report.
Tin Maung Myint, Yin Mar Bin township, Sagaing Region
On April 4, 2021, soldiers arrested Tin Maung Myint, 52, during a raid on his village in Yin Mar Bin township, Sagaing Region. He was a farmer and village leader who had joined the opposition to the junta. Witnesses said that soldiers arrested Tin Maung Myint around 4 a.m. along with seven others who were keeping watch on the military column that was preparing to raid their village.
Tin Maung Myint’s body, along with that of another villager who was arrested with him, turned up the next day about 2 p.m. at the Monywa General Hospital, bearing marks of torture. A witness who viewed the body said:
I saw bruises and swollen marks all over his and the other victim’s face. They were in pretty bad shape. We only checked their faces, not their whole bodies. It was unsettling to get close to their bodies. I didn’t want to look that closely, so I don’t know about marks on their bodies, but their faces were so black and blue.
One photograph posted on social media of Tin Maung Myint’s body shows numerous wounds. Dr. Haar, who reviewed the photograph, said she observed massive trauma consistent with skin tears and avulsions – or forcible tearing – on his shoulders that looked like burns. Bruises are visible on the face, as is a deep gash on the forehead. She said it was unclear which injury was the cause of death.
Junta authorities failed to provide a death certificate to the family or explain how Tin Maung Myint had died. Hospital staff who found the bodies told the families the men were already dead when they were discovered dumped at the hospital.
Khin Maung Latt, Pabedan township, Yangon
On March 6, 2021, soldiers and police arrived at the home of Khin Maung Latt, 58, a ward chairman and NLD member, in Pabedan township, Yangon. Witnesses said that after forcibly entering his home, security forces beat and kicked Khin Maung Latt in front of his family, then took him away at gunpoint. His family was notified the next morning that he had died of heart failure, and they retrieved his body at 8 a.m.
A friend of Khin Maung Latt’s who attended his funeral on March 7 said that his legs looked broken, his white funeral shroud was covered in blood, and that his face appeared blue and swollen. The friend said:
When I arrived at Ye Way cemetery, Khin Maung Latt’s body was already being prepared in the morgue, in the Muslim tradition. But we’d instructed our contacts who washed the body to take photos as soon as they’d stripped him. The water ran with blood and his body was marked as if he was badly beaten.… There was blood coming out of his ears and bruises all over his body; his legs looked damaged, broken. The person washing the body had put gauze in the ear and up his nose, but it was still dripping.… The white cloth was no longer white, it was stained red and rust-colored.
He said that the authorities appeared to have carried out an autopsy:
They said he died from a heart attack, but they had performed an autopsy on his body and on his head. The head was cut open, as if they’d taken one side and pulled it back like a flap. But why did they do this? There was no explanation given.… You could see the stitches on his head and on his body and the stitches were still oozing. No matter how we washed the stitches, they kept oozing and his blood was still warm. There were blue and brown marks around his eyes and his body, marks everywhere.
A member of the Muslim community who helped to prepare Khin Maung Latt’s body for a Muslim burial said there were deep wounds on his back and hands consistent with torture.
Dr. Haar, who reviewed nine photographs and one video of Khin Maung Latt’s body, observed unskilled, haphazard suturing of the autopsy wounds on the head and chest: “The sutures are very unusual and not in line with medical best practice. By even conducting the autopsy under such unusual circumstances, may also suggest medical complicity to the acts of torture that clearly occurred to the individual.”
Khin Maung Latt’s body was cremated at the Ye Way cemetery on March 7, less than 24 hours after his arrest. The friend said officials failed to provide the family with a medical certificate or autopsy report..."
Source/publisher:
"Human Rights Watch" (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-09-13
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-13
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2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights and international relations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Crimes Against Humanity
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"Myanmar regime’s sale of gold coins is not bringing down the gold price as they are being sold too near the market rate, according to dealers.
On Monday the junta started selling gold coins at a gems emporium in Naypyitaw for 2.95 million kyats per tical (16 grams) while the market price is around 3 million kyats.
On Tuesday, the market price reached 3.15 million kyats and was around 3.12 million kyats on Wednesday.
A trader said: “If they sell at a price lower than the market rate, traders would buy and sell their gold at a lower rate. But as they are selling near the market price, gold prices have gone up. The policy is not working.”
The gold price has risen as citizens have bought gold as the kyat slumped because since the military coup in February 2021. In January 2021 the gold price was slightly over 1.3 million kyats per tical and the exchange rate was around 1,300 kyats per dollar.
The regime announced last week that it would sell gold coins to the public to bring down rising prices.
The regime is selling one tical coin per person. Buyers have to present their ID cards. The regime did not say how many gold coins were being sold.
Junta spokesman Major General Zaw Min Tun told the media that the coins would be sold at international prices and that they were not from the country’s gold reserve. He said the regime would sell enough gold to affect the domestic market.
The gold price quoted by the Yangon Region Gold Entrepreneurs Association on Wednesday was 1.98 million kyats per tical at the official exchange rate of 2,100 kyats per dollar. The market exchange rate is around 3,600 kyats.
The international gold price is approximately US$1,695 per ounce (28 grams).
The coins show independence hero General Aung San, the father of jailed State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, minted in 2018 under her National League for Democracy government.
Gold coins are only being sold in Naypyitaw with no dates announced for sales in Yangon and Mandalay..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-09-07
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-07
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Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Business and the Military, The Burmese military's role in the economy, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Myanmar military troops killed nearly 30 civilians in the east of Kantbalu Township and the west of Kyunhla Township in Kantbalu district, Sagaing Region over the past two weeks amid escalating fighting with resistance groups, local defense forces and residents said.
The clashes between junta troops and defense forces broke out in the last week of August, with the Myanmar military launching both air and ground attacks against villages.
On Aug. 24, the military started launching air strikes on some villages in the border area where Kantbalu, Kawlin and Kyunhla townships meet, leaving villagers dead, including a 6-year-old boy and a pregnant woman from Thit Saint Kone Village, Kantbalu Township.
On Sept. 2, at least two dozen bodies were found at the monastery in Tal Pin Seik Village, Kyunhla Township, according to residents, and local defense forces confirmed the victims were the same people who were arrested by the military between Aug. 25 and Aug. 28, said a member of the Red Eagle Kanbalu People’s Defense Force (PDF).
The military launched further air attacks on Aung Chan Thar, Lat Khote Pin and Koe Htaung Bo village tracts, and deployed army columns in the area. During these operations military troops torched several villages, he added.
Local PDF groups said the death toll could increase as bodies are usually found for several days after the military leaves an area it has controlled. They said they had heard reports of additional casualties, but could not yet confirm them.
The PDFs fought back, however, arresting two captains and a lieutenant from the junta’s military on Aug. 28. Within two weeks, the junta’s military had suffered at least 40 casualties in clashes with local resistance forces.
This did not prevent the Myanmar military from targeting civilian areas, however. About 200 houses were torched in Kyunhla Township alone in just four days, from Sept. 1-4, according to the Kyunhla Activists Group.
U Nay Zin Latt, the elected MP for Kantbalu Township and a member of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, which was formed after last year’s coup by ousted lawmakers, said such murders by the Myanmar military were totally unacceptable.
He said that even the PDF groups, which were organized very recently, can distinguish a legitimate military target from a civilian area, but the military was targeting civilian areas that should not be considered combat zones.
“There were some operation plans that we have avoided even though we would have had a competitive edge over the enemy. But the military is killing civilians deliberately,” U Nay Zin Latt, who now also serves as an operations commander of Kant Balu Battalion 2, a local PDF in Kantbalu district.
At least three military columns are now deployed in Kantbalu district. They have arrested at least 100 civilians and taken them as prisoners of war, according to the local PDFs.
At least 10 villages were torched in Kantbalu district alone during the two-week period and more than 40,000 people in total have fled the area, residents said..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-09-06
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-06
Grouping:
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Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
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အမည်ပျက်စာရင်းကြေညာခြင်းနှင့် ဝန်ထမ်းအဖြစ်မှ ထုတ်ပယ်ခြင်း
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"ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်
အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ
ပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီးချုပ်ရုံး
အမိန့်ကြော်ငြာစာအမှတ်(၆/၂၀၂၂)
၁၃၈၄ ခုနှစ်၊ တော်သလင်းလဆန်း ၇ ရက်
(၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ်၊ စက်တင်ဘာလ ၁ ရက်)
အမည်ပျက်စာရင်းကြေညာခြင်းနှင့် ဝန်ထမ်းအဖြစ်မှ ထုတ်ပယ်ခြင်း..."
Source/publisher:
Office of the Prime Minister of the Union - NUG
Date of publication:
2022-09-01
Date of entry/update:
2022-09-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
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National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Reports suggesting Tatmadaw is becoming ‘desperate’ in face of adversity misread its remarkable cohesion, discipline and defiant resolve
Description:
"Born of Europe’s 19th century wars, it was a quip that neatly captured the difference between the hard-boiled Prussians of the north German plain and the fun-loving Viennese of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the Prussian says the situation is serious but not desperate; the Viennese says it’s desperate but not serious.
Which of today’s Southeast Asian militaries would be most at home in the old Hapsburg capital is a matter of debate. But there should be no doubt that Myanmar’s military is stamped entirely in the Prussian mold.
Much as Western and some local pundits have deployed the word in recent commentary, “desperate” in the face of adversity is simply not in the DNA of the Myanmar armed forces, or Tatmadaw, that seized power in Naypyidaw early last year and has every intention of continuing to steer the nation’s destiny.
Indeed, the response of the military’s ruling State Administration Council (SAC) junta to challenges its leaders would undoubtedly view as more serious than anything faced in six decades of army rule needs to be recognized for what it is: a display of defiant resolve, a doubling-down on base-line political positions and an unwavering determination to crush popular revolt – all underpinned by a remarkable level of internal cohesion and discipline.
The SAC’s current intransigence is arguably grounded in at least two mindsets. At a day-to-day level, it is almost certainly fueled by the insulation of the “command bubble” – the intrinsic disconnect between a military high command directing strategy on big maps in air-conditioned war rooms and subordinate elements mired in the mud and blood of combat in the field.
Rigidly hierarchical militaries such as Myanmar’s, where bad news travels up the chain of command usually slowly and sometimes not at all, only exacerbate that separation and the distorted – even delusional – perceptions it can breed.
At a sub-conscious and undoubtedly more dangerous level is a deeply ingrained mindset peculiar to Myanmar’s armed forces in which the centrality of the military to the state makes it all but impossible to conceive of strategic retreat, let alone outright defeat.
Throughout the military’s ruling caste from the senior echelons of the officer corps to rank-and-file infantrymen is an unblinking assumption that there can be no Myanmar without the Tatmadaw; indeed, that in a perverse, almost mystic sense, Myanmar is the Tatmadaw.
As international pressure has mounted in recent weeks this proprietary and fundamentally xenophobic worldview has given rise at almost every turn to anger and belligerence rather than hesitancy or a willingness to compromise. Desperation is nowhere in sight inside the Tatmadaw.
The SAC’s response to efforts within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to push for real movement on the ill-starred Five Point Consensus of April 2021 has been dismissive, even contemptuous.
Diplomatic anger has been pointedly reinforced by defiant steps on the domestic front: the slapping of a further six-year sentence on toppled and imprisoned State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the execution of four opposition activists in the face of international consternation and appeals, and most recently the jailing of the United Kingdom’s former ambassador Vicky Bowman and her husband Htein Lin on an immigration technicality.
At the international level, the SAC has been able to draw strength from high-profile recent visits from both Russian and Chinese foreign ministers, both of whose countries have pledged to support the Naypyidaw regime to weather the storm and ultimately prevail.
Preparations for elections scheduled for August 2023, meanwhile, have moved forward undeterred. Defined by the SAC as the preferred gateway to a return to “multi-party disciplined democracy” that guarantees the military a guiding role, largely unreported moves have involved the drawing up of voter registration lists and changes to the administrative map that will influence the electoral process.
The junta’s resolve has been no less striking on the battlefield. Remarkably, this year the rainy season which typically imposes a marked reduction in operations between May and October might as well not be happening as the military ratchets up the war.
Despite heavier than normal rainfall brought by this year’s monsoon, the operational tempo on the ground has scarcely slackened while air strikes by both Russian-built helicopter gunships and fixed-wing jets suitable for close air support (CAS) operations also increased in intensity through July and August.
Notable, too, has been the repeated resort to airmobile operations inserting small contingents of troops in Mi-17 transport helicopters supported by gunships into guerrilla-controlled territory mostly in the hard-fought western regions of Sagaing and Magway.
At the same time, the military has rolled out a new program to formalize and streamline local militia loosely known as Pyu Saw Htee into better organized and armed Peoples Security Teams (PSTs).
Drawn from pockets of traditional support such as the Myanmar Veterans Organization, the Fire Service, hardline Buddhist groups and activists from pro-military political parties, the PSTs are intended primarily to provide static security and free up regular security forces for offensive operations.
But while the generals are clearly gearing up a war that is certain to escalate in the dry season beginning at the end of the year, they are also no doubt aware of their most salient vulnerabilities in the field that the coup has only accentuated.
Undermanned and over-extended as never before, the army’s effective combat units are unlikely to number much more than 100,000 men stretched across a nationwide theater of operations from Putao in the far north of Kachin state to southernmost Kawthaung on the Andaman Sea.
And far more than defections, casualties are hemorrhaging those units daily, particularly in the western and eastern regions of the country where resistance mounted by anti-regime People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and their ethnic insurgent allies is increasingly well-armed and aggressive.
Wild claims from opposition sources that the security forces have lost nearly 10,000 men in the first half of 2022 can be safely dismissed as propaganda. But a sober analysis of the spread and frequency of hostilities this year suggests that on average the military is losing at least 20-25 men each day, either killed or seriously wounded.
That almost certainly conservative estimate translates to between 550 and 700 men each month – or around three to four Myanmar Army-sized battalions. Short of a regular and robust recruitment intake and efficient training regime, this level of attrition with the steady drain on morale it implies is simply not sustainable over the long term.
But as various leaked documents since last year indicate, recruitment into the regular services has dropped markedly since the coup, particularly at the critical level of junior and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), the glue that holds a combat unit together.
Whether current efforts to assemble PSTs can produce a reasonably effective urban security force capable of freeing up regular police and army battalions for the escalating war in the countryside is also a decidedly open question.
If Myanmar’s recent history is any yardstick, people’s militia units traditionally raised in areas of ethnic minority insurgency have never achieved any level of operational effectiveness or autonomy. It is doubtful whether hastily recruited, ill-trained PSTs in urban centers liable to daily bombings and shootings by underground resistance cells will do much better.
Yet to what extent Myanmar’s opposition forces can succeed in exploiting and building on these regime vulnerabilities over the coming months is far from obvious. Broad assessments are inevitably complicated by the sheer size and diversity of the country and by the stark absence of impartial reporting from any of its battlefronts.
Two facets of the mid-2022 balance of conflict are not in doubt though. First, PDF forces have successfully survived the military onslaught during the dry season months between January and May this year, marked by campaigns of raiding and wholesale pillaging and burning of villages that swept Sagaing, northern Magway and areas of eastern Kayah State and displaced tens of thousands.
Secondly, indications have emerged during the current monsoon season that notably better-armed and coordinated PDF forces are increasingly capable of pressuring the peripheries of regime-held township centers, and occasionally conducting sustained attacks on police stations and other hardpoints inside towns.
These assaults are frequently supported by aerial bombing deploying commercially available drones to drop small munitions.
At the same time – and despite the difficulties imposed by rainfall – the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to interdict road communications which began in mid-2021 has escalated sharply in recent months, most notably between key urban centers in the center and west of the country.
Matthew Arnold, one of the most perceptive independent analysts of PDF activity, notes that “the Mandalay-Monywa axis is turning into IED Avenue.”
The near-daily struggle to hold open that avenue linking central Myanmar’s largest city with the military’s Northwestern Command in Sagaing has centered largely on the townships of Chaung-U and Myinmu, where even large convoys are regularly attacked and military mine disposal (EOD) teams often operate under fire.
Apparently as the result of both PDF guerrilla tactics and rain, military operations have meanwhile become increasingly static and reactive. As offensive raiding and burning targeting PDF-dominated village communities during the dry season has waned, security forces have fallen back on random harassment and interdiction (H&I) fire from dug-in artillery and, when possible, better-targeted air strikes to relieve pressure on embattled strongpoints.
Quick-fix insertions of heliborne troops supported by gunships have, as noted, also increased, but usually appear to have been responses to PDF encroachments rather than offensive thrusts aimed at carrying the war to enemy base areas.
Limited by the availability of Mi-17 transport helicopters (typically two or three per mission) and thus manpower (around 30 soldiers to each helicopter), these airmobile forays appear seldom, if ever, to deal significant blows to an elusive enemy, let alone achieve sustainable gains.
The logic of this military dynamic is compelling: it suggests that short of a major injection of fresh manpower (that is nowhere in sight) or a willingness to free up existing manpower by prioritizing certain regions over others (a stark challenge to the military’s belief in its all-of-Myanmar mission), larger shifts on the battlefield may emerge sooner rather than later.
The coming year is likely to see the regime beginning to withdraw from exposed positions and possibly losing outlying townships in contested parts of Sagaing and Magway and in ethnic states on the national periphery.
Indeed, in western Rakhine and Chin states where the military’s ceasefire with the powerful Arakan Army (AA) all but collapsed in August, that process appears to have already begun with the army evacuating or losing a string of embattled positions at the end of the month and able to supply others only by air.
At the same time, as “IED Avenue” between Mandalay and Monywa suggests, the regime’s ability to secure key north-south communications arteries between Yangon and Naypyidaw and Mandalay and Myitkyina is also likely to emerge as a dangerous vulnerability and a further drain on manpower.
The threat is particularly real in the east of the country where elements of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) have reportedly moved out of the hills to reach the Sittang River, possibly crossing it near Kyauktaga on the old highway between Yangon and Naypyidaw. (The newer motorway lies 15 kilometers further west).
Any capacity by the KNLA and allied PDFs to operate on the west bank of the Sittang not only elevates the threat to north-south road and rail links but also implies an ability over time to establish bases in the Bago Yoma, the strategically critical spine of mountains that bisects central Myanmar.
Meanwhile in northeastern parts of Sagaing and adjacent southern townships in Kachin state, holding open the main highway and rail line to Myitkyina for military traffic is already a daily struggle that has forced a growing regime reliance on riverine convoys up the Irrawaddy. These, too, come under regular rocket fire from joint Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and PDF forces operating along the riverbanks.
Viewed strategically, these emerging challenges confronting Myanmar’s military junta represent a sea change set against the situation only a year ago, when the survivability of still fledgling PDFs in the face of overwhelming army firepower was in real doubt.
For at least the coming year, however, Myanmar’s escalating civil war will likely remain in the balance. As the military struggles to contain an array of growing threats on multiple fronts, it will continue to hold two crucial and interlocking advantages that resistance forces still lack and will almost certainly be unable to achieve: unity of command and unity of strategy backed by an instinctive and very Prussian determination to fight.
But whether these will be enough for the Tatmadaw to stem the rising onslaught remains anything but clear..."
Source/publisher:
"Asia Times" (Hong Kong)
Date of publication:
2022-08-31
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-31
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political History
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Sub-title:
The Civil Disobedience Movement member and former student leader was jailed under anti-terrorism laws.
Description:
"A member of Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), Thae Su Naing, has been sentenced to seven years in prison by Meiktila Court in Mandalay region. She received the maximum sentence allowed under the country’s anti-terrorism law.
The 24-year-old teacher was a former chairwoman of the Meiktila University Students’ Union and taught in the local township.
Thae Su Naing was sentenced under Section 52 (A) of the Counter-Terrorism Law on Monday, family members and colleagues told RFA. Sentences under the law range from three to seven years.
One family member, who declined to be named for security reasons, told RFA it was unfair to sentence a young teacher to such a long prison term,
“There is no justice. My sister is an ordinary school teacher, not a People’s Defense Force (PDF) leader,” the family member said. “This sentence is severe for my sister. She has to appeal but arrangements have not yet been made. I want my sister to come back home as soon as possible.”
Thae Su Naing was arrested by the army at her home in Maiktila township on November 22 last year. She was accused of being a PDF leader and held for nine months before being sentenced.
Her family told RFA that her leg had been broken during a beating she received from the junta soldiers who arrested her. They said her leg has not healed properly because she did not receive effective medical treatment in Meiktila Prison.
Thae Su Naing was active in fighting for students’ rights during her university days. As a teacher, she participated in the anti-dictatorship CDM movement following the Feb.1, 2021 military coup.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), 12,171 people have been arrested since the military coup of February 1, 2021 up until Monday. Some 1,410 of them have been sentenced to prison terms across Myanmar.
Last month the AAPP said 12 teachers had been killed and more than 200 arrested since Myanmar’s military seized control from the elected government..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-08-30
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-30
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Description:
"Dr. Tayzar San, 33, is one of the military regime’s most wanted people and has been hunted by the junta for many months. But despite being in hiding, the man who led the first anti-coup demonstrations in Mandalay and who has since became a prominent revolutionary continues to carry out his mission of eliminating military dictatorship from Myanmar.
He challenges the junta leaders on social media almost daily, and has been travelling extensively to meet resistance groups and civilians on the ground.
The protest leader recently talked to The Irrawaddy about what he saw during his travels in resistance strongholds.
What did you see on your travels?
I have been travelling across the country. I travelled on foot, by bike, by water and even rode an elephant once. I have been to many places and met people from all walks of life, including ordinary civilians, People Defense Forces (PDFs), ethnic organizations, people’s authorities, education boards, health boards, lawmakers, political party leaders, businessmen and even beggars. And I have heard many things from them.
To tell you briefly what I saw on my travels is that I have greater confidence that this revolution will definitely succeed. The people will definitely win this fight. The military regime are not capable, either physically or mentally, of withstanding this revolution.
What can you tell us about the plight of ordinary people?
What I have seen is the worst social, economic, health and security situation in the country since Myanmar became independent over 70 years ago. It is said that the occupation of Myanmar [then Burma] by fascist Japan during World War II was the worst period in Myanmar’s history. In the future, people will say that Min Aung Hlaing’s dictatorship was worse than fascist Japan’s rule.
Every day, junta troops torch villages for no reason. They drop bombs on civilians for no reason and shoot anyone on sight, whether they are engaged in the revolution or not. It is an extremely brutal dictatorship. The people have nothing to lose now, so there is no other option but to throw themselves into the revolution. People have been participating in the revolution with a lot of determination. In some of the villages I visited, all the villagers are members of PDFs. The military torches houses and arrests and kills civilians in order to instill fear in villagers. But the crueler their actions, the more revolutionary the people become.
How are people surviving?
People face extreme hardship. The military regime is employing the ‘Four Cuts’ strategy that they have used for many years. They cut off supplies of food, medicine and fuel, as well as access to the internet. So people are extremely short of food, medicine and fuel. As Myanmar is an agricultural country, people can still manage to grow food to eat, but life is still very difficult for them.
The worst thing is that the currency, the Kyat, is continuously depreciating. Farmers and low-income families are facing appalling hardship due to the inflation caused by that. But they have nothing more to lose. They have lost their houses and possessions in arson attacks. They live in makeshift shelters and under trees. And they make do with what they have. They are already facing the worst situation.
They are not feeling down because of the woes they are facing. Instead they are preoccupied by the desire to fight for the revolution. As they have decided to sacrifice their lives if necessary, they are no longer feeling sad or shocked. They think more about how to end the military dictatorship in the shortest possible time.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell the international community that millions of people need humanitarian assistance now. They have no shelter, no food and medicine. I want to urge the international agencies to help them on humanitarian grounds. There are millions of people affected by the fighting in Anyar [central Myanmar], Karen State, northern Shan State and Tanintharyi Region. There are many people who are going hungry. I would like to urge the world to help them.
What are the young people doing?
Teenagers as young as 15 are participating in the revolution alongside older people, which is encouraging. Parents take their children to local PDF groups. Almost all the young people in the villages take part in the revolution one way or another. Even if they don’t personally take part in the fighting, they do their part in logistics and helping displaced people. At the same time, interim schools from kindergarten to matriculation have been opened and children attend classes. Some of those who can’t join the armed revolution are serving as volunteer teachers.
And the people who are part of the Civil Disobedience Movement are not just on strike. They are teachers or are serving in people’s authorities. Some have joined PDFs. They are working with determination to end the military dictatorship.
If people in other parts of the country have similar thoughts, our revolution won’t take long to succeed. If people want to end this ordeal as quickly as possible, it is important that all of them take part in the revolution. What I have seen is that every young person has become a full-time revolutionary.
What do PDFs and resistance groups need?
All the groups said they need weapons and ammunition. The National Unity Government (NUG) has financial constraints. I would like to urge people to make donations to fund the resistance.
What are your suggestions to revolutionary groups?
Our resistance forces were established overnight out of the necessity of the revolution. They are made up of civilians who joined the PDFs after a few months of military training. The chain of command is not systematic and there is still room for improvement. They can’t still get rid of their civilian behavior. There must be a systematic and swift chain of command from the most basic unit of a squad to platoon, company and battalion level right up to the NUG’s defense ministry.
There are PDFs at the village, township, district and regional level. There must be unity among the civilian administration officials such as the people’s authorities, township resource management boards, township health boards and education boards. This is very important. The second thing is they must follow codes of conduct and regulations. This is critical.
PDF members must follow the code of conduct of a soldier. Administrative officials must also follow rules and regulations. Their weapons must be used only to protect the people and their property. So those are the two most important suggestions for them, the chain of command and compliance with codes of conduct and rules and regulations.
How much territory do resistance forces now control?
The regime says in its newspapers that normalcy has been restored to the country. Everyone knows that the rural population makes up 70 per cent of Myanmar’s total population. There are between 100 and 200 villages in every township. Today, the revolutionary forces led by the NUG are strong enough to assert control over all rural areas. The area that I am currently in is vast, and some 80 to 90 per cent of schools have been opened by NUG-led boards in the area. On the other hand, junta-run schools have been opened in only one township. Don’t judge the situation just by looking at Yangon and Mandalay or the regime-controlled media. On the ground, the huge wave of revolution is sweeping across rural areas and gaining momentum by the day.
What do you want to tell the NUG on behalf of the people and PDFs?
All the people including me view the NUG as our government. We have pinned high hopes on it and rely heavily on it. We have trust in the NUG. We understand that the NUG is trying hard despite various challenges. We rely on it and expect more from it.
Everyone knows what the PDFs and resistance groups need. They need funds, weapons and ammunition. We expect the NUG to take practical steps to make sure that people’s authorities and so on can perform effectively.
Another thing is understanding and sympathy from the international community. Even if the international community can’t directly give the things we need, they can help displaced people in Myanmar on humanitarian grounds. I want the NUG to try to solicit assistance from the international community for displaced people. Millions of people are going hungry now in our country. They need shelter and medicine. On behalf of the Myanmar people, I would like to urge the NUG to try and get them international assistance.
What is the key to the success of the revolution?
As our revolution is centered on armed resistance, people would say heavy weapons and ammunition are most needed. That is not wrong. But, personally, people are the most important part of the revolution. This is a revolution of the people. Frankly, this revolution belongs to neither the NUG nor the National League for Democracy (NLD). Nor does it belong to the PDFs. This is a revolution of the people for the people.
People have risen up in revolt because they can’t accept the injustice that comes from being ruled by a gun and having their votes cancelled. This is not a personal fight and it is not a fight between two parties: between the red [the NLD] and the green [the Myanmar military]. That must be understood clearly. The Anyar Region is fighting the military fiercely in this Spring Revolution. The Bamar people themselves are fighting fiercely against the regime, even though the Myanmar military is traditionally dominated by the Bamar.
The Myanmar military can be compared to a tree that has lost its roots. No matter how large it has grown, the tree will not survive for long once it has lost its roots. It will definitely fall down. If you want to see the tree fall down quickly, then join others to push it down. The more people who join to push the tree, the quicker it will fall down. Do whatever you can. Those with swords, cut the tree with swords. Those with axes, cut with axes. Anyone with arms, help push it down. The dictatorship will definitely collapse. As the people are the key, I would like to urge all the people to continue to participate in the revolution..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-08-29
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Description:
"Myanmar junta forces have burned down 28,434 houses in 645 locations since last year’s coup, with Sagaing Region suffering the heaviest damage, according to the independent research group Data For Myanmar.
Military regime troops have committed arson attacks in 11 states and regions, with Sagaing and Magwe regions and Chin State bearing the brunt of the junta’s campaign against civilians.
From February 1, 2021 to August 25, 2022, some 20,153 houses in Sagaing Region were torched by junta forces. Magwe Region saw 5,418 properties burned down, while 1,474 houses in Chin State were destroyed. Another 1,400-odd homes were torched elsewhere in the country.
Despite the United Nation’s (UN) Special Envoy Noeleen Heyzer calling on coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on August 17 to cease air and artillery strikes on civilian targets and the torching of homes, regime soldiers have conducted arson attacks and airstrikes on more than 20 villages in Sagaing and Magwe in the last nine days.
Over a dozen civilians have been killed, while an estimated 50,000 people have been forced to flee their homes, according to local residents and People’s Defense Forces.
Data For Myanmar said that regime forces escalated their arson attacks in Sagaing in April, May and June of this year, torching over 12,000 houses. 27 out of 34 townships in Sagaing reported junta arson attacks.
Magwe Region also saw an escalation in regime arson attacks in August losing 1,300 houses, added Data For Myanmar.
The research group said that it used reports from the media, rights groups and refugee organizations to calculate the number of homes destroyed. However, the actual number of houses burned down may be higher than the reported figures, as many regime arson attacks have yet to be verified.
Junta forces have increased their arson attacks and airstrikes against civilian targets since September last year, when the civilian National Unity Government declared war against the regime.
In mid-August, the UN Special Envoy also called on the junta leader to end all forms of violence, to show full respect for human rights and the rule of law, and to allow full and safe humanitarian access to those in need.
But the Myanmar military has continued to commit atrocities including burning people alive, the arbitrary torture and killings of civilians, extrajudicial killings of resistance detainees, using civilian detainees as human shields, artillery and airstrikes on residential areas, looting and burning houses and acts of sexual violence.
Some 2,249 people have been killed by the regime up to August 26, while 15,239 people including elected government leaders have been arrested or detained, said the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a group that monitors arrests and deaths by junta forces..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-08-29
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Description:
"The wife of democracy veteran Ko Jimmy AKA Kyaw Min Yu has called in a statement for the Myanmar junta to be held accountable for his “unjust execution” in July and for the murder to be considered a war crime.
In a statement released on Facebook on 20 August, Ma Nilar Thein called on organizations and the international community to take action and warned of more possible executions.
Here is the personal Statement of Ma Nilar Thein on the execution of Ko Jimmy:
1. Since the SAC regime led by Min Aung Hlaing illegally seized the power of the nation, they have unlawfully killed so many people, and this “Death Penalty” punishment is also an unlawful act of murder and is a war crime.
2. The SAC regime never informed anything about Ko Jimmy from the time when he got arrested to the time that he was executed. And, he didn’t have any rights as a political-prisoners such as prison visits, receiving medicines and foods from the family, and legal representation from a lawyer. And, the trial was also a closed trial too and no one was able to access the trial.
3. A family member was allowed to have a Zoom Meeting with him for around 20 minutes, just a day before they carried out the execution. And, no one has informed about when and where they would carried out the execution. In addition to that, the SAC regime pretended as they would not yet carry out the execution.
4. The SAC has refused to return the dead body or any evidence that can proof the execution, back to the family since they have announced that “they have carried out the punishment” on the military-own newspaper.
5. It is clear that the SAC has violated the rights of the prisoner that they executed, moreover, they have also violated the rights of the family even after the execution. This bluntly shows that the SAC has violated human rights and standard valued of people by using arms and power.
6. I have learned through video records that a mob with around (50) people came to the houses of Ko Jimmy and Ko Phyo Zeyar Thaw on 27th July 2022. They stoned and threw with eggs at the houses and shouted that they have lost their family members because of Ko Jimmy and Ko Phyo Zeyar Thaw. We have confirmed that they don’t belong to any victims and they were the members of the USDP party, which is a subordinate organization under the terrorized SAC and members of religious extremist groups. And, media organizations and social media have expressed that this is just one of the agenda of the terrorized SAC. And, it was clear that the SAC had organized similar kinds of violence campaigns in the early time of the coup.
7. Since the coup in 2021, 76 political prisoners are under the death row and 41 political activists are death sentenced under absentia. This sums up 117 people under the death row including underaged young people, university students and women. This is the time for the international community to pressure from all possible sides to stop such kind of inhumane unlawful killings.
8. This unjust action of execution bluntly insults all of us, including people of Myanmar and pro-democracy activists amid the international diplomatic missions and ASEAN Human Rights Organizations pressured the SAC not to carry out the execution.
9. I strongly urged all the governments and organizations from the international community to take more effective actions against the SAC since I heard about more potential executions as I don’t want to see no similar cases like my husband, Ko Jimmy in the future..."
Source/publisher:
Mizzima
Date of publication:
2022-08-22
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders
Language:
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Sub-title:
The fires also burned stashes of rice and forced more than 4,000 residents to flee.
Description:
"Myanmar junta forces and members of an affiliated militia group torched most of the homes in a village in the central Magway region, another display of the regime’s reliance on arson in its fight to hold onto power 18 months after removing the democratically elected government in a coup.
Area residents on Thursday reported the arson to RFA Burmese, a day after Noeleen Heyzer, the U.N.’s special envoy for Myanmnar, called for an immediate end to violence in the Southeast Asian country and asked to see ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a meeting with the junta leaders.
Soldiers along with members of the Pyu Saw Htee militias supporting the regime began setting fire to more than 400 of the 500 houses in Ngatayaw village in Magway’s Yesagyo township on Wednesday morning, forcing more than 4,000 residents to flee, locals told RFA.
Some of the remaining houses were set ablaze on Thursday morning, said an Ngatayaw village resident who did not want to be named for safety reasons.
“The fires went out last night because it rained heavily at about 10 p.m.,” he said. “They started the fires again today at 8 a.m. until now. We can see the smoke billowing all the way up from here.”
Villagers watched from a distance as their town burned while soldiers randomly fired their weapons, he said.
Other residents said they fled to safety when Myanmar troops entered the community on Wednesday, adding that soldiers previously had raided their village four times, including on Aug. 10 when they set fire to 14 motorcycles.
“This is the fifth time we’ve had to run,” said one woman. “There is so much trouble that it’s terrible. They set fire to several houses the last time they came here. Now, the whole village is almost gone. I had to run with some stuff and the cows. I only have the clothes on my back.”
'House has gone to ashes'
Elderly, sick and disabled residents who could not run away remained in Ngatayaw on Wednesday amid the wreckage, villagers said.
Up to 200 or 300 baskets of rice that had been stored in some of the burned homes are now gone, they added.
Another woman from the village said she was lucky to get a lift out of the community on a motorcycle when soldiers began raiding homes.
“In the past, we had gotten through very, very hard times, but now our whole house has gone to ashes,” she said. “I’m 63 years old now, and I have never seen anything like this.”
The military has not yet issued any information about the burning of Ngatayaw village. Junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun previously told RFA that army columns did not enter villages or commit arson. He blamed the arson on the anti-junta People’s Defense Forces.
A member of the Yesagyo township’s People’s Defense Forces, a militia group fighting the regime, told RFA that an army column entered the Ngatayaw after a 15-minute clash with the local defense groups near the village around 9 a.m. Wednesday.
“There was a small clash between them and some local groups yesterday just before they entered the village,” he said. “There were Pyu Saw Htee members from their area along with them. They have been deployed in Minywa village for the past 12 days, and later about half of them launched the attack.”
The 150-member army column has been in the Yay Lei Kyun area, comprising more than 40 villages, since July 26, locals said.
At least 5,000 local residents have been forced to flee their homes because military troops have been active in several villages in the area, including Ngatayaw, Hlay Khoke, Minywa, Pauktaw, Nan U, Nay Yin, since last week, they said.
Junta soldiers burned the village of Hlay Khoke three times in the past few days, destroying more than 200 of the community’s 400 houses, they said.
The army has torched thousands of civilian homes in Magway and Sagaing region in northwestern Myanmar, where it has faced fierce opposition from local PDFs..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of publication:
2022-08-18
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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Sub-title:
The bodies of the victims, who were all related, showed evidence of torture, sources said
Description:
"Two brothers aged 14 and 15 were among seven people tortured and murdered by junta troops in Sagaing Region’s Shwebo Township on Sunday, according to local sources.
The victims, who were all related, were residents of Wun Gyi, a village of around 100 households located in Khin-U Township, near the border with Shwebo.
According to a relative, they were detained while travelling together to Thabeikkyin Township in Mandalay Region, where they planned to look for work at a gold mine.
“This is a farming village, but a lot of people here also work at the gold mines when they’re not farming. It’s sad to see kids being killed like that,” said the relative.
The victims were identified as Min Nyi, 14, Zaw Hein, 15, Kyaw Thu Hein, 19, Phyo Ngwe Soe, 19, and Min Ko, Thura Tun and Nine Nine, who were between the ages of 20 and 22. All were male.
Min Nyi and Zaw Hein were both in the seventh grade and had a one-year-old sister, said the relative, who did not want to be named.
A resident of Wun Gyi who also spoke on condition of anonymity said that the bodies of the victims had multiple gunshot wounds and showed evidence of torture.
“The bodies were riddled with bullets and were all badly bruised. I’m certain they were brutally tortured,” said the villager, who was part of a team that searched for the victims after they were abducted.
“We were afraid the military would arrive while we were retrieving the bodies, which were scattered around the road, so we couldn’t get a close look at them. But each one had at least three or four bullet wounds,” he added.
According to a member of a local defence force, the seven victims were taken into custody near a high school in the town of Shwebo, but their bodies were found on Monday in Khin-U Township.
“They were just dumped in a field near Ywar Thar. They were regular villagers who went out to work to make ends meet,” he said, adding that the site was around 5km north of a military recruitment and training centre.
Myanmar Now tried to contact police in Shwebo for comment, but all calls went unanswered.
Residents of Wun Gyi confirmed that the seven boys and young men killed on Sunday were the village’s first casualties since last year’s coup, which has met with strong resistance in Sagaing and other parts of the country..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of publication:
2022-08-17
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Military History
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Description:
"A total of 17 civilians, including a child, have been killed in a Myanmar junta raid and airstrikes on a Sagaing Region village.
On Thursday around 60 regime soldiers, airlifted by helicopters, occupied Yin Paung Taing village in the south of Yinmabin Township after three Russian-made MI-35 helicopters attacked villagers using machine guns and rockets.
The villagers were preparing a meal for resistance fighters from Chin State. Many villagers and Chin People’s Defense Force members were trapped in the village while around 3,000 residents escaped.
Overnight most of the resistance members escaped after a shootout with regime forces.
On Friday, approximately 90 more regime reinforcements were dropped by helicopter and an MI-35 attacked after resistance groups tried to evacuate the trapped civilians.
On Sunday, regime troops left the village and residents found 17 bodies, including the remains of six people burned by troops.
Twelve were Yin Paung Tiaing villagers, according to residents and the Young Ranger Force (YRF), a resistance force.
Ko Bala of the group told The Irrawaddy on Monday that a 10-year-old girl and villager Daw Nwe Nwe, 52, were killed by helicopter bombs.
“We will live without any worry when we annihilate the regime. Until then there is nowhere safe for everyone,” he said.
Villagers Ko Thaw Phone Naing, 17, Ko Saung Win Latt, 40, U Mg Myint, 55, Ko Nyein Thu Aung, 24, Daw Yi Myint, 45, U Kyaw Win Swe, 73, and Ko Pwa Gyi, 45, who suffered from mental illness, were shot dead by troops.
Villagers Daw Khin Mya, 85, and Daw Ni, 62, starved to death while trapped in the village.
U Kyaw Hmawe, 67, died while fleeing junta airstrikes, according to the YRF.
Residents found five other bodies, one of which was confirmed as an ethnic Chin resistance fighter, a villager told The Irrawaddy.
Pro-regime Telegram channels reported last Friday that seven resistance fighters were killed and many firearms and ammunition were seized during the raid.
Regime forces torched about six buildings and many houses were bombed, residents said.
The troops took around 32 villagers as human shields as they raided villages in Pale Township on Sunday.
Shootouts broke out with resistance forces on Sunday.
The casualty numbers are unknown.
Since Thursday, around 7,000 residents from seven villages have fled their homes.
Amid repeated resistance attacks, regime forces have relentlessly committed atrocities, including the arbitrary killing of civilians, torturing and burning people alive, using civilians as human shields, air and artillery strikes on residential areas, looting and burning houses and acts of sexual violence..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-08-15
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-15
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political History
Language:
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Description:
"U Tin Tut, who was one of the “elders” and original members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), as well as a former parliamentarian, former political prisoner, and former student leader, died at his home in Sydney, Australia, on Aug. 8 at the age of 92. U Tin Tut was my father’s first cousin, someone I called “aba” or “older uncle.” He was also the first “political prisoner” I ever met, the person whose life inspired my scholarship on Myanmar’s democracy movement.
When I was reunited with my Uncle Tut in 2014, after many years apart, I would ask him to tell me stories about his political struggles and his run for parliament in 1990. After dinner, when the entire family would sit around the living room, my uncle’s middle son, who seemed just as excited to talk about the topic as I was, would say: “Dad, tell her about Aung San Suu Kyi; do not forget about that,” or “What about the meetings you had with the Thakins, tell her about that.” Thakins were members of the influential Burmese nationalist group Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) set up to oppose British colonial rule in the 1930s.
My Uncle Tut would lean back in his chair, smile, and nod, but said relatively little about politics or his participation in it. Instead, we talked about other family members—my father, my other uncles, my aunts, my cousins—what they were doing, who was pursuing this or particularly talented at that, and how much they reminded him of other relatives I had never met. “And what about Thant,” he would say, “He is just like his father. And May Than, oh your grandfather loved her so.”
I knew Uncle Tut needed time and space to tell his story—away even from his children and grandchildren—and in the right moment, he would recount what he knew. So, after many nights in Sydney, I walked with my uncle and aunt to the hotel where I was staying, a half-mile from where they lived. My aunt had knee surgery a few years back and my Uncle Tut, his hips failing him, also walked with a cane. I did not want them to walk such a great distance. I told them that I would hire a taxi even for a few blocks, but they would not have it. Then I told them we could do it on another occasion. I told them that we had plenty of time; I could come back to Sydney next summer and spend more time with them. But once my uncle had it in mind that he would tell me what he knew, he could not be persuaded to turn back.
Born in the Irrawaddy Delta in 1931, in the village of Einme, U Tin Tut lived through British colonialism; lived through the Japanese occupation and their eventual overthrow; lived through the era of the Thakins and the fight for independence; lived through the parliamentary era; lived through General Ne Win’s dictatorship; lived through the 1988 pro-democracy movement and Ne Win’s own overthrow; his own election to parliament in 1990; six years in prison; and then migration to Australia.
U Tin Tut’s father was the headmaster of a government school, first in Einme, and then in Pyinmana, where Uncle Tut received his primary education. He recalled to me in 2014 that “living in Pyinmana made all the difference, because there were a lot of politically active people, you see. There was not any one political cause that they all gathered around, but because my father was a teacher at the [government-run school] we always entertained guests from different places. And when they met they would talk about political issues. Even though at first I did not understand what they were saying, I would sit on the floor and listen to them. In that way, I came to be interested in politics.”
During the Japanese occupation, Uncle Tut was not able to attend school, but continued to be politically socialized by his father’s friends: “Many political types continued to come to our home in the evenings, drank tea, and talked about the occupation with my father. There was the Dobama Asiayone led by the Thakins. The Thakins from Dobama were actually older people, not terribly educated or intellectual, unlike the Thakins who were university students, but I learned a lot from them nevertheless.”
After the war ended, Uncle Tut was sent to Pathein to attend high school at the Cosmopolitan Po Karen High School. It was in Pathein that Uncle Tut first became involved with the student union. This was how Tin Tut became part of the long tradition of student leaders (the kyauntha gaungzaungs as they are called) and activists in Myanmar.
After he entered university, his involvement in a student strike in 1953 landed him his first stint in prison. Uncle Tut recounted that his experience of imprisonment in the 1950s did not have the same dehumanizing qualities that he would later experience as a political prisoner under the military regime known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Doctors made regular visits to the prisons and as the resident physician felt Uncle Tut was too thin, he was put on a regiment of fresh cow’s milk. He recalled that prisoners were not only allowed to read, but that books and newspapers were plentiful, and they could order whatever they needed from the outside. Indeed, he seemed to recall this period of his life with great fondness. My own father, who was six years younger than Uncle Tut, and tasked with bringing food and supplies to the prison, remembered it differently. He told me that they would both sit and cry during the prison visits.
In 1988, Uncle Tut once again became involved in national politics. Along with U Win Tin, with whom he was contemporaries and had a close, lifelong friendship, he became one of the earliest members and leaders of the NLD. During this period, he spent copious amounts of time in Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s home. In 1990, he ran for parliament as the NLD candidate for Einme. He won a resounding victory against his military-backed opponent but was never allowed to take office. Instead, along with hundreds of other elected parliamentarians, U Tin Tut was illegally detained and then imprisoned for six years, much of which he spent in solitary confinement.
At different points during his imprisonment he found himself crossing paths with a younger generation of activists, including members of the 88 Generation, such as Ko Jimmy, who was among the four democracy activists hanged by the regime in late July, Ko Pyone Cho, and Ko Min Ko Naing. Ko Pyone Cho recalled in interviews I conducted with him in 2013 that much of his own political socialization during his first year in Insein Prison involved listening to my Uncle Tin Tut talk with his contemporaries, including figures such as Dr. Maung Maung Kyaw, who had been chair of the Student Union in the 1950s, and the leftist writer and former student leader U Lay Myint. Uncle Tut seemed to have a particular soft spot for Ko Jimmy, often recalling with dismay how the prison guards would not let him share some of his food provisions with his younger prison mate. Both in the movement and in prison, Uncle Tut was known for his quick temper, raspy voice, passion, and authenticity. He was also known for his loyalty and warmth as a friend and comrade.
U Tin Tut was one of the few parliamentarians who made the difficult decision to migrate out of Myanmar. After his release from prison in 1996, his wife beseeched him to leave and he reluctantly agreed. Indeed, were it not for his wife, I believe Uncle would have stubbornly stayed on in Myanmar, continuing to struggle against the dictatorship, as many of his peers and comrades did, until the very end.
While he never fully articulated it to me, I do not doubt that it pained him to go into exile. Yet, if he had never migrated out of Myanmar, he certainly would not have lived until he was 92, such that he could pass away peacefully at his home, with his wife by his side, and his four children and six grandchildren close by. He would not have seen his sons marry, his grandchildren graduate. And he certainly would not have been able to tell me—his “niece”—about his time in prison. His stories would have never planted a seed inside of me that grew into the many friendships that I would have with democracy activists and former political prisoners. His narratives of political strife and imprisonment would not have compelled me to return to Myanmar to search out his history and, in doing so, to document the democracy movement in the many imperfect and incomplete ways that I have.
I am told that had my Uncle Tin Tut died in Myanmar before the coup, the community of political prisoners in Yangon would have gathered and given him the hero’s burial that he deserved. His coffin would have been draped in a flag of the NLD, for all the sacrifices that he made. Responsible members of the community would have read proclamations that the political organizations to which he had belonged over the course of his lifetime, including the NLD and student unions, released him from all future obligations and duties, allowing his spirit to be set free. While I cannot perform this rite for him, there is a part of me that recognizes that, in the last decades of his life, he needed no such release, no such liberation. He had become free on his own terms..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-08-12
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-12
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Articles and reports about the NLD, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports
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"August 9, 2022
At present, news on prison conditions in the country is under a blackout. The outside world is likely unaware of the real situation inside prisons – of human rights violations, torture, and murder.
Monitoring Inside Prisons by Military Security Affairs Forces and Police
The terrorist junta have ordered Military Security Affairs Forces (SAF) and police forces, to directly manage the prisons, as well as closely monitor the prisoners with strict rules to prevent information from getting out.
Prisons Visits Banned
In many of the places, including Yangon, and Obo (Mandalay) Prison, political prisoners have been denied visitation access by relatives since the terrorist junta seized power. As a result, prisoners are deprived of food, medicine and of contact with the outside.
Transfer of Political Prisoners to Different Prisons; Torture and Extortion
During the month, political prisoners have also been transferred to other prisons. In Monywa Prison, political prisoners were transfered twice in July and August, to Myingyan Prison, Nyaung Oo Prison, and Shwe Bo Prison. We also know that on August 5, more than 120 political prisoners from Insein Prison were transferred to Tharrawaddy Prison.
Last July, around 100 political prisoners from Hpa-an Prison were transferred to other places, including Insein Prison. Among the political prisoners transferred, members of the Hpa-an Student Union were beaten and tortured on a daily basis.
In Magway Prison, political prisoners were beaten daily without reason, both the family members and prisoners faced challenges because they were not informed before of the transfer to another prison.
Political prisoners are also forced to do hard work such as carrying sewage and sacks of rice. In addition, they are beaten by a group of other prisoners without cause, until they were severely injured and made to sleep near the putrid sewage. If political prisoners refuse to do this, there are unfair demands like how much money they must pay. Whilst criminal prisoners are ordered to beat political prisoners.
Increased COVID-19 Infections Within Prisons
Increasing numbers of prisoners are catching COVID-19, they are being isolated without medical treatment. Around 50 political prisoners are infected in Obo Prison. Since they are not allowed to see relatives, they find it difficult to get medicine and food. At least three political prisoners are in serious pain and life-threatening condition.
Hunger Strikes
Political prisoners who have been sentenced to death, as well as families, are concerned, they are victims of severe mental stress following the execution of four political prisoners including two prominent activists. Particularly since the terrorist junta force’s announcement that “more death row prisoners are to be executed”. Following this, there have been reports that political prisoners in some prisons are on hunger strike.
We are particularly concerned about the danger to these lives due to solitary confinement, and the severe beatings of political prisoners. There is, therefore, an urgent need to reveal the true situation. AAPP has been told that since a hunger strike in Obo Prison on August 4 and August 5, two gunshots were heard from the prison. Families of the detained are worried.
We, AAPP, strongly condemn these human rights violations, torture, and killings concealed within the prisons. We urge the United Nations, international governments, human rights organizations monitoring the political situation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as ASEAN member states to demand the genuine prison conditions, as well as take action to prevent such targetted and widespread human rights violations..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2022-08-09
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-09
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"ရက်စွဲ။ ။ ဩဂုတ်လ ၉ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ်
လတ်တလောအချိန်ကာလတွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အကျဉ်းထောင်တွင်း အခြေအနေများကို ပြင်ပကမ္ဘာမှ မသိရှိစေရန် သတင်းအမှောင်ချထားပြီး လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှု၊ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုနှင့် သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများ ဆိုးရွားစွာ ဖြစ် ပေါ် နေကြောင်း သိရှိရသည်။
အကျဉ်းထောင်တွင်း စရဖနှင့် ရဲများဝင်ရောက်၍ စောင့်ကြည့်နေခြင်း
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုသည် အကျဉ်းထောင်များအား စစ်ဖက်ဆိုင်ရာ လုံခြုံရေးတပ်ဖွဲ့ (စရဖ) နှင့် ရဲများက အကျဉ်းထောင်များအတွင်း ဝင်ရောက်၍ တိုက်ရိုက်စီမံခြင်း ပြုလုပ်နေသည့်အပြင် အကျဉ်းထောင်အတွင်းရှိ သတင်းများ အပြင်သို့ မပေါက်ကြားစေရန် စည်းကမ်းများ အထူးတင်းကြပ်ထား၍ အနီးကပ် စောင့်ကြည့်ခြင်း များပြုလုပ်နေကြောင်းသိရှိရသည်။
ထောင်ဝင်စာ ပိတ်ပင်ခြင်း
ရန်ကုန်၊ အိုးဘို (မန္တလေး) နှင့် အကျဉ်းထောင်အများစုတွင် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု အာဏာလုယူပြီးချိန်မှ စ၍ မိသားစုနှင့် ထောင်ဝင်စာတွေ့ခွင့် ပိတ်ထားသည်မှာ ယနေ့တိုင်ဖြစ်သည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် အကျဉ်းသားများမှာ အစားအသောက်နှင့် ဆေးဝါးများ မရရှိဘဲ ပြင်ပနှင့်လည်း အဆက်အသွယ် ဖြတ်တောက် ခြင်း ခံထားကြရသည်။
နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား ထောင်ပြောင်းရွှေ့ခြင်း၊ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခြင်းနှင့် ငွေညှစ်ခြင်း
ယခုလပိုင်းအတွင်း နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား ထောင်ပြောင်းရွှေ့ခြင်းကိုလည်း ပြုလုပ်လျှက်ရှိသည်။ မုံရွာ အကျဉ်းထောင်မှ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများအား ဇူလိုင်လ နှင့် ဩဂုတ်လတို့တွင် နှစ်ကြိမ်တိုင်တိုင် ထောင် ပြောင်းရွှေ့ခဲ့သည်။ မြင်းခြံ၊ ညောင်ဦး၊ ရွှေဘိုထောင်များသို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့ကြောင်းသိရှိရသည်။ ဩဂုတ်လ ၅ ရက် နေ့တွင် အင်းစိန်ထောင်မှ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား ၁၂၀ ကျော်ကို သာယာဝတီထောင်သို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့လိုက်ကြောင်း သိရှိရသည်။ ပြီးခဲ့သည့် ဇူလိုင်လအတွင်း ဖားအံထောင်မှ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား ၁၀၀ ခန့် ကို အင်းစိန်ထောင် အပါအဝင် အခြားထောင်များသို့ ရွှေ့ပြောင်းခဲ့သည်။ ထိုသို့ ပြောင်းရွှေ့လာသော နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းများအနက် ဖားအံ ကျောင်းသားသမဂ္ဂအဖွဲ့ဝင်များကို နေ့စဉ်နဲ့အမျှ ပြင်းထန်စွာ ရိုက်နှက်ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်ခဲ့ကြောင်း သိရ သည်။
မကွေးထောင်တွင်လည်း ဇွန်လအတွင်း နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကို နေ့စဉ် အကြောင်းမဲ့ ရိုက်နှက်ခြင်းများ ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့သည်။ ထောင်အပြောင်းအရွှေ့ပြုလုပ်ရာတွင် မိသားစုများကို ဆက်သွယ် အသိပေးခြင်းများ မပြုလုပ်ဘဲ သတင်းအမှောင်ချ၍ ထောင်ပြောင်းရွှေ့မှုများကြောင့် မိသားစုဝင်များအနေဖြင့်ရော အကျဉ်းကျခံနေရသူ အနေ ဖြင့်ပါ အခက်အခဲများစွာ ကြုံတွေ့နေရလျက်ရှိသည်။
နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကို မိလ္လာထမ်းခိုင်းခြင်း၊ ဆန်အိတ်များထမ်းခိုင်းခြင်းကဲ့သို့ ပင်ပန်းကြမ်းတမ်းသော အလုပ်များ ခိုင်းစေလျက်ရှိသည်။ ထို့အပြင် အကြောင်းမဲ့ အုပ်စုလိုက် ပြင်းထန်စွာ ဒဏ်ရာရရှိသည်အထိ ရိုက်နှက် ခြင်း၊ ရာဇဝတ်အကျဉ်းသားများကို ရိုက်နှက်ရန်ခိုင်းစေခြင်း၊ အကျဉ်းဆောင်အတွင်း အနံ့အသက်ဆိုးဝါးသော မိလ္လာနားတွင် အိပ်စက်ရန် နေရာချထားခြင်း တို့ကိုလည်း ပြုလုပ်လျက်ရှိသည်။ ထိုသို့ မလုပ်ချင်၊ မနေချင်ပါက မည်ရွေ့မည်မျှ ငွေကြေးပေးရမည်ဆိုသည့် မတရားငွေတောင်းခံမှုများလည်း ရှိနေသည်။
အကျဉ်းထောင်အတွင်း COVID–19 ကူးစက်သူ ပိုမိုများပြားလာခြင်း
COVID-19 ကပ်ရောဂါ ကူးစက်ခံနေရသူများ များပြားလာပြီး ဆေးဝါးကုသမှုလုံးဝ မပြုလုပ်ပေးပဲ အခန်းခွဲထား သည်ဟု သိရှိရသည်။ အိုးဘိုထောင်တွင် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား ၅၀ ခန့် ကူးစက်ခံနေရပြီး မိသားစုနှင့် တွေ့ခွင့် မရသည့်အတွက် ဆေးဝါးနှင့်အစားအသောက်များ မရရှိဘဲ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား အနည်းဆုံး ၃ ဦးမှာ ဝေဒနာ ဆိုးရွားစွာ ခံစားနေရပြီး အသက် အန္တရာယ် စိုးရိမ်နေရသည်။
အစာငတ်ခံဆန္ဒပြခြင်း
ထင်ရှားသည့် နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားနှစ်ဦးအပါအဝင် ၄ ဦးအား သေဒဏ်စီရင်လိုက်ခြင်း (သတ်ဖြတ်လိုက်ခြင်း)၊ နောက်ထပ် သေဒဏ်ကျအကျဉ်းသားများအား ဆက်လက်၍ ကွပ်မျက်ရန် ရှိကြောင်း အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏ ထုတ်ဖေါ်ပြောဆိုချက်နှင့် ပတ်သက်၍ သေဒဏ်ချမှတ်ခံထားရသော နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများနှင့် မိသားစုများ အနေဖြင့် စိုးရိမ်ပူပန်မှုများ မြင့်တက်လာပြီး စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာထိခိုက်မှုများ ကြီးမားစွာ ဖြစ်ပေါ်ခံစားနေကြ ရသည်။
ထိုအဖြစ်အပျက်၏ နောက်ဆက်တွဲအနေဖြင့် အချို့သော အကျဉ်းထောင်များအတွင်းရှိ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား များလည်း အစာငတ်ခံဆန္ဒပြလျှက်ရှိကြောင်းလည်း သတင်းများ ထွက်ပေါ်နေသည်။
နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသား ထိုသူများကို ပြင်းထန်စွာရိုက်နှက်ခြင်း၊ တိုက်ပိတ်ပြစ်ဒဏ်များ ချမှတ်နေကြောင်းလည်း သတင်းများဖြစ်ပေါ်နေရာ ထိုသူများ၏ အသက်အန္တရာယ်အား အထူးစိုးရိမ်ရပါသည်။ ထို့ကြောင့် သတင်းအမှန် ကို ထုတ်ဖေါ်ရန် အရေးတကြီး လိုအပ်နေသည်။ အိုးဘိုထောင်တွင် ဩဂုတ်လ ၄ ရက်နေ့တွင် အစာငတ်ခံဆန္ဒပြခဲ့ ကြောင်း ကြားသိရပြီး ဩဂုတ်လ ၅ ရက်နေ့တွင် ထောင်တွင်း သေနတ်သံ ၂ ချက်ထွက်ပေါ်လာသည့်အတွက် အကျဉ်းသားမိသားစုများမှ အလွန်စိုးရိမ်လျက်ရှိသည်။
ထို့ကဲ့သော အကျဉ်းထောင်တွင်း သတင်းအမှောင်ချထားကာ တရားလက်လွတ် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများ၊ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုများ၊ သတ်ဖြတ်နေမှုများအား မိမိတို့ နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း အနေဖြင့် အပြင်းအထန် ရှုတ်ချကန့်ကွက်ပါသည်။
ကုလသမဂ္ဂအပါအဝင် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးအဖွဲ့အစည်းများ၊ နိုင်ငံတကာ အစိုးရများ၊ မြန်မာ့နိုင်ငံရေးအခြေအနေ မှတ်တမ်းယူ စောင့်ကြည့်နေသော အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ၊ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ ကြက်ခြေနီအဖွဲ့နှင့် အိမ်နီးချင်း အာဆီ ယံ နိုင်ငံများအနေနှင့်လည်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အကျဉ်းထောင်များ၏ အခြေအနေအမှန်ကို သိရှိခွင့်ရရန် တောင်းဆို ရမည့်အပြင် ထိုသို့ ကြီးမား ကျယ်ပြန့်စွာ ကျူးလွန်နေသော လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများကို အမြန်ဆုံးနှင့် အထိရောက်ဆုံး ကာကွယ်၊ အရေးယူကြပါရန် အလေးအနက် တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါသည်။
နိုင်ငံရေးအကျဉ်းသားများကူညီစောင့်ရှောက်ရေးအသင်း..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
Date of publication:
2022-08-09
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-09
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Myanmar’s military shot dead 16-year-old student activist Ma Win Maw Oo during the pro-democracy popular uprising in 1988, which turns 34 years old on Monday.
Nearly 34 years after her death, the same military killed Ko Jimmy, who was also a young pro-democracy student activist back in 1988. Myanmar’s new regime, which is run by the military, hanged the 53-year-old veteran democracy activist in Yangon’s Insein Prison last month for his anti-regime activism against the current junta.
The killing of the two contemporary activists by the same military under different generals 34 years apart paints a grim picture of the reality Myanmar faces today.
Myanmar erupted into a nationwide pro-democracy protest on Aug. 8, 1988 to end the 26-year rule of dictator General Ne Win’s authoritarian regime. The protests continued until the military staged a coup in September and the army violently gunned down the protesters. At least 3,000 democracy supporters were killed.
While it failed to end military dictatorship in the country, the popular uprising paved the way for Myanmar’s short-lived democratic period, which was ended by another military takeover in February 2021.
The Myanmar people’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi established per political reputation in the ’88 uprising, out of which her National League for Democracy (NLD) was born. Then came the party’s landslide victory in the 1990 general election, whose result the military refused to honor. Fast forward more than two decades and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was leading a democratically elected civilian government until it was ousted by the putsch last year.
Were it not for the ’88 pro-democracy movement, it would have been difficult for any of the above to have come into existence.
The spirit of ’88 keeps Myanmar moving forward and striving for democracy even today, under Min Aung Hlaing’s dictatorship.
When the army staged a coup last year, millions of people defied military rule just as in 1988.
True to its old self, the army brutally cracked down on the protesters, as it did in 1988. After more than three decades, the military’s barbarism has not diminished. So far it has killed more than 2,000 civilians. Its repression has been even crueler this time, including sending Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to solitary confinement in a prison, hanging Ko Jimmy and three other democracy activists, and launching airstrikes against civilians and anti-regime armed resistance forces.
But the people of Myanmar have undergone a radical change: no longer do they seek reconciliation with the military.
Infuriated by their sudden loss of freedom and democracy, which were hard won through the sacrifices of the ’88 pro-democracy movement, as well as the junta’s day-to-day atrocities against them, they are now determined to root out the military dictatorship in the country by any means necessary.
What they have in common with the ’88 generation is their craving for democracy and freedom. That’s why Ko Jimmy, a veteran of the 1988 uprising, paid with his life for his beliefs and for the country, just as Ma Win Maw Oo confronted the soldiers as they sprayed bullets on the streets of Yangon 34 years ago. The young anti-regime resistance fighters, whether in the Myanmar heartland or along the borders, feel the same. So do the urban guerrilla fighters in Yangon.
The ’88 pro-democracy uprising tried to kindle the torch of democracy in Myanmar.
Today, 34 years on, it is inspiring a new generation to keep the torch aflame, whatever it takes..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2022-08-08
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-08
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Student Groups, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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"Bangkok, August 8, 2022 – Myanmar authorities must immediately disclose the status of photojournalist Aye Kyaw amid reports that he died in detention, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday.
At about 2 a.m. on July 30, military authorities arrested Aye Kyaw, a member of the Upper Myanmar Photography Association who had photographed anti-junta protests, at his home in the city of Sagaing, according to reports by the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia and the local outlet Yangon Khit Thit Media.
At about noon that day, a local official told Aung Kyaw’s family that he had died in custody and his body was being held at the Sagaing City Hospital, according to RFA. That report quoted a member of the Ohbo Health and Social Assistance Association, a burial service in Sagaing, as saying his group took Aye Kyaw’s body to a religious hall, and that the journalist’s family buried him on July 31.
An anonymous source quoted by RFA said they saw dark bruises on Aye Kyaw’s ribs and back.
“Myanmar authorities must immediately account for the whereabouts of photojournalist Aung Kyaw, and come clean about whether he died in military custody,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “If he died while in junta detention, then those responsible must be identified and brought to justice.”
CPJ emailed Myanmar’s Ministry of Information for comment, but did not immediately receive any response.
Yangon Khit Thit Media reported that authorities ordered the journalist’s family not to post about his burial on Facebook. Citing one of his family members, RFA reported that authorities had arrived at the journalist’s home on July 30 to search for weapons.
CPJ was not able to find contact information for Aung Kyaw’s family members, and calls to the Upper Myanmar Photography Association went unanswered.
Aung Kyaw is at least the fourth journalist to be killed since the military seized power in a coup on February 1, 2021, according to CPJ reporting. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), an independent rights monitoring group, at least 2,167 prodemocracy activists and civilians have been killed by the junta since the coup..."
Source/publisher:
Committee to Protect Journalists (New York)
Date of publication:
2022-08-08
Date of entry/update:
2022-08-08
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Freedom of Opinion and Expression - tools for change in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar
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