2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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" The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is warning that opium production in Myanmar may rise again if the economic crunch brought on by COVID-19 and a February 1 coup persists, with fallout for much of the region.
Myanmar is the world’s second-largest producer of opium, the raw material for heroin, after Afghanistan and the main supplier for most of East and Southeast Asia.
UNODC figures show Myanmar’s opium output falling steadily since 2014, down to 405 metric tons last year. But the U.N. agency says the trend is likely to reverse as more farmers and out-of-work laborers turn to tending poppy to make ends meet.
“The opium economy is really a poverty economy; it functions in a sense the opposite of what the licit economy does. As people exit that economy and they need to make money, they are going to be looking at places they can make it, and often people that are in poor areas and poverty-stricken areas look to make money from the opium economy,” said Jeremy Douglas, the UNODC’s representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.
“Probably 12 months out, 18 months out, we’re going to be looking at an expansion unless past history is wrong. There’s a cycle of this happening in the country over its history,” he added.
Douglas was speaking on a virtual panel hosted by the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand in May about the potential for a spike in criminal activity in post-coup Myanmar.
Job opportunities
Already bruised by months pandemic-induced lockdowns, Myanmar’s economy was hit hard again in February by the coup.
Facing a spate of new Western sanctions aimed at hurting the military junta now running the country, and widespread work strikes to protest the putsch, the World Bank expects the economy to shrink 10% this year. Fitch Solutions, an international credit ratings agency, says the contraction will be twice that.
The United Nations Development Program is predicting the downturn to leave nearly half the population of Myanmar, some 25 million people, in poverty by 2022.
As those who left the opium-growing regions of Myanmar head back for a lack of jobs in the cities, some will try their luck in neighboring Thailand, “but at least some of them are going to go back into the opium economy,” Douglas said.
Alongside opium’s decline, the dominant drug story in the region over the past few years has been the dramatic rise in methamphetamine production, most of it also pouring out of Myanmar. Compared with the synthetic, lab-made narcotic, though, growing opium takes far more work, which means more potential jobs.
“Methamphetamine is not an employer,” said Douglas. “People are going to go back to opium to make money, to feed themselves, potentially feed their families. They’re not going to be able to do that with methamphetamine.”.....‘Many hungry mouths’: Most of Myanmar’s opium is grown in the northeastern states of Kachin and Shan.
Dan Seng Lawn, executive director of the Kachinland Research Center, a local think tank that studies the country’s drug trade, agreed that opium production was well poised to rise again.
“Opium cultivation has never stopped. It’s come down, but now I think it seems to be a good time to expand the cultivation,” he told VOA. “There are many hungry mouths, so, I think if the opium farmers can employ these manual laborers or things like that, they will go there.”
Opium farmers don’t earn what they used to. UNODC figures show prices falling steadily since 2016, along with output.
But over the past few months, prices for many other domestically grown and consumed crops have fallen faster. Wholesale prices for potatoes, onions, beans and other staples were down 22% to 48% in April compared with a year earlier, likely due to lower demand from cash-strapped shoppers, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, based in Washington.
Dan Seng Lawn said poppy is also easier to store than many other crops and delivers a reliable, if diminishing, profit.
In hard times, he said, “opium is the best cash crop that these borderland communities can [use to] sort out their subsistence problems.”
Opium farming has long been a “survival strategy” in the northeast, and often not an either-or option, said Myanmar analyst David Mathieson. Speaking to VOA, he said many farmers in the region grow some opium on the side to shore up their savings and hedge against potential problems with their other crops.....Supply and demand: The coup may end up working in the opium trade’s favor in other ways too.
Dan Seng Lawn said police forces distracted by an increasingly armed resistance to the ruling junta are likely to spend less time on stopping the flow of drugs, leaving opium farmers and traffickers more room to ply their trade.
And with some of Myanmar’s many ethnic rebel armies joining the popular resistance movement, analysts say the junta may try to shore up support among the militias that shelter many of the country’s drug networks by cutting deals that let them ramp up production.
“If you look at the security situation, there’s a lot of militias that the military now needs to be on their side, and it’s a lot of the militias that are involved in protecting opium cultivation. So, that’s something to look at,” Mathieson said. “For a lot of militias, it’s like, well, if the military is now going to turn a blind eye and not come after our opium cultivation, we can tell more people to do it and we can sell more on regional markets.”
Mathieson said he still expected any additional production to be relatively modest but added that more supply could also boost demand if it lowers prices.
Whatever the bump in output, Douglas, of the UNODC, said any extra supply would have little trouble finding a market in a region with a long history of heroin use and well-plied trafficking routes to move it through.
“Two-point-six billion people in the neighborhood of this country, and the best heroin in the world,” he said. “So, there will be demand for it, if not in the region, outside the region, and they’ll meet that demand, there’s no doubt about it.”..."
Source/publisher:
"VOA" (Washington, D.C)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-31
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UN Office for Drugs and Crime, UNODC (formerly UNDCP and ODCCP) (English), Amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) - Myanmar, Burma: opium and heroin, Drugs and Burma: general links, reports and articles, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ က သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်ချက်အမှတ် (၂/၂၀၂၁)
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National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-31
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The Chinland Defence Force has reportedly been carrying out ambushes on the junta’s reinforcement troops near the foot of the famous Mt Victoria
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"Clashes between regime forces and local resistance fighters in southern Chin State’s Kanpetlet Township have intensified for three days, the spokesperson for the Chinland Defence Force (CDF) said on Sunday.
Fighting broke out on Friday in the village of Makyar, around 32 km from Kanpetlet. Since then, local resistance fighters have been carrying out ambushes on the junta’s reinforcement troops near the foot of the famous Mt Victoria, the spokesperson said.
“We have deployed some security forces to protect displaced locals in Makyar. A lot of regime troops marched toward the village and we had a head-on clash,” he told Myanmar Now.
He added that the military has suffered casualties but was unable to provide an exact number. There had been no casualties on the local side, he said.
The military has made no official announcement acknowledging the fighting in Kanpetlet.
Around 2,000 residents were forced to flee their homes in recent days due to the clashes, a local said. In a statement published on social media, the CDF in Kanpetlet warned anyone in the town who was not a local to leave by Saturday.
“It is strangely quiet in the town now. It is not normal. Only a few shops are open. Around half of the population has left the town,” the local source said.
After people fled their homes, regime forces looted property from their empty houses, locals told Myanmar Now.
Anti-junta resistance fighters in Chin State, armed with homemade weapons such as hunting rifles and explosives, have been using guerrilla tactics to fight the regime forces. The Myanmar military troops have been using heavy weapons such as automatic guns and rocket launchers against the local fighters.
On May 13, local forces had two clashes with regime soldiers outside of a branch of the state-owned Myanma Economic Bank, and again at a police outpost, reportedly injuring two members of the junta’s armed forces.
Following the battles, tensions between the regime forces and the CDF in Kanpetlet grew.
Two days later, 12 ethnic Chin police officers in Kanpetlet—including a sergeant and two lance-corporals—defected and joined the local forces against the coup regime.
Six regime soldiers, including a captain, were killed in an ambush in Falam Township on May 21 in an attack on two military trucks carrying reinforcements on the Falam-Kalay road, according to the CDF members in Falam..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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Armed conflict in Burma -- offensives, Chin (Zo)- economic, social, cultural, political, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"As of 30 May, (840) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. (1) from Nyaung-U Township in Mandalay Region was killed today and (2) from Loikaw Township in Kayah State and Pinlebu Township in Sagaing Region were killed on previous days and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 30 May, a total of (4409) people are currently under detention; of them (108) are sentenced. 1881 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
In early morning, 30 May in Baganmyothit in Nyaung-U Township in Mandalay Region, Moe Myint Aung was shot in the stomach by a bullet and died when the junta raided the Yonetan Ward and Hman Cho Ward to arrest six youths and opened fire to the door to enter the house of Moe Myint Aung. On 29 May at Narnat Taw Ward in Loikaw Town, Kayah State, the terrorists entered a religious building compound where IDPs had fled to, and shot the former Hundred Household Administrator of Yayo Village to death.
In the afternoon of 29 May, a village administrator, who was involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), was arrested at Nayin Village, Yesagyo Township in Magway Region.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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Individual Documents
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Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"On this day in 2008, less than one month after over 100,000 people were killed by Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, military dictator Senior General Than Shwe announced the promulgation of the 2008 Constitution.
Nargis struck the coast of Myanmar on the evening of May 2, 2008, smashing almost all the buildings in the Irrawaddy delta and affecting millions of people, especially in Yangon and Bago regions and Mon and Karen states.
The junta, however, decided to proceed with the vote, holding the constitutional referendum in most of Myanmar on May 10 and in the more severely affected areas on May 24, 2008.
While people were still in desperate trouble, the regime reported a heavy turnout and said 98.12 percent of eligible voters took part and 92.48 percent voted in favor. The constitution thus earned the satirical name, the Nargis constitution.
After refusing to recognize the results of the 1990 general election, which brought a landslide victory to the National League for Democracy (NLD), the military regime took 14 years from 1993 to 2007 to design the constitution which guarantees its political leadership and bars NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from becoming president.
The first general election since the 1990 poll was held in 2010 based on the 2008 Constitution, which saw the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party winning the vote and taking the office. However, no significant changes could be introduced under both the USDP and NLD, which came to power at the 2015 general election.
Military chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who was handpicked by his predecessor Than Shwe, seized power from the NLD government in February after the party repeated its electoral victory in the November 2020 general election.
Constitutions were scrapped when military chief General Ne Win seized power in 1962 and Gen Saw Maung took power in 1988. However, coup leader Min Aung Hlaing said he would act in line with the 2008 Constitution..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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Individual Documents
Category:
National constitutions, draft constitutions, amendments and announcements (texts), Rule of Law - global and regional, Military History, Political History, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Breathless, fevered and without the extra oxygen that could help keep them alive, the new coronavirus patients at a hospital near Myanmar's border with India highlight the threat to a health system near collapse since February's coup.
To help her tend the seven COVID-19 patients at Cikha hospital, day and night, chief nurse Lun Za En has a lab technician and a pharmacist's assistant....
Mostly, they offer kind words and paracetamol.:
"We don't have enough oxygen, enough medical equipment, enough electricity, enough doctors or enough ambulances," Lun Za En, 45, told Reuters from the town of just over 10,000. "We are operating with three staff instead of 11."
Myanmar's anti-COVID campaign foundered along with the rest of the health system after the military seized power on Feb. 1 and overthrew elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose government had stepped up testing, quarantine and treatment.
Services at public hospitals collapsed after many doctors and nurses joined strikes in a Civil Disobedience Movement in the forefront of opposition to military rule - and sometimes on the frontline of protests that have been bloodily suppressed.
Thirteen medics have been killed, according to World Health Organisation data that shows 179 attacks on health workers, facilities and transport - nearly half of all such attacks recorded worldwide this year, said WHO Myanmar representative Stephan Paul Jost.
Some 150 health workers have been arrested. Hundreds more doctors and nurses are wanted on incitement charges.
Neither a junta spokesman nor the health ministry responded to requests for comment. The junta, which initially set fighting the pandemic as one of its priorities, has repeatedly urged medics to return to work. Few have responded.....
TESTING COLLAPSED:
A worker at one COVID-19 quarantine centre in Myanmar's commercial capital, Yangon, said all the specialist health workers there had joined the Civil Disobedience Movement.
"Then again, we don't receive new patients any more as COVID test centres don't have staff to test," said the worker, who declined to give his name for fear of retribution.
In the week before the coup, COVID-19 tests nationally averaged more than 17,000 a day. That had fallen below 1,200 a day in the seven days through Wednesday.
Myanmar has reported more than 3,200 COVID-19 deaths from over 140,000 cases, although the slump in testing has raised doubts over data that shows new cases and deaths have largely plateaued since the coup.
Now, a health system in crisis is raising concerns about the likely impact on the country from the wave of infections with variants that is sweeping through India, Thailand and other neighbours.
Patients with COVID-19 symptoms started showing up at Cikha hospital in mid-May. It is only 6 km (four miles) from India, and health workers fear the illness could be the highly infectious B.1.617.2 strain - though they lack the means to test for it.
"It's very concerning that COVID-19 testing, treatment and vaccinations are extremely limited in Myanmar as more lives are at risk with new, more dangerous variants spreading," said Luis Sfeir-Younis, Myanmar COVID-19 operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.....
SURGE OF CASES:
Twenty-four cases have been identified in Cikha, said Lun Za En. Seven were so serious they needed hospitalisation - a sign of how few cases had likely been detected.
Stay-at-home orders have now been declared in parts of Chin state, where Cikha is located, and neighbouring Sagaing region.
The WHO said it was trying to reach authorities and other groups in the area who could provide help, while recognising the difficulties in a health system that was precipitously reversing years of impressive gains.
"It is not clear how this will be resolved, unless there is a resolution at the political level addressing the political conflict," said Jost.
Lun Za En said her hospital was doing the best it could with nebulisers - machines that turn liquid to mist - to relieve breathlessness. Some patients have oxygen concentrators, but they only work for the two hours a day that the town gets electricity.
Refusing to abandon the sick, Lun Za En said she decided not to join the strikes.
"The junta will not take care of our patients," she said.
Across Myanmar, some striking doctors have set up underground clinics to help patients. When Myanmar Red Cross volunteers established three clinics in Yangon neighbourhoods, they quickly had dozens of patients.....
At best, such options can provide basic care.:
"Eighty percent of the hospitals are public health hospitals," said Marjan Besuijen, head of mission for the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) aid group. "As MSF or others we can't step in, it's too big."
Although military hospitals have been opened to the public, many people fear them or refuse to go on principle - including for coronavirus vaccinations in a campaign the ousted government had launched days before the coup.
"I am very worried that these new infections will spread all over the country," said Lun Za En. "If the infection spreads to the crowded cities, it could be uncontrollable."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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"On 1 June, it will be four months since a military coup overthrew Myanmar's elected government.
Tens years of democratic reforms have been upended and bloody attempts to silence opposition have shocked the world.
Those on the front line attempting to stand up to the regime are trying to delicately navigate through a new life of protest and safety.
While pro-democracy demonstrations have mostly left the streets, the movement against the junta exists through other means of expression in other realms.
In particular, it has made being an artist in Myanmar a dangerous business.
"I'm sorry that I couldn't turn my camera… messy situation right here", illustrator Raven told RTÉ News over a secure line.
Raven is one of many artists in Myanmar’s largest city Yangon who have been using art as a weapon against the country’s ruling junta, by exploring a digital canvas to showcase political messages against the February coup.
Protests through paint, illustrations, images and words are a more secure place of demonstration, away from the violence on the streets.
However, that is not to say it doesn’t come with its own risks. The sheer level and reach of this expression caught those in power off guard which has led to a clampdown to squeeze out any opposition voices.
According to artists in Myanmar, art studios have been burnt down and state-sponsored news channels broadcast arrest warrant lists regularly that include influencers, actors, film makers, artists and graphic designers.
The New York Times has reported that four poets have been killed and dozens imprisoned in the last couple of months.
Poet Khet Thi, whose work declared resistance to the military, died in detention recently. His family said that his body was returned with the organs removed.
Raven has a reluctance to give anything away about herself, out of fear for her safety.
While working a full-time job she has been leading a double life, shielding herself online by using a fake name so she can "work harder and longer".
She said: "I have been protesting physically on the streets, but when the shooting became serious and brutal, I kind of stopped going outside in person.
"I've been illustrating a lot of stuff every day…listening to people listening to their stories, their ideas and trying to illustrate them and spread the message because it's the only thing you know I can do."
Demonstrations against the coup have been the largest and bloodiest in decades.
Myanmar was ruled by the armed forces from 1962 until 2011, when a new government began ushering in a return to civilian rule.
However in February, the junta seized control again following a general election in which Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD party won by a landslide.
It was a vote the military claimed was rigged. Hundreds of people, including children, have been killed in the last four months.
While the streets have become too risky for protest, the pro-democracy movement continues to live through art in the online world.
The Hunger Games' three-fingered salute has become one of the major symbols, a defiant pose that gripped demonstrators from the beginning with interpretations of the move making its way through digital art.
"Our objective is trying to reflect the people's voices as much as we can so that other people see it, hear it, because not everybody can go out" said Nyi Maw, a Myanmar filmmaker.
He continued: "[The three-fingered salute] is a symbol that people can hold onto. It aligns with the people who in the beginning were demanding the three main objectives: to get democracy, to release the leaders, and to give the people's power back to the people".
Red, the colour of danger, anger and violence, floods most of the imagery.
Art collectives like the Raise Three Fingers group in Yangon have been founded through the frustration by artists and creatives - hoping to bring the global art community together and highlight the crisis happening in the country.
"Clearly art has some kind of power, right? Because it's causing some kind of fear in the eyes of the junta" said a representative from the group to RTÉ News, who is also on the call with Raven.
"We know that art is powerful because it transcends language", they said.
"It can, it's emotional. It can get people to act. You don't need words, right? Anyone can feel moved by a piece of art you might ask", they added.
The Raise Three Fingers (RTF) group lives online with creatives posting their work anonymously from countries around the world, in solidarity with the movement.
TikTok, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have served as platforms to spread their message far and wide, allowing this movement and many others, to grow, flourish and connect with users globally.
They say access to the world at their finger trips has helped keep the situation in Myanmar on people’s agenda.
It is what separates it radically from the previously pro-democracy movements that have come before in Myanmar.
Unlike the revolutions of 1988 and 2007, the current protests in Myanmar are being led by a digitally savvy generation using hashtags, memes, visual graphics and social media to fight and shape the direction of the movement on a day-to-day basis.
More than a decade ago SIM cards were exceptionally expensive, but after a series of reforms in the country during Aung San Suu Kyi’s time in government, this opened up the digital domain to the people of Myanmar.
"There are figures to show that there are more SIM cards than people in Myanmar. In fact, Facebook is the internet in Myanmar and that's the way in which people, particularly the young, process news", Vijaya Nidadavolu, a gender and development specialist who recently worked in the country, told RTÉ News.
Even now with regular patchy internet access, creatives have the ability to organise, engage and spread the message online across interactive communities.
They can paint, draw, sculpt, animate, sing or dance and share works instantly within their networks through digital platforms.
"The revolutions in 1988 and 2007 was very different because we didn't have this type of access to the Internet. But now it feels like the playing field is different because since day one of the coup, we saw that there was a huge outpouring of art. People were able to like organise protests around a certain theme and get people together", said the RTF spokesperson in Yangon.
This online world of protest has also opened up the movement to more diverse voices.
Iconography surrounding other political mobilisations revolved solely around the figure of politician Aung San Suu Kyi, who became famous in the late 1980s for campaigning to restore democracy.
In 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi led the NLD to victory in Myanmar's first openly contested election in 25 years.
Posters, calendars and billboards all carried her image prominently as a symbol of hope as she spent nearly 15 years in detention between 1989 and 2010, after organising rallies calling for democratic reform and free elections.
"There was no alternative imagery in the public domain," said Vijaya Nidadavolu.
"The current protests have enabled a diverse set of other voices to express themselves and seize the political space, including through art. Aung San Suu Kyi’s image is not the only visible symbol of protest. People are rallying around a diversity of images and iconography, which is a defining feature of the current protest", Ms Nidadavolu added.
That changing political landscape can be seen in the art that has been produced and floods the Raise Three Fingers website.
"It's making room for diversity and inclusion and reparations for a lot of communities, including for the Rohingya communities" said the Raise Three Fingers spokesperson.
"So I think people are making different demands. It's not just about get rid of the dictatorship, we want democracy. We want a better democracy because the democracy we had before failed us", they said.
According to the RTF, Generation Z have been the most active as they have known nothing other than a country moving towards a free nation.
It’s in stark contrast to other age groups who have only gotten a taste of life outside a dictatorship, some of whom are disappointed with Aung San Suu Kyi's record and are still haunted by previous regimes.
"We want this to be the last generation under a dictatorship because we're sick of it quite frankly. For even young adults like me, it just feels like you have to do something because you don't want to go through this anymore", they said.
However, four months since the military coup, the junta still holds a tight grip on the Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi remains detained after being hit with a string of criminal charges including flouting coronavirus restrictions during last year's election campaign and possessing unlicensed walkie-talkies.
Social media may offer an alternative reality and solace for those who are trying to keep the pro-democracy movement alive as life on the streets of Yangon and elsewhere are still very different and difficult.
The spokesperson from RTF said: "I feel like I was more confined than during Covid. At least during Covid, if I had my mask on and I was keeping safe, I could go out [and] see friends. But now you know I'll go to the grocery store and I'll visit my parents house and that's about it.
"For for some people life has returned to normal. I see people eating at restaurants."
Many are living with a constant fear of being arrested.
"They're still stopping people checking cars in this street, and there is a feeling of constant anxiety, knowing that you could be arrested at any moment for everything. For having a phone, for having social media accounts" they added.
For Raven, she still puts her pen to digital paper every day with the hope that her images will keep the spirit of the movement alive.
"I definitely believe that we're going to win because we have to. Otherwise it will never win" she said..."
Source/publisher:
RTÉ News
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights and international relations, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, Political History, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Joint Statement: The National Unity Government of Myanmar and The Japan Parliamentary Group Supporting Democratization in Myanmar composed of Japanese nonpartisan voluntary Diet members jointly held "The 1st Online Conference" on 26th May, 2021 and shared common ground about the harsh current situation of the Myanmar people under the Myanmar military junta. As the
result of discussions on linkage and cooperation in the future for the early recovery of the democratic system, we agreed on the following and confirmed that we will develop activities to realize it in the future :
1. We never admit the legitimacy of coups and governance by the Myanmar military. W e urge the Japanese government and the international society also to do so.
2. We declare that we are, and will always be, with the people of Myanmar who seek peace, freedom and an immediate restoration of democracy. We also urge the Japanese government to declare this at home and abroad.
3. We ask the Japanese government to recognize that the National Unity Government of Myanmar (NUG) and Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) are the legitimate representative government and parliament of the Myanmar people
elected by the general election last November. And we also urge the Japanese government to embark on a formal dialogue to restore the democratic system and to reconstruct the social and economic system for the Myanmar people.
4. We urge the Japanese government and the international society to use all diplomatic resources and ways of negotiation with the Myanmar military and do their best to realize the following matters immediately :
(1) Immediately stop the use of force and violence against citizens.
(2) Immediately and unconditionally release Aung San Suu Kyi, State Counselor and Foreign Minister of Myanmar, other democratic executives and officials, and all citizens who have been unfairly arrested, imprisoned, or restrained.
(3) Promptly return all rights to the democracy chosen by the people in the election last November.
5. We urge the Japanese government to suspend immediately all support and cooperation in the interests of the Myanmar military, directly or indirectly, such as Official Development Assistance (ODA) and public-private investment and lending for development and not to resume it except for emergency humanitarian assistance
to innocent citizens until the requirements above are fully achieved.
6. We declare that the responsibility of all soldiers and police officials who have violated the freedom and human rights of Myanmar people/citizens and have taken their lives and property should be pursued by justice. And we urge the Japanese government and the international society to impose strict punishment on them under legal judicial decisions, including the use of the International Criminal Court.
7. We strongly condemn the Myanmar military for continuing to use heavy weapons, including air strikes, on ethnic areas. We urge the Japanese government to strongly demand the Myanmar military to stop this immediately and to provide promptly in a reliable way emergency support of daily necessities, such as water, food, and
sanitary goods, to inhabitants and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in ethnic areas who are suffering from damages.
8. We strongly condemn the countries that sells and provide weapons, etc. to the Myanmar military and demand that they immediately suspend such actions. We urge the Japanese government, in close cooperate with Western countries, to elucidate the actual situations of the selling and buying of weapons, and make the utmost efforts to achieve a global arms embargo on Myanmar as soon as possible.
9. We ask the Japanese government to take supportive measures toward the Myanmar people who seek protection or asylum from the Japanese government to escape from crackdowns and persecution by the Myanmar military or police so that they can live at ease without anxiety, permitting stable stay in Japan, such as granting Special
Permission to Stay in Japan in addition to actively protecting them as refugees under the 1951 Convention until the completion of the transfer to democracy......အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ ပြည်ထောင်စုအဖွဲ့ဝင် ဝန်ကြီးများ နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအရေး ကူညီဆောင်ရွက်ပေးနေသော ဂျပန်နိုင်ငံ လွှတ်တော် ကိုယ်စားလှယ်များ အဖွဲ့တို့ ပထမဆုံးအကြိမ် တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေးမှုကို မေလ ၂၆ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်တွင် ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ပါသည်။ အဆိုပါဆွေးနွေးပွဲအပြီး အမျိုသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအရေး ကူညီဆောင်ရွက်ပေးနေသော ဂျပန်နိုင်ငံလွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားအဖွဲ့များအကြား ပူးတွဲကြေညာချက်တစ်စောင်ကို ထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်ပါသည်။
အဆိုပါ ပူးတွဲကြေညာချက်တွင် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရနှင့် ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီတို့ကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံပြည်သူလူထုက နိုဝင်ဘာလရွေးကောက်ပွဲတွင် ရွေးကောက်တင်မြှောက်လိုက်သော တရားဝင် ကိုယ်စားပြုအစိုးရနှင့် လွှတ်တော်အဖြစ် အသိအမှတ်ပြုရန် ဂျပန်နိုင်ငံလွှတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်များက ဂျပန်အစိုးရကို တိုက်တွန်းကြောင်း၊ မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထု၏ လွတ်လပ်ခွင့်နှင့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးများကို ချိုးဖောက်ခဲ့ကြသော အသက်အိုးအိမ်စည်းစိမ်ကို ဖျက်ဆီးခဲ့ကြသော စစ်သားနှင့် ရဲတပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်များအားလုံးသည် ထိုက်တန်သော တရားစီရင်မှုရရှိသင့်ကြောင်းကြေညာပြီး ထိုသို့ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သူများကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ စစ်ရာဇဝတ်ခုံရုံးအပါအဝင် မျှတသော တရားစီရင်မှုအောက်တွင် ထိရောက်သော အပြစ်ဒဏ်များချမှတ်နိုင်ရေး ဆောင်ရွက်ကြရန် ဂျပန်အစိုးရနှှင့် အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာလူ့အဖွဲ့အစည်းများကို မိမိတို့တိုက်တွန်းပါကြောင်း၊ စစ်ကောင်စီအနေနှင့် လက်နက်ကြီးများ၊ တိုက်လေယာဉ်များအသုံးပြု၍ တိုင်းရင်းသားဒေသများကို အားတိုက်ခိုက်နေခြင်းကို ပြင်းထန်စွာရှုံချကြောင်း စသည့် အချက်များနှင့် အခြား ပြင်းထန်သော တောင်းဆိုမှုများပါဝင်ပါသည်။
ပူးတွဲကြေညာချက်ကို အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရမှ ဒုတိယသမ္မတ ဒူဝါလရှီးလမှ လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအရေးကူညီဆောင်ရွက်နေသော ဂျပန်နိုင်ငံလွတ်တော်ကိုယ်စားလှယ်များအဖွဲ့ ဥက္ကဌ Mr. Nakagawa မှ လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးခဲ့ကြပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
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"Statement to TOTAL'S Press Release, stopping MGTC's dividend payments: In my capacity as Minister of Planning, Finance, and Investment of Myanmar's civilian-led democratic National Unity Government, I welcome the recent decision made by TOTAL and others to suspend the distribution of dividend payments to all shareholders of the Moattama Gas Transportation Company Ltd (MGTC). These distributions are a part of the oil and gas revenues are now being used to finance the military's campaign of terror and gross human rights abuses against the people of Myanmar, under
the illegitimate State Administration Council (SAC).
We welcome this action as a step in the right direction, with both TOTAL and Chevron having now acknowledged that it is wrong to continue supporting the military. The SAC steals from the people of
Myanmar to fund its crimes against the same people of Myanmar.
TOTAL was right to condemn the violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by the Myanmar military. I also note TOTAL'S affirmation that the company will comply with applicable sanctions
issued by EU and US authorities. We welcome both TOTAL and Chevron have now publicly acknowledged that facilitating such
payments is at odds with their commitment to responsible business practices that respect the law. protect human rights, and benefit the communities in which they work. However suspending cash distributions to pipeline shareholders will deny the military only a
small portion of the substantial revenues that the military receives from TOTAL'S ongoing operations in Myanmar.
Based on recent financial data, the dividend payment amounts to roughly USD 40 million per year. This is a very small portion of overall revenues flowing to MOGE and state institutions under
SAC's control from the Yadana project operated by TOTAL. In 2020/2021 FY, for instance, an estimated 400 million USD will flow to state institutions that are now under the direct control of the
SAC. It must also be noted that other offshore oil/gas projects provide significant revenue streams to the military, the combined payments from these projects to the MOGE amount to over USD 1 billion
per annum. Despite the action announced by TOTAL. SAC will still receive the vast majority of revenue that accrues to state institutions from the Yadana project, and from the other projects that export of
Myanmar's natural resources. This constitutes single most significant flow of funds to SAC. allowing it to use such funds procure weapons, jet fuel, and other strategic necessities as part of its campaign of terror and gross human rights abuses. It does not stop payments that are now accruing to the military through SAC from Myanmar's natural resources, including royalties, production shanng payments and tax obligations. It bears repeating - while the National Unity Government and I do welcome this decision, it must be understood that this step does little to stop most payments that are now accruing to the military
from Myanmar’s natural wealth, including royalties, production sharing payments, and tax obligations. Yet. with actions such as these, the tides are now turning. Cracks are emerging. Some of the
largest companies in the world have now acknowledged that it is unacceptable to provide material support that directly benefits the Myanmar military through its present control of the state apparatus.
We are not calling for production to stop, but for payments to be withheld from institutions that are presently under the military's control. This is, in fact, the only way for the oil and gas contractors to
honor their obligations to the people of Myanmar. By acknowledging this reality — that providing financial resources to military-controlled
institutions conflicts with their commitment to responsible business practices — TOTAL and Chevron have set a precedent for cutting the junta’s access to crucial funds. All who continue to fund the
military can and must follow this approach, out of basic respect for human dignity. With new US government sanctions announced on May 17, 2021, oil and gas companies should be on notice that of there are legal and reputational risks arising from their failure to stop payments to MOGE and other state institutions under the control of the SAC. There is still a long way to go to protect the people of Myanmar from a military regime which has illegally attempted to seize power from the legitimate government of Myanmar. Denying them funds will ensure that they are unable to maintain their illegal and illegitimate regime. This work is just beginning, but we are confident we will succeed..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment - NUG
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Human Rights and international relations, Business and the Military, Sanctions, Sanctions - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"ကြေညာချက် (၄/၂၀၂၁)
မေလ ၃၀ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်။
===============
TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီက မုတ္တမဓာတ်ငွေ့သယ်ယူပို့ဆောင်ရေးကုမ္ပဏီလီမိတက် ( MGTC) ၏ အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှုအားဆိုင်းငံ့လိုက်ကြောင်း ကြေညာခြင်းနှင့် စပ်လျဉ်း၍ သဘောထားမှတ်ချက်ထုတ်ပြန်ခြင်း။
--------------------------
၁။ ဒီမိုကရေစီနည်းလမ်းတကျ ရွေးကောက်တင်မြှောက်ဖွဲ့စည်းထားသော ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေး အစိုးရအဖွဲ့၊ စီမံကိန်း၊ ဘဏ္ဍာရေး နှင့် ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုဝန်ကြီး အနေဖြင့် TOTAL နှင့် မိတ်ဖက်ကုမ္ပဏီများ စုပေါင်းဖွဲ့စည်းထားသည့် မုတ္တမဓာတ်ငွေ့သယ်ယူပို့ဆောင်ရေး ကုမ္ပဏီလီမိတက် (MGTC) က အစုရှယ်ယာရှင်များအား အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှု ဆိုင်းငံ့လိုက် ခြင်းအပေါ် ကြိုဆိုပါသည်။
၂။ အဆိုပါအမြတ်ငွေများသည် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီက ကျုးလွန်နေသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်သတ်ဖြတ် မှုများနှင့် ဆိုးရွားလှသည့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများအတွက် အဓိက အထောက်အပံ့ပြုနေသော ရေနံနှင့်သဘာ၀ဓါတ်ငွေ့မှ ရရှိသည့် စုစုပေါင်းဝင်ငွေ၏ အစိတ်အပိုင်းတစ်ရပ်ဖြစ်သည်။
၃။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအား ဆက်လက်ထောက်ပံ့ပေးနေခြင်းသည် မှားယွင်းသည့် လုပ်ရပ်ဖြစ်သည်ဟု TOTAL နှင့် CHEVRON ကုမ္ပဏီတို့က တရားဝင်ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုလျက် ယခုကဲ့သို့ မှန်ကန်သော ရွေးချယ်ဆုံးဖြတ်မှုအတွက် ကြိုဆိုပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ၎င်းတို့ ခိုးဝှက်ယူထားသည့် ပြည်သူ့ဘဏ္ဍာငွေများအား ပြန်လည်သုံးစွဲ၍ ပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် ရာဇဝတ်မှုကျူးလွန်နေသည့် အဖွဲ့အစည်းသာဖြစ်သည်။
၄။ TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီအနေဖြင့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှုများနှင့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများအား ပြစ်တင် ရှုံ့ချရန် တာဝန်ရှိသည့်အပြင် EU နှင့် US တို့၏ ပိတ်ဆို့အရေးယူမှုများနှင့်အညီ လိုက်နာဆောင်ရွက်သွားမည်ဟု အတိအလင်း ထုတ်ဖော် ပြောဆိုထားမှုအားလည်း မှတ်တမ်းတင်စောင့်ကြည့် နေပါသည်။
၅။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီထံသို့ ဘဏ္ဍာငွေများ ပေးဆောင်နေခြင်းသည် တာဝန်ယူမှု၊ တာဝန်ခံမှုရှိသော စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းမျာ ၏ စံတန်ဖိုးများဖြစ်သည့် ဥပဒေကိုလေးစားလိုက်နာမှု၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးကို ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်မှုနှင့် လုပ်ငန်းတည်ရာဒေသရှိ လူမှုအသိုက်အဝန်း၊ ဒေသခံပြည်သူများအပေါ် အကျိုးကျေးဇူး ဖြစ်ထွန်းစေမှု စသည့်အချက်များနှင့် ဖီလာဆန့်ကျင်လျက်ရှိသည် ဟု TOTAL နှင့် CHEVRON ကုမ္ပဏီတို့က တရားဝင် ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုသည့်အတွက်လည်း အသိအမှတ်ပြုပါသည်။
၆။ သို့သော် ယခုဆိုင်းငံ့လိုက်သည့် အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှုသည် TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီထံမှ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီရရှိနေသည့်စုစု ပေါင်းဝင်ငွေနှင့် နှိုင်းယှဉ်လျှင် မပြောပလောက်သည့် ပမာဏသာဖြစ်ကြောင်း စိစစ်တွေ့ရှိရသည်။
၇။ ယခုအခါ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ထိန်းချုပ်မှုအောက် လုံးလုံးလျားလျား ရောက်ရှိနေသည့် မြန်မာ့ ရေနံနှင့်သဘာဝဓာတ် ငွေ့လုပ်ငန်း (MOGE) ထံသို့ TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီ၏ ရတနာ သဘာဝဓါတ်ငွေ့တူးဖော် ထုတ်လုပ်ရောင်းချရေးစီမံကိန်းမှ နှစ်စဉ် ပေးဆောင်နေရသည့် ဘဏ္ဍာငွေပမာဏမှာ တရားဝင် ကိန်းဂဏန်း အချက်အလက်များအရ ၂၀၂၀/၂၀၂၁ ဘဏ္ဍာရေးနှစ် အတွက် ခန့်မှန်းခြေ အမေရိကန် ဒေါ်လာ သန်း ၄၀၀ ခန့်ရှိပြီး၊ ဆိုင်းငံ့လိုက်သည့် အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှုသည် အမေရိကန်ဒေါ်လာသန်း ၄၀ ခန့်သာ ရှိပါသည်။
၈။ အထူးသတိပြုရန်မှာ အခြား ရေနံနှင့် သဘာဝဓာတ်ငွေ့ ဆိုင်ရာ နိုင်ငံတကာ ကုမ္ပဏီကြီးများကလည်း လွန်စွာများပြား လှသည့် ဝင်ငွေပမာဏကို အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအတွက် ဖန်တီးရှာဖွေပေးနေသည့် အချက်ဖြစ်သည်။ TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီအပါအဝင် အဆိုပါ ကုမ္ပဏီကြီးများထံမှ စစ်ကောင်စီလက်အောက်ခံ မြန်မာ့ရေနံနှင့် သဘာ၀ဓါတ်ငွေ့လုပ်ငန်း (MOGE) က နှစ်စဉ်ရရှိနေသည့် ဝင်ငွေစုစုပေါင်းမှာ အမေရိကန်ဒေါ်လာ သန်းပေါင်း ၁၀၀၀ ကျော် ရှိပါသည်။
၉။ ထို့ကြောင့် ယခုကဲ့သို့ TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီမှ အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှုအား ဆိုင်းငံ့ထားလိုက်သည်ဟု ကြေညာသည့်တိုင် အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ပုံမှန်ရရှိမြဲ ဝင်ငွေအများစုအား ဆက်လက်ရရှိနေမည်ဖြစ်ပြီး ယင်းဝင်ငွေများဖြင့် ၎င်းတို့၏ အကြမ်းဖက်ယန္တရား သက်ဆိုးရှည်စေရန် အဓိကလိုအပ်သည့် စစ်လက်နက်များ၊ လေယာဉ်ဆီများ ဝယ်ယူခြင်း အပါအဝင် အခြားစစ်အသုံးစရိတ် များစွာအတွက်လည်း ဆက်လက်ဖြည့်ဆည်း သုံးစွဲနိုင်မည်သာ ဖြစ်သည်။
၁၀။ ထပ်လောင်း ပြောကြားလိုသည်မှာ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ အနေဖြင့် သဘောဝဓာတ်ငွေ့သယ်ယူ ပို့ဆောင် ရေးကဏ္ဍ၏ အမြတ်ငွေခွဲဝေမှုအား ဆိုင်းငံ့လိုက်သည့် ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်အားကြိုဆိုပါသည်။ ယင်းဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်မှ အစပြု၍ သယံဇာတ ထုတ်ယူမှုကဏ္ဍမှ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီရရှိနေသည့် အခြားများပြားလှသော ဝင်ငွေများဖြစ်သည့် ခိုင်ကြေးများ၊ ထုတ်လုပ်မှုအပေါ်ခွဲဝေခြင်းများ နှင့် အခွန်အကောက်များကိုပါ အလားတူဆိုင်းငံ့ရန် ထပ်တိုးဆောင်ရွက်သွားနိုင်မည်ဟု နားလည် ယုံကြည်ပါသည်။
၁၁။ ယခုအခါ ကမ္ဘာ့အကြီးဆုံး ကုမ္ပဏီတချို့သည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ထိန်းချုပ်စီမံမှု အောက်တွင်ရှိနေသော လက်အောက်ခံအဖွဲ့အစည်း၊ ယန္တရားများမှတဆင့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီထံ တိုက်ရိုက်အကျိုးဖြစ်ထွန်းစေသည့် ဆောင်ရွက်ချက်နှင့် ထောက်ပံ့ကူညီမှုမှန်သမျှကို လက်မခံနိုင်ကြောင်းနှင့် ပေးအပ်ရန်မသင့်ကြောင်း ပြတ်ပြတ်သားသား အသိပေး ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောကြားလျက် ရှိပါသည်။
၁၂။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ အစဉ်တစိုက် တောင်းဆိုနေသည်မှာ ရေနံနှင့်သဘာဝဓာတ်ငွေ့ တူးဖော်ထုတ်လုပ်ရောင်းချသည့် ကုမ္ပဏီများ၏ ထုတ်လုပ်မှုအား ရပ်ဆိုင်းထားရန် မဟုတ်ဘဲ ပြည်သူ့ဘဏ္ဍာငွေများအား အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ ထံသို့ ၎င်း၏လက်အောက်ခံ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများမှတဆင့် စီးဝင်မှုမရှိစေရေး တားဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းထားရန်သာ ဖြစ်သည်။
၁၃။ TOTAL ကုမ္ပဏီနှင့် CHEVRON ကုမ္ပဏီတို့အနေဖြင့် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့တောင်းဆိုသည့်အတိုင်း အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ ထိန်းချုပ် ထားသော အဖွဲ့အစည်းများသို့ စီးဝင်လျက်ရှိသည့် ဘဏ္ဍာရေးအရင်းအမြစ်အားလုံးအား ဖြတ်တောက်ခြင်းသည် မိမိတို့၏ တာဝန်ယူမှု၊ တာဝန်ခံမှု ရှိသော စီးပွားရေး ကျင့်ဝတ်များအား လိုက်နာကျင့်သုံးခြင်းသာဖြစ်ပြီး အခြားအလားတူ နိုင်ငံတကာ ကုမ္ပဏီများ အတွက်လည်း အတုယူ လိုက်နာကျင့်သုံးရန် စံနမူနာကောင်း တစ်ခုအဖြစ် ပေါ်ထွန်းလာစေမည် ဖြစ်သည်။
၁၄။ ရေနံနှင့်သဘာဝဓာတ်ငွေ့ကုမ္ပဏီများ အနေဖြင့် မြန်မာ့ရေနံနှင့်သဘာဝဓာတ်ငွေ့လုပ်ငန်း (MOGE) အပါအဝင် အခြားအလားတူ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီလက်အောက်ခံ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများသို့ ငွေကြေးလွှဲပြောင်းမှုများ ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်နေခြင်းသည် အမေရိကန် အစိုးရ၏ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် မေလ ၁၇ ရက်တွင် ချမှတ်ကြေညာခဲ့သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီအပေါ် အရေးယူပိတ်ဆို့ ကန့်သတ်မှုများအရ မိမိတို့အဖွဲ့အစည်း၏ ကျင့်ဝတ် ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာပိုင်းအရသော်လည်းကောင်း၊ နိုင်ငံတကာဥပဒေရေးရာအရ သော်လည်းကောင်း အရင်းအနှီးကြီးမားစွာ ပေးဆပ်၍ စွန့်စားလုပ်ဆောင်ရာကျနေကြောင်းကို အထူးသတိပြုစေလိုပါသည်။
၁၅။ အကြမ်းဖက်ကာ နိုင်ငံ၏ ကြွယ်ဝမှုများအား ခိုးဝှက်ယူနေသော တရားမဝင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ရန်မှ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသူနိုင်ငံသားများအား ကာကွယ်နိုင်ရေးသည် ခရီးရှည်တစ်ရပ်ဖြစ်နိုင်ပါသည်။ အဆိုပါ အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်ကောင်စီအား မည်သည့်ဘဏ္ဍာရန်ပုံငွေမျှ မရရှိစေခြင်းသည် ၎င်းတို့ ကျရှုံးစေရေးအတွက် လွန်စွာ အရေးပါသော လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်တစ်ရပ်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ယခု ခြေလှမ်းသည် အစကနဦးသာဖြစ်သော်လည်း အောင်မြင် ရမည်ဟု ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ ခိုင်ခိုင်မာမာယုံကြည်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment - NUG
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Business and the Military, Sanctions, Human Rights and international relations, Sanctions - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"“Kabarmakyaybu” was the revolutionary anthem of the 1988 pro-democracy movement and it becomes to be our chanting anthem to fight for our democracy once again in 2021 Feb. The English translation of the lyrics was done by the E-major students (YUFL) and we give full respect and credit to the original creators of the graphics and music. We created this ENG lyrics video so that world knows the meaning of our revolutionary anthem. It has been a week they overtook the country, and rallies of young & old came out of the street to protest peacefully and face their fears and fight for their rights today. We are so proud of our people. Let the world know we are resisting the group of narcissistic psychopath abusive Juntas who like to stay in power..."
Source/publisher:
GenZrevolutionMM
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-30
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political History, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"As of 29 May, (837) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (4) fallen heroes today. These (4) fallen heroes from Insein Township in Yangon Region and Gangaw Township in Magway Region were killed yesterday and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 29 May, a total of (4370) people are currently under detention; of them (108) are sentenced. 1881 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
On the night of May 28, at Pauk Taw Wa in Insein Township, Yangon Region, a youth was brutally killed when a military vehicle intentionally crashed into him, after he did not stop his motorcycle when Division 77 told him to stop to be checked. The fallen youth worked as a model and an actor. On the evening of May 28, a teacher, who was involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), and two villagers, were shot to death when junta troops raided Yehla Village in Gangaw Township, Magway Region.
On the evening of May 28, Myint Aung, Minister of Labour, Immigration and Population of Magway Region Government and NLD Chairman of Kanma Township in Magway Region, was arrested at his home. On the night of May 27, a mother was taken as a hostage when the junta could not find her son Pyae Phyo Paing, a political activist, as they searched for him in Taungdwingyi Town in Magway Region. On May 27, lawyer Ayar Linn Htut was arrested representing political prisoners at Hinthada District Court, in Ayeyarwady Region. A lawsuit has been filed against her under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code at the Hinthada Police Station.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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.."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Anti-coup protesters, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Sub-title:
The prominent activist, who has been accused of treason and murder, among other charges, was arrested more than a month ago
Description:
"Prominent anti-coup protest leader Wai Moe Naing met with his lawyers for the first time on Thursday, more than a month after his arrest, according to his mother.
The meeting took place during a court hearing in Monywa Prison, where he is currently being held, said his mother, Moe Sandar Kyu.
The protest leader from Monywa in Sagaing Region faces a total of 10 criminal charges, including treason, murder, incitement, unlawful association, wrongful confinement, and armed robbery.
“It was the first time for him to have his lawyers representing him at a hearing,” said Moe Sandar Kyu.
Thursday’s hearing was specifically related to the charges of incitement under Section 505a of the Penal Code, she said, adding that he had already appeared before the same prison court to face other charges.
“The lawyers told me he is in good health and that there are no more injuries [on his body],” she said.
A day after his arrest, a photo of him in regime custody with a bruised eye and swollen face went viral on social media, raising fears that he had been tortured.
Plainclothes regime officials detained him on April 15 after ramming him with a car while he rode a motorbike during a rally in Monywa.
Moe Sandar Kyu had expressed concern about her son’s wellbeing and health since he has suffered from high blood pressure for about six years.
On Thursday, family members were also allowed to send him personal items, she said.
A hearing related to the murder charge against him is scheduled for next Wednesday, while another hearing on the incitement charge will be held the following day.
Wai Moe Naing rose to prominence for his role in organising daily anti-coup protests in Monywa, which sits on the eastern bank of the Chindwin River.
The cheerful, round-faced leader came to be known affectionately as the “Panda of Monywa”..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"This is Part Two of a two-part interview with the newly-appointed Minister of Human Rights for the National Unity Government, U Aung Myo Min. Read Part One here.
[Editor’s Note: This post is part of a collaboration between Tea Circle and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, to share transcripts and reports from a series of seminars on Myanmar that ISHR is hosting.]
Thursday, May 13th at 10:30 EST/20:00 IST/21:00 MMT
Kristina Eberbach: Thank you, we have a couple of questions we received in advance or in the chat, some relate to the international community, and some more specifically, with respect to the International Criminal Court. I’ll begin with the international community in the sense that the UN Security Council, ASEAN, as well as individual countries have taken insufficient action in response to the situation in Myanmar. And so, one of the questions is how do you see the NUG working with these mechanisms going forward? There was also a question specifically about China, and the role of China. I know you’ve been working and calling on some sanctions against the junta, but beyond sanctions, what do you see the international community doing? And then a second question related to the role of the international community: What do you see civil society being able to do, including individuals on this call who want to support the human rights and democracy movement––what would you like to see them do?
U Aung Myo Min: Ok, on the international front, at least we have strong countries supporting us. They have been the champions of condemnation, they have called for the release of detainees and for an end to the violence. So, these are very friendly countries. And though some countries are not that strong, they support and call for peaceful dialogue and things like that, so we have different degrees of commitment. And then on the other side, China is, you know, always a protector of the military. They have a long history of these things because they have many interests in Myanmar. On the other hand, India is monitoring the relationship between China and Myanmar and measuring the pros and cons, because they are both regional giants and Myanmar is sandwiched between the two countries. So, they are thinking about checks and balances. Also, ASEAN’s role now is much more outspoken than before. In the past, ASEAN never considered the issues in Myanmar to be a regional issue, only internal. But at least there was a session, and some discussion about Myanmar; they made 5 recommendations for the military to follow up on. The military did not follow them, that is a kind of failure, but as long as you are not supporting the Myanmar military, that is fine, that is the bottom line.
But for the other strategies, we also should have a carrot and stick approach. The carrot means it is very unlikely the junta will listen to you, say yes or very politely follow (recommendations), because many countries and people have called on them to stop the violence but it is still going on. But there is kind of a ‘carrot way’, with a dialogue between the NUG, the military and other stakeholders to come together and find a solution––this is like, a good ending story, we would like to see a happy ending at the end.
This is one strategy. The second strategy is under the ‘stick’ category. Condemnation, and also some actions including selected sanctions, embargos, and ensuring accountability issues are put on the international criminal justice docket. These are the things we can do.
What we need is for countries to recognize the NUG as the legitimate government. We have support from the people, I would say, and it also has a mandate [from the CRPH], but in order to get other countries to recognize it as a legitimate government, we really need to work hard. We have sympathy and we have support, but not as a government yet. So, recognizing the NUG as the legitimate government and coordinating and supporting, for example, humanitarian assistance or other support for education help. We can work together on things like that.
Besides that, we have other issues where we need to talk with the international community, including sensitive issues from the previous government, like the Rohingya issue. We need to have a clear policy paper. The new government must have a clear policy toward the Rohingya. And we need to clarify how this kind of policy will be accepted, respected, and implemented. This process is also important. Right now, our ministry is preparing draft positions on our policy towards the Rohingya. So there are three areas: one is Rohingya being able to be called Rohingya, unlike under the previous government, where there was a denial of their identity rights. We can promise that the Rohingya will be recognized, as with the name and terminology. Second, no one––including the Rohingya––will be subject to violations of their civil rights. Arrest, torture, forced relocation, sexual violence, no one should be subjected to these. These rights are protected for Rohingya, like all other people. Third, we want to clearly implement the recommendations of the Kofi Annan commission for reconciliation of the Rakhine State issue. We recognize that these are good solutions, and we will set up a process for implementation. But those recommendations were made in 2017, almost four years ago. There should be another situational analysis, considering other things through consultation with the Rohingya people. We are in the process of meeting with different groups and people from Rakhine State, even Rohingya IDPs and refugees from the refugee camps, to get their ideas. I promise that our clear policies on the Rohingya will be released in two weeks.
And on this, I will say, I will try my best to meet the international standards and to uphold the dignity and rights of the Rohingya people after consultation with them.
Ben Fleming: Myo, may I jump in and ask a question from the audience related to this? We know that the NUG has vowed to rewrite a new constitution, to get rid of the 2008 constitution. We have a question from the audience about the NUG’s position on the 1982 citizenship law. Is that something that the NUG also wishes to reform? Rewrite? And then one quick question is when the members of the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) will be announced.
U Aung Myo Min: Thank you. We are conducting a review, consulting with many people, with the stakeholders and one of the recommendations is on the 1982 citizenship law. I studied it, I can recite it by memory almost, truly, because I was a human rights activist, so all my homework from before helps! In my view, the 1982 citizenship law is very discriminatory. It is also based on ethnicity. It was created by U Ne Win based on the 135 nationalities, so in this respect, it is already flawed. The 1982 citizenship law and other laws that are not in line with international standards are now under review and under consideration to repeal, revise or replace with a new law. I can promise that, as the Minister of Human Rights, I will try to propose to repeal or amend the 1982 citizenship law. For the NUCC, they have already established who will be on the council but some of them cannot be made public for security reasons because many are still inside the country. We expect to announce this within 2 weeks, when it is safe to make this information public.
Kristina Eberbach: Thank you. Another question we received in advance relates to human rights as a meaningful terminology and meaningful framework within the country. This person is asking how you, as the Minister of Human Rights, would communicate the idea of human rights to people and convey its relevance to their everyday concerns? How will you adapt the international terminology to more localized understandings? And finally, how do you address the role of the state, given the problematic relationship, to say the least, that the state has had with Human Rights, and given the fact that within the framework of human rights, the state is one of the primary duty-bearers for respecting human rights? How do you go about approaching the role of the state in protecting or enforcing Human Rights alongside the role of local community practices in enforcement?
U Aung Myo Min: The motto of my ministry is equality, peace, and justice. Those are the basic principles of human rights. Equality means nobody is subject to discrimination. We will stay committed to Articles 1 and 2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 1 deals with equality and Article 2 is related to non-discrimination. Thees are our principles. Whether you are from, one of the 135 ‘so-called’ nationalities or not, no one should be subject to any kind of violence or abuse, or rights violations from state or non-state actors. This is our commitment: no one should be left behind. If we have a marginalized group or disenfranchised group, like LGBT is one of them, and other minorities or persons with disabilities, these people are considered for temporary special measures, affirmative action, so their status would be upgraded, (to ensure they receive) equal treatment, justice, and peace. So this is my thing.
I set up my first organization, Human Rights Education Institute of Burma (HREIB) in 2000. This year is the 20th anniversary. We planned to celebrate our 20 years of service in Human Rights Education, but unfortunately, it will not happen. First, because of COVID, and second, the coup. The 2 C’s make it very difficult for us, but at least we can celebrate amongst ourselves. We have more than 20 years of Human Rights Education materials, including our TV channel, which we broadcast weekly through the Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB). This kind of groundwork and community-based action is good, and we can use them. We have trained more than 300 experienced trainers across the country. My role was a director to many staff before I joined the cabinet, but now my role is to make sure that these kind of Human Rights Education programs keep running. Not with lectures, but participatory learning based on the everyday situation of the country.
We have what we could call a “three H” approach. One is Head, putting in the international standards, teaching what the UDHR, CEDAW, CRC, and CRPD is. The second one is Heart, so people can practice the three values of non-discrimination, equality, and respect for diversity. So people can feel it and they can also think about what social norms and taboos are not in line with everyday life. For example, calling someone Kalar (foreigner) is very discriminatory; calling someone achauk (gay) is horribly discriminatory; taw thar (rural) is also this kind of discriminatory language. We have been working on changing this language. That’s why you can see that in the Spring Revolution many women are actively participating, and LGBT flags, rainbow flags everywhere. This is the significance of the groundwork we’ve done, so we will keep doing that.
And finally, putting a Human Rights curriculum in the new system, from the primary level to high school. A faculty of Human Rights, or maybe, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) Myanmar! This is my passion. This is my dream. This was my dream as an activist before. Now that I’m the dreammaker, maybe, to put this into our government’s policy.
Ben Fleming: On that note, Myo, do you have any thoughts on the sort of efforts that the NUG and others are taking for a federal university to stand in for the CDM students and faculty. We know that thousands upon thousands of faculty have refused to return to work, and many thousands have been fired. Those who have returned to work have returned to empty classrooms. What role––and we are happy to play whatever part we can––can we play in supporting an effort to keep education alive for those in CDM?
U Aung Myo Min: Thank you, Ben. This is my request I was going to make, but you already answered that, Great! We are real Columbia, we know each other!
Our Ministry of Education (MoE) has that kind of alternative education and institution already in mind from the liberated areas. When I recall my experience back in ‘88, we were the students that left the classroom; we were eager and hungry for education. We didn’t have any proper institutions from which we could learn, we only had small libraries. That’s where I picked up a copy of the UDHR and started learning myself. And I don’t want that [situation] for the new generation!
Our MoE plans are to have alternative education at the institute level, and the university level in some areas. Because, you know that we have totally ethnic-controlled areas along the border. From Kachin State to the border along Thailand, in some areas, the education institutions are well-established. They have their own universities, their own teachers’ college, and system. In some areas, it is not a teachers’ college, but they have their own traditional teachers training that they can multiply in other areas, so based on some of these ideas, our MoE will set up one university in one particular liberated area. So, my work, my years-long work of Human Rights curriculums, Human Rights teaching will be adapted/adopted in that university. Further, with my association with the ethnic education committees, we can work together and my team is happy to contribute and distribute. But this is from the Myanmar context.
Ben Fleming: We have lots of people on this call from a number of universities, so it is a call to arms for all of us to play our part in keeping education alive for the people of Myanmar.
U Aung Myo Min: Yeah, and welcome…for Human Rights, I’m open to working with any organization. For other non-Human Rights education, I can convey that message in the cabinet meetings, particularly with the MoE.
Kristina Eberbach: Thank you. We only have a few more minutes left, and we want to be respectful of your time, we know you are very busy! There were two questions about the ICC and you talked a little bit about it in terms of the hope to engage the ICC in pursuing accountability. And then there was the question of the jurisdiction in terms of the time frame – are you hoping to pursue accountability not only for recent events, but for those in the past?
U Aung Myo Min: Oh yes, thank you. We are in consultation with a legal firm to study and analyze how we can be a member of, or ratify to be a member state of the ICC. So, we see the legitimacy issue, the process issue, and the jurisdiction issue, too. Wo have support and advice from this legal group, but we need also to think about it ourselves, and the process is already ongoing at the NUCC stage.
To any of you, when I met some Burmese students from Columbia University I also said, please, give me your input and ideas, I’m open to listening and different ideas can help enrich my understanding and thinking about the best and possible ways. I’m open to that sort of thing.
On jurisdiction: We’ve thought about it, because usually only criminal acts committed after ratification can be held accountable. But some legal experts have said that you can request special circumstances. For example, this is the criminal, he’s not doing this just after February 1st, but there’s a long history of these things, so there is another special procedure we can request. And identifying the perpetrators, the criminals, and a long history of involvement in these kinds of crimes, these are special requests we are seriously considering, with regard to labeling it as ongoing crimes.
The ICC also accepted the case taking place inside Bangladesh against the Rohingya because Bangladesh is a member of the Rome Statute. Myanmar is not, but they have already carried out IIMM and the Independent Fact Finding Mission, set up to collect (and document) all the previous Human Rights violations and abuses. We are collaborating on that, and we can extend its jurisdiction to inside the country.
Ben Fleming: We have some questions about the military or future possible military. I know the NUG has said clearly that any future armed forces will be civilian led. Is that going to be reflected in a constitution? Also, have you gotten, or do you know if there is much buy-in from the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) about a civilian-led military and what that should look like from an inclusive standpoint?
U Aung Myo Min: Well, the PDF (People’s Defence Force) is founded as an “NUG Armed Forces.” And you might be surprised to learn that the Defence Minister was a former poet and the Deputy Minister is the first woman Deputy Minister of Defence, and with an academic background! So, this is already a civilian leadership, when you know traditionally, “macho” men-in-uniform would take these places, so this is one such change.
I think that kind of civilian-led institution is being established and that kind of militarized history has been broken already. This is the first step. But this kind of PDF, it is something like the small, first cell of the federal union, or the federal army that we are looking for. In this case, we are working with the Defence Minister, at least to have a code of conduct for members of the PDF. Because sometimes, when you are carrying arms and you want revenge, anything could happen. But that kind of PDF is meant to defend the people, and also work for the people, not to threaten or even do something bad to the people. This military code of conduct will be finished very soon, [and will] respect the dignity and the rights of the people based on international humanitarian law and also the law of armed conflict.
We are in the process of talking with different ethnic armed groups. We don’t want them to come and work under the PDF because they are more senior, they have their own thing, and they have sacrificed their lives for their struggles. But what we need is cooperation and coordination. How can we put all the forces together, with a strong chain of command, military strategies, and mutual understanding? We need to guard against possible conflicts of interests, conflicts of power, and that is the purpose of the discussion with individual ethnic armed groups. Some are ready to go, but some are not ok because of a long history of mistrust between Bamar and other ethnic people. We are solving the problem, showing that the federal union and federal democratic constitution is not only for the Bamar, but for all the peoples of Burma, of Myanmar! We are at different stages of consultation and making sure that everyone is coordinating and complementing each other under the federal union. It’s a long process, because our country is a very complicated country with very complicated issues.
(Featured image courtesy of the Institute for the Study of Human Rights)..."
Source/publisher:
"Tea Circle" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
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Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Popular participation: analysis, standards and mechanisms, Right to life: standards and mechanisms, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights and international relations, Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, National Unity Government (NUG)
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Sub-title:
Amid the near-destruction of Myanmar’s media industry, nimble township-based outlets have sprung up to meet the constant demand for local news about the nationwide uprising.
Description:
"First thing each morning, 26-year-old Ko Zaw Oo checks his online messages for recent news or tip-offs about protests and crackdowns in his home township of Hlaing Tharyar, a densely populated factory district on the north-western outskirts of Yangon.
“If something interesting is happening, I’ll go and see for myself,” said the 26-year-old. “Otherwise, I’ll roam around [Hlaing Tharyar] and find news to post about.”
Zaw Oo, who asked that his real name not be used to protect his safety, was telling Frontier about his daily routine as the editor and chief reporter for HTY (Hlaing Tharyar) Information. He founded the Facebook page and website on March 5 to provide a regular feed of reliable news about developments in the township.
Formerly an IT professional, with no previous experience or training in media, he said he had “never imagined [he’d] be doing this kind of work”. He came up with the idea for HTY Information when posts from his personal Facebook account following the February 1 coup went viral, alerting him to the huge appetite for local news amid a nationwide uprising. His news outlet has since proved popular, with more than 167,000 followers and posts that are frequently shared thousands of times.
Initially working as a team of one, Zaw Oo tracked the anti-coup demonstrations as they grew in scale and confidence in the township – with the participation of tens of thousands of factory workers from what is the hub of Myanmar’s garment industry – until a brutal crackdown by security forces on March 14 prompted many residents to flee to family homes in the countryside.
Although the crackdown all but crushed the local protest movement, it motivated Zaw Oo to keep reporting as resistance to military rule went underground, many of the township’s internal migrant workers eventually returned from rural areas, and the junta struggled to assert its authority over local communities and chase down dissidents. From early April, he was joined by 10 volunteer reporters, enabling more comprehensive coverage.
Zaw Oo said the bloodshed of March 14 showed him that many crucial events in Hlaing Tharyar would go unreported without local outlets like his own.
“I saw a lot of people die in the crackdown. I was able to broadcast some of the violence live, but a lot of mainstream media couldn’t report what had happened in Hlaing Tharyar,” he said, adding that the roughly 60 deaths reported by national outlets was significantly below the true death toll, which he put at more than 100 based on local civil society sources.
“Many reporters were unable to reach Hlaing Tharyar that day,” Zaw Oo said. “That’s when I resolved to [continue to] regularly report what is happening in the township.”
He pointed out that the March 14 massacre happened shortly after the junta seriously escalated its assault on the media, with a ban on five major media organisations announced on March 8. Most of these outlets responded with defiance; Myanmar Now, Democratic Voice of Burma, Mizzima and Khit Thit Media have continued to publish and broadcast online. The exception was 7Day News, the country’s highest circulation newspaper, which immediately stopped printing and scrubbed its online presence.
In addition to the bans, which have since been extended to Kachin State-based Myitkyina Journal and 74 Media and the eastern Shan State-based Tachileik News Agency, the junta has raided several newsrooms and arrested more than 80 journalists, over 40 of whom are still in custody, including Frontier’s managing editor, Danny Fenster. Meanwhile, other newspapers such as Myanmar Times and The Voice have decided to fold voluntarily, due to a post-coup climate that is hostile to both business survival and press freedom.
These attacks on media freedom have decimated a news industry that blossomed after the lifting of print censorship in 2012. In their place have arisen hyper-local, township-based media outlets like HTY Information. Covering the breadth of Myanmar, from Yangon to Chin State to Magway Region and elsewhere, they have met a surge in demand for local news as protests and strikes continue to be met with deadly force – an environment where, for ordinary people, staying informed is crucial to staying alive.
Some of these small, nimble outlets are run by experienced journalists and offer miniature versions of conventional news articles on websites and Facebook pages. However, many more have been started by untrained youth, who stick to social media and blur the lines between journalism and activism. As well as documenting events, they tip local residents off to police and army clampdowns, and also help to coordinate protests and fundraising for striking government workers in the Civil Disobedience Movement – a kind of community media tailored to the post-coup times.
“This is a new type of information stream for the people; citizen journalism is filling the gap in professional media coverage,” said U Myint Kyaw, a member of the Myanmar Journalist Network and a media trainer who resigned from the national Press Council shortly after the coup.
But despite attracting tens of thousands of readers, who they sometimes appeal to for donations, several of the local outlets told Frontier they’re struggling to meet their meagre operating costs in an increasingly cash-strapped economy. Their reach has also been curbed by a ban on mobile internet in place since mid-March.
More seriously, several editors and reporters told Frontier they’re being hunted down by the security forces, just like their counterparts in national media organisations. While this proves the impact of these local outlets, some are struggling to operate while in hiding or on the run.....‘The impact was huge’: U Wai Lin, a co-founder of the Thingangyun Post, is one of the few local media pioneers with an extensive background in journalism. The 30-year-old stressed that his outlet, which serves residents of Thingangyun Township as well as neighbouring townships in Yangon, fills a gap vacated by national media by marrying professionalism with a commitment to telling local stories.
“Mainstream media is no longer widespread and township-based media outlets like ours have become reliable sources of information for the public,” said U Wai Lin, who launched the Thingangyun Post with a colleague in 2019 after a decade in journalism.
“At that time, very few people knew about us, but we have gained more readers since the coup,” he said, alluding to the Facebook page’s more than 112,000 followers.
Wai Lin said the Thingangyun Post, which operates as a team of three journalists, was the first media outlet to report a February 15 raid by the security forces on a residential compound in the township that housed Central Bank employees, many of whom had joined the CDM.
“We arrived there early that day,” Wai Lin said. “Later, when we broadcast the situation live on Facebook, others came to know what was happening and better-known media arrived. Since then, our page has become very popular in Thingangyun.”
He said the Thingangyun Post’s coverage of the raid allowed it to fulfil two functions that are crucial to the mission of most township-based outlets: keeping residents informed, and bringing local incidents to national attention.
“The impact was huge,” Wai Lin said. “Many people came to show support for the striking Central Bank staff.”
But away from Yangon, where most of the remaining national outlets are based, the need to capture and draw attention to local incidents is even greater.
“In our city, there were protests and demonstrations and a lot of people were arrested by the military, but there was no news about it in the mainstream media,” said Ko Min Naung, who lives in the famous ruby mining centre of Mogok, in a mountainous area of northern Mandalay Region. “That’s why we established the Mogok Information Group.”
Min Naung, a pseudonym, is one of nine 20-year-olds in the town who founded the outlet, which has a Facebook page with more than 25,000 followers and a Telegram channel.
By mid-May, the Mogok Information Group had reported 11 deaths and more than 100 arrests in the area, “but I was unable to find any [other] media reports about this,” Min Naung said.
The Facebook page mostly posts real-time updates and warnings about bombings, arrests and army mobilisations, which have become common in Mogok in recent weeks. With most posts being less than 100 words, and with a staunchly activist stance, little of the group’s output meets a conventional definition of journalism.
But for the group’s founders, the need to provide the people of Mogok with potentially life-saving information in an environment of widespread dissent easily outweighed any lofty considerations of media professionalism.
“The main thing is for the protesters in the town to be able to run when the army and the police are coming,” explained Min Naung.
“We had never written a news story, or studied journalism,” he said. “We try to write by ourselves because we want to tell the news in our town.”
A similar amateur passion had inspired the young founder and administrator of Myingyan News, a Facebook page with more than 70,000 followers.
“It was hard for me to write news but I kept trying and now people know about the military’s abuses in our town,” said 20-year-old Ko Lin Aung, a pseudonym.
He reports on Myingyan Township alongside 20 other locals. In a sign of the outlet’s activist bent, they are drawn from night watch groups that patrol neighbourhoods each night after the curfew, to protect community members from the junta’s security forces.
The dusty Dry Zone township in Mandalay Region has seen armed resistance in addition to peaceful street protests, and the junta has cracked down brutally as a result. Lin Aung claims his group’s reporting has brought this violence to wider attention, with larger news organisations using Myingyan News as a source.
“When mainstream media learned about us, they interviewed us about the situation in Myingyan,” he said. “We achieved our goal.”.....‘We have to be brave’: The founders of these township-based outlets said their work depends on the collaboration of readers.
“Almost every day, regular readers are sending messages to the [Facebook] page’s inbox to confirm news,” said Zaw Oo of HTY Information.
But even with this support, which also comes in the form of donations via mobile wallets, providing daily news has been a financial challenge for these outlets, who don’t seek revenue from advertising or other commercial sources.
“I have no income; every cost is covered from my pocket,” Zaw Oo said, adding that since HTY Information was established in early March, its expenses – which include buying cameras and covering phone bills and taxi fares, as well as occasional reporting fees to staff – have exceeded K3 million (US$1,820).
There’s a similar problem at the Thingangyun Post, which Wai Lin said costs up to K20,000 a day to produce, due to similar expenses. “We cover the costs ourselves,” he said.
The reach of their online news dispatches has also been curtailed by the junta’s internet restrictions. The block on mobile internet imposed in mid-March has been a particular blow, because the large majority of Myanmar people access the web via smartphones. However, the junta’s gradual white-listing of apps and websites since April has, deliberately or otherwise, made the work of most township media accessible via VPNs.
For Yangon-based HTY Information and the Thingangyun Post, the mobile internet ban has been less of a problem. This is thanks to the relatively wide availability in the city of fibre internet, which the junta has left open despite blocking wireless broadband.
Wai Lin said readership and engagement with Thingangyun Post content had “decreased a bit” since the ban, but he believed it would remain widely read for as long as fibre connections remain open.
“If they cut [fibre], we can’t work,” he said. “We can’t say the junta won’t do this, and I’ve made plans to produce a printed paper in our township if it happens.”
In small towns and villages, however, people tend to lack any access to fibre internet.
“In urban areas of Mogok, a lot of homes have fibre internet, but rural areas have no access to it,” said Min Naung of the Mogok Information Group. “So, we printed a weekly newspaper and distributed it in some villages.”
However, Min Naung and his colleagues only distributed two editions of the paper in the latter half of April before the junta’s gradual whitelisting of websites made the group’s content available via mobile internet again. “If mobile internet is [entirely] cut again, we will go back to producing the print paper,” he said. “We won’t give up.”
Besides limited internet and finances, there is a still-greater threat to the survival of township-based media.
Wai Lin of the Thingangyun Post put it bluntly. “The main danger is the junta,” he said.
In the first and so far only known arrest of a township media practitioner, on April 24, soldiers and police seized the editor-in-chief of the Thanlyin Post, Ma Tu Tu Thar, 49, in a raid on her home in Yangon’s Thanlyin Township during which they also took away her 18-year-old son, brother, and a friend.
Before this incident, in early April, Wai Lin realised he was being watched, so he moved from Thingangyun to a secret location in South Okkalapa Township.
But even there, the junta seemed to be tracking him.
“A neighbour [in South Okkalapa] told me a man in civilian clothes had asked about us three times,” he said of himself and a colleague, adding that they had since moved to another hiding place in Yangon.
But even if Wai Lin is safe in hiding, his loved ones might not be. As the junta has grown increasingly desperate to impose order, its troops have taken to detaining the relatives of fugitives, seemingly regardless of whether these relatives had any role in assisting them.
“I am worried that my family members will be arrested,” he said of his parents and two brothers, who remain at his original Thingangyun address. Wai Lin added that he was “not alone” among local journalists in feeling that he was putting relatives at risk.
Meanwhile, in Hlaing Tharyar, Zaw Oo is confident the junta doesn’t know his identity. However, readers have warned him that police and soldiers are searching the township for whoever is behind HTY Information.
He said he came dangerously close to being caught in early April, when his live reporting on the aftermath of a bomb blast at the administration office for the township’s seventh ward brought security forces rushing to the scene.
“I was still at the site of the bombing when they came looking for me. I ran away fast; I was very scared,” he said, adding that he had since gone into hiding elsewhere in the township.
“My media outlet is successful, which means I’m in greater danger,” he said.
The need to constantly evade the security forces and their informers has also compounded the problems created by the internet restrictions. Wai Lin and Zaw Oo say their hiding places lack fibre internet, meaning they have needed to venture outside to post news, putting themselves and others in great danger in the process.
“Sometimes teashops are my newsroom. Sometimes my friends’ homes are my office,” said Wai Lin.
But despite these difficulties and the daily risks they face, Zaw Oo said that he and other “citizen journalists” owed it to their communities to keep reporting.
“We have to be brave now,” he said. “If we cannot fulfill our media roles, no one will know about the military’s atrocities.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Frontier Myanmar"
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
The Kachin man left his hair salon in Yangon to undergo tough training in a remote border area.
Description:
"Before the Feb. 1 military coup turned life upside in Myanmar’s nascent democracy, Alfie was running his own hair salon and spending his spare time watching TikTok videos in a comfortable urban apartment in Yangon, the country’s main city.
Four months later, the 26-year-old ethnic Kachin man has traded his scissors for a rifle, a hut in a mosquito-infested jungle, and pre-dawn training to fight one of Southeast Asia’s largest and most ruthless armies.
In between, Alfie joined hundreds of thousands of people who had taken to the streets of Myanmar, a country of 54 million people, in protest at the overthrow of the popular elected government of Aung San Su Kyi, whose landslide election victory in November the military claimed was the result of voting fraud.
When those peaceful protests were met with lethal violence, he joined thousands of young people who headed toward Myanmar’s borders with China, Thailand and India to get military training from ethnic armed groups that have been fighting the military for generations.
"We joined peaceful protest marches and later on, as brutal arrests and shootings increased, so did our urge to start a resistance movement,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service, speaking from a location he declined to reveal for security reasons.
“Working with scissors is like a work of art, which is civilized and satisfying, but holding a gun is hard work, both mentally and physically. We do this because we have to,” Alfie added.
He said he had been in the area with fellow fighters-in-training from across multi-ethnic Myanmar for almost two months now, and his combat skills were improving.
"We have different nationalities and different personalities here but we all have the same goal and dreams. Here, we get up at 4:00 in the morning, we have to exercise for stamina, we have military training in the afternoon and we study in the evening,” said Alfie.....A little hut among various pests':
When he was cutting hair and playing with TikTok on his smartphone in Yangon, a fast-growing city of 5.4 million people, he had never dreamed of taking up arms.
"The dream of a young person is to live in an independent democracy, and to be a successful entrepreneur with the kind of work he enjoys, but now all the goals of that young person are 100 percent gone and there is no opportunity to continue,” said Alfie.
“There’s a difference between living in a nice building and living in a little hut among various pests. Food is scarce here. There are no luxuries like in the city."
After the training, Alfie and fellow recruits plan to join the People's Defense Force, a fledging nationwide army launched this month by the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), made up of former high officials from the deposed government and prominent ethnic leaders, to take up arms against the junta.
NUG defense officials say they plan to stitch together a network of the local militias that have sprung up across Myanmar and then unite them deserters from regime forces and with ethnic armed groups that are battle-hardened from wars against the national army that in some cases stretch back to the late 1940s.
"Normally the pro-democracy movements entails peaceful protests by non-violent young people who believe they could succeed without resorting to violence,” said Nickey Diamond, an activist with the Southeast Asian NGO Fortify Rights.
“But eventually after facing violence, they’ve come to understand that they must take up arms,” he added.
The Thailand-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said that as of Thursday, at least 831 people have been killed by the junta, and 4331 are in detention.....Outgunned by junta?: Local militias in the Chin state and Sagaing region, which border India and Bangladesh, as well as in the eastern state of Kayah near Thailand, claim to have killed well over 100 regime troops using mostly home-made hunting rifles since late March.
"Young people are attending training today in the belief that they can overthrow the military junta in a revolutionary style and bury the dictatorship completely,” said political analyst Than Soe Naing.
“The question is the incomparable strength in arms,” he added.
Myanmar’s military, the second largest in Southeast Asia after Vietnam, has used fighter jets, heavy artillery and helicopter gunships in battles against junta opponents -- seldom distinguishing between combatants and unnamed civilians.
Many military analysts say even a force that unites the ethnic armies and the local militias would still face long odds against regime forces, but Than Soe Naing predicted that in about six months, as anti-junta groups gain strength and experience, they can challenge the junta.
If that sounds overly optimistic, Alfie does not let on.
“Someday, we will become patriotic heroes,” he told RFA.
“Let’s get rid of military dictatorship once and for all in our generation.”..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Many have been killed during protests or in custody, with others crippled by torture after their arrest.
Description:
"Myanmar’s youth are being forced to give up their dreams of careers and a productive future as they resist an assault by the military on their country’s democracy and crackdowns on protests that have crippled thousands of civilians and killed hundreds, sources say.
Among those killed, Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing, 23, was shot dead by junta forces in the Hledan suburb of Yangon city on Feb. 28, his twin Koko Aung Htet Naing told RFA’s Myanmar Service, adding that his brother had once dreamed of becoming a network engineer.
“I haven’t watched the video of my brother’s death in Hledan yet because I don’t have the strength to do it,” Koko Aung Htet Naing said. “As his twin brother, I don’t want to know or see how he died, or how much he may have suffered. I don’t want to feel the emptiness in my heart.”
Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing was only one of the many young people killed in the early days of protests calling for Myanmar’s return to democracy after the Feb. 1 military coup that ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
Like others, he had dreams for his future, his brother said.
“He wanted to pursue advanced studies in the field of network engineering at some point, and he wanted to study abroad,” Koko Aung Htet Naing said, adding, “But his dreams were just dreams. Those dreams will never come true now.”
“This was a huge loss for me,” he brother said.
Other protesters in the anti-dictatorship movement, now commonly called the Spring Revolution, have also seen their futures destroyed following arrest and torture by junta forces, other sources told RFA.
Lyan Phyo Aung, a 22-year-old student from Myanmar’s Magway city, suffered gunshot wounds to his right arm, which was later amputated above the wrist, during a protest rally on March 27, and is losing vision in one eye.
He has trouble now performing simple tasks, he said.
“In my imagination, I still think [my hand] is there. I think that I can curl up my fingers, but they’re not there anymore,” he said, adding, “Sometimes when I go to sleep at night I feel so sad: ‘Oh, my hand is gone?’ But during the operation, I didn’t even cry.”
An engineering student who had excelled in architecture, Lyan Phyo Aung has now lost his dream of designing buildings, he said.
“I got the highest marks in my school in drawing and my major subjects, but now all I have left is charity work,” he said. “And not all the fingers on my left hand are good now, either. They stepped on my fingers and crushed my middle finger when they took off my ring.”
“Also, my eyes need an operation, as I can’t bear the light. It’s not okay to see only with one eye,” he added.
Lyan Phyo Aung is currently being treated at a military hospital for rubber-bullet wounds to his arms and legs, and is facing charges of incitement to riot under Article 505(a) of Myanmar’s Penal Code, he said.
The Thailand-based rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) says that more than 4,300 people, most of them young, have been arrested in Myanmar since the military coup. Many have gone missing for months following their arrest, and some have been killed in custody with their bodies returned afterward to their families.
Others have escaped arrest and fled to areas outside of government control.
'Things like in the past'
One, 19 years old, had planned to start a graphic design business when the military launched its coup, the young man said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“As a young person, my work is in social media, and I had planned to start my own company in six months. But now because of all the oppression I won’t be able to do that” he said.
“Things are now going to be like they were in the past when you had to fear even the tenth cousin of a senior military officer,” he said.
Though his future goals in life are unclear, his plans now are to fight against Myanmar’s military dictatorship to protect the country’s younger generation from suffering under oppression, he said.
Many of Myanmar’s most talented youth had big hopes before the coup, but now those hopes are gone, said Moe Thway, chairman of the pro-democracy youth movement Generation Wave. “Youths with all their dreams have turned to taking up arms without ever having wanted to,” he said.
“Myanmar has returned to military rule under which the army oppresses, tortures, and kills people,” he said, adding that international sanctions have been imposed to punish Myanmar’s ruling generals, and that some international companies have left the country.
“So we have lost a lot of business and educational opportunities,” he said. “In fact, we can say that the future of the country’s youth is uncertain and quickly disappearing.”
An activist who had been involved in earlier protest movements—the 1988 Democracy Movement, the 1996 student strike, and the 2007 Saffron Monk Uprising—expressed sorrow that now another generation of the country’s youth has been thrown into the fight in Myanmar for democracy and human rights.
“In the past, they only heard about the oppression, threats, brutal arrests, torture, and killings,” he said. “But now Generation Z is seeing all these things for real.”
“And while they face the prospect of arrests and of having no future, they are trying to win the Spring Revolution from wherever they are,” he said..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Spring Revolution, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Dozens of villages have emptied in the past week due to resumed clashes between regime forces and resistance fighters
Description:
"As clashes between local resistance fighters and regime forces resume along the Chindwin River in Sagaing Region’s Kani Township, the number of displaced locals continues to rise.
Shootouts that initially broke out in the region in early April have escalated since Saturday, forcing more than 15,000 locals from 40 villages to flee their homes, according to a leader of the Kani Township Protest Committee.
“Everyone is on the run because they heard the junta’s troops are coming and they’re worried their villages will be raided,” he said, noting that many villages along the eastern bank of the Chindwin River have already been targeted.
“They’re on the run for their safety. Day and night, they have to move once they start hearing something unusual,” he added.
Many residents of the area have taken shelter with relatives in villages outside the conflict zone, while others have had to hide in the forest, according to local sources.
On May 6, a clash took place near Kin, a village on the Chindwin River. An increased military presence in the area since then has forced more than a thousand families to flee.
Displaced people from the village said they have had to repeatedly flee their temporary shelters as fighting has become more frequent along the river.
“We can’t sleep well at night. No one can,” a Kin villager told Myanmar Now by telephone.
Young children and the elderly are among the displaced and in need of food and medical assistance as the rainy season approaches, according to volunteers involved in the relief effort.
In early April, clashes between the military and local resistance fighters broke out along the Monywa-Yar Gyi-Kalaywa road in Kani. The fighting spread to villages along the Chindwin River in early May.
Last Saturday, military trucks passing near Hmyaing, a village on the Kani-Mingin road, were hit by explosives. There were many casualties in the attack, but the exact number could not be confirmed, according to members of a local defence team.
On Tuesday, there was a clash near Letpansu, a village on the east bank of the Chindwin, and the military occupied Htupauk, a neighbouring village in Kani Township.
Later on, the military raided other villages in the area, such as Kyawmakyar, Wayar and Kywetet, and looted valuable items from locals, including motorcycles.
On Thursday morning, regime troops raided the villages of Kyawywar, Zeehpyukone and Shanmyaung in Kani Township, taking food and other property left behind by fleeing residents.
From May 22 to 27, there were three clashes between regime forces and local resistance forces in Kani Township, killing at least nine local members and injuring 20, mainly from shelling, according to a member of the local defence force.
Anti-dictatorship protests were widespread in Kani before the current conflict began. Defence groups armed with hunting rifles and homemade weapons began forming in early April to protect civilians from the military’s violent crackdowns..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Burma: Internal displacement/forced migration of several ethnic groups., Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"As of today, AAPP believes there are 75 people currently missing in Burma. These disappearances have occurred since the beginning of the coup, when junta seized power and detained our democratically elected leaders on 1 February, 2021. Since then, the military coup has consistently been perpetrating brutal crimes against civilians, including killing and torture, and disappearing dead bodies.
A large number of pro-democracy supporters are now missing, they may be detained, tortured, or killed. Crucially, the junta regime has not disclosed where any of the arbitrarily detained are. When detainees have been located, it is because of information provided by those released from the prison, lawyers, families who have been permitted to send parcels to the prison, and legal aid groups. Many detainees are not able to see their lawyers, or contact their families, with some not in contact with the outside for periods of time. The junta regime has not issued any statement related to detention information, such as where they are being detained and interrogated.
Of the 75 missing, AAPP can verify 23 are disappeared, a further 52 are believed disappeared with precise status to be confirmed.
19 people are missing. 14 of these disappeared went missing while fleeing from junta troops who were raiding and shooting in villages in Yinmabin and Kani Townships. Four people, including Moe San Suu Kyi, disappeared from their hideout, and are suspected to have been detained. However, there is no information about when and who made the detention. One civilian was arrested for seven days for staging a solitary protest, but after their release, they did not return home.
4 people are now missing after having been initially confirmed detained. 3 were arrested for participating in a protest and supporting CDM. They were sent to Myaung Mya Prison, but no family member has been able to make contact since. Aside from this, one civilian arrested in Yinmabin Township has since gone missing, with no contact being made to his family.
24 people left their homes for known reasons, but after several days have not returned. This includes those who have left their homes to take part in protests, to withdraw money at the bank, to go to grocery stores, and to go outside for food.
28 people were detained but their families have not been told where. One of these individuals, Aung San Ko Ko (a.k.a. Wine Chit Oo) was shot, wounded, and abducted by the terrorists, and he remains missing.
Individuals went missing when:
Leaving their homes to participate in demonstrations, and amid brutal crackdowns have later not been able to contact families, relatives or friends for some days.
After being taken for questioning by junta troops whilst walking on the streets, they are later uncontactable.
They fled their homes, but have been missing with no contact since then.
Their families could not contact them after they were arrested in the hideout.
The location of the detainees was not disclosed, even though they were arrested and
interrogated, including some of those not allowed to meet with lawyers and AAPP believes are no longer in prison.
AAPP will continue to verify the recently disappeared.
According to international law, one is considered disappeared when unlawfully detained, abducted, against their will with failure by the responsible party to provide information on said person.
International humanitarian law is explicit on missing persons. States should not perpetrate, condone the act, or impede investigation. The junta in Burma has done nothing to account for these missing persons, in fact threatening civil society and oppressing civilians who raise the issue. The United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 2474 on 11 June 2019, calling on all parties to actively report and search for missing persons. Time and again, resolutions have underscored knowing the fate of loved ones is a basic human right.
In the International Committee of Red Cross’ study on international humanitarian law, it is affirmed “practice indicates that the obligation to account for missing persons arises at the latest after an adverse party provides notification of those who are missing”. AAPP is providing
notification of 75 believed missing persons. The junta is the responsible party for the crimes and disorder resulting in these disappearances.
The AAPP calls for the international community, including the United Nations and the ASEAN country members, to work effectively to investigate disappearances during this attempted coup..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
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Size:
8 MB 114.17 KB 88.95 KB 108.98 KB 110.3 KB
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Sub-title:
Junta troops burn houses and raid villages after military trucks passing through the Magwe Region township were struck by explosives on the same day
Description:
"Regime forces shot three people dead in Magwe Region’s Gangaw Township and set houses on fire at random during raids on three villages on Friday afternoon.
The crackdown on villagers was unleashed after military trucks passing through the township were struck by explosives on the same day.
One of the victims was Saw Min Hlaing Oo, a 33-year-old primary school teacher participating in the nationwide general strike against the coup regime; he was shot in the waist and the thigh. The two other casualties were men aged 50 and 33, but whose names were not known at the time of reporting.
A Gangaw local said he did not know why the houses—three in total—were burned down.
“Soldiers opened fire, aiming at the villages from a road. Many bullets landed in my village,” a local man told Myanmar Now, asking not to mention the names of the targeted villages out of fear of reprisal. “Bullets passed just over the heads of some people who were running from the gunshots. The whole village had to run.”
One woman was injured by a gunshot wound to the arm, and a woman in her 70s slipped down a hillside and broke one of her legs while fleeing the regime forces’ attack, the local added.
Villagers reportedly returned to their houses at around 5:30pm after the soldiers had left.
Residents of southern Sagaing Region’s Kani and Yinmabin townships, which border Magwe Region, have been resisting the junta rule with homemade guns and explosives since April.
In retaliation, the military raided several villages in those areas to crush the locals’ armed resistance, forcing more than 15,000 residents to flee to the forests to hide or to seek refuge in other towns..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Women's rights, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"Each morning, Ko Phyo washes himself and his two-year-old son while seated on a chair, a plastic bag covering what remains of a thigh that he says was shattered by a bullet fired by a Myanmar soldier.
Ko Phyo says he was wounded on the front lines of the biggest protests against Myanmar's military in decades. Now, he is adjusting to life as an amputee and single parent in a country in chaos since a Feb. 1 coup.
The 24-year-old says he joined the nationwide protest movement in the biggest city Yangon, acting as a guard trying to protect demonstrators from security forces during daily pro-democracy marches and strikes.
(Open https://reut.rs/3wTmBlV in an external browser to see a picture story on Ko Phyo.)
"We ran away because we didn't want to get arrested and beaten," he said, recalling a day in early March when he was cornered as police and a soldier advanced.
"Then they started shooting, I was shot in the leg, and fell on the ground."
Security forces have killed more than 800 people since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group. The ruling junta says around 300 have died, most of them "terrorists" and "instigators of violence".
Ko Phyo said he carried only a shield.
The bullet that hit him severed three arteries. The soldier who fired the shot removed it with a knife, and a local policeman he knew took him to a military hospital, a journey that took more than two hours, he said.
"I started feeling the pain and I couldn't bear it. I told them to cut off my leg immediately. They cut it on the seventh day."
Ko Phyo has been learning to become mobile in a wheelchair in his three-room home and uses crutches when outdoors to deal with the uneven roads and paths that run between the green fields of his Yangon township.
He hopes to return to his job handling vehicle licensing with the road transport authority, when stability eventually returns.
Concern about the future of his son drove him to join the anti-junta protests and gave him motivation to recover faster and leave hospital after 12 days, he said.
He sees the loss of his leg as a small sacrifice compared to those of the hundreds killed, including one of his fellow guards, a 15-year-old girl.
"All protesters out there are fighting for the next generations ... The military is supposed to protect its own people, but they are killing us instead."
"We must keep fighting," Ko Phyo said. "We must win this revolution to bring justice for fallen souls."
His son is adapting to the new reality too, playing games with his father and bringing him snacks and cushions to make him comfortable on the floor.
"I feel terrible when he asked, 'Dad, where's your leg?'," he said.
"So, I replied 'a dog's eaten my leg but it will grow later'. And he still believes it."..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-29
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"Collection of အလိုမရှိ songs in English, Burmese, Korean...
Credit to all original songs, lyrics, photos and video clips owners..."
Source/publisher:
Bryan Bert
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"As of 27 May, (831) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. (2) fallen heroes from Demoso Township in Kayah State were killed today. (1) from Taketa Township in Yangon Region was killed on a previous day and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 27 May, a total of (4331) people are currently under detention; of them (102) are sentenced. 1881 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
This morning, two youths from Demoso Township in Kayah State were shot to death by terrorist junta while they were bringing food for Karenni IDPs. Early in the morning of May 25, a man, who suffered from mental health, was shot to death at Thaketa Township, Yangon Region by the terrorist junta.
Soe Linn Htet, second year student majoring in civil engineering at the Technological University Meiktila, was arrested at home at Pyawbwe Township in Mandalay Region this morning. On the night of May 25, Aung Mya Than, a reporter of Ayeyarwaddy Times News Agency based in Ayeyarwady Region, was arrested and beaten while questioning.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
pdf pdf pdf
Size:
1.08 MB 3.97 MB 978.24 KB
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Description:
"As of 28 May, (833) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (2) fallen heroes today. These (2) fallen heroes from Loikaw Township in Kayah State and Dawei Township in Tanintharyi Region were killed yesterday and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 28 May, a total of (4350) people are currently under detention; of them (104) are sentenced. 1881 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
Yesterday afternoon, a 14 year old boy was shot dead in the head as he ran away from junta forces, who had entered Kayan Tharyar Village, in Thabyay Kone, in Loikaw Township, Kayah State. Last night, a man was shot and left injured during unprovoked shooting by the military in Kyet Sar Pyin Ward, Dawei Township in Tanintharyi Region. Junta forces then took him away by car, and he later died.
On May 28, Mi Nge a.k.a Nge Lay, a former female political prisoner, was sentenced to three years imprisonment under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code for defamation. On May 2, junta forces searched her home for her son, political activist Tin Htut Paing. When they could not find him, they arrested and beat her.
This afternoon, Myo Thiha Kyaw, a photojournalist for the Myanmar Pressphoto Agency, was arrested in Mandalay. Last night, in Thaton Township in Mon State, four youths from Manaw Phyu Charity Association were arrested.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
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Size:
1.08 MB 4.07 MB 970.62 KB
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Description:
"This is Part One of a two-part interview with the newly appointed Minister of Human Rights for the National Unity Government, U Aung Myo Min.
[Editor’s Note: This post is part of a collaboration between Tea Circle and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University to share transcripts and reports from a series of seminars on Myanmar that ISHR is hosting.]
Thursday, May 13th at 10:30 EST/20:00 IST/21:00 MMT
Kristina Eberbach: In response to the coup that took place 102 days ago, the Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR) began organizing a series of webinars focused on human rights and democracy in Myanmar. We are planning a number of further webinars over the coming months with leading Myanmar and International activists, academics, and policy-makers. To receive additional information about upcoming events in this series, please sign up for our newsletter at humanrights.org
My name is Kristina Eberbach, and I’m Deputy Director of the Institute and adjunct assistant professor at SIPA. I’m also the co-developer and co-director of the Institute’s University Human Rights Education in Myanmar.
I’d like to welcome U Aung Myo Min, who was recently named Minister of Human Rights for the National Unity Government in Myanmar by the CRPH (Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw). He is a long-standing human rights advocate and was a student leader in Myanmar’s 1988 revolution. He is also the founder of Equality Myanmar, a leading human rights organization in the country, and has been awarded seven international awards for his work in human and LGBT rights. In 1993 he also participated in ISHR’s Human Rights Advocate’s Program and we have had the pleasure of collaborating with U Myo and EQMM as part of the Institute’s University Human Rights Education in Myanmar program and SIPA’s capstone program.
I’d also like to introduce my colleague Ben Fleming, who will be co-moderating this discussion. In addition to co-developing and co-leading our Human Rights Education in Myanmar initiative, he is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and an Adjunct Professor at South Texas College of Law Houston.
Ben Fleming: Hey everybody, thanks, Kristina. Sayar Myo, good to see you, welcome everybody, and Mingalaba.
Kristina Eberbach: How did the formation of the ministry come about within the NUG? Can you describe for us the relationship that you believe will exist with the NUG and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and President U Win Myint if/when they are released? And finally, what is your envisioned role in this position?
U Aung Myo Min: It’s a good question. The NUG was founded by CRPH, a composition of the elected members of Parliament in the 2020 elections. The military did not want the Parliament to set up a new government according to the procedures. So they took a stage, staged a coup before the new government was founded. The first thing they did was arrest Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the President, and many other cabinet members. They are still under arrest right now, but the CRPH was brave enough to set up their interim government. It is just for the legislation process. We needed the executive body to make to prepare us. Since the state counselor and the President are under arrest, we did not have any communication. But the CRPH thinks this is the right move to act as a legitimate government because they are the legitimate members of Parliament, and they have a duty and responsibility to set up a legitimate government.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was not in the consultation during the formation of the NUG, but she heard about it through other sources. She didn’t say anything. The new stance of the NUG is a bit different from the old NLD (National League for Democracy) led government. The NLD-led government was recommended by many of the groups because this is the only party-dominated government, and there are some ministers and deputy ministers, mainly from the NLD supporters and President appointed.
The CRPH decided to make a better, more diverse NUG. Inclusion is a big issue. People want to see that. There should be more diverse and multiple ethnic representation in the new government. This is the lesson we learned from the past. Myanmar is known as a very diverse country. By diverse, what I mean is that we have diversity of ethnicity, diversity of religion, and diversity of social status. If we learn from the past, we see one-party dominated politics without any active participation from ethnic parties. Hence, the CRPH decided to set up the new government with someone from the non-political, non-NLD parties. They also wanted to include representation from people with ethnic backgrounds, who are supported by ethnic people, women, and the Gen Z participation. During this spring revolution, many from Gen Z are at the forefront. So the leaders and young generation should be in the cabinet to represent them and to make good policy.
See, I am an openly gay person in the country, and I am part of the new NUG. This is great. This is a very diverse and multicultural government. This is the lesson we learned. And we are trying not to repeat the mistakes and take recommendations from civil society.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi would accept it, too, I think. I say this because she always said respect for diversity is the basis of human rights. The ethnic issue is very important, especially at a time like this, because the country is building a new federal democratic union. Without the ethnic representative or other diverse people in the government, it would be meaningless. This is in line with the guidance and statements Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has made before, so even though we have no direct communication or consultation with her, I believe that she would be happy.
The question is not that the new government has different ethnicities and the new generations involved. I think she might be more interested to know our future plan. What is our draft constitution going to look like? What is our new government going to look like?
For example, the ministry of human rights is the first of its kind in the history of Myanmar. Similarly, the federal affairs ministry is new too. So, I think she may personally be interested in our mission/vision and to know our plan. We need to explain and get her updated, but we are on the same mission and vision even if we don’t have direct communication. This government is an interim government during this revolution time, but we will make a better government when we have the space and more consultation with other leaders.
Kristina Eberbach: Thank you. You touched on this a little bit in terms of the importance of diversity and ensuring respect for minority rights, but could you speak about your mission and vision and what your priorities will be in this new position?
U Aung Myo Min: Ok, after I accepted this appointment, I’m thinking about what are my vision, mission, and strategies. This is a new ministry, and it is a cross-cutting one because a lot of the issues are interrelated.
The military is committing everyday violations across the country. Many people have been killed. Right now, about 800 people have been killed. People have been shot dead, including young children. Around 4000 people are in detention, many arrested without proper legal procedure. They are committing military offensives, including airstrikes in the ethnic minority areas. This has forced thousands of already civil-war-affected people. New waves of IDPs (internally displaced persons) have been created. Such incidents are taking place everywhere.
My background in human rights documentation came to my mind because it is important to collect all the human rights violations. I would say that not only are they committing human rights violations, but they are committing crimes against humanity. They are ordering systematically. Order and command are being passed out from the military to all the military, the police forces. This is taking place all over the country, not only in Yangon or Mandalay but everywhere! This kind of criminal act and various human rights violations should be well-documented and securely stored. There should be a strong database system so we can easily learn what is going on and the different trends and think about our next steps, as well as on the issue of accountability.
In Myanmar, we have long histories of the culture of impunity. We have more than five decades of civil war, and many people were arrested and detained, but the perpetrators were never taken to trial. The culture of impunity is so well-established that the survivors feel they have no protection and feel hopeless. They get used to it, but they think no one cares or will stop these things. On the other side, the perpetrators said, ok, we’ve got the license to kill, license to rape, because they don’t have to worry about any legal action against them. So, this is very dangerous, not only right now but for any future generation to face the culture of impunity. Stopping impunity and building justice is another step.
The judicial system in Myanmar has totally collapsed. No court is running properly. There are military tribunals where there is no legal protection or witnesses or testimonies allowed. So military officers just listen to the reports by the police and make a long sentence. It is hard for us to take legal action or exercise justice domestically. We need to beyond that. Regional countries and associations like ASEAN need to utilize their HR mechanisms to hold the perpetrators accountable. They can take some bilateral or regional intervention towards the military to start to bring the power back to the people.
Another issue is the international level. Myanmar is known as a long champion of violations of war crime against ethnic people and genocide against the Rohingya people. Now again, we have crimes against humanity. They are criminals. They should proceed and be treated according to the international criminal process. There are so many ways to do this. The UN can use the mechanisms of the human rights council. The security council can be pushed for responsibility/accountability for global/un-led intervention, but unfortunately, China and Russia are not supporting that one. Another way is the ICC, which already accepted the file of Myanmar for the genocide against the Rohingya people. Bangladesh is a signatory of the Rome statute, but not Myanmar. So, we are thinking, the NUG, as the legitimate government, can ratify the Rome statute.
This is all difficult and challenging. As I mentioned, the Human Rights Ministry is a cross-cutting ministry. Everything relating to Human Rights is our responsibility. For example, if we have the Ministry of Interior to propose the citizenship law under their mandate, but it is not only the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Interior but also related to the Human Rights ministry. We have a long history of citizenship lawthath is discriminatory against minorities. For example, the people who are born in Thailand but live in Myanmar for a long time have no rights. So, we have to see this law from the perspective of human rights.
All the international human rights standards and considerations should be well-reflected, so I have to work with them. If we have another ministry, for example, the humanitarian affairs ministry, and if they decide to deliver humanitarian assistance along the border, then this is their job. But my ministry has to make sure no one is left behind. Everyone will need to be treated from a humanitarian perspective. There should be no discrimination and no abuse of power in food distribution or any kind of religious system. This is where my ministry is the focal ministry for every single ministry to ensure that every policy and program and action by ministers is in line with international standards. We have to check if this is not the right way and if there is something missing. For example, if the ministry of women, while drafting the violence against women law, exclude transgender woman, that’s not acceptable. I am doing this monitoring of every single policy, and you can see the responsibility for our ministry, just like the other ministries in the cabinet.
My background is from civil society. I duly respect the role of civil society, their commitments, their inputs, and ideas to make government better. That is what I had done when I was outside of the government. Government should listen to and coordinate with civil society. I have a series of consultations with different civil society members—by secretary, by ethnicity, by gender, you know, like women, and disabled, other minorities. Every day I have a series of
consultations to listen, and my duty is to make sure their recommendations and suggestions are well-reflected and implemented in the everyday policy of the government.
Ben Fleming: It is a very big portfolio, Myo. I don’t envy the number of meetings that you will have if we can switch gears quickly, in 1988, you went to the jungle to train, but you realized that your talents lie elsewhere. We now know that many young people are going to the jungles or taking up arms in their village. We know there was violence today in Mingyan, and in Chin State, the NUG has set up a People’s Defense Force and is negotiating with the EAOs [Ethnic Armed Organizations] in the hope that one day they can form a federal armed force. What are your thoughts on the process of defeating the junta? How would you speak to Gen Z? Is armed conflict a foregone conclusion, or can there still be a peaceful process, given the inequality of arms, what is it you hope for people to do?
U Aung Myo Min: Ok, you remind me of the days when I was a Gen Z back in 1988. I understand why many Gen Z have decided to leave for the border like me and want to take some kind of military action. There are two ways, the conventional military army and also the guerilla strategies. Young people think that we are left defenseless on the streets during the military crackdowns, and many are killed because they don’t have weapons to defend themselves. So they really want to fight back. They need weapons. I understand how they feel. Taking up arms is one of the strategies, but this isn’t the only solution to solve the problem.
We have so many other strategies and actions taken by different people every day at different stages. Some of the Gen Z are still out on the street every day. There is no massive peaceful demonstration like before, but there are still hit-and-run demonstrations. Youngsters are showing how they want their voices to be heard. They look for the flag. They are ready to join. They are showing the defiance of the people. The military has got the message that you cannot run the country like this.
First, that’s also opposition. Second, the civil disobedience movement (CDM), mainly by the staff, thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers, professors, and government servants, are still taking part in CDM. They are not going to work under the military government. There are huge numbers refusing to go even though the military is desperately saying everything is running well. We know that they cannot manage the situation while the massive CDM movement stays strong. This is another strategy. And this also is effective. You can see the military every day announces the list of people that got fired because they are part of the CDM. They threaten people who join the CDM. So, these are two strategies.
Third, the NUG is trying to work on the diplomatic strategy, using all kinds of international cooperation, trying to get the legitimate vote as the legitimate government. They are looking for international or bilateral cooperation for the NUG movement. This is also another strategy. That is why we are calling for intervention. We are asking ASEAN, EU, or the US government to take action on the military’s ‘three-cuts’ policies.
First, please cut the financial support to the military. Don’t do any economic transactions that benefit the military. Don’t do investments that directly benefit the military. Second, cut their weapons. For example, a small arm embargo can stop any kind of military training. It can stop any military-related support to the government. Third, cut the immunity to the military as a legitimate government. Bring these perpetrators to the stage of the international justice criminal system. With these three weapons and tools, we are working on our diplomatic strategy.
So maybe armed struggles and federal people’s defense forces are one of the strategies, but I would say it should be a combined strategy. Whatever path you take, our goal is to stop the human rights violations, abuses by the military, and step them down and bring in the normal civilian government.
Ben Fleming: To carry on from that, about the CDM. What are your thoughts on if and when the junta is defeated? What does national reconciliation look like? How do we reintegrate the Tatmadaw, in which case there needs to be a criminal process? But we are already getting so many messages from people who remain in CDM, those who have returned to work from the CDM, and also those who were never part of the CDM. We hear that these personal relationships have been broken, in some instances, beyond repair. How would you speak to those who remain in CDM, those who have left, and those who never were believed in the hopes of unifying the country and overcoming the junta?
U Aung Myo Min: How to deal with the CDM non-CDM and former CDM – good point! We have been discussing this issue.
For those who are committed to continuing CDM, the NUG is supporting them. Financially, at least with some international donations and through the overseas Burmese support, we are giving them the minimum amount. The money is not that much. But more so, we give them the recognition and moral support for their participation in the movement. But we cannot reach every single person who is part of the countrywide CDM. Communication is very difficult, and supporting CDM is considered a ‘crime’ by the military. We sometimes, we didn’t know the personal information of individuals, but at least we are providing some small token of appreciation to the CDM movement.
Second, we understand it has been 100 days already. Some people are having a hard time being in the CDM. Their whole family is kicked out of from the government. They have lost their quarters, jobs, salaries. They have to support their children and the elderly. We understand that one from a humanitarian perspective, humanitarian reason, and you know no one can be 100% committed, sacrificing their whole life. It happens, so we understand.
So long people are not being double agents, for example like informing on the other CDM people, and making reports, or forcing the other CDMs to return home, it’s fine. There are some people who are motivators for harassing the CDM movement staff. We are recording all these kinds of activities and making a list. The Ministries of Education and Health are also making a list. Such people might be expelled from the government jobs with the NUG side. We never encourage anyone to kill or abuse. We need to keep the dignity of the people even though they don’t have the same ideas or same side as us.
In the future, we can promise that we will compensate the CDM people who are still on strike to get their jobs back, get compensation and reparation, so we can make sure they are safe, that they can get their job back. We will give some kind of recognition to these people.
But for the people who are totally at the forefront of opposing the CDM movement, really, we cannot forget. There should be some kind of action. I don’t mean legal action, maybe not social action but some action by the government..."
Source/publisher:
"Tea Circle" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
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Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights and international relations, Right to life: standards and mechanisms, Human rights organisations, networks: resources, training, methodology and other links, Theory and practice of national human rights institutions, Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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With two competing nominations to attend its annual conference, the ILO’s Credentials Committee must decide who represents Myanmar: the military council or the NUG
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"The question of who represents Myanmar—the military council or the National Unity Government (NUG)—is being debated by the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Credentials Committee in a challenge put forward by labour activists and elected leaders against the coup regime.
At the time of reporting, the committee was deliberating on the matter ahead of the 109th session of the International Labour Conference (ILC)—set to resume online on June 3 following an initial opening last week—after both the junta-run Ministry of Labour and the NUG submitted delegations to represent Myanmar at the conference.
When there are competing nominations, neither delegation is able to participate in the conference—referred to by the ILO as “the global parliament of labour”—until a decision is made by the Credentials Committee, a source close to the labour movement explained.
“They will have to prove that they are the most representative delegation of the country,” the source said of the committee’s process. “[The delegations] also need to prove that they accept responsibility as a member state for carrying out the obligations under the ILO Constitution. And they need to show the procedures through which they arrived at their claim that they are the most representative.”
The ILO, which did not respond to a request for comment, is the only UN specialised agency that requires delegations from its 187 member states to include representation from three entities: government, employers, and workers. The Credentials Committee follows the same structure.
Kyaw Ni, the NUG’s Deputy Minister of Labour, told Myanmar Now that their delegation met the ILO’s criteria and included the participation of an independent employer, and the Confederation of Trade Unions of Myanmar (CTUM) as the workers’ delegate.
The deputy minister emphasised that the NUG’s legitimacy did not only come from its formation by the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw—made up of elected and subsequently ousted lawmakers—but also in contrast to the widespread violence perpetrated by the junta’s armed forces since the February 1 coup.
“The military council has been violating human rights and doing very inhumane things to their own people. There are also many violations of labour rights of both regular workers and civil servants,” Kyaw Ni said. “We have been building a case to show all of the ways in which they have violated these rights legally and according to ILO principles like the freedom of association and the right to job security.”
He referenced the banning of labour organisations in the country and the regime’s recent mass dismissal of civil servants—including tens of thousands of striking teachers, bank employees, transportation workers, doctors and nurses—as examples of these violations.
“The military council has been violating human rights and doing very inhumane things to their own people. There are also many violations of labour rights of both regular workers and civil servants."
It is not believed that the junta’s delegation had the endorsement of a Myanmar-based trade union, local sources said. The workers’ movement has been an integral force within the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement, which is aimed at toppling the coup, and has denounced any cooperation with the military council’s labour ministry.
International trade unions have rallied in support of NUG’s application to represent Myanmar at the ILC, according to CTUM President Maung Maung, for whom the military authorities issued an arrest warrant on Friday. Along with nearly 30 other trade union leaders and central committee members wanted by the regime, he is charged with committing incitement and violating Section 505a of the Penal Code, which carries a three-year prison sentence. Others are facing sedition charges.
Unions and workers’ coalitions based in a number of countries—including Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, the Philippines—have issued open letters to the ILO demanding that the NUG’s delegation be recognised as the legitimate representative of Myanmar at the ILC.
“This rejection at the ILC is one of the ways to weaken military regime and effect change within Myanmar without hurting any of the citizens and can lead to the regime to be disavowed by the UN,” CTUM’s May 17 appeal to international workers’ rights groups read.
Deputy labour minister Kyaw Ni said that NUG recognition at the ILC would demonstrate “that the international community accepts a government that comes from the people and that they do not accept the junta that staged the coup,” adding that he hoped an ILO decision in the NUG’s favour would lead to greater acceptance of his government by other international actors.
In April, junta representative Lt-Gen Than Hlaing participated in the 64th Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the governing body of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, drawing extensive criticism and raising questions as to whether the coup regime would be accepted as Myanmar country representatives at further UN forums.
The World Health Organisation on Wednesday moved to exclude both the NUG and the military’s delegations from its 74th World Health Assembly “pending guidance from the United Nations General Assembly” at its next session in September.
It is possible that the ILO’s Credentials Committee will do the same: exclude both delegations from its conference and wait for a larger committee to make the ruling at the UNGA, multiple sources noted.
At that time, it is expected that the NUG and the military council will again submit competing delegations.
“Going into the UNGA, it seems we do have a big chance of ousting the regime from representing Burma,” Maung Maung said. “What happens if the Burma seat is left vacant? The people win. The UN can show it has teeth.”
He added that this would likely lead to the withdrawal of foreign investment and a halt to projects by international financial institutions, further isolating the coup council and its sources of revenue.
“What happens if the Burma seat is left vacant? The people win. The UN can show it has teeth.”
“The ‘false façade’ of successive regimes—that international resolutions and sanctions don’t have any impact on them—crumbles, as they would not be representing the country at UN forums,” Maung Maung told Myanmar Now. “This will take away the confidence of middle-level military officers and their blind faith in the regime.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
International Labour Organisation (ILO), International labour standards and mechanisms, National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"A celebrity couple and an actress charged with incitement after participating in anti-regime protests appeared at a special court inside Insein Prison in Yangon on Thursday.
Couple Eaindra Kyaw Zin and Pyay Ti Oo, reputedly the highest-paid actors in Myanmar, were arrested in early April and charged under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code. They are being held at Insein Prison along with actress May Toe Khaing, who was arrested in the second week of April and charged under the same law.
Soon after the junta’s coup in February, the military regime amended the Penal Code to protect the coup leaders.
Under the revised provision, any attempt to “hinder, disturb, damage the motivation, discipline, health and conduct” of military personnel and government employees and cause their hatred, disobedience or disloyalty toward the military and the government is punishable by up to three years in prison.
The junta has issued arrest warrants for hundreds of artists, including actors, directors and singers, who have publicly supported the anti-coup movement.
Actor-director Lu Min was arrested in February, making him one of the first artists to be arrested for supporting the anti-coup movement. Most recently, singer Athen Cho Swe was detained at her house in Yangon after she emerged from hiding to visit her daughter.
Zarganar, Myanmar’s most famous comedian, was arrested in April. He was previously arrested in 2008 by the former junta, before being freed in 2011. Singer Po Po was also arrested at her home in April.
Another big name to have been detained is Paing Takhon, a 24-year-old internationally renowned model and actor who has spoken out against the coup. He was also arrested in April and his case was brought to court on May 4, with the court saying that their ruling will be delivered within 180 days.
“We have had a meeting on case management with the prosecutor and the judge. We view the case as simple and a decision was reached that the case will be heard within 180 days from May,” said lawyer U Khin Maung Myint, who is acting for Paing Takhon.
The case will be heard at Yangon’s North Dagon Township court and the hearing is scheduled to begin on June 9, starting with the appearance of the plaintiff, police captain Myo Myint Aung, said the lawyer.
Famous actor Ye Tike was also arrested in April and charged with incitement under Section 505(a) of the Penal Code, as well as with drug possession. His cases will be heard separately at courts in Yangon’s Latha and Mayangone townships on June 1 and June 3.
The actors are being held in separate cells and are in good health, said their lawyers.
“Some people are posting rumors about them on Facebook. We have been able to meet them at the court every week or so. Their condition is the opposite of what is being said on social media. They are all physically well and mentally good,” said U Khin Maung Myint..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Popular participation: analysis, standards and mechanisms, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"A group of musicians in Myanmar have been on the streets performing in the country’s anti-coup demonstrations. Their new song, ‘Revolution,’ aims to encourage young people to fight the military dictatorship..."
Source/publisher:
"South China Morning Post" (Hong Kong)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Human Rights Defenders, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Summary:
"Governments and energy companies should follow up a recent decision by Chevron and Total SA to suspend payments from a gas pipeline project in Myanmar with additional steps to cut off funding to the...
Sub-title:
Governments Should Take Stronger Steps to Cut Natural Gas Revenues
Description:
"Governments and energy companies should follow up a recent decision by Chevron and Total SA to suspend payments from a gas pipeline project in Myanmar with additional steps to cut off funding to the country’s military junta, Human Rights Watch said today. While the May 26, 2021 announcement reflects a shift in corporate dealings with the junta that seized power on February 1 and has engaged in a brutal crackdown since, the payments are just a modest amount of the military’s overall gas revenues.
Governments and all energy companies operating in Myanmar should take stronger action to block natural gas revenues flowing to the Myanmar military. Natural gas revenue is the military’s largest source of foreign currency income, including approximately $1 billion in duties, taxes, royalties, fees, tariffs, and other profits. The dividends suspended by Chevron and Total are a minimal part of the overall payments the government receives from natural gas.
“Chevron and Total’s recent decision is a step in the right direction, but it affects less than 5 percent of the natural gas revenue the Myanmar junta receives,” said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director. “To have real impact, governments and companies need to go further to stop the junta from receiving funds or accessing bank accounts that receive payments.”
The decision announced by Total and Chevron concerns only a 15 percent dividend paid by a pipeline company, the Moattama Gas Transportation Company (“Moattama”), from profits from transportation fees it earns moving gas from Myanmar’s offshore Yadana gas field to Myanmar and Thailand. Total said the payments were suspended as of April 1.
Total and Chevron together are the majority owners in Moattama, with 31.2 percent and 28.3 percent of the project, respectively. The military-controlled company Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), owns 15 percent, and the Thailand state-owned gas company PTT owns 25.5 percent. Total acts as the “operator” of the Yadana wellheads and Moattama’s pipeline infrastructure. The suspended payments are dividends to these companies based on their ownership share. According to Moattama financial records, the company paid MOGE about $38 million in 2018 and approximately $52 million in 2019, consistent with EITI reporting indicating that MOGE’s overall gas transportation dividends from gas operations are less than 7 percent of overall state revenue from natural gas.
Total’s and Chevron’s statements do not mention the hundreds of millions of dollars in additional tariffs, fees, and tax payments that Moattama pays to Myanmar military-controlled bank accounts. The statement does not apply to hundreds of millions of dollars more that MOGE receives from its share of revenues from selling gas to PTT.
“While only a modest amount of the overall revenues was suspended, Total and Chevron’s decision signifies that at least some companies in Myanmar recognize that their cash payments to junta-controlled accounts create major reputational risks,” Sifton said.
Total acknowledged the dire situation in Myanmar and suggested in its statement that further action might be taken: “Total condemns the violence and human rights abuses occurring in Myanmar and reaffirms that it will comply with any decision that may be taken by international and national authorities, including applicable sanctions issued by the EU or US authorities.”
Chevron’s statement noted that the company “condemns the violence and human rights abuses occurring in Myanmar. We stand with the people of Myanmar and the global community in urging for a peaceful resolution that respects the will of the people.” The company said that it would respect sanctions imposed on additional gas revenue but cautioned against them.
Total and Chevron should provide more information on the value of the dividends that have been suspended. They and other energy companies operating in Myanmar should also clarify their positions on sanctions and explain why carefully applied sanctions would not allow their operations to continue while revenues to the junta were blocked. The companies should also adhere to applicable international sanctions and make public information about all payments they make to military-controlled and state-owned entities.
Total has not yet replied to a May 11 letter in which Human Rights Watch asked about the potential effects, if any, of the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, and others imposing sanctions on Myanmar military-controlled entities or imposing economic measures to block Myanmar military-controlled bank accounts from receiving revenues. Specifically, the letter asked whether such measures would prevent Total from continuing to operate in Myanmar.
Governments considering new sanctions on gas revenue should focus more attention on PTT, a shareholder and primary purchaser of the gas that Moattama transports, and the banks that send and receive its payments to Myanmar military-controlled accounts. All the revenue from Total’s joint ventures in Myanmar come from PTT in the first instance, and the company separately pays military accounts hundreds of millions of dollars yearly.
PTT alone also operates a separate smaller gas field, Zawtika, which provides the Myanmar junta hundreds of millions of dollars in additional payments.
Another gas production and pipeline venture run by the South Korean company POSCO operates in the country’s third major field, Shwe, and receives payments from a Chinese-owned company that pays the junta several hundred million dollars per year.
Total, Chevron, PTT, and POSCO should signal support to authorities in the US, EU, Thailand, and other jurisdictions for sanctions or other measures to block royalties, share dividends, tariffs, and tax payments to Myanmar military-controlled accounts.
“If governments effectively sanction or suspend the natural gas revenue generated for the military junta, it will lose $1 billion a year being used to hurt Myanmar’s people,” Sifton said. “That kind of economic impact could put real pressure on the military to stop its brutal repression and return the country to a democratic path.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Human Rights Watch" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-28
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Formal Sanctions, Sanctions, Business and the Military, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"When Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations Kyaw Moe Tun took the floor of the General Assembly on Feb. 26 to condemn the weeks-old military coup and announce his loyalty to the elected government, he not only shocked all those tuning in who expected a pro forma defense of the Tatmadaw’s power grab and denunciation of U.N. interference. He also provided Myanmar’s democratic movement a potentially powerful new tool, both to help secure their legitimacy, and to shift the historic dynamics of U.N. failure in Myanmar. To make the most of this tool, the nascent National Unity Government (NUG) must quickly learn how to work with the U.N. system and leverage it for its intrinsic utility as well as to build out their footprint internationally. To date, the results have been mixed, but there are signs that the NUG is learning. Whether these efforts ultimately will be effective also depends on whether the U.N. system can learn from its own failures in Myanmar and make the necessary course corrections at this pivotal moment.....Past Imperfect: The U.N.’s history with Myanmar has been a multi-decade case study in the moral hazards that international organizations face when dealing with regimes that do not care about either the welfare of their own people or the opinions of outsiders. After being one of the first of the newly independent post-colonial countries to join the U.N., Myanmar enthusiastically participated in U.N. activities during the parliamentary democracy period. It even requested the U.N.’s help in dealing with spillover from the Chinese civil war, when both Kuomintang (KMT) and Communist troops breached Myanmar’s border.
After Ne Win’s 1962 coup, however, successive military regimes rigorously limited their engagement with international organizations out of an almost fanatical devotion to neutrality. Like other autarkic dictatorships, the Ne Win regime deeply distrusted the U.N. and particularly eschewed involvement with its field-based activities, even though his countryman U Thant served as U.N. Secretary General during much of the first decade of Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP) rule. It was not just the U.N. that drew Ne Win’s suspicions: nearly all foreign organizations were kicked out of Myanmar during the 1960s and diplomats based in the country were heavily restricted. The BSPP’s fetishization of neutrality was such that Ne Win withdrew Myanmar from the Non-aligned Movement in 1978 because he was concerned it had become too partisan toward the Soviet Union. Given the role of Southeast Asia as a major theater of Cold War contestation, and China’s mercurial role in these geostrategic games, one can hardly blame Myanmar for wanting to remain aloof from it all. But Ne Win’s autarky also ensured that Myanmar essentially was suspended in amber for more than a decade.
Faced with a ruinous economic situation, however, the post 1974-BSPP and its successors in the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), while no less xenophobic, recognized that the U.N.’s rapidly expanding aid agencies could be useful as they attempted to address the country’s disastrous economic situation. The Tatmadaw generals seemed to innately grasp that these various humanitarian and development agencies cared more about their agency’s particular development and humanitarian mission set than about the quality of Myanmar’s governance and these agencies were competing for “clients” in the developing world. Having been locked out of Myanmar at the height of the BSPP’s autarky, these agencies were desperate to experiment on its broken economy and what they viewed as a tabula rasa society ripe for their modernization efforts. This gave the BSPP the ability to arbitrage aid agencies’ ambitions and silos, strictly limiting their staffing and physical access and insisting on a high degree of control over their activities in the country. Even after Ne Win resigned as BSPP chairman in 1988, the SLORC and SPDC continued to use humanitarian access as a bargaining chip to ensure that agency operations were compliant. In the most striking—but far from the only– example of its extreme suspicion toward the U.N., the Burmese regime initially rejected U.N.-led humanitarian assistance in the wake of 2008’s devastating Cyclone Nargis, which killed tens of thousands of people, wiped out the critical Irrawaddy Delta rice production zone, and left millions homeless.....Political Battles at – and Over – the U.N.: In contrast to the aid agencies ostensibly apolitical approach, the U.N.’s Member State bodies have periodically attempted to involve themselves in Myanmar’s politics, especially after the Tatmadaw’s violent suppression of the 1988 uprising. The end of the Cold War and concurrent rise of liberal internationalism were rocket fuel to the U.N.’s political engagement in Myanmar. After the SLORC ignored the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) landslide victory in the 1990 elections, the United States and other western democracies supported various resolutions in the U.N. Human Rights Commission and General Assembly, condemning the military’s brutal usurpation of democracy and appointing Special Rapporteurs to investigate its wrongdoings. The United States and other major donors also restricted U.N. agencies’ and international financial institutions’ cooperation with the military. U.N. agencies, in turn, complained bitterly about what they saw as the negative impact of these donor efforts to ensure aid was not instrumentalized by the military regime.
For their part, Burmese regimes did not appear to differentiate between the component parts of the U.N. system. The Secretary General’s Special Envoys typically were given privileged access to both junta members and detained opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, so long as they kept their public statements anodyne and their “negotiations” efforts within prescribed limits. Human Rights Special Rapporteurs, on the other hand, were forced to negotiate access on the narrowest of terms and often subjected to rough treatment on the ground. Special Rapporteur Paulo Pinheiro found a barely concealed listening device in the room where he was holding interviews with political prisoners. A violent mob attacked his successor Tomas Quintana’s motorcade during a field visit to Rakhine State following 2012 anti-Muslim violence there. Likewise, after she spoke out on the situation of the Rohingya, Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee was subjected to a steady stream of virulent misogynist verbal abuse before seeing her access cut off altogether.
For the U.N. agencies and personnel deployed in-country after 1988, efforts to navigate between their ‘apolitical’ aid and development missions and the extremely political Member-State activities in New York and Geneva—all while dealing with a distrustful and mercurial junta-often proved untenable. The treatment of the U.N. during the Saffron Revolution of 2007 is a case in point. As anti-regime protests intensified in the summer and fall of 2007, the dual-hatted Resident Coordinator/ Humanitarian Coordinator (RC/HC) in Myanmar was Charles Petrie, a U.N. veteran who had been an eyewitness to the international community’s moral failure in the Rwandan genocide, was under pressure to speak out about the situation on the ground. His home agency, the U.N. Development Program (UNDP), was often a target of criticism from human rights groups and the pro-democracy movement as soft on the military regime due to their focus on economic development. Even after the military started shooting at unarmed protesters and arresting U.N., Petrie studiously avoided direct criticism of the junta. It was only after thousands had been killed that Petrie issued a U.N. Day statement that obliquely linked economic hardship in Burma with the protests, after which the junta forced him to leave the country.....The Consequences of Contested Engagement: In trying to manage the sensitivities of both Burmese juntas and subsequent quasi-civilian governments, the U.N. generally has ended up pleasing no one and failing in its most basic tasks. The Tatmadaw was never going to embrace the U.N., given its innate xenophobia and the decades of General Assembly and Human Rights Commission and Council resolutions criticizing its ruinous and abusive rule. Prior to 2010, democratic forces and ethnic civil society criticized U.N. humanitarian and development programs on the ground as doing little more than legitimizing military rule. After a brief post-2010 honeymoon period, Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy came to view the U.N. as unhelpful because she felt they consultation with treated her as a ‘box-checking’ exercise as they rushed to expand the UN presence under the Thein Sein government. After the NLD took power in March 2016, Suu Kyi’s negative view of the U.N. hardened in the face of Member State bodies’ condemnations of atrocities against the Rohingya while she was the de facto head of government. Suu Kyi’s antipathy towards the U.N. was undoubtedly fueled by veteran diplomats such as Kyaw Tint Swe who spent their careers vigorously defending military regime abuses and pushing back on the U.N. in Geneva and New York. By the time the August 2017 atrocities against the Rohingya began, there was little trust and empathy between the U.N. and the NLD government.
Once again, the U.N. Resident Coordinator in Yangon, Renata Lok-Dessallien, was caught in these cross currents. A development expert by training, Lok-Dessallien was sent to Yangon to oversee the major expansion of U.N. agency partnerships with Myanmar’s government. In the end, her efforts to soft-pedal concerns about the Rohingya and other human rights issues prior to the 2017 atrocities did little to overcome the deep reservoir of hostility and distrust that colored the government’s view of the U.N. Her development-focused approach did, however, trouble her staff, especially those charged with implementing the U.N.’s “Human Rights Up Front” initiative. As the scale and scope of the atrocities in Rakhine state spiraled and international condemnation grew, Lok-Dessallien was spectacularly ill-equipped to deal with the situation. Although the U.N. secretariat in New York was aware she was flailing, they took no steps to recall or replace her until it was too late. This was all well documented in both contemporaneous media reports on the 2017 Rakhine crisis and the U.N.’s Rosenthal Report on the U.N.’s failure to anticipate or prevent the genocide.
Despite this checkered history, in 2021 protestors in Myanmar initially called on the U.N. to act against the Feb. 1 coup and live up to its founding ideals. Invoking the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) and seizing on condemnatory statements by U.N. officials, many young protesters looked to the U.N. to send in peacekeepers or take other steps to restore the elected government. But so far, the U.N. has spectacularly failed to rise to the occasion. Blame for this failure has largely centered on the Security Council, where the United Kingdom and other so-called like-minded countries have taken a cautious incremental approach, ostensibly due to fear of a joint Chinese and Russian veto of any resolution they might table. As time passes since the coup and humanitarian needs rise, there also are growing concerns among the anti-coup forces that various U.N. agencies may be falling back into old habits of willingness to work with the junta in order to retain access to their projects in country.....A New Hope at the U.N.? Options for Constructive Engagement: Yet even as the U.N. has proven unable to stop the junta’s illegal coup or ameliorate the situation on the ground, it does have some specific utility for the democratic movement. For the first time, those facing off against a military junta have a Burmese ambassador in New York who has declared his loyalty to the democratic movement and is empowered to work with the entire U.N. system, including and especially on human rights issues. Practically speaking, control over the U.N. seat in New York can be a beachhead for the NUG’s broader efforts towards international recognition even as the struggle on the ground continues and the democratic leadership builds out its own institutions. Because many other governments will recognize whatever authorities are recognized by the U.N., controlling the General Assembly seat is critical.
Moreover, Permanent Representatives (PRs) in New York hold a privileged position within the U.N. system, surpassed only by ministers and heads of state and government from a protocol standpoint. As long as Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun remains credentialed to the U.N. as Myanmar’s PR, he is the senior-most Burmese diplomat accredited to the U.N. system. As a result, he can represent Myanmar at U.N. meetings not only in New York but also in Geneva, Vienna, Rome, Bangkok, Nairobi, or any other venue where the U.N. convenes Member States. The U.N.’s continued reliance on virtual meetings due to the pandemic is helpful in this regard, as Kyaw Moe Tun and his designates can remain in New York to defend his seat while representing Myanmar at U.N. events around the world.
On the programmatic side, the Civil Disobedience Movement’s (CDM’s) efforts to shut down economic activity in Myanmar and the NUG’s demand that humanitarian assistance not flow through military controlled channels have highlighted the need to establish parameters for cooperation with U.N. agencies, funds, and programs accustomed to dealing with Member State governments. To this end, the NUG can use their foothold in New York to pull through cooperation with U.N. agencies, including negotiating Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) on access, financing, and other modalities. By aligning these efforts with outreach to bilateral donors and multi-lateral development banks, the NUG can begin to demonstrate governance capabilities to their own people and the international community alike.
Working together with CDM diplomats in Geneva and elsewhere, the New York mission can coordinate diplomatic engagement across the entire U.N. system on everything from credentialling for meetings to negotiating MOUs with U.N. agencies. The NUG will need to provide strategic and policy guidance, including on where within the U.N. system to prioritize limited human resources for maximum impact. This was recently and unfortunately demonstrated when the junta successfully sent its murderous police chief to a U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) senior officials’ meeting. That event seems to have served as a wake-up call for the NUG on the need to track and manage such U.N. Member State-driven activities more effectively. On May 26, for instance, the World Health Assembly (WHA) refused to seat the junta’s delegate after the NUG submitted a competing credential request. While not a total victory, having the Myanmar chair empty is preferably to having the junta represent the country. The WHA’s decision also kicked the issue back to the General Assembly, highlighting the stakes for keeping the New York mission in the NUG’s hands.
Given the complexity of the task and the small number of diplomats the NUG currently has, both the New York mission and the NUG leadership will need to be creative and disciplined about staffing and other resource allocation decisions. For instance, civil society groups that work on human rights and humanitarian action have substantial resources and influence that make them potential force multipliers in these areas of alignment. While many small Member State missions in New York and Geneva have deep experience working with their own and international allied civil society partners, many experienced Burmese diplomats are more accustomed to seeing civil society as adversarial and both sides will have to overcome both a trust deficit and a learning curve to work together effectively.
The CDM diplomats are fortunate, however, that Burmese civil society has decades of experience partnering with regional and global advocacy groups and diplomats from other governments, especially in the priority areas of human rights and humanitarian assistance. The New York mission should look beyond the Secretary General’s Special Envoy and engage the various Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council that have an interest in Myanmar, including Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews, and Special Representatives of the Secretary General on issues such as the Responsibility to Protect, Sexual Violence in Armed Conflict, and Children in Armed Conflict. These U.N. experts can be both resources for information and potential allies in the system.
Finally, the NUG must have a clear plan for holding on to Myanmar’s U.N. General Assembly seat when the next General Assembly session begins in September. The NUG and the junta are likely to submit competing credentials for the session, and the U.N. Credentials Committee and ultimately the General Assembly itself will likely be drawn into a credentials fight. While the technical and protocol aspects of U.N. credentialling are relatively straightforward, those credentials fights that have taken place over the 75-year history of the U.N. have largely followed a pattern where initially ‘possession is 9/10ths of the law’ but the representation usually ends up aligning with political reality on the ground—regardless of the legitimacy of that reality. The refusal to seat representatives of South Africa’s apartheid government is one of the few cases where the U.N. acted from a moral imperative.
The situation of Myanmar is likely to challenge the U.N., both institutionally and among its individual member states. By working now to establish Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun as an active and credible representative of the Burmese people across the U.N. system, the NUG can create facts on the ground that may prove dispositive when his credentials are challenged in September. The more his counterparts in New York see him as the legitimate representative, the more likely they are to support him, if for no other reason than they themselves would not wish to be arbitrarily replaced as the result of an illegal coup. For its part, the U.N. system should recognize that they have an historic opportunity to align with the Burmese people’s democratic aspirations and contribute positively to this hinge moment in Myanmar’s history. By drawing lessons from the missed opportunities and failures of the past, the system can try to turn a new page.
For the programmatic pillars of the system, this means being more cognizant and tolerant of political risk than they are typically comfortable being. The UNDP—both because of its past issues in Myanmar and because it has specific responsibilities with regard to governance—should stake out a leadership role in supporting the democratic aspirations of the Burmese people and work with both the NUG and civil society on urgent governance challenges that have resulted from the coup. UNDP also has an existing MOU to work on Rakhine State, signed with the NLD government, that can provide the basis for addressing that troubled region. Likewise, agencies such as U.N. Fund for Children (UNICEF) and the World Food Program (WFP) can work directly with the NUG to address urgent humanitarian needs. In the past, these agencies have been more adept at handling political ambiguity and demonstrating flexibility, and these skill sets will be necessary to navigate the current situation.
On the Member State side, creativity will also be required, including looking beyond the politicized Security Council and Human Rights Council (HRC). One potential solution is to empower entities such as the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar (IIMM), that were created by Member States but operate as independent technical bodies. The IIMM’s mandate should be interpreted (or expanded) as needed to allow it to provide technical assistance directly to the NUG, including by confidentially sharing evidence about the atrocities against the Rohingya. Helping the NUG and its ministers to understand and come to terms with the scope and scale of atrocities the Tatmadaw committed during the NLD’s watch could help to advance the cause of recognition and reconciliation that ultimately is core to Myanmar’s nation-building project. This is a delicate task, but one that the IIMM – as a technical body that is built on collecting and following the evidence rather than advocating for any particular outcome – is uniquely qualified to undertake. Given that the overwhelming majority of Member States have supported resolutions in the General Assembly condemning the atrocities against the Rohingya, the NUG’s inability to date to adequately address the Rohingya issue remains a major stumbling block as countries consider whether to recognize it. A successful two-way partnership between the IIMM and the NUG could help to address this issue in a more constructive way.
In light of the many challenges facing Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement at the moment, leveraging the country’s U.N. General Assembly seat may not be top of mind for the NUG. Nonetheless, the seat – and the source of legitimacy that comes with it – represents a major tangible asset that has real value to other countries that otherwise may be inclined to pay the NUG little attention. Whether the NUG can deploy this asset strategically and successfully could make the difference as it struggles to establish itself on the international stage. After decades of awkward and all-around frustrating engagement, the U.N. also needs to step forward with a more flexible and conscious approach that shows it has learned from past mistakes. Even if both sides can break old habits, there is no guarantee that the outcome will be successful for the Burmese people. But if the NUG and U.N. squander this opportunity by repeating old patterns, it is virtually guaranteed that everyone stands to lose..."
Source/publisher:
Just Security (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, The UN and Burma - news and commentary, Human Rights and international relations, Political History, Anti-coup protesters, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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"As of 26 May, (828) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (1) fallen heroes today. This (1) fallen hero from Salin Township, Magway Region was killed on previous days and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 26 May, a total of (4330) people are currently under detention; of them (102) are sentenced. 1881 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
A woman, living in Taw Seint Village in Salin Township, Magway Region, was shot dead in the head last night when the village administrator requested the military come to the village and open fire in response to a “No to Military Slavery Education” sticker campaign at a local school.
Last night, Zaw Win Maung, member of the NLD Information Committee in Hpakant Township, was arrested while staging a night protest in Lone Khinn Village, Hpakant Township in Kachin State. Khin Ohn Myint, the retired teacher and a patron of the Red Cross Committee in Mogok Township, was arrested at Kyauk Saung Village in Mogok Town in Mandalay Region yesterday evening.
On May 24, Thet Tin Aung, Secretary of Art and Science of All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), and his companion Paing Soe, were arrested at Yangon-Mandalay Road and Chit Htwe, Myo Nyunt and Win Kyaw Soe, three philanthropists, living in Wakema Township, Ayeyarwady Region, were arrested.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"While most media attention continues to focus on the domestic political problems that have engulfed the country since the 1 February military takeover, little has been said about continuing inter-ethnic
fighting in Shan State between the Restoration Council Shan State (RCSS) the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP) and its ally the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA). A large part of the current discourse in relation to the military takeover suggests that armed ethnic
organisations will be able to come together in a ‘Federal Army’ to free the people in the cities. But if there is one thing the continuous fighting in Shan State suggests is that there remains much discord
between ethnic actors themselves. Clashes between the two Shan factions have been a constant and have also heavily involved the
Ta’ang National Liberaion Army (TNLA) which has sided with the SSPP. In large part the increase in fighting was exacerbated in 2015 after the RCSS signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement
(NCA). After the NCA was signed, the RCSS established bases in Namtu, Hsipaw and Kyaukme townships. The move sparked fighting between the RCSS and the Shan State Progress Party, which
controlled some areas outside of major towns there, and the TNLA. Similarly, the SSPP also allied itself not only with the TNLA, but also the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA),
and the then Kachin based Arakan Army (AA).
Politically, the SSPP/SSA had no particular objective and instead sought guidance in such matters from the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD). However since the emergence of the
TNLA, the SSPP seems to have allowed the Ta’ang group to hold major influence over the SSPP in its current strategy making processes. It also appears the TNLA’s territorial ambitions are perhaps
driving, or at least adding to current hostilities with the RCSS in which the SSPP is playing a part. In 2018, media reported that the RCSS claimed it had the right to operate wherever there are ethnic
Shan while the SSPP and TNLA say it belongs in the south of Shan State only. However, according to one individual close to the RCSS it had said that it will operate in every township outside the SelfAdministered Zones (SAZs) and Self-Administered Division (SAD). Meaning the TNLA should not operate outside the 2008 constitutionally mandated Namhsan and Mantong. If it wants to, it must be in agreement with the RCSS.1 The RCSS/SSA has maintained control in the north through its Brigade-701 in Muse District, Namkham Township. The claims to have set up Task Force 701 in 2006 after the PSLA was disarmed and SSA 3rd Brigade was ordered to move south of LashioMandalay Road.
The TNLA claims the RCSS used its membership in the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the central government as justification for stationing fighters in the north of Shan State.
2 A claim the RCSS has vehemently denied.The TNLA has also accused it of not consulting them on territory
demarcation or joint operations, obstructing established administrative structures of TNLA and SSPP and forced conscription on pretext of combating drug addiction. 3 For its part, the RCSS claims
that local ethnic Shan in Northern Shan State invited them to set up bases in the area to protect them against TNLA oppression, which the SSPP allegedly failed to do due to its alliance with the TNLA against the Tatmadaw.4 Most recently, it has been suggested that one of the main reasons for the continuing conflict is the fact that Northern Shan State has become a key point for border trade between Myanmar and
China, especially with China’s Belt and Road Initiative. China has plans to build a railway link to Myanmar. It has therefore been posited that the underlying reasons for continuing ethnic conflict is
related now more to business interests and securing territorial gains rather than previous grievencies or ideological issues.5..."
Source/publisher:
Euro Burma Office
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Various groups, Euro Burma Office, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Lux et veritas. Light and truth. These are the words proudly emblazoned on the banners that adorn Yale’s New Haven buildings, stamped in the seals imprinted in the diplomas we earn after graduating, guiding us during the years we pore through books and listen to lectures, always to learn more, to do better, to thrive for the most.
I went to Yale for my undergraduate studies where I took classes on conflict resolution and was mentored by pre-eminent academics in understanding root causes and patterns of genocide. I tried to understand how and why people commit mass atrocities, and what political and social forces enable them. I believed that the more we study atrocities, the more we can do to prevent them. I have since realized that a key element in the enablement of mass atrocities is the mobilization of financial resources that powers and legitimizes oppressive regimes. I’ve been dismayed to see a representative of a Yale-founded institution linked to the funding of the Myanmar military.
Here is a truth: in 2011, Kay Kuok Oon Kwong, the Director of Shangri-La Hotel Limited and niece of Malaysia’s richest man, was announced as the Chair of the Yale-NUS Governing Board. Yale-NUS was jointly founded by Yale and NUS in 2011 and Yale-NUS graduates join the ranks of the Yale Alumni Association as international affiliates. When Kuok joined the Governing Board, she was also the Director of the Trader Square Group (a subsidiary of Shangri-La Asia), which signed a land lease agreement with the Quartermaster General, an office of the Myanmar military under the Ministry of Defense. The land lease agreement was to develop an office tower and retail mall, Sule Square, in Yangon. As the Director, Kuok was responsible for overseeing the agreement. The following year, in a public ceremony, Kuok thanked the Quartermaster General for leasing the land. In October 2017, the Sule Square development was opened, with Kuok present at the ceremony.
Myanmar’s Quartermaster General plays a key role in managing the military’s business, and is responsible for purchasing arms and for Ministry of Defense budget requests to the Parliament. Due to its role in managing supplies and budgets, it is responsible for managing leasing arrangements for military-owned land across the country. The defense budget, managed by the Quartermaster General, is used to fund the purchase of weapons and military supplies, such as a missile director system, that in turn has been used to commit genocide against the Rohingya and vast crimes against humanity against ethnic groups in Myanmar.
Kuok’s opening ceremony of the Sule Square took place 2 months after the Rohingya clearance operations committed by the Myanmar military, which, in September 2017 alone, resulted in the deaths of at least 6,700 Rohingya, followed by the exodus of 742,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh and the internal displacement of over 130,000 Rohingya. In December 2019, the Myanmar military was brought to the International Court of Justice for genocidal acts against the Rohingya.
Here is some light: By leasing land from and engaging in business with the Myanmar military, Kuok is directly contributing to the financing of the military, which may amount to aiding and abetting the commission of their international crimes. The UN Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar in 2019 examined the military’s sources of revenue that “enhances its ability to carry out gross violations of human rights with impunity”. The report assessed how the military uses its own businesses in addition to foreign companies to support military operations. The Mission examined military owned businesses, such as MEC and MEHL, and named Shangri-La’s land lease in its report. It found that “any foreign business involving the Tatmadaw poses a high risk of contributing to or being linked to violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law”. It recommended that foreign businesses sever ties with the Myanmar military to ensure they were not complicit in crimes against humanity. The Mission stated it “puts companies on further and effective notice of the human rights implications that arise from maintaining business connections with the Tatmadaw”. Yet Kuok continued to maintain her business with the Myanmar military, paying likely significant amounts in land leasing that go directly to the Myanmar army. Although the exact terms of the Sule Square land lease are unknown, a different shopping and hotel complex in Yangon brings in about $20 million a year to the military.
On February 1 2021, the Myanmar military attempted a coup d’etat and has escalated its crimes nationwide, which, according to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, almost certainly amount to crimes against humanity. The violence since the coup is part of a continuation of decades of extreme violence perpetuated against ethnic and religious minorities, including the Rohingya. Over the 3 months since the coup, the Myanmar military has killed over 780 people, including over 40 children, arbitrarily imprisoned over 3800 people, internally displaced 50,000 individuals, and has injured and tortured countless others. There is video evidence of men being burnt alive, rescue workers and doctors being shot and abducted for helping the injured, and the bodies of the murdered being held for ransom by military soldiers, depriving families of closure. Many activists, politicians, ordinary people who are holding on to hope for a future free of repression and fear are on the run. Yet they continue to fight for their rights, and they demand that, at the very least, the international community stop providing the military with the finances to brutalize them.
Given the escalation of violence since the coup, various companies have been assessing their business connections to the military more seriously. The Singapore Stock Exchange (SGX) has announced suspension of trading of ETC, a company that is involved in leasing land from the Quartermaster General. Civil society organizations, including Human Rights Watch, sent a submission to the UN Working Group on Human Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other Businesses inquiring into the land lease agreements of Japanese businesses with the Quartermaster General. Kuok’s tenants, Coca Cola and McKinsey & Company, stated they would terminate their lease from the Sule Square office, and Reuters and the World Bank Group stated they were reviewing their plans.
And while this is happening, Kuok, the Chair of the Yale-NUS Governing Board, allegedly continues her business with the Myanmar’s military junta.
The Governing Board of Yale-NUS provides “oversight of the College and its development and management,” and is responsible for overseeing the operations and establishing policies for the college. As the Chair of the Governing Board, Kuok thus plays a very important role in the strategic direction of the college, which makes it all the more paramount to assess whether and how her business interests might be impacting the college.
In particular, although Yale-NUS’ spokesperson Jeannie Tay Meow Sein has stated that Kuok’s business affairs are distinct from her role on the Governing Board, Kuok’s role raises questions about whether Yale-NUS is receiving donations from her, and whether these donations are tainted with the carnage of the Myanmar military. It raises the question overall about the finances of Yale-NUS, and where these finances come from.
There were concerns from students and professors about Yale extending its outreach to Singapore due to limits on freedom of expression in the country, nonetheless Yale established Yale-NUS and continues to play an ancillary role in the school. Yale’s mission states that it is “committed to improving the world today and for future generations”. Yale President Peter Salovey, who sits on the Governing Board of Yale-NUS, has written that “the country and the world need the very best from Yale – right now”. The best cannot entail doing business with a murderous regime.
As one of the founders of Yale-NUS, it is past time that Yale shed light and truth on its school in Singapore, conduct a thorough investigation into Kuok’s business affairs in Myanmar, and assess whether she is representing or compromising Yale’s mission to improve the world..."
Source/publisher:
"Tea Circle" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Business and the Military, Human Rights and international relations, Racial or ethnic discrimination in Burma: reports of violations against several groups, Genocide, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"The Myanmar military authorities should immediately drop charges against journalists, said Amnesty International today. This includes those in pre-trial detention, on bail, or those with warrants outstanding on them solely for carrying out their work and the peaceful exercise of their human rights.
“Journalists are at the frontline of the struggle to expose the truth on what is happening in Myanmar today,” said Emerlynne Gil, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for Research.
“The brazen violence, intimidation and harassment the military authorities are levelling at them only illustrates how powerful exposing the truth can be. Individual journalists can be threatened, arrested, or even meet a worse fate, but Myanmar’s free media as a whole can never be silenced.”
The ongoing persecution, intimidation, harassment and violence faced by journalists in Myanmar constitutes a clear attempt by the military authorities to suppress peaceful dissent and obscure violations committed by security forces in the wake of the 1 February coup. The nationwide crackdown has resulted in widespread denial of the rights to freedom of expression and access to information.
On 24 May, American citizen Danny Fenster became the third foreign journalist arrested and detained since the coup. He was arrested by authorities at Yangon’s Mingalardon Airport while waiting to board a flight to Malaysia. He was reportedly taken to Insein Prison and, as of 25 May, no charges have been made against him. Amnesty International believes that Danny Fenster was arrested for peacefully exercising his human rights. He must be released immediately and unconditionally.
As of 21 May, 88 journalists have been arrested since the 1 February coup, according to the most recent figures from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPPB). More than half remain in detention, and 33 are in hiding. Two have been released on bail. Dozens have fled the country or have sought refuge in territory controlled by Ethnic Armed Organizations. Two journalists have been injured by gunshot while covering protests.
“The arrest of Danny Fenster is a reminder of how the media in Myanmar has been targeted for trying to expose the human rights violations committed by the military in this ruthless crackdown,” said Emerlynne Gil.
“Despite the severe communications blackout, what the world knows about the military authorities’ abuses is a credit to the courage of journalists.”
Climate of fear: ‘We don’t want to go back to those days’
The military authorities’ crackdown on the media has resulted in a chilling effect on the press, access to information and other human rights. On 8 march, media outlets Myanmar NOW, Khit Thit Media, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), Mizzima, and 7day had their licences revoked, in a ban that affects print, broadcast and digital platforms.
By mid-March 2021, there were no privately-run daily news journals left in circulation in the country, as many suspended operations. Journalists interviewed by Amnesty International voiced concerns that the ongoing crackdown in the wake of the coup heralds a return to the darkest days of censorship, self-censorship and state-sponsored disinformation.
“We feel everything is heading back to our childhood days … we don't want to go back to those days when we had only state-owned media, spreading propaganda,” said one Yangon-based reporter. “It's really difficult to struggle and to survive as a journalist during this period in Myanmar. It's not safe – not only for the journalists, but also their families. We are all facing this insecure situation every day. But we keep trying to report as much as we can.”
After an almost five-decade state monopoly on publishing and a heavy censorship regime, in 2012, the press scrutiny and registration department suspended pre-publication censorship. In 2013, Myanmar's ministry of information began granting licences for privately-owned daily newspapers.
However, recent actions by the authorities mark a significant step backward for human rights including the right to freedom of expression, and a near-total dissipation of gains made for media freedom over the previous decade of quasi-civilian rule.
The Myanmar military authorities should ensure the rights to freedom of expression, access to information and media freedom are respect, protected, promoted and fulfilled including by unblocking independent news media websites and social media platforms, and restoring full internet connectivity as a matter of urgency.
Old laws, new amendments
On 3 March 2021, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) journalist Min Nyo was arrested while covering anti-coup protests in Pyay, Bago Region in central Myanmar. According to a statement from DVB, Min Nyo was beaten by police during arrest and sustained injuries. He was sentenced to three years’ jail time on 12 May under section 505(a) of the Penal Code.
This lengthy sentence is the second handed down to a journalist since the coup, after another DVB reporter May Thwe Aung was handed a month’s jail time under Section 188.
The majority of journalists have been charged under Section 505(a) of the colonial-era Penal Code, which prohibits the publication or circulation of “statement, rumour or report … with intent to cause, or which is likely to cause, any officer, soldier, sailor or airman, in the Army, Navy or Air Force to mutiny or otherwise disregard or fail in his duty”.
This broad provision has historically been used by the Myanmar military to target human rights defenders, journalists, and political opponents, punishing those who distributed political pamphlets or sought to report news.
On 14 February 2021, the Myanmar military authorities announced a series of amendments, including additions to Section 505A. These new provisions criminalize those who cause or intend to cause fear, spread false news, agitate directly or indirectly criminal offence against a Government employee, bringing the maximum sentence up to three years, and introducing fines.
These amendments violate the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly and pave the way for arrest and conviction on the basis of intent. It is not just journalists facing such charges: celebrity influencers, doctors, teachers, and other civil servants suspected of participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement general strike have had warrants issued against them under 505A, and other provisions.
Section 505A of the penal code, as well as the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law and the Natural Disaster Management Law should be repealed or amended to comply with international human rights standards.
The Myanmar military authorities must cease its assault on human rights including the right to freedom of expression and media freedom, ensure people’s rights to access information are upheld, and stop targeting journalists..."
Source/publisher:
Amnesty International (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
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Individual Documents
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Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Amnesty International reports on Burma/Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Total and Chevron halt some payments to military in wake of coup but advocacy groups say more needs to be done
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"Advocacy groups have called on French fossil fuel giant Total and US company Chevron to further cut ties with Myanmar’s military, after announcing they would suspend dividend payments to the junta from a large gas project in the wake of February’s coup.
“Total condemns the violence and human rights abuses occurring in Myanmar and reaffirms that it will comply with any decision that may be taken by the relevant international and national authorities, including applicable sanctions issued by the EU or the US authorities,” the company said in a statement.
But advocacy groups said 90% of the money the junta makes from the Yadana gasfield joint venture with Total and Chevron – as well as the gas itself – continues to flow.
Since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government, more than 5,400 people have been arrested, according to monitoring group AAPP Burma, with the majority still in detention, often in unknown locations. At least 824 people have been killed by the junta, including dozens of children, sparking global outcry and calls for international companies to cut their business ties with the military.
Total told a shareholder meeting this month that Moattama Gas Transportation Company Limited (MGTC) – a joint venture that pipes gas from the Yadana field in the Andaman sea to Myanmar – had decided to stop making dividend payments to the junta.
The resolution was put forward by Total, which owns 31.24% of MGTC, and Chevron, which owns 28.26% of MGTC – shareholdings that give the two multinationals a controlling stake.
The rest of MGTC is owned by PTTEP, which is controlled by the Thai state (25.5%) and Myanmar government company Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (15%).
However, advocacy group Justice for Myanmar pointed out oil was still flowing through the pipeline and the vast majority of payments to the junta have not been affected.
The junta, which seized power on 1 February, still earns the state’s share of gas revenue, royalties and cost recovery from the Yadana gas field operation and corporate income tax from the MGTC.
MGTC’s suspension of dividends accounts for a tiny proportion of the estimated US$1.5bn Myanmar earns annual from offshore oil and gas projects.
Spokesperson for Justice For Myanmar Yadanar Maung said the decision to suspend dividend payments would curb one source of revenue for the illegitimate military government in Myanmar.
“Total and Chevron have made enormous profits in Myanmar in the past while simultaneously bolstering brutal military regimes … [they] have made the right choice by finally acknowledging that MOGE [Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise] is under the control of the military and finances the junta’s crimes.”
Anti-corruption group Publish What You Pay Australia said Total and Chevron’s decision to stop dividends was “a positive first step in supporting the people of Myanmar and will begin to limit the murderous Myanmar military regime’s access to vital foreign currency”.
“We urge them to stop the other 90% of payments flowing to the military from the pipeline,” the group’s director, Clancy Moore, said.
He said that in the 2017-18 financial year, MGTC paid $141m to MOGE in taxes and dividends, made up of $41m in dividends and $100m in taxes.
“Total and Chevron must stop financing the military generals who have blood on their hands and put payments into escrow accounts,” he said.
Chevron said it was aware of calls to shut off the gas and put all payments due to MOGE into an escrow account instead of paying the regime.
“Any actions should be carefully considered to ensure the people of Myanmar are not further disadvantaged by unintended and unpredictable consequences of well-intentioned decisions,” it said in a statement.
“Gas produced by the Yadana project is used to supply electricity for approximately half the population of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, and also for people in Thailand.
“Effectively turning off the power to half of Yangon’s homes, schools and hospitals – in the middle of a state of emergency and a pandemic – risks creating even more hardship.”
In its statement, Total did not address the other payments made to the junta. “Total continues to act as a responsible operator of the Yadana field, maintaining the production of gas in accordance with applicable laws, so as not to disrupt the electricity supply that is vital to the local populations of Myanmar and Thailand,” it said..."
Source/publisher:
"The Guardian" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Oil and gas, Business and the Military, Sanctions, Sanctions - general, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"ကြေညာချက် (၃/၂၀၂၁)
မေလ ၂၆ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်
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အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ လက်အောက်ခံ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုကော်မရှင် (MIC) သည် တရား၀င်ခြင်းမရှိသည့်အတွက် ယင်းအဖွဲ့အစည်းက အတည်ပြုလိုက်သော ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုများ၊ စီမံကိန်းများအား အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရက အသိအမှတ်ပြု လက်ခံမည်မဟုတ်ကြောင်း ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာချက်
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၁။ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့ တွင် နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာအား တရားမဝင်လုယူခဲ့သည် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် ဒီမိုကရေစီနည်းလမ်းတကျ ရွေးချယ်ဖွဲ့စည်းထားသည့် အရပ်သားအစိုးရ၏ ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှု နှင့် နိုင်ငံခြားစီးပွါးဆက်သွယ်ရေး ဝန်ကြီးဌာန ပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီး၊ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုကော်မရှင် (MIC) ဥက္ကဌ ကို ဥပဒေမဲ့ ဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းကာ ကော်မရှင်အား ၎င်းတို့ဩဇာခံ လူပုဂ္ဂိုလ်များဖြင့် အစားထိုးခန့်အပ်ခဲ့ပါသည်။
၂။ ထိုကဲ့သို့ တရားမဝင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ဩဇာခံ လူပုဂ္ဂိုလ်များနှင့် ပြင်ဆင်ပြောင်းလဲဖွဲ့စည်းလိုက်သည့် အချိန်မှစ၍ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုကော်မရှင်၏ ဥပဒေအရ တရားဝင်မှုမှာလည်း အလိုအလျောက် ပျက်ပြယ်သွားခဲ့ပြီးဖြစ်သည့်အတွက် ယင်းကော်မရှင်မှ ဆောင်ရွက်သည့် ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုဆိုင်ရာခွင့်ပြုမိန့်များ နှင့် အတည်ပြုမိန့်များသည် တရားဝင်မှုမရှိသော ခွင့်ပြုမိန့် နှင့် အတည်ပြုမိန့်များသာဖြစ်သည်။
၃။ ၂၀၂၀ ခုနှစ်၊ နိုဝင်ဘာလ ရွေးကောက်ပွဲရလဒ်အရ တရားဝင် ဖြစ်ထွန်းပေါ်ပေါက်လာသော ပြည်ထောင်စုလွှတ်တော် ကိုယ်စားပြုကော်မတီက ခန့်အပ်သည့် ခေတ္တပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီး၊ ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုနှင့် နိုင်ငံခြားစီးပွားဆက်သွယ်ရေး ဝန်ကြီးဌာန၏ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ မတ်လ (၁၃) ရက်စွဲဖြင့် အဆိုပါ ခွင့်ပြုမိန့်များနှင့် အတည်ပြုမိန့်များကို အသိအမှတ်ပြုလက်ခံမည်မဟုတ်ကြောင်း ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သည့် ကြေညာချက်အား အမျိုးသားညီညွှတ်ရေးအစိုးအရ အနေဖြင့် ထပ်လောင်းအတည်ပြုပါသည်။
၄။ ထို့ကြောင့် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁) ရက်နေ့မှစ၍ တရားမဝင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုကော်မရှင် (MIC) မှ ခွင့်ပြုလိုက်သည့် စီမံကိန်းများသည် ခွင့်ပြုမိန့်မရှိသော၊ တရားဝင်မှုမရှိသော၊ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှု ဥပဒေ၊ နည်းဥပဒေများနှင့် ကိုက်ညီမှုမရှိသော စီမံကိန်းများဖြစ်ကြောင်း အဆိုပါစီမံကိန်းများတွင် ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်နေသည့် ဘဏ်များနှင့် ဘဏ္ဍာရေး အဖွဲ့အစည်းများအား သတိပေးလိုက်သည်။
၅။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီက နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာအား တရားမဝင်လုယူထားချိန်တွင် စီမံကိန်းများနှင့် ပတ်သက်၍ စစ်မှန်ပြည့်ဝ သော လူထုပါဝင်မှုနှင့် တွေ့ဆုံဆွေးနွေးမှုများ ဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်ခြင်း မရှိသည့်အတွက် ပတ်ဝန်းကျင် ထိခိုက်မှုဆန်းစစ်ခြင်း (EIA) ကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ တည်ဆဲဥပဒေနှင့်အညီ လက်ရှိကာလတွင် ပြုလုပ်ဆောင်ရွက်နိုင်ခြင်း အလျဉ်းမရှိပါ။ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင် ထိခိုက်မှု ဆန်းစစ်ခြင်း ပြည့်စုံစွာ ပြုလုပ်ဆောင်ရွက် ပြီးစီး၍ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ထိခိုက်မှုဆန်းစစ်ခြင်းဆိုင်ရာ လုပ်ထုံးလုပ်နည်း ၂၀၁၅ (EIA Procedures 2015) နှင့်အညီ လိုအပ်သည့် သက်ဆိုင်ရာခွင့်ပြုချက်များ မထုတ်ပြန်မချင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် မည်သည့်အဓိက စီမံကိန်းကိုမှ အတည်ပြုခွင့် မရှိပါ။
၆။ အဆိုပါ စီမံကိန်းများကို ထောက်ပံ့ပေးသူ (sponsors) များသည် စီမံကိန်းများ အကောင်အထည်ဖော် ဆောင်ရွက်ခြင်း၊ တည်ဆောက်ခြင်း နှင့် လည်ပတ်ခြင်းများကြောင့် သဘာဝပတ်ဝန်းကျင်နှင့် ပြည်သူလူထုအပေါ် တိုက်ရိုက် (သို့မဟုတ်) သွယ်ဝိုက်၍ ထိခိုက်နစ်နာ ပျက်စီးဆုံးရှူံးမှုများ အားလုံးအတွက် တာဝန်ယူရမည့်အပြင် မည်သည့်နစ်နာကြေးပုံစံကိုမှ ပြန်လည် တောင်းဆိုပိုင်ခွင့်မရှိကြောင်း သိစေအပ်သည်။
၇။ ထိုကဲ့သို့စီမံကိန်းများတွင် ပါဝင်ဆောင်ရွက်နေသည့် ကုမ္ပဏီများ၏ဒါရိုက်တာများ၊ အရာရှိများနှင့် စီနီယာမန်နေဂျာများသည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုဥပဒေ ၂၀၁၆ ၊ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင်ထိန်းသိမ်းရေးဥပဒေ ၂၀၁၂ ၊ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒေ ၂၀၁၄၊ အဂတိလိုက်စားမှုတိုက်ဖျက်ရေးဥပဒ ၂၀၁၃ နှင့် ရာဇသတ်ကြီးပုဒ်မများနှင့်အညီ အရေးယူခံရမည်ဖြစ်သည်။
၈။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရသည် မြန်မာပြည်သူလူထုအတွက် ရေရှည်အကျိူးစီးပွါး ဖြစ်ထွန်းစေမည့် တာဝန်ယူမှု၊ တာဝန်ခံမှုရှိသည့် ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုများအား အစဉ်အမြဲကြိုဆိုပြီး လွယ်ကူအဆင်ပြေစေရန် ပံ့ပိုးကူညီသွားမည်ဖြစ်သည်။ စီးပွါးရေးလုပ်ငန်းများနှင့် ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံသူများ အနေဖြင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ တည်ဆဲဥပဒေ၊ နည်းဥပဒေများကို အသိအမှတ်ပြုလေးစား ရန်၊ စီးပွါးရေးနှင့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးဆိုင်ရာ လမ်းညွှန်ချက်အခြေခံမူများကိုလိုက်နာရန် နှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ တရားဥပဒေစိုးမိုးရေး၊ ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး နှင့် ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေးကို ဆုတ်ယုတ်စေသည့် ရင်းနှီးမြုပ်နှံမှုများအား ဆောင်ရွက်ခြင်းမပြုကြရန် အလေးအနက် တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။
တင်ထွန်းနိုင်
ပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီး
စီမံကိန်း၊ ဘဏ္ဍာရေးနှင့် ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုဝန်ကြီးဌာန..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment - NUG
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
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Local defence forces armed with homemade guns are inflicting heavy blows on the Tatmadaw, but some groups worry how long they can hold out without greater support from the National Unity Government.
Description:
"Early on April 2, U Nay Win Tun’s phone rang in the darkness of his home in Kani Township.
On the line was a contact in Thabyay Aye village, some 100km to the south in Yinmabin Township, elsewhere in the arid plains of Sagaing Region. He sounded panicked; two hours earlier, at 3am, he said, around 100 soldiers and police had descended on Thabyay Aye to arrest Ashin Thaw Pa Ka, a revered monk who had emerged as a leader of anti-coup resistance in the area.
A shoot-out erupted and four injured villagers were detained, the contact said, and the security forces were offering to hand them over in exchange for the monk. But the people of Thabyay Aye were refusing to do a deal and hoping they could stall the junta troops until reinforcements arrived.
Nay Win Tun didn’t hesitate. He slung a tumi gun – a homemade, single-shot hunting rifle that is common in the area – across his back, placed two grenades he’d recently purchased from an ethnic armed group in a gunny sack, and hopped on his motorbike.
As the sun rose to his left above the Chindwin River and he drew closer to Thabyay Aye, Nay Win Tun saw many tumi-armed villagers – from Yinmabin and Kani as well as Monywa and Pale townships of Sagaing – travelling in the same direction. Shortly after he arrived, there were several thousand fighters gathered near Thabyay Aye, he said.
A three-hour pitched battle ensued, with the police and soldiers putting up fierce resistance in spite of the fighters massed against them. Eventually, weight of numbers won out, and they were forced to retreat. Witnesses and civilian fighters told Frontier that at least a dozen police and soldiers were killed and there were no civilian casualties. Frontier could not confirm these numbers independently, and Tatmadaw spokesperson Brigadier-General Zaw Min Tun could not be reached for comment.....A grassroots revolt: For the villagers with their tumi guns, the battle at Thabyay Aye on April 2 was a morale-boosting victory; regime troops have not returned to the village since, and Thaw Pa Ka remains free.
Although they had started forming village defence forces a month earlier – around the time the junta stopped using water cannon and stun grenades against protesters and instead began firing live rounds – Thabyay Aye was their first major engagement with the security forces.
Around the same time, protesters also took up the fight further north in Kalay and Tamu, swapping their protest placards for tumi guns and other improvised weapons.
In the two months since, conflict between regime forces and civilian militias has escalated and spread across Sagaing Region and other parts of the country, including Mandalay and Magway regions and Chin and Kayah states.
It is largely a grassroots, bottom-up rebellion, in which villagers have spontaneously risen up with whatever arms they can find.
Around Yinmabin, the monk Thaw Pa Ka had been integral to establishing the village defence forces. Together with other community leaders, he started running basic combat courses for residents, who took part with the only weapons they had – their tumi guns.
Further to the north, Nay Win Tun had helped set up village defence forces across parts of both Kani and Yinmabin along the west bank of the Chindwin, opposite Monywa. Like Thaw Pa Ka, he had concluded that the situation demanded more than peaceful protest.
“I knew on the day of the coup [on February 1] that an armed revolution would be necessary, and I began acquiring as many weapons as I could,” he said.
But Nay Win Tun is no battle-hardened insurgent. The 41-year-old father-of-two smiles often and is quick to laugh. For decades he worked as a timber and cattle merchant, rising early each day to tend to his herd. His voice is thick with the anyar accent that denotes a person who lives in upper Myanmar.
Nay Win Tun first used guns as a teenager; his father was a police officer, and together with his friends taught the young man how to fire revolvers and old carbine rifles. But Nay Win Tun insists most of his knowledge has been picked up recently, in the wake of the coup.
After the clash in Thabyay Aye, Nay Win Tun, Thaw Pa Ka and other local leaders realised their strength lay mostly in numbers; with only limited weaponry, it was important to work together. So, they formed a defensive alliance they call the United Villages Force, bringing together defence forces in 80 villages in Yinmabin, Pale, Kani and Mingin townships.
But at the same time, they also knew they needed to remain nimble; gathering in large numbers for extended periods would make them an easy target. They therefore appointed a leader for each participating village, and members were organised into 10-person units or cells. The larger villages have many cells, while smaller ones might have just a few.
“It’s hard for the security forces to crack down when we are so dispersed. Staying in small teams also makes it easier to train recruits without being noticed,” Nay Win Tun said, adding, “At the same time, it’s like a big network – we’re all connected. If they target a village, the forces from other villages can quickly come and surround them.”
Still, the lack of advanced weapons remains a major problem, he said.
Just 25 kilometres from Kani, the Sagaing Region capital Monywa is home to the Tatmadaw’s North Western Command, which nominally has dozens of infantry battalions at its disposal. The Tatmadaw also has artillery, helicopters and drones to monitor civilian forces. It’s nothing like an equal fight.
Still, Nay Win Tun says the sheer number of people joining the civil defence forces meant there was an opportunity to hit the Tatmadaw hard.
“If each member of our people’s forces had the same weapons as the Tatmadaw, we would seize all of Monywa District … we would win the revolution.”...Seeking support: To improve their firepower, local defence forces are looking to the parallel government and ethnic armed groups.
While the defence forces formed organically, they have been given a tick of approval by the National Unity Government, which was formed in mid-April by the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw. Although the ousted lawmakers that lead the NUG and CRPH are largely from the National League for Democracy, they have discarded the party’s longstanding commitment to non-violence.
On May 5, more than a month after the fighting at Thabyay Aye, the NUG announced the creation of the People’s Defence Force as a national resistance army and invited the village defence forces to come under its auspices. Many have accordingly pledged allegiance to the NUG and rebranded themselves as local chapters of the PDF, although there is so far little evidence of a centralised command-and-control system.
The NUG said that the PDF would later be integrated into a “federal” army together with ethnic armed groups, with whom they are coordinating informally in the meantime.
NLD lawmakers like U Myint Htwe, 45, who won the Sagaing Region Hluttaw seat of Ye-U 2 in the 2020 election, have played an important role in connecting the newly formed defence forces to the NUG and ethnic armed groups.
Myint Htwe said he and other lawmakers in Sagaing Region had been providing daily updates on the local situation to the NUG defence minister, U Yee Mon, a poet and former political prisoner who also won a seat for the NLD in last year’s election.
“I’ve also been speaking with ethnic armed groups about how they can support the defence forces with weapons training,” he said.
But he conceded that many local armed resistance groups that have sprung up in the Bamar heartland have found it difficult to access better guns and training.
“Since we are very far from ethnic armed organisations, we don’t have any weapons except tumi guns. And even if we had enough money, it’s really hard to buy light weapons, such as pistols,” he said.
Even so, these Bamar groups have so far received more help from ethnic armed groups than the NUG.
Ko Aung Kyaw, a student activist and leading member of the Monywa General Strike Committee, said a local PDF has sent about 100 youth from the town to train with ethnic armed groups in border areas, and more have done so independently. Some have already returned, and are in turn training local fighters.
Still, he’s hopeful the NUG will come through for them in future.
“There are indeed many challenges, but we’ve spoken with [NUG defence minister Yee Mon] about our need for weapons and other support, and the defence minister has told us that the NUG plans to support our needs,” Aung Kyaw told Frontier on May 4, while declining to give further details for security reasons.
While they wait for weapons and training, Sagaing’s civil defence forces continue to strike out at the Tatmadaw, with deadly consequences for both sides.
On May 5, villagers with tumi guns ambushed three boats of Tatmadaw soldiers as they travelled upstream on the Chindwin.
The villagers waited on both sides of the river near Upper Kin village in Kani Township before opening fire, forcing two boatloads of soldiers to flee and the third to abandon their vessel midstream, according to some of those who took part in the attack.
They said at least 10 Tatmadaw personnel, including the acting battalion commander Major Thant Sin Myint, were killed, while six of the tumi-armed attackers also died in the exchange. Villagers also later relieved the abandoned boat of the explosives on board.
The Tatmadaw waited six days to respond. On May 11, troops descended on Thamin Chan village tract, less than 10 kilometres west of Upper Kin – between the river and the Monywa-Kalaywa highway – where they believed the leaders of the ambush were living. Most of the men who were healthy enough to do so fled into the jungle, but soldiers arrested 30 people and established a base at the village of Thamin Chan.
The following day, soldiers also entered Zee Bin Dwin village on the Monywa-Kalaywa road, about 27km from Monywa, in an effort to find more of the participants in the attack. Residents said the soldiers shot indiscriminately, stole money and killed cattle and livestock. Around 40 people were arrested, including some women. “They treated everyone as though they were an enemy. We just had to run as quickly as we could before they arrived,” said one resident of Zee Bin Dwin.
On May 22, meanwhile, the rebranded Kani PDF reportedly attacked a Tatmadaw convoy, forcing it to retreat, with casualties reported on both sides. Three days later, reports said an unknown group attacked five Tatmadaw vessels travelling upriver to Kani, apparently seeking to reinforce the local garrison, and the Kani PDF ambushed troops heading to Kani by road.....The cost of victory: About 100km north of Monywa, on the scenic road to Kalaywa, is a group of villages known as Seh Ywar Chaung.
The name means “Ten village corner”, but there are now 14 villages in the Seh Ywar Chaung area, which is close to the remote and rugged Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park.
As in other areas of Sagaing, the residents of Seh Ywar Chaung quickly formed a defence force as the military began brutally crushing peaceful protests.
On April 17, they were told that a convoy of military vehicles was heading their way through the mountains. While around 3,000 villagers fled into the nearby forest, others prepared an ambush.
“Three [Tatmadaw] trucks came from Mingin at about 4pm. We had taken positions on both sides of the road to Kalaywa and … opened fire on the first truck,” said U Hla Zaw Moe, 34, from Htantabin village, part of Seh Ywar Chaung.
He and several other fighters told Frontier that about 2,000 people took part in the attack – about two-thirds of them armed with tumi guns and the rest with crossbows and slingshots.
They claimed to have killed at least 30 Tatmadaw soldiers and destroyed one truck, while suffering just one loss themselves.
By about 7:30pm, the villagers had retreated into the forest, while the Tatmadaw convoy established a post nearby, Hla Zaw Moe recalled.
The next day, the defenders, although exhausted from the previous 24 hours, attacked the convoy again. But just minutes after they launched their offensive, four additional trucks of troops arrived from Mingin. Following a three-hour battle, in which Tatmadaw soldiers fired mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, the civilian forces were left with little choice but to retreat.
The two days of fighting left three villagers and around 40 Tatmadaw soldiers dead in total, according to members of the defence force. Frontier could not confirm the numbers independently, and the Tatmadaw has not publicly acknowledged the attack.
Among the locals who died was Ko Aung Zaw Oo, 29, who had proved himself in a previous battle. On April 16, the day before the fighting began in Seh Ywar Chaung, he was involved in a separate clash with the Tatmadaw in Yar Gyi village tract, about halfway between Seh Ywar Chaung and Monywa.
Aung Zaw Oo was injured and detained by Tatmadaw soldiers on April 17. Three days later his body was found in the forest; he appeared to have been stabbed to death. He left behind a wife, Ma Nwe Kyi, and two sons, aged two and seven.
“He told me he was going to fight [in Yar Gyi] and said if he survived, he would return,” Nwe Kyi said. “He called the next day at 4am, before the fighting began [in Seh Ywar Chaung], saying he was worried about me and the kids. It was the last time I spoke to him.”
Nwe Kyi spoke to Frontier at a ceremony to honour the fallen fighters. The event was organised by Ma Cherry, a leading member of the Monywa General Strike Committee, and included a donation for those who had been forced to flee their homes because of the fighting. Cherry, a prominent activist who is wanted by the junta, held Nwe Kyi’s hand throughout the event, consoling the widow as she fought back tears.
“He was trying to build a wooden house for us,” Nwe Kyi said of her husband. “He had already laid the foundation on our land … but since the economic situation is not good, we were spending all of our income on food.”
Another victim of the fighting at Seh Ywar Chaung was Ko Aung Myo Oo, 23. He is survived by his wife of the same age, who is seven months’ pregnant, and their six-year-old daughter.
“He never spoke about what he was doing,” the widow, who asked not to be named, told Frontier. “I haven’t even told our daughter that he is dead – she thinks her father is travelling somewhere.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Frontier Myanmar" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Sagaing Division, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Local URL:
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"On February 1, 2021, the Myanmar armed forces (known as the Tatmadaw) seized control of the country, following a general election that the National League for Democracy party won by a landslide.
The military have since declared a state of emergency to last for at least a year, and numerous countries have condemned the takeover and subsequent violent crackdown on protestors. Over the past three months, from February to May 2021, hundreds of people, including children, have been killed and many injured during the protests.
The military-run State Administrative Council has targeted doctors and other health workers for taking a leading role in the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM). Doctors and nurses have been served with warrants and arrests, health workers have been injured while providing care to protestors, ambulances have been destroyed, and health facilities have been raided.
This document is the result of collaboration between Insecurity Insight, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), and Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights (CPHHR) as part of the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition (SHCC). It highlights reported incidents of violence against health workers, facilities, and transport in Myanmar between 11 February and 11 May 2021. It does not include information on violence against patients.
The incidents referred to are based on the dataset 11 February - 11 May 2021 Violence Against Health Care in Myanmar Data, which is available on the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX)..."
Source/publisher:
Insecurity Insight via "Reliefweb" (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Health Workers Strike, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Public Health, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Two other women who were shot during the raid by regime forces were among seven people taken into custody
Description:
"A 24-year-old woman was shot and killed in Magwe Region’s Salin Township on Tuesday night during a raid carried out in response to anti-coup graffiti.
About 70 soldiers and police stormed the village of Tawseint at around 7:30pm on Tuesday after residents painted slogans opposing the education system under the military regime on the gate of a local high school.
“They were firing non-stop, at least 90 or 100 rounds. I also had to flee,” said a villager who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
Seven people, including two women who had been shot while trying to escape, were arrested after the raid, he added.
Saung Hnin Hmon, the mother a six-year-old girl, was shot in the head and killed instantly. Her body was returned to the village the following day.
The whereabouts of her daughter, who went missing after the raid, remains unknown.
An elderly woman, a 13-year-old girl, and a disabled woman who tried to flee on one leg were also arrested, but were later released, according to a village resident.
Most of Tawseint’s roughly 2,000 residents have gone into hiding since the junta’s forces returned on Wednesday morning, local sources told Myanmar Now.
“Many people are still in the forest. Those who remained in the village don’t dare try to leave now, and those in the forest are afraid to return to their homes,” one source said.
“We have not had a grain of rice to eat the whole day. We are still hiding in the forest,” he added.
Tawseint is located near three military bases. Light infantry brigades 153, 254, and 255 are all stationed in the area.
At least 828 people have been killed by the regime since it seized power on February 1, according to a tally by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.
As resistance to the coup continues, more than half of the nation’s teachers are on strike and some 90% of students refuse to enroll under the regime’s education system, according to the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Women's rights, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Police chief Than Hlaing once reportedly threatened to cut off his brother’s head because he took up arms against the Myanmar military
Description:
"They were two brothers with radically different ideologies who became bitter enemies during the 1988 democratic uprising–even once meeting on the battlefield.
One joined the army and rose through the ranks to become a senior member of the military establishment. The other joined mass protests and later travelled to Myanmar’s jungle-covered borderlands to take up arms against the junta.
Now, with the country once again in the grips of a revolution, their rivalry is over.
Soe Moe Hlaing, the veteran democracy activist, was murdered in regime custody on Monday evening after soldiers grabbed him from his village in Bago Region. The 53-year-old was the 827th person to be murdered at the hands of the new regime, according to one tally.
His death comes almost four months after his older brother, Than Hlaing, was appointed Myanmar’s chief of police, making him one of the key figures overseeing the recent campaign of terror against Myanmar’s defiant population.
A lieutenant general, Than Hlaing was also appointed deputy home affairs minister on February 2, the day after military chief Min Aung Hlaing toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.
Both the EU and the US have blacklisted Than Hlaing for his role overseeing the crackdown, during which more than 5,400 people have been arrested. He previously served as the head of Eastern Central Command and North Western Command.
Soe Moe Hlaing, also known as Mae Gyi, was arrested in Zaung Tu village on Saturday along with eight others. It is unclear why they were detained.
His wife, Myat Muyar Win, told Myanmar Now that soldiers from the local 901st Artillery Operations Command took her husband, and that he was reportedly beaten with the butt of a gun during the arrest.
Two days later, she received a phone call from a regime official telling her that he was dead. “They said he died of some disease. But my husband was healthy and did not have any diseases,” she said.
The family were not allowed to take Soe Moe Hlaing’s body home and were told it would be cremated by soldiers at a military cemetery in Mingaladon on Tuesday. Than Hlaing reportedly came to the cemetery to look at the body before the cremation, said Myat Muyar Win.
If true, it is the closest contact he has had with Soe Moe Hlaing in many years. “The brothers had no communication with each other,” said Myat Muyar Win. In a separate interview with the BBC’s Burmese service, she said: “During our 15 years of marriage, I had never seen them talk. No contact at all.”
The brothers came from a family of 11 siblings. After taking part in the 1988 uprising, Soe Moe Hlaing joined the All Burma Students' Democratic Front (ABSDF), a revolutionary armed group in which he served as a battalion commander.
The move infuriated his army officer brother, said Tun Tun Kyaw Oo, who spent time in Insein Prison with Soe Moe Hlaing.
“Than Hlaing sent Mae Gyi letters challenging him to a fight,” he told Myanmar Now. “He said he would kill his brother and cut off his head because he joined the armed group.”
Than Hlaing got his fight. He was sent to the region where Soe Moe Hlaing was based to take on the ABSDF. “In 1989 he exchanged shots with his brother on a Karen battlefield,” Tun Tun Kyaw Oo said.
The next year, Soe Moe Hlaing left the ABSDF–it’s unclear why–and went to Yangon.
Then in December 1991 he was arrested and sentenced to 13 years in prison for supporting the ABSDF’s underground activities, and for taking part in a campaign to demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was then in the middle of her first stint under house arrest.
He was released in 2001, and later threw himself into volunteer community work, helping people in a number of villages along the Bago River. “He did all the local development work such as teaching, digging wells and helping locals get electricity,” Myat Muyar Win said.
Unlike in 1988, he was not on the frontlines of the current movement to overthrow the regime, but he offered encouragement and assistance to those who were, she said.
Soe Moe Hlaing left behind five children; the youngest is a year and half old..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-27
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"An American journalist working in Myanmar was detained by local authorities Monday, his family and his news organization told CNN.
Danny Fenster, 37, was stopped at the Yangon airport as he tried to board a flight out of the country, his brother Bryan Fenster said.
Fenster, a US citizen originally from Detroit, Michigan, works for the news site Frontier Myanmar in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon.
"Frontier's managing editor, Danny Fenster, was detained at Yangon International Airport this morning shortly before he was due to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur," the news organization said in a statement.
"We do not know why Danny was detained and have not been able to contact him since this morning. We are concerned for his wellbeing and call for his immediate release. Our priorities right now are to make sure he is safe and to provide him with whatever assistance he needs," the statement said.
The news organization also said it understands Fenster has been transferred to Insein Prison near Yangon. Insein is one of the country's most notorious prisons, known for its deplorable conditions.
Speaking to CNN Monday evening, Bryan Fenster said the family doesn't have much information on his brother's situation.
"I can only assume being a journalist in a country that's run by the military who wants to control the narrative, he was flagged being a journalist when he was at the airport. Can't begin to imagine why it happened," he said. "He was on valid work papers, valid visas, passports, everything. He was voluntarily leaving the country to come visit family, so we can't see what the issue is."
Bryan Fenster said the family are working with elected officials in Michigan and said the US state department is aware of his brother's case.
"We're very hopeful with all the support, we'll be getting him out as soon as possible," he said.
Bryan Fenster said earlier that his brother was flying to the United States to surprise his parents, whom he had not seen for over two years. The family had been concerned about the safety of being a journalist in Myanmar following February's military coup, and felt shocked and worried at the news of his detention, Bryan said, calling it a "nightmare."
A US Department of State official, who used another name for Myanmar, said the agency was monitoring the situation. "We are aware of reports of a US citizen detained in Burma. We take seriously our responsibility to assist US citizens abroad, and are monitoring the situation. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment."
The detention comes almost four months after Myanmar's military seized power in a coup on February 1, overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi and detaining government officials. Junta security forces have brutally suppressed almost daily protests across the country, killing more than 820 people and arresting more than 5,400, according to advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
The junta has also attempted to silence the country's media by revoking independent publishing and broadcast licenses, raiding newspaper offices and targeting journalists for arrest. Among the thousands of people detained since the coup are 85 journalists, including 48 still in detention, according to Reporting Asean.
Fenster is among a number of foreign journalists to be detained in Myanmar since the coup.
Japanese journalist Yuki Kitazumi was arrested in April and charged with spreading false information. He was held in Insein Prison until the junta released him two weeks ago and returned him to Tokyo.
Many detained reporters are charged with crimes under section 505a — a law amended by the military that makes it a crime punishable by up to three years in prison for publishing or circulating comments that "cause fear" or spread "false news."
In a statement, the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand (FCCT) said it was not clear whether Fenster had been charged with any offense.
"The arrests of journalists and the violence used by the security forces on anyone caught trying to report or record their actions, constitute an extraordinary attack on freedom of expression in Myanmar, and should be widely condemned," the FCCT statement said.
The detention comes as ousted civilian leader Suu Kyi attended a court hearing Monday and met with her lawyers — her first appearance in person since the coup.
In its nightly news bulletin, Myanmar state TV aired the first images of Suu Kyi since the coup. She was detained in the early hours before the military seized power and had not been seen in public since.
The images showed Suu Kyi in the dock with her hands in her lap and wearing a surgical mask. Beside her sat ousted President Win Myint and the former mayor of the capital Naypyidaw, Myo Aung.
Suu Kyi faces a range of charges, from illegally possessing walkie-talkie radios to violating the official secrets act -- the most serious charge which carries a potential prison sentence of up to 14 years.
Last week, Myanmar's junta-appointed election commission said it would dissolve the ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) party because of what it claims was election fraud. The military overthrew the NLD government alleging mass voter discrepancies, though the electoral commission at the time rejected the army's complaints.
According to her lawyer Khin Maung Zaw, Suu Kyi struck a defiant note, saying of the NLD: "Our party grew out of the people so it will exist as long as people support it."
Source/publisher:
"CNN" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Sub-title:
The Karenni People’s Defence Force went on the offensive over the weekend, but now faces an overwhelming show of force
Description:
"As armed resistance to the Myanmar military’s February 1 coup continues to grow around the country, a new front has opened in the struggle between regime forces and civilians fighting back with homemade weapons.
Since late last week, major clashes have been reported in an area of southern Shan State and northern Kayah (Karenni) State about 200km east of the capital Naypyitaw and about the same distance north of Kayin State’s Hpapun (Mutraw) District, which has also seen a dramatic escalation of hostilities.
Unlike the situation in Kayin State, where the conflict is between the military and the Karen National Liberation Army, an established ethnic armed group, the fighting in Shan State’s Pekhon Township and Demoso, Bawlakhe and Loikaw in Kayah State mainly involves regime forces and the Karenni People’s Defence Force (KPDF), part of the nationwide anti-coup resistance movement.....
The KPDF goes on the offensive:
The KPDF went into action last Friday after soldiers entered Demoso, a town less than 20km south of the Kayah State capital Loikaw, the day before and opened fire in residential areas. According to the KPDF, the regime’s troops also used explosives during their assault on the town, which resulted in the arrest of 13 people, including four civil servants who had defected from the regime.
The KPDF’s first response was to seize and burn down three outposts in Demoso and Bawlakhe townships with the help of a local ethnic armed group. Three police officers were killed during those initial clashes.
The group made it clear that it had prepared carefully ahead of the attacks, which it saw as part of the nationwide resistance movement called for by the National Unity Government.
“When the People’s Defence Force was formed, we started setting up township communication offices. We built our own strongholds to protect people. We warned [the junta’s authorities] from the beginning not to cross the line,” said a KPDF member who was involved in the fighting in Demoso, speaking on condition of anonymity.
After the regime faced casualties in Demoso, it approached the KPDF for negotiations the next day, he added.
However, the KPDF members did not respond to this overture because they didn’t trust the military council, which they knew was sending reinforcements to Demoso.
Rather than back off, the civilian-led resistance force overran another local police outpost on Sunday morning, this time in Moebye, a town in southern Shan State’s Pekhon Township, on the border with Kayah State.
Regime troops suffered heavy casualties in the attack on the Moebye police outpost, where at least 20 of the junta’s forces were killed and four police officers were taken into custody by the KPDF.
“They call it a police station, but there were only three or four police there and all the others were soldiers. We ambushed the station because it had become a military outpost,” said the KPDF member.
The Karenni youth-led resistance force spent two days preparing to overrun the police station, he added. On Sunday morning, they surrounded it and warned the soldiers and police inside to drop their weapons and surrender, he said.
“If they had just surrendered their weapons, it would have been better for both sides. There wouldn’t have been so many casualties, and we wouldn’t have had to waste our time or bullets,” he said.
At around 9:30am, the KPDF opened fire from outside the entrance to the station and a shootout began.
“Some of them ran, and some of them took cover to fight back. But most fled, and there weren’t enough holding us back, so there were a lot of casualties,” said the KPDF member, who estimated that there were around 30 soldiers and police at the station.
Three hours later, between 15 and 20 members of the regime’s forces were killed, and four more were captured alive, he added.
One KPDF member was killed, and four others were injured.....Fending off reinforcements: Later the same day, the KPDF launched two more attacks to prevent military reinforcements from entering the area.
The reinforcements were coming in three trucks from Pekhon in the north and six from Loikaw in the south. The first group was attacked in Hkwang Mai, a village on the way from Pekhon to Moebye.
“Some trees were cut down and put across the road in Hkwang Mai, so they had to start walking from there. There was a short fight and the PDF members there had to retreat a bit. But the reinforcements didn’t get to the police station in Moebye until after we overran it,” the KPDF member said.
The six trucks from Loikaw were ambushed at Kone Thar, a village about halfway between Loikaw and Moebye.
“The PDF youths in Kone Thar also held them off for a while. After a brief shootout, they retreated. These reinforcements also arrived only after we’d captured the station. They had to walk the whole way,” said the KPDF member.
The KPDF burned down any structure in the police station compound that the soldiers could use for shelter and dispersed before the reinforcements reached the scene.
“After we scattered, the reinforcements went into the station to observe the situation of their fellow soldiers. Then they started firing their guns. They kept it up late into the night, threatening residents,” the KPDF member said.
Although Light Infantry Battalion 422 is stationed only a mile away, near the Moebye dam—the main dam of the Lawpita hydropower project—it didn’t send any troops to the police station to defend it. Instead, it simply fired at the KPDF fighters from a distance, according to a member of the group who took part in the attack.
Likewise, troops based at an outpost in Waryikawkhu, a village about five miles from the Moebye police station, fired heavy artillery but did not provide any other support, he added.
The Global New Light of Myanmar, a junta-run newspaper, said on Monday that “some of the security members were killed in the attack” in Moebye and some were still “missing”.
The report described the local resistance force as “terrorists” and said the police outpost was attacked by a combined force of about 100 armed fighters.
Resistance fighters in Demoso also attempted to capture a police station in the town during a three-hour battle on Sunday afternoon, local media reported. However, the KPDF members were forced to retreat when army reinforcements, including some in armoured vehicles, arrived.....Civilians fall victim to reprisals: Following the attacks, regime forces started raiding local villages and terrorising civilians by opening fire with guns and heavy artillery.
One victim was a 50-year-old woman who was injured after being shot by soldiers while riding from Moebye to Loikaw on her motorbike.
At around 8pm on Sunday, a man on a motorbike was also shot on the Moebye-Loikaw road. He sustained a stomach wound and later died.
The next day, the military imposed day-time curfews in Moebye and Loikaw.
The junta’s armed forces are now stationed at the burned-out police station and a football field near Moebye, according to a local resident. He said the soldiers fired shots randomly on their way to Loikaw and Pekhon.
Around 50 youths were arrested on Monday but were later released after questioning. Those still in Moebye are currently taking shelter in the town’s churches, the local added.
More than 10,000 villagers from the surrounding area have fled their homes, while many inside the town are unable to leave due to the regime’s campaign to crush the armed uprising with lethal force.
“Some people don’t want to leave, but those who do can’t anyway, because there’s no way out. They’re afraid they’ll be shot at if they try to leave,” said a Moebye resident who spoke to Myanmar Now on Tuesday.
At least nine civilians have been killed since Monday, including a young man who was shot in the head by regime troops who had tied his hands behind his back.
Lt-Gen Soe Htut, the junta’s minister for home affairs, arrived in Kayah on Tuesday. The junta-run Global New Light of Myanmar reported on Wednesday that Lt-Gen Soe Htut had “inspected” Moebye and Pekhon police stations and provided "cash assistance" to the police, soldiers, and their family members from coup council chairman Snr-Gen Min Aung Hlaing.
The report, however, did not mention the casualties at and damage to the Moebye police outpost after it was attacked by Karenni resistance fighters.
It said Lt-Gen Soe Htut also visited Loikaw prison to inspect “prison healthcare services, accommodation and meals.” Meanwhile, there were also reports that the military was using drones as part of its offensive against resistance forces.
“There were drones. Every time one passed, shells fell immediately. They were so fast we couldn’t keep up with them. They’re very advanced,” said a KPDF fighter from Demoso.
On Monday, multiple military planes were seen landing at Loikaw’s airport, carrying soldiers and equipment.
Armed only with handmade weapons, the KPDF fighters are up against a military that is far better equipped. There are even concerns that the regime could start carrying out airstrikes, as it has been doing in Kayin State since late March.
Despite the prospect of an overwhelming show of force, however, many resistance fighters remain convinced that it is still possible to defeat the junta.
“I’d like to call on the entire nation to rise up. Then this dictatorship could end in a short time,” said one KPDF member.
Editor's Note: This article was updated on May 26 to include details of Lt-Gen Soe Htet's visit..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"This is a list of children under 18 who were brutally killed by the military junta between Feb. ((15) to May (15), 2021 in Myanmar. Totally 73 children, 63 boys and 9 girls were executed across the country.
Some were shot during the street protest and some were killed when the military searched their homes and intentionally shot to them. Some were shot while the kids were playing on the street.
The recent death of children in current intensive fights in Mindat, Kani, Demosoe have not been documented in this list. More update list from other areas will be released soon.
Please kindly provide any human rights violations to the Ministry of Human rights page.
Justice for all!...ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ (၁၅) ရက်ကနေ မေလ (၁၅) ရက်နေ့အတွင်း စစ်အုပ်စုရဲ့ သတ်ဖြတ်မှုကြောင့် သေဆုံးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ကလေးသူငယ်များစာရင်းပါ။ ဒီရက်ပိုင်းအတွင်းတနိုင်ငံလုံးမှာ အသက် (၁၈) နှစ်အောက်ကလေး စုစုပေါင်း (၇၃) ဦးသတ်ဖြတ်ခံခဲ့ရပါတယ်။ ယောကျ်ားလေး (၆၃) ဦး မိန်းကလေး (၉) ဦးဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
လမ်းပေါ်မှာ ဆန္ဒထုတ်ဖော်ရင်း ပစ်သတ်ခံရသလို နေအိမ်ထဲဝင်ရောက်သတ်ဖြတ်ခံရတာတွေလဲ ရှိပါတယ်။ တချို့ကလေးတွေက အိမ်ပြင်မှာ ကစားနေရင်း သေနတ်ထိမှန် သေဆုံးခဲ့တာတွေလဲ ပါဝင်ပါတယ်။
အခုစာရင်းထဲမှာ အခုနောက်ပိုင်း တမြို့လုံးကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား ချေမှုန်းတိုက်ခိုက်ခံရတဲ့ မင်းတပ်၊ ကနီ၊ ဒီမောဆိုးစတဲ့ဒေသတွေက သေဆုံးစာရင်းတွေမပါသေးပါဘူး။ ဒီစာရင်းတွေကို နောက်ထပ်ထပ်တိုးစုဆောင်းတင်ပြပါမယ်။ မိုးမောက်မြို့နယ်အတွင်း အသက် (၁၂) နှစ်အရွယ်ကလေးတယောက် လက်နက်ကြီးထိမှန်ပြီး သေဆုံးတာမျိုးစတဲ့ သတင်းတွေ ထပ်ရထားပါတယ်။
ပြည်သူတွေအနေနဲ့လဲ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးသတင်းများကို စုဆောင်းပေးပို့ဖို့ တိုက်တွန်းပန်ကြားပါတယ်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Human Rights
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Children's rights: reports of violations in Burma against more than one ethnic group, Children, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
280.21 KB
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Summary:
"Civilian resistance fighters in eastern Myanmar’s Kayah State seized and destroyed a police security checkpoint north of Loikaw, the Kayah capital, on Wednesday morning.
The Karenni People’s...
Description:
"Civilian resistance fighters in eastern Myanmar’s Kayah State seized and destroyed a police security checkpoint north of Loikaw, the Kayah capital, on Wednesday morning.
The Karenni People’s Defense Force (KPDF) burned the captured outpost in Htee Se Khar in Loilen Lay town, 15 miles north of Loikaw and close to the border with Shan State, according to a member of the KPDF.
The attack comes as military tensions rise in Kayah and security has been tightened in downtown Loikaw, with junta forces checking the cell phones of residents. Many people are staying in their houses, while workers from other areas of the country are returning to their hometowns.
Fighting between regime soldiers and the KPDF broke out on May 21 and over forty junta troops, including police, have since been killed. The KPDF has attacked and destroyed police stations in Kayah State’s Demoso Township and Shan State’s Pekon Township and Moebyel Town. Regime forces have fired artillery into community quarters and villages following the shootouts with the KPDF.
Clashes continued in Demoso Township at dawn on Wednesday. A KPDF member said a woman was killed by junta forces gunfire, while another man was seriously injured.
Five KPDF members were confirmed killed after heavy fighting near the Ngwe Taung Dam in Demoso Township on Tuesday.
“During the May 25 fighting, we lost five of our men. We also heard there were many casualties from the junta side. However, we can only confirm seeing five dead regime soldiers,” said the KPDF member on Wednesday.
Displaced People
Some 70,000 residents from around 150 villages in Demoso, Loikaw and Shan State’s Pekon Township have been displaced in the five days of fighting since Friday, according to relief workers.
In Pekon and Moebyel Town, over 20,000 people have been displaced, while more than 50,000 are displaced in Kayah State, including 10,000 in Demoso and 6,000 in Nam Mae Khon, according to Pekon, Loikaw and Demoso residents.
One relief worker said the villagers have fled into the hills, while town residents are sheltering at monasteries, churches and in elders homes. “We need shelters in the rural areas with the rainy season beginning. The elders and children also need medicine,” he said.
Another relief worker in Pekon said the town residents and people from nearby villages have fled their homes. The displaced villagers are taking temporary shelter at five different places, as well as scattering across Pekon and Moebyel to stay with relatives. He added that they are in need of emergency help, as the basic food items the villagers brought with them will run out after a week if the fighting continues.
A spokesman of the management committee for the internally displaced people (IDP) in Pikin Kaw Khu, a village near the Kayah-Shan border, said that there are about 1,500 people who fled from Pekin Kaw Khu and Hawyi Kaw Khu villages. They have brought some food with them, but if they are going to be displaced for a long time, people will need rice, medicine and shelter from the elements.
“We opened an IDP camp in Pekin Kaw Khu. But after artillery fire landed in the camp, we now have to go to another place,” he said.
One villager from Kone Thar village said that more than 2,000 people have fled alongside him. “We have rice, but not enough for a long time. We need shelters, clean water and medicine,” said the villager.
Relief workers, camp management leaders and locals who The Irrawaddy contacted urged the junta forces not to fire at civilians and the IDP camps.
The relief worker from Pekon added, “There is no guaranteed safe place for the IDPs, because the junta forces even fire at the churches where people are sheltering and white flags are flying.”
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karenni (Kayah) State, Internal displacement/forced migration of Karenni villagers, Armed conflict in Karenni State, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
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Summary:
"A veteran pro-democracy activist, who is a younger brother of the Myanmar regime’s Home Affairs Ministry deputy minister and chief of police, died while in military custody in Bago Region.
The 53...
Description:
"A veteran pro-democracy activist, who is a younger brother of the Myanmar regime’s Home Affairs Ministry deputy minister and chief of police, died while in military custody in Bago Region.
The 53-year-old Ko Soe Moe Hlaing, also known as Ko Mae Gyi, was arrested Saturday in Zaung Tu village in Bago Region along with a few other villagers after a regime informant told troops about their whereabouts.
A friend said they were told by witnesses that Ko Mae Gyi was violently beaten over the head with rifle butts at the time of his arrest. On Monday night, his wife was informed by telephone that he was dead. The status of the other detained villagers is still unknown.
His friends believed that the activist was tortured to death for his strong political beliefs against the military regime.
Unlike with his notorious brother Lt-Gen Than Hlaing, who was promoted to deputy minister and chief of police following the coup and is one of the key people responsible for the brutal crackdowns on civilians, Ko Soe Moe Hlaing, a.k.a Ko Mae Gyi, had devoted his life to the country’s struggle for democracy since 1988.
He was also involved in All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) which was the first students’ army formed to oppose the then-regime in 1988.
Due to his political activism during and after 1988, he was jailed for 13 years after being arrested for taking part in a student movement demanding the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under the previous military regime.
After his release, Ko Mae Gyi actively worked on philanthropic projects and regional development in Bago. He also established a network in the region to offer free education to children.
The family was only allowed to see Ko Mae Gyi’s face after his body was placed inside a coffin at Mingaladon military hospital in Yangon, before a funeral on Tuesday evening.
“Despite coming from a family with military background, he did everything he could throughout his life for the country’s democracy, from taking part in protest movements to joining the student army. He was a good leader, much experienced in political activism. I am so grieved to lose our good comrade,” said a former political prisoner who was also one of his inmates in prison.
Ko Mae Gyi was married with five children.
In Sagaing Region’s Kale Township, a detainee was also killed under detention. Ko Min Min, the father of two, died hours after being detained by junta forces on Monday afternoon. He was taken from his motorcycle workshop for questioning. On Tuesday, his body was returned to his family from a military hospital with knife wounds on his arms and bruises on his back and leg.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) which tracks killings and detentions, at least 20 civilians have been tortured to death in military custody since the coup..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Oil and Gas Firm PTT Should Cut Ties with Military Enterprises, Abusive Cronies
Description:
"Thailand’s majority state-owned oil and gas company, PTT, is partnering with military-linked companies to expand its engagement in Myanmar, Human Rights Watch said today. This growth comes on top of the half a billion dollars PTT already pays annually to junta-controlled enterprises through its existing operations in Myanmar’s gas fields.
A 2019 PTT joint venture is paying the military conglomerate Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) nearly US$1 million in annual rent for the construction of a fuel terminal on land seized from farmers. The United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and Canada have sanctioned MEC and the other military conglomerate, Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL), for their role in generating vast revenues that help fund the military’s abuses and enshrine its impunity.
PTT should end ties with Myanmar’s military enterprises and suspend all new investment in the country until a democratic government is established. Foreign governments should also adopt measures to block direct or indirect payments to the State Administration Council (SAC) junta from oil and gas projects operated by PTT and other companies.
“By expanding business ties with the Myanmar military as it carries out a bloody crackdown, the Thai state-owned PTT has shown little regard for the lives and freedom of Myanmar’s people,” said Shayna Bauchner, Asia researcher. “PTT’s leadership should respect international sanctions and cut ties with the junta to avoid being complicit in its crimes.”
Since the February 1, 2021 coup that overthrew the duly elected government, Myanmar’s military has responded with increasing brutality to nationwide pro-democracy protests. State security forces have killed over 820 people and detained an estimated 4,300 activists, journalists, civil servants, and politicians.
PTT has conducted oil and gas exploration and production in Myanmar since 1989, paying Myanmar state-controlled entities billions of dollars for gas in fees, taxes, royalties, and revenues. But with production declining in recent years, the company has ramped up its midstream and downstream investments in the country, with the stated goal of becoming the “top Myanmar provider” of petroleum products. Human Rights Watch wrote PTT on May 11, inquiring about the company’s operations in Myanmar, but received no response.
The Indian company Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone was recently removed from the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices due to “heightened risks to the company regarding their commercial relationship with Myanmar’s military,” following a campaign by groups Justice for Myanmar, the Australian Centre for International Justice, and Market Forces. Like PTT, Adani had acquired land from MEC. PTT and four subsidiaries are listed on the same sustainability index. Human Rights Watch contacted S&P Dow Jones Indices requesting that they review PTT according to the same standard as Adani.
PTT’s plans for growth are outlined in part in a March 2017 memorandum of understanding, recently leaked by transparency collective DDoSecrets, with the military-aligned Kanbawza Group (KBZ). The company later announced plans to invest over $200 million in its partnership with KBZ.
In 2019, PTT Oil and Retail (PTTOR, a PTT subsidiary) and KBZ began a joint venture to build a jetty, fuel oil storage terminal, and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) filling plant in the Thilawa area of Kyauktan township, Yangon Region, with a stated investment of $150 million. The terminal will be largest in the country, according to PTT, with a reported capacity of one million barrels of oil and 4,500 metric tons of LPG. It was originally slated for completion in 2021.
KBZ, a major Myanmar conglomerate owned by a longtime military crony, Aung Ko Win, runs the country’s largest bank and dozens of companies across mining, manufacturing, technology, trade, and other industries. KBZ maintains close personal, financial, and commercial ties to the military that benefit and enable the security forces. In 2019, the United Nations-backed Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar found that KBZ donated US$4.7 million to the 2017 security force operations against the ethnic Rohingya in Rakhine State, and concluded that KBZ officials should be investigated and prosecuted as appropriate for having “aided, abetted, or otherwise assisted in the crimes against humanity of persecution and other inhumane acts.”
KBZ has also partnered with the military-conglomerate MEHL for over two decades in jade and gems mining ventures. The EU sanctioned Kanbawza Bank, Aung Ko Win, and his family members until 2012 for their engagement with the prior military junta. Human Rights Watch wrote KBZ on May 11 but received no response.
To develop the fuel terminal, the PTTOR and KBZ joint venture, Brighter Energy, is leasing land from MEC and the Ministry of Defense under a build-operate-transfer (BOT) agreement, according to leaked Myanmar Investment Commission documents. PTT bought a 35 percent stake in Brighter Energy from KBZ in 2019.
The BOT agreement covers 168.5 acres of land owned by MEC near its shipbreaking factory in Thilawa and is valid for 50 years following a two-year construction period, with the option to renew for two additional 10-year terms. Lease payments to MEC include a $1,685,000 land use premium fee and $808,800 annual rent, for a total of $42 million over the contract period. All fuel terminal structures and fixtures are to be transferred to MEC at no cost when the lease ends. The agreement is signed by Thant Swe, MEC managing director, who was recently sanctioned by the UK, and Brighter Energy directors.
The authorities acquired the land in Kyauktan’s Thida Myaing ward by seizing it from farmers who had worked there for decades, nongovernmental organizations EarthRights International and Namati reported. In 2014, MEC filed a criminal trespass complaint against 33 farmers based on a 1996 illegal confiscation attempt by military government officials. The farmers were found guilty in 2018. That year, MEC filed land record forms of the area in an application to use 168.5 acres for “buildings and storage tanks.”
PTT and KBZ will also pay a significant amount in taxes to the junta-controlled Internal Revenue Department. In an annex to the contract, the combined commercial and income tax over the first 20 years is estimated at $1.36 billion. Brighter Energy lists the terminal’s estimated net profit as $65.7 million in the first year of operation and $104 million annually after 10 years, with an additional $63 million per year from oil and gas sales.
The fuel terminal project is just one example of PTT’s planned expansion in Myanmar. In December 2020, PTT signed an agreement to invest $2 billion in a new gas-to-power project for domestic use with the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, now led by SAC Minister Aung Than Oo, who was sanctioned by the EU for his role in the previous military junta. A PTT executive, Phongsthorn Thavisin, told reporters in March that the project was not affected by the coup and would move ahead, saying the company was politically neutral. PTT sought tenders in May for a drilling rig in the project location.
PTT already pays Myanmar over $500 million a year through its projects with the Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) in three of the country’s four major gas fields. The company reported paying $125 million in taxes in 2019 to the Ministry of Planning, Finance, and Industry, now led by SAC Minister Win Shein, recently sanctioned by the US.
PTT’s human rights standards state that the company is guided by international human rights treaties and other internationally accepted standards on human rights applicable to companies, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.
Since the coup, the State Administration Council has seized control of all government ministries and state-owned enterprises – as well as their bank accounts – including those involved in PTT’s projects. The junta has also overhauled the Myanmar Investment Commission, responsible for facilitating all foreign investment, installing as chair Lt. Gen. Moe Myint Tun, also a member of the junta. The US, UK, EU, and Canada have sanctioned Moe Myint Tun for committing serious human rights violations, both as a member of SAC and in his previous role as army chief of staff overseeing operations against the Rohingya in 2017. As with other military leaders, Moe Myint Tun is a director of both MEC and MEHL.
Foreign governments should block payments to the junta and state-owned enterprises from foreign-financed oil and gas projects, such as those operated by PTT, Total, and Chevron. Such measures can be designed to target the junta’s access to foreign accounts while allowing for the continued production of gas and electricity.
Thai financial authorities should cooperate with governments that have imposed sanctions and instruct Thai banks processing foreign currency transactions to comply with other countries’ economic measures and sanctions.
Governments that have sanctioned MEC and MEHL should encourage Thailand, Japan, Singapore, and other countries with significant investment in Myanmar to adopt similar measures.
“PTT’s investments in Myanmar provide hundreds of millions of dollars to the military,” Bauchner said. “Concerned governments should zero in on these sources of funds as a prime target for sanctions to make it much harder for coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, the junta, and other generals to benefit from their atrocities.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Human Rights Watch" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
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Individual Documents
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Thailand-Burma relations, Sanctions - general, Sanctions, Business and the Military, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"ကြေညာချက် (၂/၂၀၂၁)
မေလ ၂၅ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်။
================
နိုင်ငံ့ဝန်ထမ်း (အမြဲတမ်း) များကို လစာ(၂)လစာ အတိုးမဲ့ ကြိုတင်ထုတ်ချေးငွေများအား ပြန်လည်ပေးဆပ်ရန် မလိုအပ်သည့် ချီးမြှင့်ငွေအဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ထားပြီးဖြစ်ကြောင်း ထပ်မံအသိပေးထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာချက်
-------------------------------
၁။ Coronavirus Disease 2019 ( COVID-19 ) ကြောင့် ဖြစ်ပေါ်လာနိုင်သည့် သက်ရောက်မှုများအပေါ် ကုစားနိုင်ရေး အတွက် နိုင်ငံ့ဝန်ထမ်း(အမြဲတမ်း)များကို လစာ(၂)လစာ ကြိုတင်ထုတ်ပေး၍ အတိုးမဲ့ချေးငွေအဖြစ် ၂၀၂၀ အောက်တိုဘာလမှစ ၍ ဆိုင်းငံ့ကာလ (၆)လ၊ ပြန်ဆပ်ကာလ (၁) နှစ်သတ်မှတ်ပြီး ပြည်သူ့ဆန္ဒနှင့်အညီ ရွေးကောက်ဖွဲ့စည်းခဲ့သည့် အရပ်သားအစိုးရမှ ထုတ်ချေးခဲ့ပါသည်။
၂။ အဆိုပါချေးငွေအား ၂၀၂၀ ခုနှစ်၊ နိုဝင်ဘာလ ရွေးကောက်ပွဲရလဒ်အရ ပြည်သူ့ဆန္ဒနှင့်အညီ ဖြစ်ထွန်းပေါ်ပေါက်လာသည့် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့အစိုးရက နိုင်ငံ့ဝန်ထမ်းများ၏ သက်သာချောင်ချိရေးကို ရှေးရှုလျက် CDM ဝန်ထမ်း၊ non-CDM ဝန်ထမ်းမခွဲခြားဘဲ ပြန်လည် ပေးဆပ်ရန်မလိုအပ်သည့် ချီးမြှင့်ငွေအဖြစ် ပြောင်းလဲသတ်မှတ်ပေးခဲ့ပြီးဖြစ်သည်။
၃။ ပြည်သူလူထု၏ အခွန်ဘဏ္ဍာငွေများကို တရားဝင်စီမံခန့်ခွဲပိုင်ခွင့်ရှိသူမှာ ပြည်သူလူထုကိုယ်တိုင် ယုံကြည်စွာ ဆန္ဒမဲပေး ရွေးချယ်လိုက်သည့် အစိုးရသာဖြစ်သည်။
၄။ ပြည်သူလူထု၏ ဆန္ဒအား အလေးမထား၊ လစ်လျူရှုလျက် နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာအား အတင်းအဓမ္မသိမ်းယူထားသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီ၌ ပြည်သူ့အခွန်ဘဏ္ဍာငွေများအား စီမံခန့်ခွဲပိုင်ခွင့် လုံး၀ မရှိပါ။
၅။ ယခုအခါ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်ကောင်စီသည် CDM ဝန်ထမ်းများအား ချေးငွေပြန်လည်ပေးဆပ်ရန် အတင်းအကျပ် ခြိမ်းခြောက် တောင်းဆိုနေသည့်အပြင် non-CDM ဝန်ထမ်းများအားလည်း ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ စက်တင်ဘာလ အကုန်တွင် ချေးငွေ ပြန်လည်ပေး ဆပ်ရမည်ဟု သတိပေးချက်ထုတ်ပြန်ထားကြောင်း သိရှိရသည်။
၆။ ထို့ကြောင့် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရအနေဖြင့် အဆိုပါချေးငွေများအား ပြန်လည်ပေးဆပ်ရန် မလိုအပ်သည့် ချေးငွေအဖြစ် တရားဝင်သတ်မှတ် ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာထားပြီးဖြစ်သောကြောင့် အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်ကောင်စီ၏ ခြိမ်းခြောက်တောင်း ဆိုမှုများအား အသိအမှတ်ပြုရန် မလိုအပ်ကြောင်း ထပ်လောင်းထုတ်ပြန် ကြေညာလိုက်သည်။
တင်ထွန်းနိုင်
ပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီး
စီမံကိန်း၊ ဘဏ္ဍာရေးနှင့် ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုဝန်ကြီးဌာန..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment - NUG
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
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More than half of all teachers are on strike and just 10 percent of students have signed up to start the school year, according to the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation
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"Two days into the school registration process, some 90 percent of students have refused to enroll in Myanmar’s education system under the coup regime, members of the Myanmar Teachers’ Federation (MTF) have said.
Although the military council opened registration on Monday, only 10 percent of students nationwide have enrolled in their respective schools, according to MTF.
Myanmar had more than 9 million students enrolled in its basic education system during the 2019-2020 school year, according to the Ministry of Education under the ousted National League for Democracy government
Current figures suggest that less than 1 million are re-joining their schools this year when they open on June 1.
Locals nationwide have protested the reopening of schools—the sites of occupation by junta troops and battles with local resistance—spray painting anti-coup messages on gates and buildings. Parents have declared that they do not want their children indoctrinated into a “military slave education.”
Likely in response to this protest movement, some 30 policemen and regime troops have been standing guard outside the only high school in Kyike Htaw village in Yangon’s Kawhmu Township during the registration process. They have also been escorting teachers to the school, according to a local resident who requested anonymity.
In the afternoon, the local said, military-appointed ward administrators and members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party took over the duties from the police and soldiers.
Just 12 students enrolled at the high school in two days, according to sources close to the school.
In the cities of Mandalay, Monywa, and Yangon there are schools that have had no students register to attend, MTF reported.
Yet junta-run newspapers have recently published photos of crowds of people taking part in the registration process. Netizens have cried foul, pointing out that the pictures were taken prior to the 2019 school year and not indicative of the current level of participation. Myanmar Now has been unable to independently verify these claims.
‘They are trying to threaten us’
A teacher and MTF member who is on strike in accordance with the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), told Myanmar Now that this was not an appropriate time for students to return to school.
“If schools open now, we won’t be able to teach anything meaningfully. Children won’t feel safe. Education isn’t just about teaching information—it is about cultivating humanity. This needs to happen in an environment that is warm and secure,” the teacher said.
More than half of the 400,000 teachers in Myanmar’s education system are estimated to be participating in the CDM. With more than 130,000 of the striking teachers formally suspended by the regime, the military authorities have been advertising open teaching positions in junta-controlled newspapers as the school opening date nears.
“Even before the coup, there weren’t enough teachers to meet the needs of the number of students that they had. Suspending the teachers and bringing charges against them will create even bigger operational challenges for the regime itself,” the same teacher told Myanmar Now.
More than 100 striking teachers have been charged with incitement for violating Section 505a of the Penal Code, an MTF member said. Conviction carries a three-year prison sentence.
Soe Thura Kyaw, a teacher from Yangon’s Taikkyi Township, is among those charged under 505a for leading a protest in Yangon and joining the CDM. He told Myanmar Now that the junta has offered to drop the charge against him if he returns to work.
“They are afraid of the resistance. They are trying to threaten us into teaching again,” Soe Thura Kyaw, who is also a member of the protest committee for education staff, said.
He added that he is committed to the strike, and bringing down the military dictatorship.
A 28-year-old man in Yangon Region’s Kyike Htaw village said his younger brother, who was due to start fifth grade, would not be going to school this year.
The family is waiting for the anti-coup National Unity Government (NUG) to release its interim education program. At the time of reporting, the NUG had publicly stated plans to teach online, but further details were not yet known. “We don’t accept the military dictatorship, and we reject their education,” the Kyike Htaw local said. “We will send our brother back to school once the people have won.” ..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
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Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Education in Burma/Myanmar - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Even after suffering life-changing injuries, many protesters are determined to keep up the fight against military rule
Description:
"Thura was trying to recover the body of a friend who had been shot in the head when he, too, came under fire from regime forces during a protest in Yangon’s North Okkalapa Township on March 3.
The 23-year-old had been a regular participant in protests at North Okkalapa’s Kanthaya Park, but on the day he was shot, a crackdown dispersed the crowd that had gathered there. Rather than simply give up and go home, however, he and some friends decided to march to another protest site at the township’s Circular Junction.
They went because they wanted to support students who had come under attack at the junction. They knew that they were walking into an extremely dangerous situation, but somehow it no longer seemed to matter.
When his friend was shot and killed, he became even more reckless, he recalled.
“In the past, I didn’t think I would ever dare go into an area where bullets were flying. I was just too scared. But the crackdown made my blood boil, so I wasn’t afraid anymore. I just wanted to get my friend's body and return it to his family,” he told Myanmar Now.
On a day that saw a total of 38 civilians killed by the regime around the country, North Okkalapa alone accounted for 10 of them. But a far greater number were injured, many of them seriously. Thura was one of 79 who were wounded in the township on the day that he permanently lost his eyesight.
A bullet fired by a soldier from the military’s notorious Light Infantry Division 77 took out his left eye, but blinded him in the right as well.
His first thought, he said, was how the news would affect his mother, who suffers from heart disease.
“I was afraid that my mom would be very sad,” he said.....‘Ready to do anything’: Thura, who dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade to help support his family, lives in a household of eight people. Their home is in North Dagon Myothit, one of the “new townships” created by the former regime a year after it seized power in 1988.
Since he was shot, he has been receiving treatment for his injuries at home. To help him pass the time, family members read the news to him so that he can follow the progress of the movement against the current junta.
Despite losing his vision, he said that he would willingly do anything he could to bring down the regime.
As a “defence-line protester”, Thura was armed with no more than a makeshift shield that he used to slow down rampaging soldiers so that fellow protesters could escape. Now, however, he is prepared to go to extremes to fight back.
“Do I have to strap explosives to my body and blow myself up in a crowd of soldiers? If I can, I will. If there is anything I can do, I’m ready to do it,” he said.
Like many others who have fallen victim to the regime’s ruthless efforts to terrorize the public into submission, however, Thura’s immediate concerns are more personal.
He is still worried about his bedridden mother, from whom he has managed to hide his own condition. “I don't want to make her heart disease worse,” he said, explaining why he hasn’t let his mother know what happened to him.
He also acknowledged that his situation has added to his family’s hardships at a time when the collapse of the economy since the coup has put enormous pressure on the poor.
But even the loss of one of the family’s breadwinners has done little to dampen their conviction that no sacrifice is too great to resist the junta’s rule.
“Despite this incident, no one in my family has spoken a word of regret,” he said.....Fighting for the future: A week after Thura lost his eyesight in North Okkalapa, 24-year-old San Lin was shot while protesting in South Dagon. Two days later, after being admitted to Mingaladon Military Hospital, he lost half of his left leg.
He spent 10 days in the hospital, and was due to return again five days later to have the dressing on his wound changed when the regime’s forces went on a killing spree.
His appointment was on March 27—a day marked by the military as Armed Forces Day, but by the rest of the country as Anti-Fascist Resistance Day. It was the worst day of killing since the coup. Over 100 civilians were murdered on that day alone, and countless others were wounded.
San Lin said he felt he had to fight for the sake of his three-year-old son’s future. “We received a poor education when the military was in power before. I don’t want my son to have a similar fate,” he said.
He said he believed that the Spring Revolution, as the anti-coup uprising has been called, would eventually succeed, but it would take time.
“Our movement must win. We will fight until we win,” he said.
As for his own role, he said that even if he can no long join his fellow protesters on the front lines, he will still find a way to support their efforts.
“I will continue participating in this movement in any way I can. In the beginning, I was a frontline protester. I can’t be on the front line anymore, but I will stay in the movement,” he said.
While his son’s future remains his primary motivation for continuing with the struggle, he said he now also feels an obligation to honour those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
“If we fight until we win, our brothers and sisters who gave their lives will be content in the afterlife. All people who are fighting for democracy at this time are brothers and sisters,” he said.....‘We will win!’: The first reaction most people have when they learn that a family member has survived a deadly crackdown is relief, according to doctor in Mandalay who has treated many such patients.
But when they learn that their loved ones will never be the same after suffering often grisly injuries at the hands of soldiers armed with high-powered weapons, they realize that their suffering has just begun.
“They just have to accept that whatever the patient’s condition, they can still see them alive and live together with them,” said the doctor.
“It’s a sad thing,” he continued, noting that many of the victims are low-paid casual workers who struggled to make ends meet even when they were healthy.
“In the future, there should be long-term projects established to support people with such disabilities,” he added.
This is the grim reality that now faces thousands of people around the country who may never fully recover from injuries inflicted on them by the ruling junta.
According to those who work to assist these victims of the regime’s assaults on unarmed civilians, many are unwilling to speak about their injuries to others.
Myanmar Now spoke to one young man who was shot in Mandalay, but he said he was not ready to talk about his injuries, which have left him without the use of his limbs.
One of the most notorious incidents was the shooting of Hlyan Phyo Aung, a 22-year-old civil-engineering student from Magway. In a particularly sadistic attack, soldiers shot both of his hands at close range, completely severing the right hand and leaving the left severely damaged.
He was saved by fellow protesters, but not before the soldiers shot him repeatedly in both legs, leaving him with injuries that could require amputation.
That attack took place on March 27, the day that the regime unleashed an orgy of violence on the country that put its utter contempt for human life on full display.
The following day, near the Thiri Myaing railway station in Yangon’s Hlaing Township, another young protester also lost his hand after he tried to throw a hand grenade that had been lobbed at a group of protesters away from them.
In a scene that was captured on video and widely shared on social media, the man is then seen getting into a cycle-rickshaw as blood dripped from his handless wrist.
At that moment, he shouted the words that continue to sustain many others like him: “We will win!”..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Sub-title:
Resolution Should Be Adopted, Urging States to Halt Arms Transfers
Description:
"The United Nations Security Council, entrusted by the UN Charter to be the world’s guardian of international peace and security, has done little to help the people of Myanmar besides issuing statements asking the junta to end the violence and release prisoners. But the UN General Assembly can help motivate the council take action to stem the rampant abuses.
In the absence of robust Security Council action, the 193-nation General Assembly should adopt a resolution condemning the junta’s rights violations and calling on all UN members to halt arms transfers to Myanmar. While not legally binding on states, such a resolution would carry significant political weight. As the UN’s most representative body, it would send a powerful signal to the junta and press members of the Security Council to adopt a legally binding resolution – as recently urged by a group of 205 nongovernmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch.
Governments should recognize that arms and materiel sold to Myanmar’s military will likely be used to commit abuses against the population. Arms embargoes can help prevent such crimes, a possibility recently highlighted by UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet who warned Myanmar could escalate into a “full-blown conflict” like in Syria.
Last week, a scheduled vote on a draft resolution circulated by Liechtenstein calling “for an immediate suspension of the direct and indirect supply, sale or transfer of all weapons and munitions” to Myanmar was postponed. A vote could come as early as this week, though a revised version by members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) removes mention of suspending arms sales.
The United States, France, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and other sponsor countries should work with Liechtenstein to ensure a vote is rescheduled as soon as possible, with the language on halting arms sales. They should not play the game of saying this is a regional issue and hiding behind ASEAN to avoid their own responsibilities; ASEAN is built on the principle of noninterference and will never deliver on Myanmar. Instead, they should lobby UN members to ensure a robust resolution receives support from the General Assembly. Concerned governments should then use the resolution to press the Security Council to act.
Inaction by UN member states will only embolden Myanmar’s military and encourage more abuses. General Assembly action is needed now..."
Source/publisher:
Human Rights Watch (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-26
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights and international relations, Human Rights Watch Reports on Burma/Myanmar, International Relations, Collected resolutions of the GA on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"The number of political prisoners in Burma is growing every day since the military staged a coup on 1 February.
The latest figure is over 4,250 in detention, and more than 5,000 arrested in total, but this does not include some people who have been arrested or simply disappeared in very remote ethnic areas of Burma.
The military is not only carrying out the targeted arrest of individuals who they might consider a “risk”, but they are also conducting random mass arrests of civilians as a means of trying to instil fear and crush dissent.
You don’t need to be a peaceful protester to face arrest or intimidation. You can be a shopkeeper, bystander, a Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) supporter, a social influencer or just an ordinary citizen. It’s heart-breaking to see the reports of detainees being tortured and killed in custody. There are also reports of family members getting arrested when the military can’t find the family member they want to arrest.
Despite ongoing violence and mass arrests, people continue to protest and speak out against the military junta every day. Doctors, teachers, nurses and many others who are involved in the CDM are under increased pressure to go back to work or face arrest. The military issued warrants and revoked licences for many doctors and nurses for taking part in the CDM. After their release, they will have a criminal record, which makes it almost impossible to go back to their jobs or find new jobs.
Many university students should be pursuing their dreams, but instead, they are being thrown into jail for protesting. It’s unlikely they will be able to go back to their studies after prison. For many decades, criminal records for political prisoners have been used as a form of repression by the junta to ostracise activists and to discourage people from speaking out. Having a criminal record can impact them and their families for the rest of their lives, often meaning struggling to survive and living in poverty.
In February, the military revised Burma’s Penal Code to target and arrest anyone who speaks out against the coup. The Code of Criminal Procedure was also amended so they can arrest people without warrants and deny bail. Every day, groups of people are being charged under the new 505-A law. Its broad language – “cause fear, spread false news, agitate directly or indirectly criminal offence against a government employee” makes it possible for anyone to be arrested. Punishment for violation of 505-A is up to 3 years in prison.
Additionally, we still don’t know the location of many political prisoners and many of them still haven’t been charged. My father was arrested in the early hours on 1 February, and we found out that he was charged and detained in Insein prison only two months after his arrest. In the midst of everything, we are “lucky” to know where he is but many families still don’t have that reassurance.
The military is also filing politically motivated charges against activists and civilians to make sure that they can keep them in prison. Armed soldiers forcibly arrested U Ko Htwe in Namhsan on 11 February and later charged him with violating “Covid safety regulations”. The irony is that soldiers themselves violated covid regulations by showing up in a group to arrest U Ko Htwe. U Ko Htwe’s crime is being an ordinary citizen who happens to support the National League for Democracy (NLD).
Currently, trials are being held inside prison out of public view and families cannot attend. Some are allowed to have lawyers but it’s hard to know how many are on trial without legal counsel. Trials in Burma are just formalities and almost all of them would certainly be sentenced under politically motivated charges.
Burma’s prisons are known for being unhygienic and not providing adequate food or healthcare. Now prisons are overcrowded as arrests continue. Some have been arrested with injuries and some need regular healthcare for their underlying health issues such as hypertension, diabetes, or cancer, so it is an increasingly worrying situation for families.
Families also have to provide food, medicines and other essentials regularly, which puts a financial toll on them. Not all families can afford to send food regularly so many political prisoners have to survive on watery soup, bad rice and fish paste. There is a lovely tradition among political prisoners of sharing the little amount of food they received from families with each other, but it’s still not enough to provide them with essential nutrition in the long run.
Families of political prisoners are unsung heroes who give unrelenting support in the background. They take on numerous roles as self-made counsellors, motivators, cooks, friends and they don’t often get the credit that they deserve. At the moment, family visits are not allowed. Even when families can visit, it would be a 15-30 minute monitored visit every month where you can’t talk openly or even embrace each other. Despite those restrictions, such moments are precious to see our loved ones and be assured that they are in good health.
For both activists and families, it is very emotionally taxing to go through years of hardship and struggle. Some families became estranged from each other and most former political prisoners need to readjust to their lives outside prison. They need help financially to restart their lives and mental health support after going through torture and imprisonment. But under dictatorships and successive governments, none of the former political prisoners have received an apology or compensation for being unlawfully arrested.
When an individual is unlawfully arrested in Burma, there is a huge socio-economic impact on both a political prisoner and family members. Activists know they will face arrest, lifelong trauma and uncertainty when they stand up for freedom and federal democracy, but Burma has countless heroes.
When we rid our country of the military, which we will, political prisoners and their families must not be forgotten as they were for the past ten years. We all have a special obligation for them and their sacrifices. The new democratic government must ensure their criminal records are removed, and provide a special package of support for former prisoners and their families. They will need extra healthcare because of torture and malnutrition. They will need financial support, housing and, as so many students have lost their chance for education, free university education.
When we win our freedom, we will owe political prisoners a great debt for their sacrifice, and it’s a debt we must make sure we pay..."
Source/publisher:
"Burma Campaign UK" (London)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"As of 25 May, (827) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. These (3) fallen heroes from Bago Township in Bago Region, Myo Thit Township in Magway Region and Kale Town in Sagaing Region were killed on previous days and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 25 May, a total of (4313) people are currently under detention; of them (102) are sentenced. 1861 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
At least 75 civilians have been killed by this terrorist junta in a month since the 24 April ASEAN leaders meeting. ASEAN intervention has not been effective at stopping the killings of civilians by this junta even with international governments, including the UN, observing the ASEAN dialogue.
A family was informed this morning to collect their loved ones’ dead body from “Seit Htar Marn Tai Motorcycle Repair Shop” in Kale Town in Sagaing Region, the man had been arrested yesterday afternoon. His body was found with bruises all over the back, and stab wounds to his hands.
In addition to this, Mae Gyi (a.k.a Soe Moe Hlaing), a former member of All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) and former political prisoner, was arrested on May 22 at Zaung Tu in Phayar Gyi Town in Bago Region, he was killed yesterday evening from brutal torture in interrogaiton.
On the night of 23 May, a man from South Phayar Ngar Su Kan Gyi Village was shot dead while driving through Taungdwingyi to return home after work. On May 24, Kay Jar Naw, NLD member of Tanai Township in Kachin State, Danny Fenster, Frontier’s managing editor, and a lawyer representing Nay Pyi Taw Council Chairman Myo Aung, called Thein Hlaing Tun, were arrested.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Sub-title:
The shelling came after local resistance fighters ambushed a convoy of soldiers travelling to southern Shan State as reinforcements
Description:
"Four people died and eight were critically injured as the coup regime’s forces bombed a Catholic church near the Kayah State capital of Loikaw in the early hours of Monday morning.
The Tatmadaw fired artillery shells at the church in Kayan Tharyar village at around 1am, shortly after its troops were ambushed on a nearby road by local resistance fighters.
People who fled the shelling were chased by soldiers firing guns and hid in nearby caves, a local resident said.
The ambush came as soldiers travelled from the Kayah capital Loikaw to reinforce troop numbers in Moebye, southern Shan State.
Civilians-turned-fighters from the Karenni People’s Defense Force (KPDF) said they killed at least 20 members of the regime’s forces in Moebye on Sunday and another 26 outside the nearby town of Demoso. They also captured four soldiers.
Their members attacked the reinforcements from Loikaw with guns, delaying them on their way to Moebye.
“The KPDF ambushed them near the Kayan Tharyar village and the reinforcements did not arrive at Moebye in time,” the local resident said.
Soldiers then entered the village and began shooting. “So the locals got scared and ran to the church to hide,” the resident added.
Rescue workers on Monday were unable to send the eight people injured in the shelling to the hospital in Loikaw because there was still fighting along the six-mile stretch of road that leads there, a local resident told Myanmar Now.
No further details about the four people who died were available at the time of reporting.
The military council’s spokesperson could not be contacted for comment about the killings at the church..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karenni (Kayah) State, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Karenni State, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Local sources report that over two days, nine Karenni villagers are killed in military offensives, shellings, and what appear to have been roadside executions by the coup regime
Description:
"At least nine civilians were killed by the junta’s armed forces in the Kayah (Karenni) State capital of Loikaw between Sunday night and Tuesday morning.
Regime troops suffered heavy casualties during fighting with the local Karenni People’s Defence Force (KPDF) on Sunday in Moebye in southern Shan State and Demoso in Kayah State. In retaliation, the Myanmar military used both light weaponry and heavy artillery to attack civilians that night and over the following two days in Demoso and Loikaw townships.
Nine civilians were killed and at least eight others seriously injured in the assaults.
In the early morning hours on Tuesday, regime forces began launching offensives against civilian resistance groups in Demoso, according to a KPDF member. Starting at 4am, clashes occurred in three villages: Daw Ngan Khar, Daw Tama Nge and Ngwe Taung.
Three villagers from Daw Ngan Khar were killed in the attack, the KPDF member told Myanmar Now.
Clashes in Daw Tama Nge halted at around 9am. Five KPDF members were injured in the village; one critically.
Meanwhile, regime forces in Loikaw opened fire indiscriminately at around 10am, with the shooting ongoing at the time of reporting on Tuesday afternoon.
On Monday afternoon, a young man was shot in the head by regime troops with his hands tied behind his back. The execution took place in an unconfirmed location between Noekoe and Yayyo villages in Loikaw Township, according to updates shared on social media by a Karenni youth online community.
Four villagers were also killed and eight others were seriously injured when the junta’s forces fired artillery shells at Kayan Thaya Village Church in Loikaw Township at around 1 am on Monday.
On Sunday night, local man Hla Htike was fatally shot in the abdomen by the army while driving a motorcycle on the Moebye-Loikaw Road, according to locals.
The junta’s armed forces raided Yayyo village and Narnattaw quarter, both on the outskirts of Loikaw, on Monday morning, and there were also shootings in Shanpine and Mong Lone quarters, according to locals.
“They stormed into Yayyo village first, and then Narnattaw. We had to resist the army. At around 3:30pm, they withdrew. Some of them were in plainclothes, but they were armed with guns,” a member of KPDF told Myanmar Now.
He said that there were no casualties on either side of the mutual shootout in Narnattaw, and that the military council had deployed a small number of troops to the west of Narnattaw, while the rest of the troops had moved to downtown Loikaw.
On Monday evening, residents described Loikaw as silent except for the sound of artillery shells, which were fired until around 6:30pm.
Using loudspeakers early on Monday morning, the military urged residents of Loikaw not to leave their homes after 9am.
Residents told Myanmar Now that they heard at least six flights land at Loikaw Airport, the last which arrived at 3pm.
“The planes landed at Loikaw Airport. I saw soldiers coming down. We don’t know how many soldiers were on each plane. Security was tightened at the airport. They were also seen unloading things,” a local said.
The junta’s forces attacked Moebye and Demoso townships with heavy artillery on Sunday, firing some 30 shells in the area from 5pm until 10pm, a resident told Myanmar Now.
While residents remain in downtown Loikaw, tens of thousands of people outside of the town itself have fled their villages throughout Demoso, Loikaw and Moebye townships, according to Karenni youth who are assisting the displaced persons..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karenni (Kayah) State, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Karenni State, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"The military junta that seized control of Myanmar earlier this year is seeking to "line its pockets" by selling off thousands of tons of illegal timber to international markets, the Environmental Investigation Agency reported on Friday in its latest update on the country’s “tainted timber” trade.
During the last term of the ‘legitimate’ government of Myanmar, the state took steps to combat illegal logging and seized about 200,000 tons of illegal timber, the EIA previously reported. That will now be up for auction by the Myanmar Timber Enterprise (MTE), a state-run entity which controls all timber sales across the country.
The EIA said that the enterprise operates an “opaque” auction system where international traders place a deposit of US$10,000 before bidding for a final price.
“Why would this State enterprise do this, other than to obtain desperately needed hard currency to continue the junta’s brutal persecution of the people of Myanmar?” asked Faith Doherty, an EIA Forests Campaigns Leader, in a statement. “This is additional confirmation of EIA allegations that the military regime is using timber to support itself and its reign of terror.”
The move comes as more stringent sanctions are being placed on the country. Last week, the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control placed sanctions on Khin Maung Yi, the Minister for Myanmar’s Ministry of Natural Resources, Environment and Conservation (MONREC), who has, according to the EIC, “directly profited” from the selling of the country’s natural resources.
“This is conflict timber, it is illegal in so many ways, and seeking to buy and import it from Myanmar would amount to nothing more than naked profiteering on the country’s misery and suffering,” Doherty said, urging the European Union and the U.K. to follow the U.S. and Canada by imposing sanctions on the timber trade.
Myanmar’s deadly military coup began in February, after only six years of democratic rule but according to the initial report by the EIC in March of this year, the MTE’s trade has long been embroiled in corruption—even before the country’s short-lived democracy—illegally harvesting and smuggling the timber and evading or reducing taxation in order to ship teak to European markets.
The report also highlighted how the military continues to profit from exports of timber, particularly from teak in high demand for the luxury yachting sector.
Deforestation has claimed an area roughly the size of Finland and Slovakia combined was lost between 2001 and 2019..."
Source/publisher:
Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Timber trade, Corruption, Illegal Economy - general, Timber extraction, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
‘They will condone and fund a military coup just to keep their profits flowing. We want Chevron to stop funding the coup,’ a protest organiser says
Description:
"Protests against US oil giant Chevron were held in multiple locations on Friday and Saturday as part of “Anti-Chevron Day,” in the lead-up to the company’s annual shareholder meeting scheduled for Wednesday.
At the El Segundo oil refinery in California, organisers estimated that 80 people participated in a Saturday demonstration against Chevron’s business in both Myanmar and the Amazon rainforest in South America, and its role in contributing to climate change.
Protest organiser Jack Eidt from SoCal 350 Climate Action told Myanmar Now that Chevron should work in concert with the US government to pressure Myanmar’s junta to restore democracy.
“We are concerned by [Chevron’s] environmentally corrupt business practices. The case in Myanmar fits with their business model – the pursuit of profits no matter the cost to people and planet. They will condone and fund a military coup just to keep their profits flowing. We want Chevron to stop funding the coup,” Jack Eidt said.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, protesters gathered outside the Chevron Richmond Refinery on Friday.
In a statement, Nyunt Than, a member of the Burmese American Democratic Alliance, demanded US sanctions be imposed against Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE).
“More than 800 people have been killed since the military coup in Myanmar on February 1st. Chevron is funding slaughter in Myanmar and to stop it, President Biden must sanction MOGE to make such payment illegal,” he said.
MOGE, a state-owned enterprise under the Ministry of Electricity and Energy, came under direct military control as a result of the February 1 coup.
Other Anti-Chevron protests were held in Australia and the Philippines.
Civil society groups are also pressuring Chevron through an online petition to CEO Michael Wirth, demanding that the company “stop bankrolling the Myanmar military.” It has received more than 15,000 signatures.
Chevron, headquartered in California, is one of the world’s biggest oil companies with a market capitalisation of more than US$200 billion.
In Myanmar, Chevron owns 28.3 percent of the offshore Yadana gas field, operated by Total. The company is also an investor in the Yadana pipeline.
Chevron subsidiary Unocal was sued by Karen villagers in US courts in 1996 for human rights violations linked to the Yadana pipeline, including killings, forced relocation, forced labour and rape. They received compensation in an out of court settlement..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
History of the Tatmadaw, Business and the Military, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Family members say they have not been permitted to meet with Kay Zon Nway since her arrest in late February
Description:
"Relatives of a Myanmar Now journalist who has been in detention for nearly three months say they are growing increasingly worried about her well-being.
Kay Zon Nway, who was arrested in late February while reporting on an anti-coup protest in Yangon, has been charged with incitement under Section 505a of the Penal Code. She faces a three-year prison sentence if found guilty.
Family members say they have been denied permission to meet with her and are concerned that her health may be at risk due to harsh conditions inside Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison, where she is being held.
“She has been suffering from nervous-system problems, so I am sure she has not been well,” said a relative who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
“I heard she is angry, distressed, and hurt because she believes she has not committed any crime,” the relative added, citing reports that the family has received from prisoners who met the reporter prior to their own release.
“She asked the released prisoners she met in jail to tell us that she could not sleep at night because of the heat and mosquitoes,” the relative said.
Kay Zon Nway previously shared a cell with several inmates, but she was separated from them late last month after she was accused of staging a hunger strike. According to her lawyer Nilar Khine, she was actually fasting for Ramadan.
She is currently being held in an 8’x12’ cell with one other female inmate.
Her family has been sending medication to help her deal with gastric and nervous ailments, the relative said.
No one in the family has seen her since March 12, when she appeared online briefly during a court hearing held via video link.
Her next hearing, which will be held at a prison court in Insein, is scheduled for June 3.
The plaintiff in the case is deputy police major Win Naing from the Sanchaung police station in Yangon. Testimony from witnesses for the prosecution will be presented at the hearing, her lawyer said.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 48 journalists are still in detention since being arrested in the wake of the military’s February 1 coup..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Human Rights Defenders, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Women's rights, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Toppled democratic leader makes clear in a military court appearance that she and her party represent Myanmar's agitated people
Description:
"Myanmar’s deposed and detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in court on Monday, her first public appearance since a February 1 military coup toppled her elected government and set off waves of popular dissent and resistance.
Although it was only a first 30-minute hearing, the legal process could lead to her eventual imprisonment and the dissolution of her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
Suu Kyi stands accused by the military of several charges ranging from possession of illegally imported walkie-talkies to violating the 1923 colonial-era Official Secrets Act.
But the reality, most Myanmar observers say, is that the top brass wants to punish the government she led since 2016 and nullify the outcome of the November 2020 election where the NLD scored yet another landslide victory, as it did in 2015 and 1990.
The military’s accusations of electoral fraud are not what independent, international election observers saw when they monitored the poll last year.
With the military now firmly in charge of the country’s central institutions since the coup, the eventual outcome of the court cases against Suu Kyi is not in doubt – she will inevitably be found guilty and banned from politics. That, in turn, could set the stage for new elections rigged in favor of the military and without the participation of the NLD.
Those verdicts, whenever they are handed down, will surely spark more furious unrest in a country that has descended into chaos and anarchy since the military made the fateful decision to seize power on the day a newly elected parliament was scheduled to meet for the first time in Naypyitaw.
The coup has also restored Myanmar to pariah status internationally, with Western criticism and sanctions heaped on the coup makers.
At the same time, coup leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is coming under fire from within the military — not because of the power grab as such, but for his inability to consolidate it. Internally, he has reportedly been mocked as only being good at making donations to pagodas and for being “the prince of bangs and pots”, a reference to the way people across the country are venting their anger at the coup by banging pots and pans.
The coup was immediately met by massive demonstrations all over Myanmar, with pro-democracy protesters often waving Suu Kyi’s image on banners and signs, and has been followed by a fierce response from the military. More than 800 protesters and bystanders have been killed and about 4,000 people detained since the putsch. And the violence and persecution are far from over.
What began as peaceful protests have morphed into violent clashes between the military, the police and anti-coup activists who in some places have organized their own armed bands. In Kayah state in the east armed partisans overran and burned down a police station on May 23.
According to the Kantarawaddy Times, a local website, at least 15 policemen were killed in the raid and four captured alive. Twenty-six Myanmar army soldiers have reportedly been killed elsewhere in Kayah state over the past few days. The same news source reported that one resistance fighter was killed and five wounded during the clash.
In Mindat in the west, resistance fighters armed with hunting rifles and homemade guns took over the town before the military responded with heavy artillery and fire from helicopters. Elsewhere in Myanmar, bombings are becoming daily occurrences and the targets are military-controlled banks, companies and local governmental offices.
A huge fire raged at a government building in the northern city of Myitkyina in Kachin state on May 23. On the same day, a bomb exploded in front of the municipal office and explosions as well as gunfire could be heard in Sanchaung in the country’s largest city and commercial capital Yangon.
Apart from igniting armed resistance by locally raised and previously unknown forces, the war between ethnic armed groups in Kayin and Kachin states and the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw, has flared anew.
In Kayin state, more than 20,000 people have had to flee the fighting while the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has overrun a number of army positions and police stations, most recently in Hkamti in northern Sagaing Division on May 22.
Airbases in Meiktila, Magwe and Toungoo have come under rocket attacks in what appears to be ethnic rebels working with urban dissidents.
Among those arrested by junta forces are journalists, activists, health workers and teachers who have taken part in protests against the coup. According to a May 23 Reuters report quoting an official of the teachers’ federation who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals, 125,000 school teachers of the country’s total of 430,000 have been suspended.
The number of doctors and nurses who have lost their jobs is not known, but is thought to be considerable. Many educated people, fearing arrests, have managed to leave the country leading to yet another brain drain, similar to those after the first military takeover in 1962 and the crushing of a pro-democracy uprising in 1988.
The country could tilt towards further anomie without a circuit breaker. Banks are not functioning and the economy is in a shambles amid countrywide strikes and unrest. There are rising reports of soldiers and police seemingly at random breaking into people’s homes, destroying furniture and stealing whatever they can lay their hands on.
Other reports indicate that soldiers and policemen have been given methamphetamine pills to jack them up before being deployed to crack down on protesters, which could explain their often erratic and wildly violent behavior.
The only statement that came out of the May 24 court hearing was that a defiant Suu Kyi said that the NLD “was established by the people so the party will be there as long as the people are.” It’s impossible to predict how that short utterance from the country’s iconic democratic leader will impact or ignite an already volatile situation on the ground.
What is clear, however, is that she acknowledged her followers are now pitted against the military, an institution she had tried to accommodate and work with while in power.
It’s also clear that whatever sympathy and support the public may have had for the Tatmadaw are long gone as soldiers rampage, kill and loot with increasingly reckless abandon – a point that some say may be forming schisms in the military.
If Min Aung Hlaing is eventually replaced, which is still far from certain, it doesn’t mean his successor would take a more conciliatory approach to the country’s civilian leaders, including Suu Kyi, and her affiliated pro-democracy movement.
But as long as he remains in place and Suu Kyi is in the dock on trumped-up charges, Myanmar’s people-versus-the military struggle will likely accelerate and spread..."
Source/publisher:
"Asia Times" (Hong Kong)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
About Aung San Suu Kyi, Various groups, Articles on the NLD, Armed conflict in Kachin State - general articles, Political role of the Tatmadaw, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Sub-title:
Family of Danny Fenster voice concern for his welfare after he was held by authorities in Yangon international airport
Description:
"An American journalist has been detained in Myanmar as he tried to board a flight at Yangon International Airport, the latest of dozens of reporters and editors to be arrested since the coup.
Danny Fenster, managing editor of the independent outlet Frontier Myanmar, had been due to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur on Monday morning, his employer said, adding it believed he had been taken by the authorities to Insein Prison in Yangon.
In a statement, Frontier Myanmar said: “We do not know why Danny was detained and have not been able to contact him since this morning. We are concerned for his wellbeing and call for his immediate release. Our priorities right now are to make sure he is safe and to provide him with whatever assistance he needs.”
More than 70 journalists have been detained by the military over recent months, as it attempts to crush independent coverage of anti coup protests, and of the reign of terror the security forces have inflicted on communities.
The military has revoked the licenses of some publications, raided journalism offices and announced arrest warrants against reporters. Many outlets have continued their coverage regardless, with journalists operating in hiding.
Fenster is among several foreign journalists to be detained since the coup. Nathan Maung, editor-in-chief of Kamayut Media and a US citizen, is also being held at Insein Prison, according to Associated Press. Freelance journalists Robert Bociaga of Poland and Yuki Kitazumi of Japan, were recently detained and expelled.
According to the advocacy group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors arrests in Burma, 48 journalists are still being held by the junta.
On Monday, the relatives of a journalist who was detained almost three months ago while working for the independent news site Myanmar Now told the outlet they were increasingly worried about her wellbeing. Family members of Kay Zon Nway said they had been refused permission to meet with her and were concerned about her health. She has been charged under Section 505a of the Penal Code, which criminalises comments that “cause fear” or spread “false news”, and could face three years in prison.
The Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand strongly condemned the crackdown on journalists. In a statement, it said: “The arrests of journalists, and the violence used by the security forces on anyone caught trying to report or record their actions, constitute an extraordinary attack on freedom of expression in Myanmar, and should be widely condemned.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has also called for Fenster’s release. “This unlawful restriction of a foreign journalist’s freedom of movement is the latest grave threat to press freedom in Myanmar,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative.
According to AAPP Burma, 5,408 have been arrested since the coup, and the majority remain in detention, often in unknown locations. At least 824 have been killed by the junta, the groups has estimated, including dozens of children.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who is among those being held, appeared in person at a court hearing on Monday for the first time since her government was overthrown.
According to reports by Reuters, Suu Kyi “wished people good health” in her meeting with her lawyers and also made a reference to her National League for Democracy (NLD) party, which could be dissolved soon.
“Our party grew out of the people so it will exist as long as people support it”, one of her lawyers, Khin Maung Zaw, quoted Suu Kyi as saying.
She faces charges that range from illegally possessing walkie-talkie radios to violating a state secrets law, punishable by 14 years in prison..."
Source/publisher:
"The Guardian" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"H.E. Dr. Sasa, Union Minister of the MOIC and Spokesperson of the National Unity Government of Myanmar greatly welcomes the joint-statement by President Joe Biden of the United States and H.E. Moon Jae-in, President of the Republic of Korea regarding the situation in Myanmar. The statement is as follows:
“We resolutely condemn violence by the Myanmar military and police against civilians, and commit to continuing to press for the immediate cessation of violence, the release of those who are detained, and a swift return to democracy,” President Biden and President Moon said in their joint statement. “We call on all nations to join
us in providing safe haven to Burmese nationals and in prohibiting arms sales to Myanmar.” H.E. Dr. Sasa stated:
“Today I would again like to thank the US and ROK Governments for taking a lead and being an advocate and voice for the people of Myanmar, and offering to provide safe haven to those who have fled for their lives. I appeal to all nations around the globe to join with us, and support us, the people and rightfully elected National Unity
Government of Myanmar and help us end this cruel and unlawful military junta ('SAC'). We especially urge all nations to put tougher, coordinated, targeted sanctions both diplomatically and economically. Every moment that these tougher measures are delayed, more and more lives are lost, and thousands are displaced from their homes
in Myanmar.Thank you for strongly standing with the 54 million brave people of Myanmar in this darkest time in the history of our nation. Your recognition of our voice, and your support, will make us remain as your faithful allies, friends, and economic partners for generations to come."
H.E. Dr. Sasa Union Minister of the Ministry of International Cooperation & Spokesperson National Unity Government of Myanmar..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-25
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Burma/Myanmar's Foreign relations, general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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" Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in court in person Monday for the first time since the military arrested her when it seized power on Feb. 1, Myanmar media reported.
One of her lawyers, Min Min Soe, told The Associated Press by phone that Suu Kyi was able to meet with her defense team before her hearing began at a special court set up inside the city council building in Naypyitaw, the capital. The hearing’s purpose was procedural.
The lawyers also met with Win Myint, who was president in the government that Suu Kyi led as state counsellor, and a defendant on some of the same charges she faces.
Suu Kyi had been charged with several criminal offenses, but her only previous court appearances had been by video link, and she had not been allowed to meet in person with any of her lawyers.
Min Min Soe said Suu Kyi had a message for Myanmar’s people to the effect that her National League for Democracy party would stand by them.
“The main thing (she said) is that she always wishes good health and well-being for all the people, and she also said that since the NLD was founded for the people, the NLD will exist as long as the people exist,” said Min Min Soe said after the hearing.
“She looks fresh, healthy and full of confidence,” she added.
Monday’s hearing concerned several of the six charges Suu Kyi faces.
These are two counts of violating the Natural Disaster Management Law for violating COVID-19 pandemic restrictions during the 2020 election campaign; illegally importing walkie-talkies that were for her bodyguards’ use; unlicensed use of the radios; and spreading information that could cause public alarm or unrest.
The most serious charge that Suu Kyi faces is breaching the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a penalty of up to 14 years’ imprisonment, but that is being handled by a separate court.
Suu Kyi’s supporters say the proceedings against her are politically motivated and meant to try to legitimize the military’s seizure of power and discredit her. If convicted of any of the offenses, she could be banned from running in the election that the junta has said it will hold within one or two years of its takeover.
The military ousted Suu Kyi’s government less than three months after her National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in a general election that would have given it a second five-year term in office. Before the start of democratic reforms a decade ago, Myanmar was ruled by the military for 50 years.
The junta claims it was justified in taking power because of alleged widespread electoral fraud, especially irregularities in the voting lists.
The Asian Network for Free Elections, a non-partisan poll watching organization, in a report issued last week rejected the military’s allegations of massive fraud, saying the results of last November’s voting were representative of the will of the people.
On Friday, however, the head of Myanmar’s military-appointed state election commission said his agency will consider whether to dissolve Suu Kyi’s former ruling party for alleged involvement in electoral fraud and whether those involved “should be punished as traitors.”
The junta has accused Suu Kyi of corruption and presented on state television what it said was evidence that she took bribes, but has so far only said it intends to pursue charges for that offense. Her lawyers dismiss the allegations.
Several cases are also pending against other senior members of Suu Kyi’s party in addition to Win Myint, the ousted president.
Australian economist Sean Turnell, who served as Suu Kyi’s adviser and was also detained on the day of the army’s takeover, has been charged with violating the Official Secrets Act..."
Source/publisher:
"Associated Press" (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
About Aung San Suu Kyi, The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"As of 23 May, (818) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. These (3) fallen heroes from Monywa Township in Sagaing Region and Demoso Township in Kayah State were killed on previous days and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 23 May, a total of (4296) people are currently under detention; of them (95) are sentenced. 1822 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
Yesterday morning, Two youths were shot dead by junta forces in Demoso Township, Kayah State while bringing food for people who fled from the town. The bodies of the two were reportedly taken away by the military regime.
Last night, a youth was beaten and arrested at his home in relation to the bomb blast which occurred in front of the Inn Ma Town Hospital at Thegon Township in Bago Region. In the morning of 22 May at Mingaladon Township in Yangon Region, a 16-year old girl was arrested while she was sticking anti-school attendance leaflets. Even though this girl is only 16 years, the junta’s propaganda newspapers stated action will be taken against as she is 18 years old.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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1.06 MB 3.81 MB 940.05 KB
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"As of 24 May, (824) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (6) fallen heroes today. These (6) fallen heroes from Htantabin Township in Bago Region, Kani Township in Sagaing Region, Myo Thit Township in Magway Region, North Dagon Township in Yangon Region, Pekon Township in Southern Shan State and Kayah State were killed on previous days and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 24 May, a total of (4301) people are currently under detention; of them (96) are sentenced. 1841 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
On the night of 23 May, a man from Myaung Kone Village in Kani Township, Sagaing Region was shot dead in the head. Last night, a villager from Kone Thar Village in Kayah State was killed, he was shot in the stomach while he was driving a motorbike, the motorbike hit the lamp-post, and broke his leg. Junta forces opened fire yesterday evening when they raided the football ground in North Dagon Township, Yangon Region, a youth was shot when he climbed on the wall to run away and fell on the ground. He was arrested with a forehead and gunshot injury, and later died. Yesterday, a clash between the People’s Defense Force (PDF) and junta troops led to a PDF member shot in the thigh and died due to excessive bleeding.
On the night of 22 May, a man, who was shot and arrested with injuries in an ‘unprovoked’ shooting by terrorist troops into wards at Htantabin Township in Bago Region. His family was later informed he had died. A private boarding school principal from Myo Thit Township in Magway Region with preexisting health conditions, died from being forced to sit in a stress position (called “Pon Zan”) after he appeared before the court in Magway Prison on May 21.
Freelance reporter Super (a.k.a Kyaw Zin Win) was arrested at gunpoint this afternoon in Mandalay City. Last night, both parents and a younger brother were detained as hostages when the junta did not find a CDM striking worker from the fire department in Thegon Town in Bago Region.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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1.07 MB 3.85 MB 951.59 KB
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"The European Union on Sunday denounced a proposal by Myanmar's junta-appointed election commission to dissolve deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), which overwhelmingly won the general election in November.
"If the Commission were to proceed with this proposal, it would show yet again the junta's blatant disregard for the will of Myanmar's people and for due legal process," a spokeswoman of the EU's executive Commission said in a statement.
On Friday, media cited the chairman of the junta-appointed Union Election Commission (UEC), Thein Soe, as saying the panel would have to dissolve the NLD for committing vote fraud in the November election.
Myanmar's army seized power on Feb. 1, overthrowing and detaining the elected civilian leader Suu Kyi, who led a non-violent struggle against dictatorship in the last two decades of the military's 1962-2011 rule of Myanmar.
The military justified its coup by accusing the NLD of obtaining a landslide victory through a manipulated vote, though the electoral commission at that time rejected its complaints. The NLD says it won fairly.
The EU echoed the NLD's position, underscoring the party's victory had been confirmed by all independent domestic and international observers.
"No repression or unfounded pseudo-legal proceedings can grant legitimacy to the junta’s illegal takeover of power," the spokeswoman for the EU Commission said.
"The EU will continue to denounce all attempts to overturn the will of the Myanmar people and to alter the outcome of the last general elections."..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
European Union-Burma relations - European Parliament, Articles on the NLD, The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"We have heard the statement of U Thein Soe, the junta-appointed chairman of the Union Election Commission, according to which the Commission may dissolve the National League for Democracy, which overwhelmingly won the last general elections in November.
If the Commission were to proceed with this proposal, it would show yet again the junta’s blatant disregard for the will of Myanmar’s people and for due legal process.
The EU reiterates that the elections in November faithfully represented the will of Myanmar’s people. This was confirmed by all independent domestic and international observers. No arbitrary decision by the military junta and their illegally-appointed members of the Electoral Commission can cancel that.
The EU will continue to denounce all attempts to overturn the will of the Myanmar people and to alter the outcome of the last general elections. No repression or unfounded pseudo-legal proceedings can grant legitimacy to the junta’s illegal takeover of power. Only respecting the will of the people can bring Myanmar back onto its democratic path and deliver stability and sustainable development..."
Source/publisher:
European External Action Service
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
European Union-Burma relations - European Parliament, Articles on the NLD, The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Local URL:
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Description:
"Summary: Myanmar, also known as Burma, has suffered decades of repressive military rule, poverty due to years of isolationist economic policies, and civil war with ethnic minority groups.
The transfer to civilian leadership in 2011 spurred hopes of democratic reforms. But the military maintained control over parts of the government, and security forces began a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.
The military launched a coup in February 2021, announcing a yearlong state of emergency and arresting opposition figures, including de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and civil society activists.....Introduction: Throughout its decades of independence, Myanmar has struggled with military rule, civil war, isolation from global affairs, and widespread poverty. In 2011, the military junta dissolved, giving way to a military-installed transitional government and ushering in what many believed would be a new era for the Southeast Asian nation. The country’s longtime opposition party—the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Aung San Suu Kyi—won majorities in both chambers of parliament in 2015, and some foreign governments and companies that had previously shunned Myanmar began developing ties with it.
But the military, known as the Tatmadaw, has continued to dominate many aspects of domestic affairs. Military and civilian leaders, including Suu Kyi, have also faced international condemnation for ongoing human rights abuses and brutal violence against Rohingya Muslims in the western state of Rakhine, which a UN report said were committed with “genocidal intent.” In February 2021, the military staged a coup and officially retook control, dashing hopes for democratic progress..."
Source/publisher:
Council on Foreign Relations (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Arakan (Rakhine) State - reports etc. by date (latest first), Racial or ethnic discrimination in Burma: reports of violations against several groups, Discrimination against the Rohingya, Ethnic Cleansing, Genocide, International Court of Justice (ICJ) - General, Several Groups, Rohingya (cultural, political etc.), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ ဖက်ဒရယ်ပြည်ထောင်စုရေးရာဝန်ကြီးဌာနက ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာချက် အမှတ် (၁/၂၀၂၁) ကို ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာ
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Federal Union Affairs - Myanmar - NUG via National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Peaceful Co-existence - Towards Federal Union of Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Format :
pdf
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652.79 KB
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"ကြေညာချက် (၁/၂၀၂၁)
မေလ ၂၃ ရက် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်။
===============
အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုပိုင် စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းစုများနှင့် ဆက်စပ်ထုတ်ကုန်ပစ္စည်းများ၊ ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများအား အရှိန်အဟုန်မြှင့် သပိတ်မှောက်ကြရန် တိုက်တွန်းနှိုးဆော်ခြင်း
--------------------------
၁။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏ ဝင်ငွေရလမ်းများအား ဟန့်တား၊ ပိတ်ဆို့၊ဖြတ်တောက်နိုင်ရေးသည် မြန်မာ့မြေပေါ်မှ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် လုံး၀ချုပ်ငြိမ်းပျောက်ကွယ်သွားစေရေးအတွက် လွန်စွာအရေးပါသည့် လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်တစ်ရပ် ဖြစ်သည်။
၂။ အဆိုပါလုပ်ငန်းစဉ်တွင် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုပိုင် စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းစုများနှင့် ဆက်စပ်ထုတ်ကုန်ပစ္စည်းများ၊ ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများ အား ပြတ်ပြတ်သားသား ဆန့်ကျင်သပိတ်မှောက်ခြင်းသည်လည်း အရေးကြီးသည့် အခန်းကဏ္ဍတစ်ခုအဖြစ် ပါဝင်သည်။
၃။ ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက် လက်နက်အားကိုးဖြင့် နိုင်ငံတော်အာဏာအား အကြမ်းဖက်သိမ်းယူခဲ့သည့် နောက်ကွယ်က တစ်ခုတည်း သော အဓိက အကြောင်းအရင်းသည် စစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်များနှင့် ၎င်းတို့မိသားစုဝင်များ၏ စီးပွားရေး အကျိုးအမြတ်များကို တည်ဆောက်ထူထောင် ၊ ချဲ့ထွင်ကာကွယ်ရန်သာဖြစ်သည်။
၄။ ယခုအခါ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု၏ စီးပွားရေးအင်ပါယာသည် ကျောက်မျက် ရတနာရောင်းဝယ်ခြင်း၊ စက်သုံးဆီဖြန့်ဖြူး ရောင်းချခြင်း၊ ဟိုတယ်လုပ်
ငန်း၊ ဘဏ်လုပ်ငန်း၊ အာမခံလုပ်ငန်း၊ ဆောက်လုပ်ရေးလုပ်ငန်း၊ ဆိပ်ကမ်းဝန်ဆောင်မှု မှစ၍ အရက်၊ ဘီယာ၊ စီးကရက်၊ ဘိလပ်မြေ၊ သံချောင်း၊ အိမ်မိုးသွပ်ပြား ထုတ်လုပ်ရောင်းချခြင်းအပါအဝင် ကော်ဖီမစ်၊ တီးမစ်၊ ဆပ်ပြာ၊ သွားတိုက်ဆေးပါမကျန် ဈေးကွက်နယ်ပယ်စုံ၌ ထိုးဖောက်နေရာယူကာ စီးပွားရေးအကျိုးအမြတ်များစွာ နှစ်စဉ်ရရှိနေပါသည်။
၅။ ထို့ကြောင့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စု သက်ဆိုးရှည်ရေးအတွက် အဓိကအသက်သွေးကြော ဝင်ငွေရလမ်းဖြစ်သည့် ပူးတွဲဖော်ပြပါ စစ်တပ်ပိုင် စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းစုများနှင့် ဆက်စပ်ထုတ်ကုန်ပစ္စည်းများ၊ ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများအားဝယ်ယူသုံးစွဲခြင်း၊ သိုလှောင် ဖြန့်ဖြူး ရောင်းချခြင်း အလျဉ်းမပြုလုပ်ကြရန်နှင့် အရှိန်အဟုန်မြှင့် သပိတ်မှောက်ကြရန် အထူးတိုက်တွန်း နှိုးဆော်အပ်ပါသည်။
တင်ထွန်းနိုင်
ပြည်ထောင်စုဝန်ကြီး
စီမံကိန်း ဘဏ္ဍာရေးနှင့် ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုဝန်ကြီးဌာန..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Planning, Finance and Investment - Myanmar - NUG
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Economic activities of the Myanmar Military, Business and the Military, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
452.56 KB
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"The headline of the Jakarta Post’s editorial last Wednesday said it best: ‘ASEAN, hurry up’.
It’s been a month since ASEAN’s heads of government met in an informal summit in Jakarta to discuss their collective response to the February coup in Myanmar.
It was an achievement that, despite the presence of the coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, the group was able to come to a five-point consensus. Now, observers — and those who continue to face a brutal crackdown — are getting impatient to see follow-through on the plan.
By inviting junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing to April’s mini-summit, ASEAN accepted the risk of legitimising the junta in exchange for its engagement with an ASEAN-brokered dialogue and aid plan. Like clockwork the junta has been using the general’s visit to Jakarta as fodder for its propaganda.
It would be a travesty if the April ASEAN summit gave a veneer of legitimacy to the coup leaders without leading to concrete follow-through on ASEAN’s five-point ‘consensus.’ The most urgent — and one would think the most straightforward — element of this plan was the appointment of a Special Envoy for the ASEAN Chair, who would spearhead a process of dialogue between the junta and the deposed government and coordinate ASEAN’s delivery of humanitarian aid as the Myanmar economy collapses.
That envoy has yet to be named. Commentators have called on Brunei, which holds the ASEAN Chair this year, to cut through the bureaucracy and make the appointment quickly; the Jakarta Post’s editors labelled the delay ‘ridiculous’.
It is appropriate that such calls are being heard from Jakarta. Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have prosecuted Indonesia’s natural leadership role within ASEAN ably throughout the crisis. But the fact is that their eagerness for action is not matched by other quarters in ASEAN, as Barry Desker explains in the first of two lead articles this week.
Whereas ‘Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore [have] emphasised the unacceptability of the use of force against unarmed civilians’, Desker writes, ‘Thailand and Vietnam, supported by Cambodia and Laos, have advocated acceptance of the Myanmar fait accompli’, invoking ASEAN’s tradition of non-interference.
Because ‘ASEAN’s influence lies in its capacity to persuade Myanmar’s military authorities, not the presence of rules which could be enforced’, that apparent divergence is bad news. ASEAN’s ability to exert its influence is only as strong as the internal consensus it can forge on the need for change in Myanmar.
As was observed in the aftermath of the coup in February, the same goes for the international response more broadly. Unanimity is the only weapon in the arsenal. The United Nations is largely toothless given the protection China and Russia will offer the junta at the Security Council; economic sanctions and arms embargoes, meanwhile, have limited utility because Myanmar’s biggest trading partners and arms suppliers aren’t interested in them.
‘The reality’, Desker reminds us, ‘is that ASEAN remains the only game in town.’ Its five-point consensus is the only viable set of lowest-common-denominator demands on which ASEAN, Asian and western democracies, and potentially even China, can and should collectively pressure the junta.
If the ASEAN-process doesn’t get results, there are alternative options, but likewise these are dicey. In a second feature article this week, Greg Poling lays out the grounds for scepticism about ASEAN’s ability to shift the facts on the ground in Myanmar, arguing that the momentum from the April summit has quickly dissipated and that member states and ASEAN partners need to get creative in finding pressure points independent of ASEAN processes. ‘That would not be an assault on ASEAN’s centrality, but a recognition of its limitations’, argues Poling.
No matter what form diplomacy takes, if a partial or whole reversal of the coup isn’t negotiated then things could unravel even further within Myanmar. The anti-coup National Unity Government has linked up with the ethnic organisations that operate in the country’s periphery, raising the prospect of the continuing strife between the Tatmadaw and ethnic armies being augmented by terrorist tactics in urban areas. Myanmar’s economy is in freefall and may be a source of economic refugees as well as those fleeing violence.
The failure of diplomacy to arrest Myanmar’s downwards spiral could have very serious implications for Southeast Asia’s regional architecture as well. It was immediately apparent in the aftermath of the February coup how much was at stake for ASEAN’s relevance and credibility. As violence continues on the streets of Myanmar, this remains the case. Brunei will host the ASEAN Regional Forum in August and the East Asia Summit in November. Having a coup leader at the table whose soldiers are gunning down civilians in the streets would not be a good look.
Amid the Myanmar crisis we’re seeing a familiar but increasingly stark set of gaps — between ASEAN member states’ interests and ambitions in the international arena; and between what many expect of ASEAN and what its institutional processes can deliver.
Within those gaps lie considerable hazards for the ability of Southeast Asia’s homegrown regional association to safeguard its centrality in regional affairs. That will only be tested more as great power rivalries escalate. ASEAN doesn’t have a moment to waste.
The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University..."
Source/publisher:
"East Asia Forum" (Australia)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
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ASEAN-Burma relations, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"This piece launches an online essay series aimed at illuminating the coup and its aftermath from a research perspective. It is driven by an intense desire to put knowledge to work in the interests of participatory democracy and justice with a focus on state formative processes and imprisonment. For information on how to contribute please scroll to the end. To access the series, follow this link: http://essays.legacies-of-detention.org/
The military coup that took place in Myanmar on February 1st, 2021 sent shockwaves throughout the world. It has affected many who do research in and about Myanmar in a deep, visceral way. In the weeks—now months—since the takeover, we have followed developments closely. We have been in touch with our research partners in Myanmar. We have perused news and social media sites, attended virtual webinars, and listened to statement after statement at the UN. We have published in the Danish national press, posted gestures of solidarity on social media and participated in demonstrations expressing solidarity and calling out the military regime.
Nevertheless, common to all these distant forms of witnessing—and occasionally acting—has been a sense of inadequacy as each day brings new horrors and tragedies.
We are based at DIGNITY – the Danish Institute Against Torture, an organisation committed to the eradication of torture and the rehabilitation of torture survivors. So, we are not unused to testimonies and images of struggle and suffering. In one sense it is our stock in trade. And yet the coup and its aftermath has left us reeling, unbalanced and rudderless. Why?
Is it because we were, fundamentally if unconsciously, invested in a fantasy of linear progress and democratic transition? Was our research attached to an underlying idea that the politics of Myanmar were in fact on a more hopeful trajectory than the stalled peace process, the Rohingya catastrophe, and the constitutional compromises implied? Does such a turn of events raise, once again, the haunting specter of the alleged irrelevance of research? Or is it because of the personal and professional ties we have developed with places and people that were suddenly under attack?
For our research team, this sense of imbalance and inadequacy has been exacerbated by the fact that this crisis is what our research project is about: a state-in-the-making and the way imprisonment is implicated in (and reveals something about) that process and its meanings. Since 2016 we have been seeking,, to understand aspects of state and society by looking at prisons, their histories, their structures and dynamics, their effects, and the politics around them.
The military coup, the arrests, torture and killings and the ensuing highly predictable crackdown on dissent that has involved the arrest, torture and killing of elected parliamentarians, activists, journalists, and civil society leaders have sent our team spinning. Inspired as we are to see friends, colleagues, and others fighting back, standing firm, and courageously confronting the repressive tactics of the police and the Tatmadaw, we are profoundly discomforted by the situation and what it means for the future of Myanmar. We realise that we are not alone in this, and the essay series we are launching is an invitation to share and put knowledge to work.
A series of simple but related questions drive this initiative: How can knowledge be put to work to illuminate events and to counter news-oriented oversimplifications and nuance the standard discourses of the international community and the human rights world? How does one respond acutely, using grounded knowledge and critical reflection even as times are changing and it seems impossible to keep up? How can the authority and expertise of research be put to work in the moment?
As a means through which to grapple with and respond to these questions the series of brief essays we will host aims to illuminate aspects of the present calamity through the application of an ethnographic sensibility. An ethnographic sensibility draws attention to meanings, to social practices, and to situated histories. It is both a form of observation, a form of analysis, and a form of writing. By encouraging an ethnographic sensibility, we aspire to produce and curate a form of reflection from below and from within that might inform, illuminate, and provoke further thought.
The series is in some senses a response to the call of Matt Venker, Nicole, and Ma Ei Ei, in a Tea Circle post of February 10th, to own our responsibility as foreign researchers to provide context, all the time conscious of the fraught position we occupy as privileged outsiders.
The focus of this series is narrow but nevertheless highly pertinent given the nature of the coup and its aftermath. Reflecting the scope of the Legacies of Detention in Myanmar research project, this series will center on four themes:
Prisons, arrest and detention – how are detention and imprisonment being used repressively; who is being detained, and under what circumstances; what are the effects of detention; how are communities responding; to what extent are we seeing the resurrection of the former junta-era carceral state?
Law and legitimacy – why is the Tatmadaw so obsessed with legitimacy; what form is ‘lawfare’ (Comaroff and Comaroff 2007) taking and why; how exactly has law been commandeered?
State-in-the-making – what does the current situation mean for illusions about transition and for aspirations of democracy; how is the state metamorphosing currently; what kinds of sovereignties are at stake?
Struggles of everyday life – what forms is resistance taking; how might current expressions of dissent be understood historically; how are people surviving; what traumas are reawakened?
Making sense of violence is implicit across each of these themes. Contributions may be provisional and experimental, authoritative only to the extent that the reader is persuaded. Contributors are welcome, indeed encouraged, to write reflexively. This is in recognition of the grip that the situation and people in Myanmar have on researchers and the various ways in which this turn of events continues to shock and disturb. To feel is, after all, part and parcel of the ethnographic venture to generate vulnerable knowledge.
An acute crisis insists on a response, especially when the crisis is an unfolding feature of a landscape that a research project is designed to address. We have few illusions about the difference writing can make in the current crisis here and now. But the compulsion to write is no less on that account. We aim to publish short (1000-1500 words), thought-filled, and thought-provoking pieces in an accessible style, though with a scholarly signature. We will not shy away from theory, but our source of sustenance and stimulation is everyday events. In this way we seek to put knowledge and experience to work.
Through this series we hope to contribute to a renewed and engaged scholarship on the socio-political situation and the everyday experiences of people in Myanmar, as called for by Cheesman (2019) echoing Wittekind and Rhoades (2018, see also Jefferson 2020) even at this time of acute crisis. First and foremost, we hope to illuminate what is going on and to ensure that Myanmar is not forgotten.
Contributions will be posted on a specially designed platform linked to the Legacies of Detention website and promoted via social media posts to ensure wide circulation. Depending on interest and uptake we expect to accept and publish contributions for a period of between three to six months.
If you are interested in submitting a contribution, please contact Andrew M. Jefferson who will curate the series at [email protected] or [email protected]. Our aim will be to respond promptly with a rapid 48-hour turnaround between receipt of contributions, editorial work and posting.
(Photo courtesy of Benjamin Small)
Andrew M. Jefferson is a senior researcher at DIGNITY, working on issues pertaining to the relationship between states and subjects through the lens of imprisonment.
Tomas Max Martin is a senior researcher at DIGNITY, working in the field of prison sociology and the anthropology of the state with a focus on the localization of human rights reform and the appropriation of penal technologies and architectures.
Hannah Russell is a project officer, supporting the legacies of detention program at DIGNITY, and is a founding member of the Myanmar Action Group Denmark.
Ergün Cakal is a legal advisor at DIGNITY, working on juridical understanding(s) and recognition(s) of state violence..."
Source/publisher:
"Tea Circle" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
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Individual Documents
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Abstracts, bibliographies, scholarly journals, libraries, institutes, universities, other research tools, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"H.E.Dr Sasa urgently appeals for strong actions and prayers
H.E. Dr Sasa urgently appeals to the international communities and the responsible Governments around the world to pray for and make immediate actions and intervention efforts to end this senseless killing of civilians in Myanmar, destruction of Churches and targeting of already oppressed and marginalized ethnic communities, and to help and support the brave people of Kayah and of Myanmar overcome this brutal reign of terror by the junta ‘SAC’ forces and restore democracy, human rights, and freedom to ALL, and build "A new future in a New Myanmar where a Federal Democratic Union flourishes; and all the people of Myanmar, regardless of ethnic backgrounds, religion, race, culture or gender will be equals.” We have been doing everything we can around the clock, and now we need the support, recognition, actions and intervention from the international communities before more innocent civilians are slaughtered.
Myanmar will forever be an ally, friend and partner of all those who help us during this darkest hour of our history..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-24
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Human Rights and international relations, Racial or ethnic discrimination in Burma: reports of violations against several groups, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Inter-Communal violence and discrimination - Myanmar - General articles and analysis, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"More than 100 people are reported to have been killed by security forces in Myanmar, on the deadliest day since last month's military takeover of the country.
A five-year-old was reported to be among the dead along with other children.
Protesters against the military coup had defied warnings from the government that security forces would shoot people in “the head and back”.
There’s been international condemnation of the violence.
Kate Silverton presents BBC News reporting by Laura Bicker..."
Source/publisher:
"BBC News" (London)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Human Rights Defenders, Anti-coup protesters, Children, Children's rights: reports of violations in Burma against more than one ethnic group, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"More than 125,000 school teachers in Myanmar have been suspended by the military authorities for joining a civil disobedience movement to oppose the military coup in February, an official of the Myanmar Teachers' Federation said.
The suspensions have come days before the start of a new school year, which some teachers and parents are boycotting as part of the campaign that has paralysed the country since the coup cut short a decade of democratic reforms.
A total of 125,900 school teachers had been suspended as of Saturday, said the official of the teachers' federation, who declined to give his name for fear of reprisals. He is already on the junta's wanted list on charges of inciting disaffection.
Myanmar had 430,000 school teachers according to the most recent data, from two years ago.
"These are just statements to threaten people to come back to work. If they actually fire this many people, the whole system will stop," said the official, who is also a teacher. He said he had been told that the charges he faces would be dropped if he returns.
Reuters was unable to reach a junta spokesman or the education ministry for comment. The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper has called on teachers and students to return to schools to get the education system started again.
The disruption at schools echoes that in the health sector and across government and private business since the Southeast Asian country was plunged into chaos by the coup and the arrest of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Around 19,500 university staff have also been suspended, according to the teachers' group.....PARENTS KEEP CHILDREN HOME: Registrations begin next week for the school term that starts in June, but some parents said they also plan to keep their children out of school.
"I am not going to enrol my daughter because I don't want to give her education from military dictatorship. I also worry about her safety," said 42-year-old Myint, whose daughter is 14.
Students, who have been at the forefront of daily protests at which hundreds of people have been killed by security forces, also said they planned to boycott classes.
"I will only go back to school if we get back democracy," said Lwin, 18.
Myanmar's education system was already one of the poorest in the region - and ranked 92 of 93 countries in a global survey last year.
Even under the leadership of Suu Kyi, who had championed education, spending was below 2% of gross domestic product. That was one of the lowest rates in the world, according to World Bank figures.
A National Unity Government, set up underground by opponents of the junta, said it would do all it could to support the teachers and students itself - calling on foreign donors to stop funding the junta-controlled education ministry.
"We will work with Myanmar's educators who are refusing to support the cruel military," Sasa, who goes by one name and is a spokesman for the national unity government, said in an email to Reuters. "These great teachers and brave teachers will never be left behind."..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Human Rights and international relations, Education in Burma/Myanmar - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi was in good health and would face court in the coming days, in excerpts of an interview published online on Saturday.
It was his first interview since overthrowing Suu Kyi in a Feb. 1 coup.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health. She is at her home and healthy. She is going to face trial at the court in a few days," he said by video link with the Hong Kong-based Chinese language broadcaster Phoenix Television. "Like I said before, she tried all she could."..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
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Individual Documents
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"Myanmar’s junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi was healthy at home and would appear in court in a few days, in his first interview since overthrowing her in a Feb. 1 coup.
The coup has plunged the Southeast Asian country into chaos. An ethnic armed group opposed to the ruling junta attacked a military post in a northwestern jade mining town while other violent incidents were reported from other corners of Myanmar.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her long struggle against previous military rulers, is among more than 4,000 people detained since the coup. She faces charges that range from illegally possessing walkie-talkie radios to violating a state secrets law.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health. She is at her home and healthy. She is going to face trial at the court in a few days," Min Aung Hlaing said by video link with the Hong Kong-based Chinese language broadcaster Phoenix Television on May 20, in excerpts released on Saturday.
The interviewer asked him what he thought of the performance of Suu Kyi, 75, who is widely admired in the country of 53 million for her campaign that had brought tentative democratic reforms which were cut short by the coup.
"She tried all she could," Min Aung Hlaing responded.
He reiterated that the army had seized power because it had identified fraud in an election won by Suu Kyi's party in November - although its accusations were rejected by the then election commission.
He said the army would hold elections and potential changes to the constitution had been identified and would be made if they were "the people's will".
Suu Kyi's next court appearance is due on Monday in the capital Naypyidaw. So far she has appeared only by video link and as yet to be allowed to speak directly to her lawyers.
The junta has cited security reasons for not allowing her to speak to her lawyers in private at a time the military authorities have not established control of the country in the face of daily protests, strikes and renewed insurgencies.....ATTACK ON JADE TOWN: The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) attacked an army post at Hkamti township in the Sagaing region early on Saturday, the Irrawaddy and Mizzima online publications said. Pictures showed columns of dark smoke rising from the scene.
KIA spokesman Naw Bu told Reuters he was aware of the attack but could give no details. Reuters was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.
State run-MRTV television reported the attack and said that three police had been wounded and others were missing. Independent broadcaster DVB said nine were captured by the insurgents.
Since the coup, open conflict resumed between the army and the KIA, which has been fighting for greater autonomy for the Kachin people for some six decades and has voiced support for anti-junta protesters.
Mizzima said the army used jets in attacks on the KIA at Hkamti, a town on the Chindwin river in a remote region rich in jade and gold about 50 km (30 miles) from the border with India.
The army has carried out numerous bombing attacks on KIA positions in recent weeks and has also clashed with ethnic armies in the east and west of Myanmar.
Security forces have killed at least 815 people since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group.
Min Aung Hlaing said the actual figure was around 300 and that 47 police had also been killed.
State-run MRTV said one policeman had been killed in an insurgent attack in eastern Kayah state on Friday.
In western Chin state, junta opponents said they had killed at least four members of the security forces on Friday and had buried them by the roadside. The claim could not be independently verified.
Myanmar media reported that a soldier had been killed in a shooting in the commercial hub, Yangon, on Saturday. Bomb blasts were reported there, at Pathein in the Irrawaddy delta region and at a trading zone near the border with China..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
About Aung San Suu Kyi, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Kachin State - general articles, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Fighting in recent weeks has displaced some 45,000 civilians in Chin and Kachin states.
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"At least 10 military junta troops were killed and around 20 critically wounded in five clashes over the last two days in Myanmar’s Chin state, militia groups said Thursday, while tens of thousands of civilians have fled and are living in dire conditions as fighting has intensified in the region.
Four of the engagements took place in Chin’s Hakha township, killing and injuring regime soldiers, a Hakha-based Chin-land Defense Force (CDF) spokesman told RFA’s Myanmar Service.
The first occurred when CDF forces entered Lot Klone village on May 18 and were fired on by the junta troops, while the second took place the following morning, when a CDF unit ambushed soldiers on Matupi Road, killing seven, he said.
“This morning [Thursday] we heard from sources close to the area that more than 10 troops were killed and more than 20 injured,” the spokesman said.
Additionally, the CDF reported, a clash took place at a security checkpoint near Hakha University on May 18 and another near the intersection of Hakha Thar 6 and Hakha-Gangaw Roads the same day. On the evening of May 19, the military set fire to more than 30 motorbikes owned by Hakha CDF members, the group said, although no casualties were suffered.
In Chin’s nearby Mindat township, the Mindat People’s Administration (MPA) militia said it engaged with regime troops on May 19 between mile markers 40 and 50 on Mindat-Matupi Road, killing three junta soldiers, including a sergeant.
As of Thursday, the military had yet to confirm details of any of the clashes in Chin state, where soldiers are battling volunteer militias wielding mostly home-made weapons more than three months after it overthrew the country’s elected government in a Feb. 1 coup and reinstated junta rule.
Za Op Ling, deputy executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO), told RFA that more than 35,000 civilians from Chin state have fled their homes since the attack on Lot Klone village—15,000 of whom have crossed Myanmar’s border into India’s Mizoram state.
“Whenever there is a clash, the soldiers later search every house and make arrests,” he said.
“Their main target is young people, so all the youths have fled to nearby villages. Some escaped to the Indian border. All this happened mostly in Mindat and at least 8,000 people have fled from the township alone.”
Za Op Ling said that local authorities in Mizoram state have asked India’s central government to provide assistance to the refugees from Myanmar.
A resident of Mindat confirmed that the township is nearly deserted after the military “opened fire with heavy artillery,” killing several residents.
“In this kind of situation, it isn’t possible for people to live in the town. It’s not safe to stay at home at all,” she said.
“People just fled to nearby forests or villages. The young people from our village have helped some of the refugees. Now there are only some elderly people left in the town, most of whom are trapped.”
Around 3,000 people taking shelter in four villages in Mindat township are currently facing food shortages due to logistical difficulties and with water and power cut off, according to a local aid worker.
A member of the Mindat CDF, which is helping the refugees, said the group plans to ask the United Nations refugee agency for help in distributing food and other necessities.
A spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General said in a statement on Tuesday that that the UN Office for Human Rights is investigating reports of arbitrary detentions, including the killing of six people in Mindat over the weekend.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said at least 797 civilians, including dozens of children, have been killed by security forces since the latest military coup, while more than a thousand civilians have been injured.
The fighting in Mindat over the weekend prompted Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) on Thursday to condemn the military’s blocking of humanitarian and medical aid and access to clean water.
“The reports out of Mindat … expose the horrifying reality of ongoing violence against tens of thousands of civilians in Mindat by the Myanmar military,” the group said.
“These actions further echo the unconscionable actions and severe breaches of international human rights law perpetrated by the Tatmadaw since the group seized power in a February 1 coup d’etat,” it said, using the Burmese name for the military.
“Physicians for Human Rights is appalled by the Myanmar military’s unlawful implementation of martial law in Mindat, who has pushed civilians into Mindat’s surrounding jungles to escape detention, and the reported obstruction in access to clean drinking water.”
The group noted that the fighting has left women and children in Mindat vulnerable to tactics of war it said the military regularly employs, including sexual and gender-based violence.....Kachin state refugees: In Kachin state, where junta troops have also been fighting the veteran ethnic Kachin Independence Army (KIA) since clashes broke out between the two sides on April 10, residents told RFA that the military has launched more than 30 airstrikes in the area over the past 40 days.
The two sides have engaged in some 90 engagements in Kachin state’s Momauk township alone, prompting more than 10,000 people to flee from 20 villages. More than 3,000 have arrived in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs), while the remainder are in hiding in forests near their homes, hoping to remain able to harvest their crops.
A woman refugee from Momauk’s Sihak village told RFA her family had lost nearly everything in the fighting.
“The three or four houses in front of ours were razed to the ground during the clashes,” she said. “The owners have nowhere to live and have fled.”
A resident of Momauk’s Kone Law village said that clashes intensified just as farmers were preparing to harvest peanuts, and many crops were damaged.
“We should have been harvesting then, but now, the harvest time has passed, and the ground has become very hard,” he said.
“It’s very difficult to pull out the plants. We had to hire more people, but we still can’t get it done because the soil has hardened. There are a lot of people who dare not go to the fields because the soldiers are too close.”
Civil society groups are attempting to provide food, shelter and medicine to Momauk, but refugees told RFA that the military is blocking them from doing so and confiscating the goods.
Residents also complained that soldiers regularly plant landmines in area fields that kill essential cattle, but then demand compensation from farmers for “destroying their weapons.”
A civil society worker who is assisting refugees in Momauk told RFA there are still not enough camps for those who have fled the fighting.
“Even monasteries that used to take in refugees are full, so many people lack shelter because there is no place for them to live,” he said.
“We are now trying to find ways to set up a new camp in a convenient location with the help of U.N. agencies, but it is difficult because of the rising number of refugees.”
While the most intense fighting between the military and KIA has taken place in Momauk, clashes have also occurred in several other townships in Kachin state, including Laiza, Hpakant, Mohnyin, Mogaung, Tanaing, Bhamo, Putao, Mansi and Myitkyina.....Inter-ethnic conflicts: In addition to clashes with the military regime, Myanmar’s myriad ethnic armies have continued to fight amongst themselves in the pursuit of new territory, further exacerbating the country’s refugee crisis.
Clashes between the Restoration Council of Shan State (RCSS) and the combined forces of the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army-North (SSPP/SSA-N) and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) broke out near Manli village in northern Shan state’s Namtu township in April.
More than 2,000 residents of Namtu’s Panlong, Chaungsa and Manli villages, have since fled to the nearby town centers of Hsipaw and Namtu. Additionally, clashes between the SSPP/SSA-N and RCSS on May 19 prompted another 1,000 villagers to flee Hsipaw’s Wan Sein village, bring the total number of IDPs in the area to around 3,000.
The SSPP/SSA-N and TNLA have called on the RCSS to withdraw their troops back to their home base in southern Shan state to ease fighting in the northern part of the region.
Fighting between the RCSS and the TNLA intensified between 2015 and the end of 2017 in northern Shan state and in April 2018, the TNLA began joint operations with the SSPP/SSA-N in Namtu township. According to the SSPP/SSA-N, talks between the two Shan ethnic armies have yielded little progress..."
Source/publisher:
"RFA" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Chin State, Kachin State, Shan State, Armed conflict in Burma -- offensives, Armed conflict in Kachin State - general articles, Armed conflict in Shan State - general articles, Internal displacement/forced migration in Chin State, Internal displacement/forced migration of Kachin, Internal displacement/forced migration of Shan. Palaung and Wa villagers, Humanitarian assistance - emergencies, Several Groups, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Senior leaders of the pro-democracy party say the move was inconsistent with its stance on the military takeover
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"A decision by People’s Party chair Ko Ko Gyi to attend a meeting convened by a junta-appointed election body on Friday has cost the party more than a third of its senior leaders.
Seven of the party’s 20 central executive committee members have resigned over the move, according to co-founder Ye Naing Aung, who was among those who stepped down.
The two men, who have known each other since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, were divided over whether to accept an invitation from the Union Election Commission (UEC) to attend the meeting.
“I expressed the view that we shouldn’t accept, because it wasn’t in line with the will, desires, or expectations of the people,” Ye Naing Aung told Myanmar Now.
“However, a majority decided to attend the meeting. Since I couldn’t accept that decision, I resigned as the party’s secretary,” he said.
Aye Aye Khaing, another CEC member, confirmed that she also resigned for the same reason.
“Some members of our party have been arrested. Some of my friends have lost their children. I could not turn my back on them and meet with election officials appointed by this junta,” she said.
According to Ye Naing Aung, there were also many resignations from the party’s more than 80 township-level branch offices, especially in Mandalay Region.
Myo Aung, the secretary of the party’s office in Kayin State’s Myawaddy Township, told Myanmar Now that he simply could not accept Ko Ko Gyi’s justification for the decision.
“It is impossible to form a federal union just by cooperating [with the junta]. What they did was unacceptable to the entire country and very evil,” he said, noting that the regime has killed more than 800 people since seizing power on February 1.
He added that regional party officials were not given an opportunity to express their views on the subject or even informed about the decision.
The meeting on Friday was the second convened by the UEC since the regime replaced all of its members with its own appointees soon after the coup.
The People's Party rejected an invitation to the first meeting, held in late February, because the newly formed UEC “did not try to resolve issues related to the results of the 2020 multi-party democratic general election in accordance with the law,” the party said at the time.
Ko Ko Gyi acknowledged that party’s current stance was “more dangerous”.
"The path we have chosen now is more arduous and more dangerous. We have to act with political courage and political faith,” he told Myanmar Now.
He reiterated that a majority of the party’s CEC members were behind the decision to attend Friday’s meeting and added that it would not compromise the party's pro-democracy principles.
Ko Ko Gyi did not comment on the resignations of the members, but said that many party members expressed their support on social media.
“With other like-minded people, a political party must continue,” he said.
Formed in 2018, the People's Party has about 100,000 members. In addition to its township-level branch offices, it has around 400 quarter/village-level offices.
The party fielded more than 150 candidates in the 2020 general election but did not win any seats.
Ko Ko Gyi contested a lower house seat representing Yangon’s South Okkalapa Township, but was defeated by a candidate from the National League for Democracy (NLD).
The NLD went on to win a landslide victory in the election, but was ousted by military before it could begin its second term in power.
The military used unfounded allegations of electoral fraud as a pretext for overthrowing the NLD government.
Soon after seizing power, the regime reorganized the UEC and appointed former military judge advocate-general Thein Soe to act as its chair.
Thein Soe previously served as chair of the UEC during the 2010 election, which most observers regarded as rigged in favour of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
The NLD boycotted that election, but soundly defeated the incumbent USDP government five years later. It performed even more strongly in last year’s election..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Burma/Myanmar's political parties, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Statement by Ministry of Labor, National Unity Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar - ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ အလုပ်သမားဝန်ကြီးဌာနက
ထုတ်ပြန်ချက်တစ်ရပ်ထုတ်ပြန်..."
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
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"The United Nations in Myanmar is alarmed by the humanitarian impact of ongoing violence in the town of Mindat in Chin State in western Myanmar, following reports of indiscriminate attacks by the security forces against civilians and resulting population displacement and civilian casualties.
Local sources indicated that close to 4,000 people have been internally displaced since the hostilities escalated in the town of Mindat on 12 May, with an unconfirmed number, believed to be in thousands, hiding in nearby forests and mountains in search of safety and protection. A higher number of civilians remain in Mindat as they were reportedly not allowed to leave during the height of the hostilities.
There are reports of houses and other civilian property damaged, destroyed or occupied by security forces. An unconfirmed number of men, women, and children have lost their lives or sustained injuries because of the violence. The United Nations is also concerned by reports about the security forces using civilians as human shields and incidents of sexual assault perpetrated against women and girls.
People who have already fled and others who remain are in urgent need of food, water, shelter, access to healthcare and gender-based violence and psychological support. The United Nations and humanitarian partners are making efforts to assess and address these needs; however, humanitarian access challenges, including due to insecurity and road blockages, are complicating these efforts.
The United Nations calls on security forces to urgently take all necessary measures and precautions to spare civilians and civilian infrastructure, and to adhere to the fundamental principles of distinction, necessity, proportionality and protection.
We also call upon security forces to allow civilians who choose to leave areas of danger to do so without obstruction or delay, securing their safety, and to ensure that those who are injured are transferred to a medical facility situated in a safe area.
We urge everyone involved to facilitate the delivery of relief by the United Nations and all humanitarian partners to people fleeing the violence, those trapped in their homes and everyone affected, by ensuring safe and unhindered humanitarian access.
The United Nations reiterates its strong commitment to continue making all efforts to provide humanitarian assistance and protection services to people in need wherever they may be, guided by the internationally recognized principles of humanity, impartiality, neutrality and independence.....မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ အနောက်ဘက်ရှိ ချင်းပြည်နယ် မင်းတပ်မြို့တွင် လုံခြုံရေး တပ်ဖွဲ့များက အရပ်သားများအပေါ် ခွဲခြားမှုမရှိဘဲ တိုက်ခိုက်မှုကြောင့် နေရပ်စွန့်ခွာထွက်ပြေးခြင်းများနှင့် အရပ်သားများထိခိုက်သေဆုံးမှုများ ရှိကြောင်းသိရှိရပါသည်။ ယင်းကဲ့သို့ ဆက်တိုက်ဖြစ်ပေါ်လျက်ရှိသော အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ၏ အကျိုးဆက်များ အပေါ် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ ကုလသမဂ္ဂက စိုးရိမ်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။
မေလ ၁၂ ရက်နေ့မှစ၍ မင်းတပ်မြို့တွင် ပစ်ခတ်မှုများအရှိန်မြင့်တက်လာရာမှ လူပေါင်း ၄,၀၀၀ ခန့် နေရပ်စွန့်ခွာခဲ့ရသည်ဟု ဒေသခံများက သတင်းပေးပို့ခဲ့ပါသည်။ နေရပ်စွန့်ခွာသူ အရေအတွက်ကို အတည်မပြုနိုင်သေးသော်လည်း ထောင်နှင့်ချီမည်ဟု ခန့်မှန်းထားပါသည်။ ၎င်းတို့သည် အနီးအနားရှိ တောတောင်များထဲတွင် ဘေးရန်ကင်းပြီး အကာအကွယ်ရယူနိုင်ရန် ပုန်းခိုနေရလျက်ရှိပါသည်။ မင်းတပ်မြို့တွင်မူ အရပ်သားအများအပြားကျန်ရှိနေပြီး ပစ်ခတ်မှုများ ဖြစ်ပေါ်စဉ်အတွင်း ထွက်ပြေးခွင့်မရှိခဲ့ကြကြောင်း သိရှိရပါသည်။
လုံခြုံရေးတပ်ဖွဲ့များကြောင့် အရပ်သားများ၏ အိုးအိမ်စည်းစိမ်များ ပျက်စီးခြင်း၊ အဖျက်အဆီးခံရခြင်းနှင့် သိမ်းယူခံရခြင်းများရှိကြောင်း သတင်းပေးပို့ချက်များလည်း ရှိပါသည်။ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများကြောင့် အပြင်းအထန် ဒဏ်ရာရ၊ အသက်ဆုံးရှုံးသွားသည့် အမျိုးသား၊ အမျိုးသမီးနှင့် ကလေးသူငယ်များရှိပြီး အရေအတွက်ကိုမူ အတည်မပြုနိုင်သေးပါ။ အရပ်သားများကို ပစ်ခတ်မှုများတွင် လူသားဒိုင်းသဖွယ် အကာအကွယ်ယူခြင်းနှင့် အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးများအပေါ် လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းများရှိနေသည်ဆိုသည့် သတင်းများအပေါ်လည်း ကုလသမဂ္ဂက စိုးရိမ်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။
ထွက်ပြေးသွားရသူများနှင့် ကျန်ခဲ့သူများပါ စားနပ်ရိက္ခာ၊ ရေ၊ ခိုလှုံရာနေရာနှင့် ကျန်းမာရေး စောင့်ရှောက်မှုများ အရေးတကြီး လိုအပ်လျက်ရှိပြီး လိင်အခြေပြု အကြမ်းဖက်မှုဆိုင်ရာနှင့် လူမှုစိတ္တပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ အကူအညီများလည်း လိုအပ်နေပါသည်။ ကုလသမဂ္ဂနှင့် လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာ မိတ်ဖက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများသည် လိုအပ်ချက်များ လေ့လာဆန်းစစ်ပြီး ဖြည့်ဆည်းပေးနိုင်ရန် ကြိုးပမ်းအားထုတ်လျက်ရှိပါသည်။ သို့ရာတွင် လုံခြုံရေးအခြေအနေနှင့် လမ်းပိတ်ဆို့မှုများအပါအဝင် လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာ အကူအညီပေးနိုင်ရေး သွားလာခွင့် အခက်အခဲများကြောင့် နှောင့်နှေးကြန့်ကြာမှုများဖြစ်နေပါသည်။
လုံခြုံရေးတပ်ဖွဲ့များအနေဖြင့် အရပ်သားများနှင့် အများပြည်သူပိုင်အဆောက်အဦများကို မထိခိုက်စေရန် လိုအပ်သလို ထိန်းထိန်းသိမ်းသိမ်း ဆောင်ရွက်ရန်နှင့် တိုက်ခိုက်သူနှင့်အရပ်သားများအကြား ပစ်မှတ်ခွဲခြားခြင်း၊ လိုအပ်မှသာလျှင် ပစ်ခတ်ခြင်း၊ အင်အားအလွန်အကျွံအသုံးမပြုခြင်းနှင့် အရပ်သားများကို ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်ခြင်း အစရှိသည့် အခြေခံ မူဝါဒများကို လိုက်နာရန် ကုလသမဂ္ဂက တောင်းဆိုလိုက်ပါသည်။
ထို့အပြင် အန္တရာယ်ရှိသည့် နေရာများမှ ထွက်ခွာချင်သည့် အရပ်သားများကို တားဆီးခြင်း သို့မဟုတ် ကြန့်ကြာစေခြင်းများမဖြစ်စေဘဲ ခွင့်ပြုပေးရန်၊ ၎င်းတို့၏ ဘေးကင်းမှုအတွက် လုံခြုံရေးယူပေးရန်၊ ဒဏ်ရာရရှိသူများကို ဘေးကင်းလုံခြုံသည့် ကျန်းမာရေး စောင့်ရှောက်ရာ နေရာများဆီသို့ လွှဲပြောင်း ပို့ဆောင်ပေးရန် ထပ်မံတောင်းဆိုလိုက်ပါသည်။
အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများမှ ထွက်ပြေးရသူများ၊ မိမိတို့၏ နေအိမ်များထဲတွင် ပိတ်မိနေသူများနှင့် ထိခိုက်သူအားလုံးကို ကုလသမဂ္ဂနှင့် လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာလုပ်ငန်းများ လုပ်ကိုင်သည့် လုပ်ဖော်ကိုင်ဖက်များက ကယ်ဆယ်ရေး လုပ်ငန်းများ လုပ်ဆောင်ပေးရာတွင် ပါဝင်ပတ်သက်သူအားလုံးအနေဖြင့် အကူအညီပေးရန်နှင့် ဘေးကင်းပြီး နှောင့်နှေးကြန့်ကြာမှုမရှိသည့် လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာ အကူအညီပေးနိုင်ရေး သွားလာခွင့်များ ပေးပါရန် မိမိတို့က တိုက်တွန်းလိုက်ပါသည်။
ကုလသမဂ္ဂသည် လူသားချင်းစာနာခြင်း၊ ခွဲခြားမှုမရှိခြင်း၊ ကြားနေခြင်း နှင့် လွတ်လပ်ခြင်း အစရှိသည့် နိုင်ငံတကာ အသိအမှတ်ပြု မူဝါဒများနှင့်အညီ မည့်သည့်နေရာတွင်မဆို အကူအညီလိုအပ်နေသူများကို ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်ပေးသည့်ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများနှင့် လူသားချင်းစာနာမှုဆိုင်ရာ အကူအညီပေးရေး ကြိုးပမ်းအားထုတ်မှုများကို ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်သွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ခိုင်မာသော သန္နိဌာန်အား ထပ်လောင်း အတည်ပြုလိုက်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
United Nations (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Chin State, Internal displacement/forced migration in Chin State, Humanitarian assistance - emergencies, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Women's rights, Children, Chin (Zo)- economic, social, cultural, political, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"End sexual violence in conflict day..."
Source/publisher:
Naw Susanna Hla Hla Soe via Ministry of Women, Youths and Children Affairs
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
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Individual Documents
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66.84 KB
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Four Commitments of the People's Defense Forces
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-23
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Type:
Individual Documents
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1.11 MB
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"Myanmar’s military authorities must drop all charges against Nathan Maung, a U.S. citizen, and Hanthar Nyein, co-founders of the privately held local news website Kamayut Media, and immediately release them from detention, where their families report they have been physically abused, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.
Authorities first arrested Maung, the outlet’s editor-in-chief, and Hanthar, a news producer, on March 9, according to news reports at the time.
They are currently being detained at Yangon’s Insein prison on charges under Article 505(a) of the penal code, which punishes the dissemination of information or “fake news” that could agitate or cause security forces or officials to mutiny with a maximum three-year prison term, according to the journalists’ families, who communicated with CPJ via an intermediary who requested anonymity to avoid reprisals.
Authorities physically abused them during their initial two weeks of detention at the Yay Kyi Ai interrogation center in Insein Township, the intermediary told CPJ by email. According to the intermediary, the journalists’ families said they were severely beaten around their heads, burnt on their belly, thighs, and buttocks with lit cigarettes, and made to kneel on ice while their hands were cuffed behind them during interrogations.
“Myanmar authorities must drop their charade of a criminal trial against Kamayut Media journalists Nathan Maung and Hanthar Nyein, and set them free,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative. “The abuse their families report in detention is unconscionable and the authorities involved must be identified and prosecuted.”
CPJ initially reported that Maung was arrested covering a protest, but local news reports said that he and Hanthar were arrested in a raid of the Kamayut Media office in Yangon. Kamayut Media stopped its bureau operations after the raid but its remaining staffstill publish online from undisclosed locations, the intermediary told CPJ. Maung and Hanthar appeared in a Yangon court on May 17, and at least four more weekly hearings are scheduled for police to present evidence, according to the intermediary. They are currently being held in individual cells in the same wing of Insein prison, the families said via the intermediary.
Myanmar’s military regime currently holds dozens of journalists behind bars, according to preliminary investigations by CPJ based on reporting, news reports, and research by the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, a local rights group. The majority have been detained during newsroom raids or while covering anti-coup street protests, and over half face charges under Article 505(a), that reporting shows.
On April 6, CPJ addressed a public letter to junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing calling on his regime to release all journalists detained in the wake of the February 1 coup.
CPJ emailed the Ministry of Information for comment on Maung and Hanthar’s legal status and allegations they have been abused in detention, but did not immediately receive any reply..."
Source/publisher:
Committee to Protect Journalists (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Description:
"As of 22 May, (815) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. These (3) fallen heroes from Mindat Township in Chin State and Lanmadaw Township in Yangon Region were killed the previous days and have been documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of May 22, a total of (4271) people are currently under detention; of them (95) are sentenced. 1802 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
Yesterday afternoon, a clash occurred between the military and Chinland Defense Force (CDF-Mindat) at Bue Kunn Village in Mindat Township Chin State. It is reported that a member of the CDF-Mindat died during this clash. A civil servant, who was involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) was shot to death on May 20, in Mindat Town, Chin State. A man, who was arrested whilst he was voluntarily guarding his ward for security, and who was facing trial inside prison, also died on May 19, from insufficient medical care for his diabetes.
In the early morning of May 22, Soe Myint Htein, NLD Secretary of Yangon Region, was arrested at home in Hlegu Township, Yangon Region where he was evading arrest. His wife and another man were also arrested along with him. His wife and the man were released, however Soe Myint Htein remains under detention.
Last night, in South Dagon Township in Yangon Region, a final year medical student and a final year college student from the Myanmar Mercantile Marine College were arrested by an excessive number of junta troops. Early yesterday morning, two children, a 15 year old and a 17 years old, living in Myeik, Tanintharyi Region, were arrested and charged under Section 505(a)(c) of the Penal Code.
On the night of May 20, a third year university student majoring in Botany at Dagon University was arrested at a house in Mayangone Township in Yangon by junta forces in military vehicles. Neighbours reported that this student was severely beaten.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
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Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"PetroChina International Singapore Pte Ltd sold a cargo of jet fuel into Myanmar in April, according to government import data reviewed by Reuters, the first such shipment since before the military seized power in a coup in February.
Industry sources say suppliers have been particularly wary of selling jet fuel because it could be used in planes to bomb ethnic armed groups that have been supporting anti-junta protesters, as well as in civilian airliners.
The shipment could raise new questions over China's role in Myanmar at a time when it has been accused by the junta's opponents of backing coup leader Min Aung Hlaing - an accusation rejected by Beijing.
China's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. PetroChina, a listed company controlled by state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPET.UL), did not respond to requests for comment about the fuel shipment.
The import data, which hasn't been published, shows PetroChina International shipped 13,300 tonnes of jet fuel and 4,000 tonnes of gasoline onboard tanker MT Yu Dong for discharge at Myanmar's Thilawa terminal on April 15.
Western nations including the United States and Britain have condemned the junta for killing hundreds of civilians and have applied limited sanctions, but there are currently no international measures outlawing oil product shipments.
And while the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to which Myanmar belongs, has called for an end to violence and dialogue among the parties, it stopped well short of calling for sanctions in an April statement.
China has not been so forceful in condemning the junta and has simply said it wants to see stability in its neighbour, drawing accusations from some of the junta's opponents that it is supporting the military authorities.
"Given Beijing's desire to boost its influence in Naypyidaw, it seems unlikely that any Chinese state firm would be too concerned by the threat of backlash from the international community over doing business with Myanmar's government," said Henrick Tsjeng, an associate research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University.
Activist group Justice for Myanmar condemned the fuel sale.
"We're appalled that PetroChina is exporting jet fuel to Myanmar, doing business with the war criminals who are conducting indiscriminate air strikes against ethnic communities," said spokeswoman Yadanar Maung.
Data from Singapore trade agency Enterprise Singapore confirmed a mid-April shipment of aviation turbine fuel into Myanmar. The fuel can be used by both commercial and military planes, possibly needing to be blended depending on the grade.
Reuters saw no evidence that the fuel was destined for military jets. The junta spokesman did not respond to calls requesting comment.
Military jets have carried out frequent bombing raids against ethnic armies opposed to the junta in northern and eastern Myanmar as fighting has surged since the Feb. 1 coup that toppled elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
One of the forces that has been bombed, the Kachin Independence Army, told Reuters it had attacked seven oil trucks it suspected of bringing aviation fuel in by road from China this week. It did not comment on the PetroChina shipment.
The Myanmar data showed PetroChina International sold the jet fuel to National Energy Puma Aviation Services Co Ltd (NEPAS), a joint venture between Puma Energy and Myanma Petroleum Enterprise (MPE). The gasoline went to three other local fuel importers.
Puma Energy told Reuters NEPAS arranged for delivery of a cargo at the Thilawa terminal on April 15, but declined to comment on the type of fuel being offloaded.
Puma Energy, a fuel storage and retail firm majority-owned by global commodities trader Trafigura, said it had suspended operations in Myanmar on Feb. 10 to ensure employee safety.
Since then, operations of the NEPAS joint venture are being carried out by majority shareholder MPE, Puma Energy's spokesman said.
MPE, owned by the Ministry of Electrical and Energy (MOEE) which is now under junta control, did not respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the jet fuel, 79,500 tonnes of gasoline and 110,700 tonnes of diesel were shipped to Myanmar last month from Asia's oil trading hub, Enterprise Singapore's data showed.
Myanmar last imported about 13,800 tonnes of jet fuel in February, according to government data. Monthly imports in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, were about 14,500 tonnes.
PetroChina International Singapore is the Singapore-based trading unit of PetroChina Co Ltd (601857.SS), ..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Business and the Military, Oil and gas, Burma's economic relations with China, Economic activities of the Myanmar Military, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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The Tatmadaw, Myanmar's powerful army, controls every aspect of its soldiers' lives. And those who leave pay a heavy price. DW spoke to three defectors.
Description:
"As he witnessed the brutal crackdown on unarmed civilians protesting the army's takeover, the young lieutenant felt increasingly disgusted. Soon after, he left without saying goodbye to his parents, fleeing the country first on motorbike and then on foot, aided across the border by local villagers.
Along the way, he stuck to smaller roads, carefully avoiding checkpoints and detection.
For if caught, he knew he would pay a heavy price for his desertion: In Myanmar, army defectors are usually sentenced to death — which is then commuted to life in prison, as the death penalty has not been carried out in over three decades.
That could, however, change as the army faces opposition within its ranks to its power grab.....Rare insight into Myanmar's military: The lieutenant is one of three defectors DW has spoken to in recent weeks, exchanging almost daily messages with them. The man, who peppers his messages with laughing emojis, is in hiding in India. The other two, both high-ranking officers, are on the run in Myanmar, moving from one safe house to the next. Their accounts provide rare insight into an otherwise opaque institution that is known for committing gross human rights violations against its own citizens — and shows the army's stranglehold on soldiers' lives, minds and, DW has learned, also finances.
The interviews were conducted via messenger apps, including patchy video and audio calls, given that the army's ongoing internet crackdown hampers most communication with the outside world.
DW has not been able to independently verify their accounts, but the interviews corroborate each other in key aspects. In two cases, military identification cards were shown.
Their identities are not disclosed in this report due to fears for the defectors and their families' safety.....'Every move monitored': The three men describe a cloistered, strictly controlled life, based on a stringent, overarching hierarchy. Soldiers, they say, are required to live on army bases and are only allowed to leave if granted permission by superiors. The army dictates what soldiers and their families "wear, say and believe in, even how to decorate your home," one man said. "They can check your house at any moment," he added.
The wives of soldiers, he explains, are not allowed to wear the color red, which is associated with Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), or spout any other political symbols.
"Everything is monitored," says another defector, who was deliberate with each word used to recount his experience. "They want to turn people into robots, who don't think (for themselves)."
A monitoring team within the army using Facebook, all three sources say, watches over soldiers and their families' activities, scrutinizing every single like, share and post. Soldiers, one defector says, have to hand over their log-in details for Facebook, including sign-up phone numbers.
"If people post political things, they can be arrested and put in jail for three or four weeks," one defector tells DW. Another says that soldiers have been denied promotions after sharing social media posts criticizing the leadership of the Tatmadaw — as Myanmar's military is known — or voicing support for the NLD party.
One man recalls taking part in a training course a few years ago, where officers were shown how to tap into CCTV and intercept phone calls using Russian and Chinese technology — although he did not know the extent of surveillance.
Low-ranking soldiers, one defector says, were treated "like slaves," with their wives forced to clean high-ranking officers' homes without pay. Another said he had witnessed a superior asking the wife of a low-ranking soldier to give him a massage. He says the woman acquiesced, knowing that refusing could have negative repercussions for her husband.....Anti-Muslim propaganda: According to DW's three sources, soldiers are fed a steady stream of propaganda that views the Tatmadaw as the guardian of the embattled Buddhist nation of Myanmar. The enemies, according to this propaganda, are made up of a shadowy cabal of Muslims, Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party, who are bent on destroying the Buddhist country.
It's an ideology that has been forged in a decades-long, at times brutal battle against a myriad of ethnic insurgencies that have been fighting for independence from the Burmese majority and, at times, each other.
In Myanmar, a state with 135 different ethnic groups, where roughly 90% of the population adheres to Buddhism, politics and religion are closely interwoven. Generals have long built pagodas, erected Buddha statues, and paid homage to influential monks to legitimize their claim to power as a unifying force. Anti-Muslim sentiments are widespread, which the Tatmadaw is adept at exploiting for political capital.
And this anti-Muslim, Buddhism-first propaganda is instilled into soldiers of all ranks. Soldiers, one source says, are being "brainwashed" into buying the army's worldview. Another said while he did not believe the propaganda, he did not speak out against it, for fear of being punished. One defector recalled how he had been verbally abused when he dared to question the narrative that Rohingya — a Muslim minority long denied full citizenship rights — were "terrorists" bent on destroying the country and that they had no place in Myanmar.
One of the men, who, like many officers hails from a military family and had grown up on an army base, said that he had long believed the Tatmadaw's propaganda: When friends dared to question the army, he would defend the military, recalling his anger at anyone who spoke negatively of the institution he had been taught to revere.
His views, he said, only changed following the coup when he witnessed the army's crackdown on peaceful protesters — unarmed men, women and children that the army labels "terrorists.".....Myanmar army is a state within the state: The Tatmadaw's outsized role is intertwined within Myanmar's political and economic life — a lucrative advantage that succeeded colonial rule.
Following independence from Britain in 1948, a military junta took control in 1962, ushering in a prolonged period of iron-fisted rule characterized by strict censorship, imprisonment of opponents and international isolation.
While in power, the army — as well as individual officers and their families — amassed great wealth. This included land, economic and financial assets.
The generals only eased their grip on power in 2010, which culminated in elections that allowed for Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD party to form a government.
Even after ceding some control to elected politicians, it continues to play a vast role in both the political and economic field: The constitution guarantees the military 25% of parliament seats, meaning that the army can block any constitutional amendments it dislikes.
It also retains control of important ministries, including defense and home affairs.
Likewise, it continues to own and run a myriad of lucrative business interests without any independent oversight. The Tatmadaw runs its own schools, universities, hospitals and court system.
In short: The army has established what is basically a powerful state within the state. And, since the coup, it is now formally back in power.
In absolute terms, this professional army is the 11th largest in the world, with some 406,000 soldiers in active duty as of 2019, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies.....Economic exploitation: The Tatmadaw not only tries to control soldiers' ways of thinking — but also their finances. Military personnel of all ranks, DW has learned, are forced to support military-owned companies through two mandatory schemes: This includes, the three defectors say, requiring soldiers to sign up for a life insurance policy with Aung Myint Moh Min Insurance Company Ltd. The policy, which they are forced to select, renews automatically every five years — with no way for soldiers to opt-out.
The company is an alleged subsidiary of one of the military's two conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Holding (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holding Limited (MEHL), according to a 2019 UN report. These conglomerates, benefit both the Tatmadaw and high-ranking individual officers and their families.
The company did not respond to DW's requests for comment.
Soldiers are also forced to make mandatory payments into MEC and MEHL, which are converted into shares. In return, soldiers receive a small dividend every year, defectors say.
It is likely a way to both generate revenues for the military and individual generals — whilst buying loyalty. Many high-ranking officers upon retirement are often awarded posts in the two holdings, their subsidiaries and affiliated companies. Others are given posts in the civilian administration.
The army does not respond kindly to those who attempt to leave its fold. One of the defectors tells DW that soldiers "cannot leave the army."
In theory, another explained, soldiers can submit a letter of resignation after 10 years. "But that is only in the law," he explained drily. "In practice, it is not easy and it takes three to four years to submit the process (of leaving the army)." And even then, he added, it was not a given that the army would let the soldier go.
He says he regrets his decision to join the army in the first place.
The Myanmar Embassy in Berlin did not respond to DW's request for comment.....Tatmadaw hunting down defectors?: All three men are aware of the Tatmadaw's reach, as the army pursues defectors. One man says he had heard from a contact in the Tatmadaw's headquarters that it had compiled a list of some 300 defectors and was going after them and their families. It was, he says, "a manhunt."
DW cannot verify the claim, however, given that the authorities have compiled a wanted list of activists and journalists that is broadcast every night on state television, it's likely that the same is happening with army defectors.
One man describes how his family receives threatening phone calls. "They said: Where is your son? If you support him, you will get arrested." Soon after, he severed all communication with his family, fearing for their safety.
Another source refuses to acknowledge whether he is still in contact with his family, fearing it would risk their safety.
Despite all the high risks, one defector has no regrets. Life on the run and hiding in a different house each night to keep safe is, for him, a consequence of maintaining integrity. He stands by his decision to leave the army he had served for so many years, saying he did not want his future children to "think I did nothing to stop this illegal coup."..."
Source/publisher:
"DW News" (Germany)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political role of the Tatmadaw, The Military's political role, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Racial or ethnic discrimination in Burma: reports of violations against several groups, Human Rights and international relations, Military History, Political History, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"ASEAN’s capacity to spearhead a collective response to a regional crisis was tested at the ASEAN Leaders’ Meeting (ALM) in Jakarta on 24 April following the February coup in Myanmar. Facing backlash for its decision to invite Myanmar’s military junta leader General Min Aung Hlaing to the event, the stakes were high for ASEAN to find a unified stance on Myanmar’s rogue behaviour. But it was Indonesia’s leadership that made possible the resulting five-point consensus.
Hours before the release of the ALM chairman’s statement, Indonesian President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo held a press conference outlining Indonesia’s position on Myanmar, which resembled the final draft of ASEAN’s collective statement. Several differences between Indonesia and the ALM chairman’s statement stand out.
First, Jokowi conveyed that the situation in Myanmar is ‘unacceptable and cannot be allowed to continue’. The watered-down ALM statement stated a ‘deep concern on the situation in the country, including reports of fatalities and escalation of violence’.
Second, Jokowi called on the military government in Myanmar to cease its use of violence, while the ALM statement made no direct reference to the junta.
Third, Jokowi called for political prisoners to be released. The ALM chairman’s statement worded this as: ‘we also heard calls for the release of all political prisoners including foreigners’.
One of the biggest shortcomings of the ASEAN five-point consensus is the absence of a call for the junta to honour the results of the 2020 general elections that the National League for Democracy (NLD) won in a landslide. While Jokowi emphasised the Myanmar people as Indonesia’s priority, General Min Aung Hlaing’s inclusion in the ALM dashes any hope of restoring a pre-coup state of affairs. The ALM chairman’s statement confirms this.
The ALM was convened on 19 March — five weeks after Jokowi called for an ASEAN special summit to discuss the political crisis in Myanmar. While the meeting was being arranged, the Myanmar military’s violent crackdown against protesters and civilians continued, with at least 739 deaths and 3331 arrests as of 21 April.
ASEAN’s collective stance on the Myanmar political crisis differs from its response during Myanmar’s 2007 Saffron Revolution. When anti-government protests grew in number across Myanmar in September 2007, the military government responded violently, culminating in an ASEAN chairmanship statement three weeks later. The statement singled out the Myanmar military government and expressed revulsion for what had transpired.
Yet despite Indonesia’s best efforts, the ALM chairman’s statement is less assertive than it was in 2007. Naypyidaw’s detachment from ASEAN after forfeiting its chairmanship position in 2006 encouraged ASEAN and its key member states at the time — Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines — to ensure that Myanmar ameliorated its human rights record before it was trusted with further engagement in ASEAN-led processes.
Aside from the flaws in the ALM statement, there are also challenges to its implementation. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has managed to find common ground among ASEAN member states on the ongoing political crisis in Myanmar — first at an Informal ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (IAMM) through shuttle diplomacy and subsequently in preparation for the ALM.
The night before the ALM, Marsudi hosted a working dinner with ASEAN counterparts in making final preparations for the leaders’ meeting. Though the leaders of Thailand, the Philippines and Laos were absent from the ALM, a consensus was reached on how to prevent the situation in Myanmar from destabilising the wider region.
Now that ASEAN has articulated a regional response to the situation in Myanmar, it needs to ensure that the junta adheres to the first two points of its five-point consensus — halting the violence and facilitating constructive dialogue between concerned parties. The other three points also require continuous commitment from ASEAN including Myanmar to appoint an ASEAN special envoy, facilitate humanitarian assistance and advance dialogue.
While the implementation of ASEAN’s five-point consensus is still too early to assess, ASEAN must display a tangible commitment to its framework for peace and stability in the region. This is where Indonesia’s role and leadership within ASEAN should be nurtured.
As the regional powerhouse in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is no stranger to advancing initiatives to strengthen political stability in the region. These include former president Megawati Sukarnoputri’s leadership to finalise the ASEAN Political-Security Community, former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s incorporation of democratic principles in Indonesian foreign relations through the Bali Democracy Forum and President Jokowi’s adoption of the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.
In a climate where Indonesia and ASEAN depend on one another to preserve peace and stability in Southeast Asia, ASEAN needs to remain the cornerstone of Indonesian foreign policy — no matter who its president is.
Gibran Mahesa Drajat is a Doctoral Researcher at the Graduate School of Global Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, and a Lecturer of International Relations at President University, Cikarang, Indonesia..."
Source/publisher:
"East Asia Forum" (Australia)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
ASEAN-Burma relations, Indonesia-Burma relations, The 2020 General Elections in Burma/Myanmar, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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A directive reveals that the coup leader indefinitely extended his tenure as commander-in-chief days after seizing power
Description:
"Days after overthrowing Myanmar’s elected government, Senior General Min Aun Hlaing also pulled off another coup: making himself the country’s de facto military leader for life.
That was revealed in documents that have put his motives for throwing the country into turmoil into sharper focus.
On February 4, the newly installed junta issued a directive that effectively allowed Min Aung Hlaing to stay on as top general for as long as he sees fit.
The directive, which has only recently come to light, removes an age restriction that would have required the senior general to step down later this year.
The issue first came up five years ago, when he acknowledged that under existing rules, he would have to retire once he reached the age of 65.
“The duty of commander-in-chief is not unlimited. There is an age limit that cannot be extended,” he told reporters in June 2016, when he was 60 years old.
Now less than two months away from his 65th birthday, Min Aung Hlaing should be making his way to the exit. Instead, he spends his days cementing his hold on power.
In a recent interview with the BBC’s Burmese-language service, Maj-Gen Zaw Min Tun, the regime’s deputy information minister and military spokesperson, confirmed the move.
The new directive allows both the commander-in-chief and the deputy commander-in-chief to remain in their positions for as long as the situation requires, he said without elaborating.
“It was changed because they are performing state duties,” he added, referring to the military’s resumption of direct control over the country since ousting its elected leaders.
Even before the coup, there were signs that Min Aung Hlaing was positioning himself to remain as the military’s unchallenged supremo, according to observers.
One sign, they said, was his appointment of officers many years his junior to senior military posts, side-lining any prospective rivals from among those closer to him in age and influence.
Many of the military’s most powerful commanders are now relatively young men in their fifties or even forties, all of whom are beholden to Min Aung Hlaing for their rapid rise to the highest echelons of power.
The current air force chief is Gen Maung Maung Kyaw, who graduated from the 26th intake of the elite Defence Services Academy (DSA), seven years behind Min Aung Hlaing (DSA 19). His navy counterpart, Gen Moe Aung, is an even younger DSA alumnus from the 28th intake.
Younger still is Lt-Gen Moe Myint Tun (DSA 30), a Min Aung Hlaing favourite who now serves as army chief of staff. He is also a member of the ruling military council and, since the coup, the new chair of the Myanmar Investment Commission.
Lt-Gen Myo Zaw Thein, a DSA 28 graduate who is also closely linked to Min Aung Hlaing, was appointed adjutant general in July 2019, while DSA 35 graduate Lt-Gen Kyaw Swar Linn was named quartermaster general in May of last year, when he was just 49 years old. (He is also the youngest member of the Myanmar military ever to hold his current rank.)
Junta joint secretary Lt-Gen Ye Win Oo, who is also chief of military security affairs, and Lt-Gen Than Hlaing, the deputy home affairs minister and newly appointed police chief, are also at least 10 years younger than Min Aung Hlaing.
Maj Hein Thaw Oo, who served in the military for nearly 20 years before defecting in late March, said the senior general’s choices reflect his obsession with holding onto power.
“It’s madness. He just doesn’t want to transfer power to any of his peers. There are outstanding officers under him, but he doesn’t want anyone else to have power,” he said..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Political role of the Tatmadaw, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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Sub-title:
The potential arrival of a highly transmissable variant could overwhelm health systems already struggling after military coup
Description:
"Doctors in Myanmar have warned the country would be unable to cope with a major outbreak of Covid-19 as hospitals and medical facilities struggle to function in the aftermath of February’s military coup.
Fears are growing about the potential impact of a highly transmissible variant as neighbouring countries, chiefly India but also Thailand and Laos, battle record numbers of Covid cases.
Last year, more than 3,000 people in Myanmar died when the pandemic hit, with the UN warning the country was particularly vulnerable given its weak public health system.
But there are concerns a third wave could prove far more deadly because, since the military seized power earlier this year, most hospitals are not operational due to a strike by doctors and other medical workers.
The number of people being tested has plummeted and the vaccination programme has been thrown into confusion. The UN has warned that medics fear arrest or detention by the junta “at a time when Myanmar needs them the most”.
One doctor based in Yangon said a fresh outbreak would place extraordinary strain on the public healthcare system.
“I think it would be a disaster,” said the medic, who cannot be named for security reasons. “Even in [the] Covid second wave, the government had a shortage of human resources – doctors. That’s why many medics and volunteers helped us with everything. But now, most of the charity clinics’ doctors, medics and volunteers are being arrested by the junta.”
Another doctor, who also cannot be named, agreed: “This could become a perfect storm, and Myanmar is not in a position to respond. Even if the hospital situation normalises to pre-February levels, the capacity will be critically insufficient to deal with a large outbreak.”
A medic in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second biggest city, said she had treated about 20 Covid patients in recent months and believed the virus was circulating at a low level. “Fortunately it is not spreading massively,” she said.
She worries that health services would be unable to cope with an outbreak if new variants, such as the strain first detected in India, spread over the border.
Mandalay general hospital is barely functioning, and there is only one small charity facility capable of treating patients with severe Covid in the city, she said. It can handle about 20 patients, and equipment is basic. “Compared to the hospital, we have no HFNC [to give patients oxygen] and no patient monitors [which show vital signs],” she said, adding they have just oxygen cylinders and medicines.
A private hospital in the city is also capable of caring for patients who develop pneumonia, she said, but can accept only a very limited number of people, and the medical bills are unaffordable for most. “For the treatment cost you could buy a car,” she said.
Patients who test positive for Covid are referred to the military hospital for treatment, but are too afraid to go. She fears that she could be targeted by security forces for caring for patients outside of the military facility.
Alarmed by the possibility of a major new outbreak, the charity Medical Action Myanmar (Mam) has said it is raising funds for oxygen concentrators to treat patients. A Mam UK spokesperson said: “We are frightened of the impact that Covid will have on an already compromised population.”
According to the Myanmar ministry of health and sports, to date, the country has had more than 143,000 confirmed Covid cases and 3,216 deaths. However, as testing levels have fallen to a fraction of what they were before the coup it is impossible to know the true scale of infections.
Dr Khin Khin Gyi, speaking for the ministry, warned last month: “There is a possibility of a third wave of the pandemic coming.”
For the medics taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement against the junta, which in turn has imposed a violent crackdown on protesters, the prospect of a health emergency during the strike brings much soul-searching.
“Yes, it is a very difficult decision,” said the doctor in Yangon. “The ethical and moral dilemma obviously.” But the surgeon said they would continue “until we win”.
“The unity among junior doctors, thinking about the brighter future if we have democracy, the creativity of generation Z and the resistance of the people (especially the poor ones) against the junta. I think those are the things that motivate me every day.
“There are people who died resisting the junta. This is the least I can do.”..."
Source/publisher:
"The Guardian" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Public Health, Anti-coup protesters, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Forces of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of the ethnic factions opposed to Myanmar’s coup, attacked military positions at the northwestern jade mining town of Hkamti on Saturday, local media reported.
The attack marks an advance into new territory by the KIA at a time Myanmar has been plunged into chaos since the army seized power on Feb. 1, detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and cut short a decade of democratic reforms.
KIA fighters attacked an army post at Hkamti township in the Sagaing region early on Saturday, the Irrawaddy and Mizzima online publications said. Pictures showed columns of dark smoke rising from what they said was the scene of the attack.
KIA spokesman Naw Bu told Reuters he was aware of the attack but could give no details. Reuters was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment on the reports.
"The fighting is still ongoing. I can still hear the gunshots," Mizzima quoted one resident as saying.
It said the site attacked was near a mining venture that involves the military-owned Myanma Economic Holdings Ltd. conglomerate.
Reuters was unable to confirm the reports independently.
Since the coup, open conflict resumed between the army and the KIA, which has been fighting for greater autonomy for the Kachin people for some six decades and has voiced support for anti-junta protesters.
Mizzima said the army was using jets in attacks on the KIA at Hkamti, a town on the Chindwin river in a remote region rich in jade and gold that lies about 50 km (30 miles) from the border with India.
The army has carried out numerous bombing attacks on KIA positions in recent weeks and has also clashed with ethnic armies in the east and west of Myanmar.
Security forces have killed at least 812 people since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group. The military disputes this figure and says at least two dozen members of the security forces have also been killed.
The army seized power alleging fraud in a November election won by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. The then electoral commission had rejected its accusations. On Friday, local media quoted an official of the new electoral commission appointed by the junta as saying there was a plan to dissolve the NLD..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Kachin State, Armed conflict in Kachin State - general articles, Armed conflict in Kachin State - human rights violations, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်
အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ
ပညာရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန
ကြေညာချက်အမှတ်(၁၄/၂၀၂၁)
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ မေလ(၂၁) ရက်
PPTT အပတ်စဉ် (၇) သင်တန်းနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာခြင်း..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Education & Ministry of Health
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Education in Burma/Myanmar - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"Leonard Rubenstein is a professor of practice at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and author of the forthcoming book “Perilous Medicine: The Struggle to Protect Health Care from the Violence of War.” Sandra Mon, a Myanmar national, is a senior epidemiology researcher at the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
The Feb. 1 military coup in Myanmar triggered a wave of popular protest that has yet to abate. Since then, security forces have reportedly killed more than 800 demonstrators.
Yet even amid the slaughter, one particular cruelty of the junta stands out: its deliberate targeting of health-care workers.
On Feb. 27, the military launched its first violent attack against health care, dispersing peacefully protesting nurses and doctors with live rounds and smoke grenades. By early April it had committed more than 100 attacks on health-care transport, facilities, and personnel, killing at least 10. Soon thereafter, the military began charging medical staff with “attempts to deteriorate peace and stability of the State.” According to our research, the authorities have so far issued arrest warrants for more than 500 health-care workers.
The junta’s attacks on health care have a perverse logic. Mere days into the coup, Myanmar’s health professionals, still in the throes of the country’s covid-19 response, launched a nationwide strike to protest the coup, galvanizing the pro-democracy civil disobedience movement. For that, the authorities have designated them enemies of the state. In April, a junta spokesperson absurdly accused protesting medics of committing genocide.
Regime violence has extended beyond doctors and nurses who are pro-democracy activists. Since March, the military has occupied at least 36 hospitals across the country. Security forces have attacked and hijacked ambulances, directed private facilities not to treat wounded demonstrators, obstructed medics from reaching protest areas and looted medical equipment from organizations offering emergency care.
In one harrowing account, a doctor in Mandalay told one of us that on May 1, security forces raided a local clandestine clinic, then severely beat and detained rescue workers nearby.
The brutal assaults on health care in Myanmar have parallels elsewhere. The regime of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad has assaulted health care as a strategy of war. In Turkey, doctors have been harassed and punished for reporting the torture of prisoners. In many countries, new laws criminalize providing health care to alleged terrorists.
In Myanmar, the recent assaults continue a long-established military strategy of denying health care to communities that challenge the junta and punishing the doctors and nurses who seek to offer it.
Ten years ago, one of us conducted research on access to health care during a lengthy war waged by the regime against ethnic groups seeking autonomy. The military junta at the time deemed these communities to be enemies and forbade international humanitarian organizations from operating among them. Soldiers burned clinics, stole supplies and medicines, and arrested, kidnapped and murdered medical staff. One medic recalled, “Because we are health workers for our people, if [the soldiers] know this, they will kill us.” To offer basic services such as delivering babies and teaching malaria prevention, doctors had to travel furtively through the jungle to avoid encounters with security forces.
The military’s cruelty against people with medical needs and their caregivers, then as now, breached fundamental protections of health care under international law that date back to the 1860s. The rules are straightforward: Wounded and sick people and their caregivers may not be attacked or denied care based on their affiliations, and no health provider may be punished for providing it. Five years ago this month, the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution condemning the alarming violence against health care in conflict and calling on governments to take concrete actions to stop it and hold perpetrators to account.
The violations in Myanmar are taking place in a country that, according to the World Bank, spends $60 a year per capita on health care, near the bottom of global rankings. The violence in recent months has interrupted essential services for HIV, tuberculosis, emergency obstetric care and chronic illnesses, in addition to protest-related injuries.
Myanmar’s covid-19 vaccination program, the third to be launched in Southeast Asia, has stalled thanks to widespread distrust of the military-commandeered health ministry. Coupled with a quickly diminishing health workforce and the rapid emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 strains in the region, a surge in cases in Myanmar could destabilize health security even beyond its borders.
The international community must act firmly to restore democratic governance in Myanmar. It must also end the military’s lack of accountability for crimes against health and humanity by prosecuting perpetrators. It should support aid to restore Myanmar civilians’ right to health care.
The civilian National Unity Government (NUG), standing in opposition to the junta, is poised to respond to people’s most critical needs in health and beyond. Toward that end, international health mechanisms, such as the World Health Organization’s Covax program, should partner with the NUG to address the country’s most urgent medical needs.
Those responsible for the assaults on health-care workers in Myanmar, as elsewhere, have long enjoyed impunity. This cannot be allowed to continue. The world must take a stand.
Source/publisher:
"The Washington Post" (USA)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Health Workers Strike, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Human Rights Defenders, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, National Unity Government (NUG)
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"Statement by the National Unity Government on the ongoing fighting in Kayah State - ကယားပြည်နယ်တွင်ဖြစ်ပွားလျက်ရှိသည့် တိုက်ပွဲများနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ၏ ထုတ်ပြန်ကြေညာချက်..."
Source/publisher:
National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-22
[field_licence]
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Individual Documents
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"As of 21 May, (812) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (2) fallen heroes today. (1) from Falam Township in Chin State died on 21 May. (1) from Thabeikkyin Township in Mandalay Region was killed the previous day and documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of 21 May, a total of (4258) people are currently under detention; of them (94) are sentenced. 1782 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
Since the military coup, civilians have lost their freedom, just going around their communities is a life-threatening situation. On the night of 19 May, Chaung Gyi village, Thabeikkyin Township, Mandalay Region, a young man was killed after the junta chased, arrested, beat him in the face and shot him in the abdomen. Shooting, killing detainees are clearly barbaric. When the coup fails, perpetrators will have to pay for each and every one of their crimes.
In Chin State, fighting continues between the Chin National Defense Force (CNDF) and the junta. As reported this morning, a member of the CDF-Falam was killed in a clash. The weapons and forces of both sides are not equal, still, people are defending themselves against terrorism. If they don’t, atrocities will only deteriorate. For this reason civilians are defending with anything they can use as a weapon, to attain freedom for their regions.
That is why the terrorist group is increasingly hostile and threatening in different ways in Chin State. Beginning today in Mindat Township, the junta cut off water, electricity and telephone lines. The junta is attacking locals like a military operation, cutting aid to people in Mindat to make the locals weaker and unable to regroup, and resist. Resistance against the junta is accelerating, the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) retaliated against shooting by the terrorists at Daw Ngan Khar Ward, Demoso Township, Kayah State this morning. RPG and bombs were used by the junta group to fire at locals during the fight. As a result, some civilians, who live in the city, have been fleeing. It is a worrying situation because the junta troops might plan an offensive attack on Demoso Township like they did in Mindat Township.
The junta group fires heavy artillery, mortar shells and bombs into residential areas, they violate international law – this is but one action of theirs which demonstrates their illegitimate terrorist status. On 21 May, at the Daw Ngan Khar intersection, Demoso Township, it is reported that two men on a motorbike were told to stop, when they drove away one was shot and killed. AAPP is monitoring this event for further information. In a separate incident, a highway bus driver was also reportedly shot in the arm and injured.
In fact they are committing crimes, including shooting and killing. The junta group commits shooting, killing, and other rights abuses on a daily basis. This is because there is no effective deterrence. The junta group is now making a series of arrests against activists. Today, around noon, two Kachin youth activists including Seng Nu Pan and Lun Zung were arrested. Two other youths who were in the car with them were also detained. The junta troops shot and crashed into them with a vehicle before arresting them. Their inhumanity is evident. Terrorists use brutal ways to capture civilians who oppose them.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"As of 20 May, (810) people are now confirmed killed by this junta coup. AAPP compiled and documented (3) fallen heroes today. These (3) fallen heroes from Tedim Township in Chin State, Pandaung Township in Bago Region and Taungdwingyi Township in Magway Region were killed the previous days and have been documented today. This is the number verified by AAPP, the actual number of fatalities is likely much higher. We will continue adding as and when.
As of May 20, a total of (4212) people are currently under detention; of them (94) are sentenced. 1762 have been issued arrest warrants; of them 20 were sentenced to death and 14 to three years imprisonment with hard labour, who are evading arrest. We are verifying the recently released detainees and continuing to document.
The junta is shooting and killing civilians every day. Yesterday, in Lay village, Okshitpin Town, Pantaung Township in Bago Region, a motorcycle mechanic was killed, and another man was shot and left wounded. The junta terrorists are now mainly targeting and murdering civilians in remote areas and in the ethnic regions. Demonstrations in urban areas were also cracked down on in inhumane ways and junta forces continued a series of arrests upon civilians. This violence came alongside their heavily repressive military operations in rural areas.
The junta have been committing acts of vandalism and violence. These push the country further into a state of instability. Bombing in Tedim Township, Chin State yesterday evening resulted in the death of a 10-year-old child. The 10-year old child was critically injured in the explosion, then prevented from accessing medical assistance fast enough. The bombing also caused injury to two other children, aged 6 and 10. This junta regime violates the rights of all civilians, even those who are most vulnerable, such as children and the elderly. They oppress people without any regard for the sanctity of life, using any means, in order to maintain their power.
Since the coup, Bumrese civilians have faced constant insecurity and have lost assurance of their basic rights. Yesterday, in Taungdwingyi Township, Magway Region, a former village administrator, who worked under the NLD government of Sithar Gyi, and five other villagers were arrested, beaten and interrogated by junta forces. The village administrator was left dead, and the other five civilians sustained serious injuries. Previous dictatorships in Burma systematically and methodologically used torture against civilians to punish resistance and enforce confessions. Since the coup, the junta’s violence against civilians has worsened, they now treat everyone as their enemy.
Amongst the regions that are fighting back against the junta, Chin State is the one which is most targeted by these terrorists. Chin state has faced heavy attacks and severe repression by the junta. In Kanpetlet town, junta troops camped out at school and police station, forcing almost the entire town to flee. Junta troops raided Loklung village, close to Hakha Town, again forcing the entire village to flee. These civilians remain on the run.
Cases of the junta taking family members of wanted individuals as hostages are becoming more frequent. Their widespread method of taking hostages has reached an extremely concerning stage. Last night, a wanted activist from Seikkan village in Paungde Township, Bago Region could not be found by junta forces, so they instead arrested his wife, child and stepmother. A similar case occurred in Phang Fa Village, Chaungzon Township, in Mon State on the night of May 16. A wanted man could not be found, so the junta instead arrested his father. Such arrests are clearly unlawful. This is yet another example of Burmese civilians being left unprotected, the junta use laws however they want please.
AAPP will continue to keep you informed of verified daily arrests, charges, sentences and fatalities in relation to the attempted coup, and update our lists to the 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..."
Source/publisher:
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association, violations of, Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights Defenders, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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1.05 MB 3.85 MB 931.47 KB
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Sub-title:
While one party courted controversy by deciding to attend, others said they didn’t even consider taking part
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"Leaders of most of Myanmar’s major political parties have decided not to attend a meeting with the country’s junta-appointed election body on Friday.
The meeting will be just the second held since the military appointed all new members to the Union Election Commission (UEC) in the wake of its February 1 coup, which it staged on the pretext of alleged irregularities in last year’s election.
The first meeting, held in late February, was attended by 53 political parties, only 10 of which had won any seats in the November 2020 general election.
Major ethnic parties such as the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD), the Arakan National Party (ANP), and the Kachin State People's Party (KSPP) are among those that will not be in attendance on Friday.
Also absent will be the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS), formed in 1988, and the United Nationalities Democracy Party (UNDP), which was founded in 2019 by former members of the National League for Democracy (NLD).
The NLD, which won last year’s election by a landslide, was due to form a new government when it was ousted by the coup. Most of its leaders are now in detention or in hiding.
Aung Moe Zaw, the chair of the DPNS, said in a video uploaded to the party’s Facebook page on Wednesday that his party refused to attend the Friday meeting because it rejected the coup regime’s “illegitimate” actions. It also boycotted the previous meeting.
“We are a political party that always says we are working for the public. They are killing and arresting members of the public on a daily basis and even threatening us with arrest. I myself have been charged with incitement. I don’t think we should attend the meeting for any reason,” he said.
The longtime pro-democracy activist added that the party would continue to boycott the regime until the path to democracy is restored in the country. He also called on other political parties to stand together with the people.
The chair of the SNLD, Sai Nyunt Lwin, told Myanmar Now that his party—which won 42 seats in last year’s election—did not even consider attending the meeting on Friday.
The SNLD, which is the largest ethnic party in the country, is more concerned with ongoing clashes and the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
The party was also absent from the first junta-led UEC meeting in February.
The KSPP and the ANP, which both joined the February meeting, said they decided against attending this time around for a number of reasons.
“We were busy with Covid-19 issues and with our plans to relocate our party headquarters,” said KSPP central executive member Jan Hkung, adding that there was no discussion in the party about whether to accept the invitation of the military council’s UEC.
Tun Aung Kyaw, the joint secretary of the ANP, said that his party did discuss the possibility of attending the meeting, but decided against it on security grounds.
“As we all know, even administrators have been shot in the head. And there have also been explosions,” he said.
Naw Ohn Hla, the prominent rights activist who is also vice-chair of the UNDP, declined to comment on the party’s decision not to attend, apart from noting that it made the same choice in February.
Most of the parties that attended the last meeting were allied with the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, although a handful of ethnic parties also took part.
During that meeting, the junta-appointed UEC chairman announced that the results of last year’s election had been annulled over allegations of voter fraud.
In its final report on the election, however, the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said that “the results of the 2020 elections were, by and large, representative of the will of the people of Myanmar.”
The regime has said that it will hold elections again at an unspecified time, but few observers believe that they will be free or fair.
“The junta that staged the coup appointed the people who will run the election. How can we trust them to hold a fair election?” said the leader of an ethnic party who spoke to Myanmar Now on condition of anonymity.
One of the few parties not directly connected to the military that decided to attend the meeting was the People’s Party, whose chair, Ko Ko Gyi, has been a well-known political figure since the 1988 pro-democracy uprising.
Ko Ko Gyi declined to speak to Myanmar Now about the decision, but in a recent interview with the BBC, he said that most of the party’s members agreed with the move.
“The majority of members think we should attend the meeting to officially express the party’s political stance and our views,” he said.
However, a number of senior party members, including the party’s general secretary and Ko Ko Gyi’s longtime associate Ye Naing Aung, have resigned over the decision.
The party did not send representatives to the UEC meeting in February..."
Source/publisher:
"Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Burma/Myanmar's political parties, The Military's political role, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Political History, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"This is the first Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business (MCRB) e-newsletter since the military took over on 1 February. Rather than the usual format, this message to MCRB stakeholders takes a wider look at responsible business in the current political crisis, and what this means for MCRB’s future activities.
Since 1 February MCRB has been focused on our team’s welfare and safety. We have seen that employee and customer safety is also the top priority of all businesses, both local and foreign. We have shared tips with companies and other organisations how they can support staff digital safety and mental welfare, including responding to detention of loved ones. The MCRB team has also taken up the opportunity of a group workplace counselling session to share their feelings. Counselling Corner also have regular free online sessions.
We know the other main priority of business in Myanmar right now is commercial survival. The survey undertaken in April by ten Chambers of Commerce demonstrated very clearly the massive economic impact of the coup on the Myanmar economy and employment, and showed this to be far more significant than COVID-19. Main challenges for business are disruptions to banking (77%), internet (70%) and employee safety (66%). The survey also showed that the biggest impact has been felt by Myanmar companies, particularly SMEs which unlike multinationals, have little ability to absorb it. Against this very negative business outlook, and with foreign investors now scaling back and avoiding Myanmar, MCRB has been reflecting on what responsible business means in the current crisis and how the Centre can be useful to our stakeholders.....ဤ အီလက်ထရောနစ် သတင်းလွှာသည် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့တွင် တပ်မတော်မှ အာဏာသိမ်းပြီး သည့်နောက် မြန်မာ့စီးပွားရေးကဏ္ဍ တာဝန်ယူမှုရှိရေး အထောက်အကူပြုဌာန (MCRB) မှ ပထမဆုံးအကြိမ် ထုတ်ပြန်သည့် သတင်းလွှာ ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ဤ တွင် MCRB နှင့် ပတ်သက်ဆက်နွယ်သူများ (stakeholders) အတွက် ပုံမှန်ထုတ်ပြန်နေကြပုံစံထက် လက်ရှိနိုင်ငံရေး အကျပ်အတည်းကာလနှင့် ဆိုင်သော တာ၀န်ယူမှုရှိသော စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်း အကြောင်း ပိုမိုကျယ်ပြန့်စွာ ကြည့်ရှုရန် နှင့် MCRB ၏ အနာဂတ် လုပ်ငန်းများအတွက် မည်သို့ဆိုလိုသည်ကို တင်ပြရန်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။
ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့မှစ၍ MCRB သည် MCRB အဖွဲ့သားများ ၏ အဆင်ပြေစိတ်အေးချမ်းမှု (welfare) နှင့် ဘေးကင်းလုံခြုံမှု (safety) ကို အဓိကထားခဲ့ပါသည်။ ထိုနည်းတူစွာ ပြည်တွင်း နှင့် နိုင်ငံခြား စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်း အားလုံးအတွက်လည်း ၎င်းတို့၏ ဝန်ထမ်းများနှင့် ဝယ်ယူစားသုံးသူများ/ ဝန်ဆောင်မှု ဌားရမ်းသူများ (customer) ၏ ဘေးကင်း လုံခြုံမှုသည် ပထမဦးစားပေး ဖြစ်ကြောင်းကို ကျွန်ုပ်တို့ တွေ့ရှိခဲ့ပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် ကုမ္ပဏီများ၊ အခြားသော အဖွဲ့အစည်းများနှင့် ၎င်းတို့၏ ဝန်ထမ်းများ အတွက် ချစ်ခင်သူများ အထိန်းသိမ်းခံရပါက မည်သို့လုပ်ဆောင်သင့်ကြောင်း အပါအဝင် ဒစ်ဂျစ်တယ် လုံခြုံရေး (digital safety) နှင့် စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ ကောင်းမွန်အဆင်ပြေစေရေး (mental welfare) အတွက် မည်သို့ ပံ့ပိုးကူညီပေးနိုင်ကြောင်း အကြံဥာဏ်များကို မျှဝေခဲ့ပါသည်။ MCRB အဖွဲ့သားများ အနေဖြင့် ၎င်းတို့၏ စိတ်ခံစားချက်များကို မျှဝေရန် လုပ်ငန်းခွင်အတွင်း အဖွဲ့လိုက် ကောင်းစလင်း ဆွေးနွေးခြင်း အစီအစဥ် (workplace counselling session) တစ်ခု ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့ပါသည်။ Counselling Corner တွင်လည်း အခမဲ့ အွန်လိုင်း အစီအစဥ်များ ပုံမှန်ရှိပါသည်။
လက်ရှိတွင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင်း စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများ အတွက် အခြားသော အဓိကဦးစားပေးမှာ စီးပွားရေးဆက်လက်ရှင်သန်နိုင်ရန် (commercial survival) ဖြစ်ကြောင်းသိရှိပါသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအခြေစိုက် နိုင်ငံတကာကုန်သည်အသင်း ၁၀ ခု မှ ဧပြီလတွင် ပြုလုပ်ခဲ့သည့် စစ်တမ်းကောက်ယူမှု အရ အာဏာသိမ်းမှုကြောင့် မြန်မာ့စီးပွားရေးနှင့် အလုပ်အကိုင်အပေါ် ကြီးမားသော ဆိုးကျိုး သက်ရောက်မှုမှာ COVID-19 ထက်ပို၍ သိသာထင်ရှားကြောင်း ရှင်းလင်းစွာ ဖော်ပြခဲ့ပါသည်။ စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများအတွက် အဓိကစိန်ခေါ်မှုများမှာ ဘဏ်လုပ်ငန်း (၇၇%)၊ အင်တာနက် (၇၀%) နှင့် ဝန်ထမ်းများ၏ ဘေးကင်းလုံခြုံမှု (၆၆%) ဆိုင်ရာ မငြိမ်မသက်မှုများကြောင့်ဖြစ်ပါသည်။ ၎င်းစစ်တမ်း ဖော်ပြချက်အရ မြန်မာကုမ္ပဏီများ၊ အထူးသဖြင့် နိုင်ငံစုံကုမ္ပဏီများနှင့်မတူသည့် ခံနိုင်ရည်မရှိသော အသေးစားနှင့် အလတ်စား စီးပွားရေးလုပ်ငန်းများ အပေါ် အကြီးမားဆုံး သက်ရောက်မှုများ ဖြစ်စေခဲ့ပါသည်။ ဤ အနုတ်သဘောဆောင်သည့် စီးပွားရေးအလားအလာကို မလိုလားကြသော နိုင်ငံခြား ရင်းနှီးမြှုပ်နှံမှုများသည် ယခုအခါ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို ရှောင်ရှားခြင်းနှင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှ ပြန်လည်ဆုတ်ခွာခြင်း တို့ကြောင့် MCRB သည် လက်ရှိ အကျပ်အတည်းတွင် တာ၀န်ယူမှုရှိသော စီးပွားရေး လုပ်ငန်းဆိုသည်မှာ မည်သည်ကို ဆိုလိုကြောင်းနှင့် ကျွန်ုပ်တို့နှင့် ပတ်သက်ဆက်နွယ်သူများ အတွက် စင်တာ (Centre) မှာ မည်သို့ အသုံးဝင်နိုင်မည်ကို အလေးအနက်ထား စဉ်းစားသုံးသပ်နေပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Myanmar Centre for Responsible Business
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Business and the Military, Economy: general, analytical, statistical (various sources), Human Rights and international relations, Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory
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"Children and the elderly make up a large proportion of the people taking refuge in camps in northwest Myanmar to escape fighting between the army and insurgents, residents said on Thursday, as France called for an urgent delivery of humanitarian aid.
In the past week, Chin State bordering India has seen some of the most serious fighting since Myanmar's military seized power in a coup on Feb. 1 and removed the elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
India said this week that more than 15,000 people had crossed the border to seek refuge, but residents in Chin State said many of the most vulnerable were sheltering in camps around the town of Mindat after it was overrun by the army.
"Children and the elderly make up a big proportion of the groups. Some didn't have sandals. They trekked through the forest barefoot for days," said a 34-year-old resident helping look after the displaced but asked not to be identified.
He said that villages around Mindat were caring for about 2,000 displaced people in camps and churches, while access to the town once home to more than 40,000 people had been blocked.
"We will face food shortage after a week," said the resident, adding that petrol supplies were about to run out.
At least 10 people have been killed in Chin State in the past week, according to figures from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group.
It puts the countrywide death toll since the coup at 807, a figure disputed by the army.
Pleading for international aid, another Mindat resident said the camp he was at had 13 bags of rice and would see shortages soon, with the 140 people there now expected to swell to 300.
Those fleeing say thousands of people left Mindat after the army attacked to root out fighters of the newly formed Chinland Defence Force, who are aligned with a National Unity Government (NUG) formed by the junta's opponents.....'IMMEDIATE NECESSITY': The French Embassy in Myanmar blamed a "disproportionate use of force and war weapons against civilians by the military" for causing a loss of human life and the displacement of thousands in Chin State.
"The restoration of access to water and electricity as well as the delivery of humanitarian aid for population in need are an immediate necessity," the embassy said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Fighting in the area is continuing, and a citizens' administrative group said in a post on social media that Chin militia had killed three soldiers on a road out of Mindat on Wednesday.
The United Nations said nearly 10,000 people had been displaced in Kachin State in the north by renewed fighting since mid-March. Thousands have also been displaced by clashes in the east and northeast.
A spokesman for the military council did not answer calls for comment.
The junta has struggled to impose its authority in the face of daily protests, paralysing strikes and an upsurge of fighting against old and new groups of ethnic minority fighters.
Attacks on junta-appointed local administrators have increased in recent weeks, with state media on Thursday reporting "terrorists" and "insurgents" had killed or wounded officials with knives, guns and home-made bombs.
It also reported arson attacks on state-owned property in several cities. Witnesses and local media reported explosions on Thursday in Mandalay and the biggest city, Yangon.
Anti-coup marches took place in different parts of the country by day, with candle-lit strikes and protests by night on Thursday, all calling for the overthrow of the military, many with signs backing the unity government.
The NUG on Thursday announced the formation of a commission to draft a new federal constitution, hoping to follow through with a pledge by Suu Kyi's party to replace the current military-drafted charter.
Myanmar's constitution had long been a source of friction between the army and Suu Kyi's government, which was intent on amending it to reduce the military's political powers, which included parliamentary seats and control of defence and interior ministries.
The junta has been hit by Western sanctions and widely condemned over the coup and its violent suppression of protests, but has found a diplomatic friend in Russia, a key source of its defence hardware.
News outlets in both countries on Thursday reported a Myanmar military delegation was visiting Moscow to attend an exhibition showcasing Russian helicopters..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Chin State, Humanitarian assistance - emergencies, The discussion on humanitarian assistance to Burma, Internal displacement/forced migration in Chin State, Burma: Internal displacement/forced migration of several ethnic groups., Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, National Unity Government (NUG)
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"Myanmar's junta-appointed election commission will dissolve Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy Party (NLD) because of what it said was fraud in a November election, news outlet Myanmar Now said on Friday, citing a commissioner.
Myanmar Now said the decision was made during a meeting with political parties that was boycotted by many parties including the NLD.
The election fraud conducted by the NLD was illegal "so we will have to dissolve the party's registration", the chairman of the junta-backed Union Election Commission (UEC), Thein Soe, was cited in the report as saying. "Those who did that will be considered as traitors and we will take action," said Thein Soe.
A spokesman for the junta and for a pro-democracy national unity government, which includes ousted members of the NLD, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A spokesman for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party said it had representatives at the meeting, which was still going on, and he was not aware of the outcome.
Myanmar's army took power alleging fraud in a November election that was swept by the party of Suu Kyi, who fought for democracy for decades before tentative reforms began a decade ago. The electoral commission at the time had rejected the army's complaints.
The security forces have killed more than 800 people since a wave of protests broke out after coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group says.
Fighting has also flared between the security forces and ethnic minority guerrilla groups.
The turmoil has alarmed Myanmar's neigbours and the broader international community, but the generals have shown no sign of any intention of seeking a compromise with the pro-democracy movement.
Since her arrest hours before a Feb. 1 coup, Suu Kyi has been held in detention and faces numerous charges filed in two courts, the most serious under a colonial-era official secrets act, punishable by 14 years in prison.
Suu Kyi, 75, has been permitted to speak with lawyers only via a video link in the presence of security personnel. Her co-defendant is Win Myint, the ousted president.
Opponents of the military have formed a National Unity Government, which operates under cover or through members based abroad. It has announced it is setting up of a People's Defence Force to challenge the junta.
Japan, a major donor to Myanmar, will have to rethink its aid provision to Myanmar if the situation in the Southeast Asian nation does not improve, Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said in Tokyo..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Burma/Myanmar's political parties, Articles on the NLD, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော်
အမျိုးသားညီညွတ်ရေးအစိုးရ
ပညာရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန
ကြေညာချက်အမှတ်(၁၃/၂၀၂၁)
၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်၊ မေလ (၂၁) ရက်
ပညာရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန၏ Non-CDM များနှင့်ပတ်သက်၍ အသိပေးကြေညာခြင်း..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Education & Ministry of Health
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Education in Burma/Myanmar - general, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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"On Saturday, May 15, 2021, the Myanmar military – known as the Tatmadaw – launched a coordinated attack against the town of Mindat in Myanmar’s western Chin State. This latest crackdown was precipitated by several weeks of sustained fighting between the Tatmadaw and civilian defense forces in Mindat, formed in March in response to increasing military violence against civilians participating in the peaceful nationwide anti-coup resistance. Following an imposition of martial law on the grounds of insurgency, the siege of Mindat has been characterized by indiscriminate deployment of heavy weaponry by land and air, widespread use of forced labor and human shields, and active obstruction of delivery of basic humanitarian necessities for civilians, including food, water, and access to medical care and supplies.
In response to escalating violence against civilians in Mindat, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) issued the following statement:
“The reports out of Mindat, including the Tatmadaw’s blocking of humanitarian and medical aid and access to clean water, expose the horrifying reality of ongoing violence against tens of thousands of civilians in Mindat by the Myanmar military. These actions further echo the unconscionable actions and severe breaches of international human rights law perpetrated by the Tatmadaw since the group seized power in a February 1 coup d’état. Physicians for Human Rights is appalled by the Myanmar military’s unlawful implementation of martial law in Mindat, who has pushed civilians into Mindat’s surrounding jungles to escape detention, and the reported obstruction in access to clean drinking water.
“Through an unlawful and violent campaign to seize power, directly violating security forces’ responsibility and duty to protect, the Tatmadaw continues to violate the basic human rights of Myanmar’s people. Mindat civilians, mostly men, who have reportedly been forced into the forested areas around Mindat, have little to no access to shelter, water, food, or medical care. Their forced absence has left women and children in Mindat vulnerable to the brutal tactics of war deployed against the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities by the Myanmar military, including sexual and gender-based violence, which PHR has long documented and corroborated.
“This new wave of violence in western Chin State has further contributed to the displacement of tens of thousands of people, both internally and across the Indian border. The escalating crisis critically compounds already strained access to humanitarian and medical aid experienced by internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Myanmar. Medical personnel are reportedly unable to reach IDPs in Mindat without coming under artillery fire by the Tatmadaw, and are prevented from tending to patients in critical condition due to a lack of safe medical facilities available for emergency surgeries. PHR condemns the Myanmar military’s obstruction of critical medical and humanitarian aid, and the impediment of medical personnel’s duty to administer care to civilians desperately in need.
“Physicians for Human Rights demands that the Tatmadaw immediately cease attacks against the Mindat community, reestablish access to clean water and medical supplies, and end the obstruction of medical and humanitarian aid, which is in grave violation of international human rights law. As well, PHR calls on international and regional actors, including the United Nations Security Council and the Association for Southeast Asian Nations, to urgently negotiate an agreement to establish a safe and secure demilitarized humanitarian corridor into Mindat and other similarly afflicted territories across Myanmar. PHR emphasizes the acute need for humanitarian and medical personnel to fully access affected civilians without encumbrance, as is necessary to provide health care to the sick and wounded, to deliver humanitarian aid more broadly, and to ensure the safety and security of surrounding communities.
“The latest human rights violations demonstrate that ongoing sanctions and justice and accountability efforts are not sufficiently serving as deterrents. International actors that have been leading the effort to advance targeted sanctions against perpetrators of these abuses – such as the United States and European Union – should build a broad, international coalition comprised of governments and businesses in support of a sanctions regime that will prevent the Tatmadaw and other security forces from accessing resources to continue perpetrating abuses against the Myanmar people.”
Dr. Maung,* a volunteer surgeon based in Mandalay and a PHR medical partner, said that he had spoken with medical colleagues on the ground in Mindat who have reported on the dire need for immediate medical aid. “Several patients are in need of emergency surgery. Without it, they won’t survive for long. Surgeons are traveling from Mandalay to try and assist the wounded, but first they must be able to transfer the patients to a safe zone, as there is little they can do in the jungle,” he said.
In a statement responding to the Myanmar military’s coup, PHR condemned mass arbitrary arrests and detention of civilian leaders and human rights defenders in Myanmar, and called for an immediate de-escalation of the situation, the prompt release of political prisoners, and the restoration of communications networks. Following escalating violence directly after the coup, PHR additionally condemned attacks against protestors and the reported detention of medical professionals.
PHR reprises its call to the international community to hold the Myanmar military and other responsible actors accountable for its August 2017 campaign of widespread and systematic violence against the Rohingya ethnic minority in “clearance operations” that forced more than 720,000 Rohingya into neighboring Bangladesh. The Tatmadaw has an egregious history of human rights violations against civilians, including perpetrating forced labor, sexual violence, torture, extrajudicial killings, child labor, and other abuses in Myanmar’s ethnic territories, including Chin State, which PHR documented in 2011. International efforts to quell the violence are critically important as the perpetrators of these grave violations increase their political power and continue to operate with impunity within Myanmar.
*Dr. Maung asked that we use only his surname for security reasons..."
Source/publisher:
Physicians for Human Rights (New York)
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-21
[field_licence]
Type:
Individual Documents
Category:
Chin State, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, Racial or ethnic discrimination in Burma: reports of violations against several groups, Discrimination against the Rohingya, Internal displacement/forced migration in Chin State, Humanitarian assistance - emergencies, Human Rights and international relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
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