ND Burma
ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.
Recent Posts
- Myanmar armed group says 11 civilians killed in junta air strikes
- Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 22 to 31, 2024)
- Myanmar military court jails 144 villagers detained after massacre
- More than 40,000 war displaced flood across border into Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region
- Trials ordered in 20-year-old Thailand military, police ‘massacre’
Myanmar armed group says 11 civilians killed in junta air strikes
/in NewsBANGKOK —
Myanmar military air strikes in northern Shan state killed 11 civilians and wounded 11 more, a spokeswoman for an ethnic minority armed group battling the junta told AFP on Friday.
The junta is battling widespread armed opposition to its 2021 coup and its soldiers are accused of bloody rampages and using air and artillery strikes to punish civilian communities.
“They bombed at two areas in Namhkam” town on Friday around 1 a.m. local time, Lway Yay Oo of the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) said.
The strikes killed 11 and wounded 11, she said, adding that the office of a local political party had been damaged.
The dead were five men, four women and two children, she said.
Namhkam is around 5 kilometers from the border with China’s Yunnan province, with TNLA fighters claiming control of the town following weeks of fighting last year.
Images on social media showed people sifting through rubble and carrying a young person who appeared to be wounded.
One video showed several destroyed buildings. AFP reporters geolocated that video to a site in Namhkam and said it had not appeared online before.
AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment.
Since last year the military has lost swaths of territory near the border with China in northern Shan state to an alliance of armed ethnic minority groups and “People’s Defense Forces” battling to overturn its coup.
The groups have seized a regional military command and taken control of lucrative border trade crossings, prompting rare public criticism by military supporters of the junta’s top leadership.
Earlier this week junta chief Min Aung Hlaing warned civilians in territory held by ethnic minority armed groups to prepare for military counterattacks, state media reported.
The junta also announced this week that it had declared the TNLA a “terrorist” organization.
Those found supporting or contacting the TNLA and two other ethnic minority armed groups, the Arakan Army, and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, can now face legal action.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in 2021 and launched a crackdown that sparked an armed uprising.
Conflict since the coup has forced more than 2.7 million people to flee their homes, according to the United Nations.
VOA News
Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 22 to 31, 2024)
/in HR Situation, NewsHuman Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Aug 22 to 31, 2024
Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Magway Region, Bago Region, Mandalay Region, Tanintharyi Region, and Shan State from August 22nd to 31st. Head of Prison which works under Military Junta, tortured and blackmailed the political prisoners in Thayet Prison, Magway Region, and Thayawaddy Prison, Bago Region. The Military Junta is arresting and blackmailing the fully aged civilians for military service in the Yangon Region, Ayeyarwady Region, Bago Region, and Naypyidaw.
Over 20 civilians died, and over 20 were injured by the Military’s heavy and light artillery attacks within a week. Over 100 civilians were arrested by the Military Junta within a week.
Infogram
Myanmar military court jails 144 villagers detained after massacre
/in NewsJunta troops suspect the villagers were helping Arakan Army insurgents closing in on the state capital.
Myanmar’s junta jailed 144 civilians for supporting insurgents more than three months after they were detained following a massacre of nearly 80 people in their village, which residents blamed on junta troops, families of the detained told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
Relatives of the jailed residents of Byain Phyu in Rakhine state dismissed the convictions, denying they had supported Arakan Army insurgents, who have been making significant advances on the battlefield against the military.
“How can we support the AA when day to day we’re struggling ourselves and hardly making ends meet?” said a relative of one of those jailed on Friday under a law against unlawful association by a military court in the main prison in the western city of Sittwe.
“But the court didn’t accept this and convicted them anyway.”
Byain Phyu is on the outskirts of Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state, and junta forces have been keen to ensure that AA fighters can not dig into positions there from which to attack the city.
Shortly after the May 29 killings, a junta spokesman said the military had conducted a clearance operation there and rebel forces had attacked with “drone bombs and artillery”.
At the time, the military said it found bunkers built from sandbags in houses throughout the village, which it said were positions for AA soldiers.
The military detained some 300 villagers at the time. Only four people on trail on Friday were found not guilty, residents said, adding that more than 150 more were due to be tried by the court on Monday.
The AA has made unprecedented gains in fighting in Rakhine state since late last year, leaving junta forces increasingly confined to pockets of territory, including Sittwe.
A Sittwe resident, who also declined to be identified for safety reasons, said junta forces were enraged by their setbacks and were taking out their frustration on civilians.
“Sources close to the court told us before that only 38 people would be jailed and the rest would be released, but days before the verdict, the Sittwe-based Regional Command Headquarters was attacked with heavy weapons by the Arakan Army,” he said.
“It seems as if the attack might have caused casualties, so they convicted the villagers.”
Neither the junta’s main spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, nor the Rakhine states junta spokesperson, Hla Thein, responded to attempts by RFA to contact them for information.
Byain Phyu is largely deserted now with nearly 2,000 of villagers sheltering in monasteries and schools in Sittwe, residents said, with junta troops deployed to prevent anyone returning.
In Sittwe, nervous junta soldiers are conducting many checks and detaining people, residents said.
The AA has also made gains in both the north and south of Rakhine state.
RFA News
More than 40,000 war displaced flood across border into Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady region
/in NewsTwo-thirds of the population of Rakhine’s Gwa township have fled fighting between the military and ethnic rebels.
As the fight between the military and ethnic rebels for the southernmost township in Myanmar’s Rakhine state escalates, more than 40,000 civilians have streamed across the border into neighboring Ayeyarwady region, residents said Thursday.
The push to the southern border with Ayeyarwady region is the latest advance for the Arakan Army, or AA, which ended a truce with the military in November and has gone on to control nine townships and three sub-townships in Rakhine state, as well as Paletwa township in neighboring Chin state to the north.
The AA’s advance south into areas traditionally on the edge of its influence could signal that the army wants to establish a foothold in central Myanmar and take on a more central role in any post-conflict national reconciliation process, rather than staying on the sidelines as a marginal ethnic armed group.
Speaking to RFA Burmese on Thursday, residents of Ayeyarwady region’s Thabaung township said that the fighting in Rakhine state’s Gwa township is now centered on Kyeintali town, and that 42,434 civilians – or two-thirds of Gwa’s population – had crossed into Ayeyarwady seeking shelter over the past two weeks.
“War-displaced persons have arrived in Thar Paung township via jungle routes, as they were prohibited from entering at junta checkpoints on the roads,” said one resident of Thabaung who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on condition of anonymity due to security concerns. “They had nothing to eat for about seven days during their journey.”
The resident said that many of the displaced lack travel documents and residence permits from their local officials, and that authorities in Ayeyarwady are allowing them to stay on the outskirts of their towns.
Most of the displaced have taken refuge in the Ayeyarwady townships of Thabaung, Yegyi, Kyonpyaw, Kyangin, Myanaung, Kwin Kauk and Nga Thai Chaung, he added.
Prices are high
Residents of Ayeyarwady told RFA that with the influx of displaced people from Gwa township, home rental prices have risen three-fold from about 200,000 kyats (US$95) to 600,000 kyats (US$285) per month.
A resident of Gwa township who fled to Nga Thai Chaung township in Ayeyarwady said that the financial situation facing the displaced is dire.
“Around two-thirds of residents from Gwa township are now displaced persons, while the remaining one-third is still trapped in Gwa,” he said. “All the commodity prices, except rice, are high here [in Ayeyarwady]. We all are facing various challenges.”
RFA News
Trials ordered in 20-year-old Thailand military, police ‘massacre’
/in NewsBangkok —
A court in Buddhist-majority Thailand decided Friday to try seven former military and police officials for their roles in the deaths of 85 Muslim men at a protest that took place 20 years ago.
The seven are charged with murder, attempted murder and unlawful detention. The statute of limitations on the charges expires in late October, exactly two decades after the events of the so-called Tak Bai Massacre.
“I feel relieved that the duty of the lawyers and the duty of the plaintiffs is accomplished,” Pornpen Khongkachonkiet, a human rights activist and lawyer representing one of the plaintiffs in the case, told VOA after the court announced its decision.
“We [were] hugging each other … and I think they are very happy,” she said of the other plaintiffs as well.
Lawyers for the accused could not be reached for comment.
The case concerns the events of October 25, 2004, in Tak Bai district, Narathiwat province, in Thailand’s predominantly Muslim and ethnic Malay deep south.
Soldiers and police shot and killed seven people while responding to a protest demanding the release of suspected Islamic militants. Human rights groups say the officers forced many more protesters into police trucks destined for a military camp some 140 kilometers away, leaving them packed inside and forced to lie on top of one another for hours. Seventy-eight of them died.
A state inquest later determined that they had suffocated. It also concluded that security forces used inappropriate measures to disperse the protesters and that commanding officers failed to adequately supervise the movement of the detainees. But authorities did not pursue charges and police claimed force majeure, a legal term referring to events beyond their control.
No one was ever previously charged over the deaths or injuries.
Hoping to change that, 48 survivors and relatives of the dead filed a lawsuit with the Narathiwat provincial court in April against nine officers, all since retired, involved in the security forces’ response to the protest.
Pornpen said the court on Friday decided against taking two of the nine to trial on the grounds they were not responsible for use of force.
Even so, she said the court’s decision to put the other seven on trial was a welcome surprise in a country where senior police, military and government officials are widely seen to act with impunity.
“We had so many times in history that the call for democracy, call for change, anything like [a] protest always ends up with violence and no one is [held] responsible,” she said. “So, to bring the perpetrator to justice according to Thai law is not easy, and I think we did it.”
In a statement, Amnesty International called Friday’s decision an overdue but “crucial first step towards justice” for those who suffered what it called the “excessive use of force” at the 2004 protest.
“The victims and their loved ones have spent almost two decades waiting for justice and accountability for the heinous crimes committed,” the rights group said. “Thai authorities must immediately enforce the court decision and take necessary measures to ensure the case’s statute of limitations does not expire.”
Amnesty International said at least one of the defendants must be brought to court to hear the charges by October 25 for the case to proceed to trial.
Pornpen confirmed that the defendants must still appear in court before the statute of limitations runs out for the trial to proceed.
She said the court would issue subpoenas ordering the accused to appear on September 12, but was concerned they may try to stall and avoid an appearance until the statute of limitations runs out.
Anchana Heemmina, director of the Duay Jai Group, a non-profit that monitors human rights abuses in Thailand’s deep south, said she also worried the accused may yet avoid a trial.
But she welcomed Friday’s decision nonetheless and said it could begin to restore some faith in the courts among southern Thailand’s Muslims.
“They feel like the Thai government, or the military don’t want to protect Malay Muslims who are civilians in the country and feel like we are the second class,” said Anchana.
“Now, for today, for the Tak Bai case, it’s a little bit first step that makes the people believe or trust the justice system,” she added.
Once the seat of a Muslim sultanate, the southern provinces of modern-day Thailand were deeded by the British to the then-kingdom of Siam in 1909. Rejecting the transfer, several armed ethnic Malay Muslim groups have waged a long-running guerrilla war against the Thai state in hopes of winning independence for the provinces.
More than 7,000 people have died in related violence since fighting intensified in 2004.
While bombings, assassinations and shootouts across the south continue to occur alongside police raids and arrests, the pace of the violence has waned over the years, and the government is in talks with some of the rebel groups over terms of a possible cease-fire.
VOA News
Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 15 to 21, 2024)
/in HR Situation, NewsHuman Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Aug 15 to 21, 2024
Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region, Magway Region, Mandalay Region, Tanintharyi Region, Rakhine State, and Shan State from August 15th to 21st. The Military Junta arrested the civilians for military service in the Bago Region, Magway Region, and Mandalay Region. The political prisoners from Daik-U Prison and Thayawaddy Prison from Bago Region were tortured.
Over 20 civilians died, and about 40 were injured by the Military’s heavy and light artillery attacks. Over 200 civilians were arrested by the Military Junta within a week.
Infogram