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.
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‘Trail of bodies’: defector says military’s top judge came to Rakhine to destroy evidence of Rohingya atrocities
/in NewsAung Lin Dwe, who at the time was Judge Advocate General, fabricated cover stories and ordered soldiers to delete files from their phones, according to a defector
The Myanmar military’s top judge travelled to northern Rakhine State in 2017 to assist with the destruction of evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya, a defector who says he took part in the offensive has told Myanmar Now.
Aung Lin Dwe, who at the time was the Tatmadaw’s Judge Advocate General, arrived in the village of Mawrawaddy near Maungdaw after the attacks against the minority group began in August 2017, according to Captain Nay Myo Thet.
“The Judge Advocate General came to the No. 4 Border Guard Force office in Mawrawaddy, fabricated incidents as the military wanted… and got rid of the evidence of the acts of terrorism the military committed,” he said. “He also altered the weapons and ammunition inventory records.”
Aung Lin Dwe, who now serves as Secretary of the military’s so-called State Administration Council, issued an order in 2017 for soldiers to delete any record of the attacks they had taken on their phones, Nay Myo Thet said, adding that he himself passed this order down to his own subordinates.
“We were told to check our mobile phone every few days and delete whatever photos or videos we had there,” he said.
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Much of what is known about the 2017 attacks, which both UN investigators and the United States have labelled genocide, comes from witness testimony given by Rohingya survivors who fled to Bangladesh in their hundreds of thousands.
The offensive, which followed a similar but smaller round of violence against the Rohingya in 2016, involved mass killings, the rape of women, men and children, and systematic arson to destroy hundreds of villages.
Journalists, observers and investigators have been denied access to northern Rakhine ever since, except on tightly controlled media tours, and it has not been possible to gather physical evidence from the sites where atrocities were reported.
Nay Myo Thet abandoned his post in Buthidaung Township in January, taking his wife and five-year-old child with him, to join the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) against Myanmar’s coup regime.
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The captain, who is 32, graduated from the 51st batch of the Defence Services Academy and from 2015 until his defection served as a squadron commander of Infantry Battalion 233 under Western Military Command. His unit was in charge of providing logistical support for troops.
His wife, Mar Mar, who he married in 2016, is a former police officer from Rakhine. The family has fled Rakhine.
During the 2017 attacks, higher ranking soldiers had a sense that they were unlikely to be held accountable for their crimes, but nonetheless did not want to make things easy for international prosecutors by leaving behind evidence, Nay Myo Thet said.
“They used to say: ‘The noose is very far away. Be careful not to put your neck in the noose yourself. Double-check everything. Instruct your underlings to cover their tracks. Get rid of all the evidence’,” he said.
The military’s engineering battalion was brought in to help with this, he added.
“They bulldozed the land to get rid of the evidence,” he said. “By evidence, I mean dead bodies and the remains of burned houses.”
The military built border guard police stations on the bulldozed land, he said.
Soldiers also poured acid onto the bodies of dead Rohingya in order to prevent them being identified, Nay Myo Thet said.
A 2018 investigation by the Associated Press found that acid had been poured over the bodies of Rohingya buried in mass graves in the village of Gu Dar Pyin, in Buthidaung. Nay Myo Thet told Myanmar Now that he arrived in Gu Dar Pyin after the attacks there and saw the aftermath.
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Weapons inventories destroyed
Another way the military erased evidence in Rakhine was by destroying inventory records of weapons and ammunition used in the offensive, said Nay Myo Thet.
He served as a logistics officer during the operations and it was his role to procure food supplies, weapons, and aircraft fuel for the soldiers, he said.
“I was aware of our ammunition inventory because I used to be the supply officer,” he said. “So I know how much and what kind of ammunition the soldiers used. It was, however, off the record, so it meant they were given permission to do whatever they wanted.”
Nay Myo Thet’s battalion was deployed to Maungdaw Township as part of a mission named Zwe Marn Hone, which began in 2016 and continued after August 2017 with the purpose of “clearing” a stretch of land along Myanmar’s western border.
“We destroyed a series of Rohingya villages from Kyi Kan Pyin until Baw Tu Lar,” he said, referring to offensives he took part in in both 2016 and 2017. “It ended after we built a community hall in Baw Tu Lar” in 2017, he added.
A top military official named Lieutenant General Aung Kyaw Zaw, who was later sanctioned for his role in the atrocities, built a pagoda in Baw Tu Lar, which sits at one of Myanmar’s most westerly points, “in order to declare the area as Buddha’s land” Nay Myo Thet said.
During the Zwe Marn Hone mission, Nay Myo Thet said soldiers burned down villages and stripped Rohingya women naked for “searches”.
“The military columns would raid and torch villages and the villages would be burnt to ashes. It all happened before my own eyes,” said the captain, who served in the military for 13 years, seven of which he spent in Rakhine State.
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Military authorities gave permission to ground troops to carry out unannounced searches in the villages and to take whatever they liked, the captain said.
“Every time they arrived at a house, they would make the men step outside and the women stand in a line in the house, and then they would strip them naked and ‘search’ them,” he said. “It didn’t matter if the women were old or young. They’d strip all of them naked. Then they would brag about it proudly.”
He added that the soldiers were also allowed to shoot anyone dead if they tried to run during the searches and that no weapons, apart from kitchen knives, were ever found.
“The people did not have any weapons to fight back but the soldiers were justified in killing them even if they found a kitchen knife” he added.
“They would leave a literal trail of dead bodies behind them after they left the villages. The streets would be filled with rotten smells from the bodies. It was very disturbing,” he said.
Rohingya leaders sometimes sought to prevent attacks by bribing army officers at the entrances of their villages with gold, silver, and other valuables, he added: “They would sell the objects given as bribes by the Rohingya people, including motorcycles and cars, among themselves. It was a big market.”
In 2020, military spokesperson Zaw Min Tun told reporters that three soldiers had been punished for “weakness in following the instructions” during the Gu Dar Pyin attacks, but he declined to name the soldiers or give their ranks.
Nay Myo Thet told Myanmar Now that the three soldiers Zaw Min Tun was referring to reported to a tactical officer named Colonel Naing Oo.
In 2019, Nay Myo Thet said, a lieutenant general named Zaw Myo Win was detained at a jail inside the base of Infantry Battalion 233 in Buthidaung for around six months.
His detention was ostensibly a punishment for his role in the Gu Dar Pyin attacks, Nay Myo Thet said, but it “was just an act”.
“I only know about this because I was there when it happened,” he added. “Everyone thought [he] was jailed for real. However, he was allowed to do whatever he wanted while he was detained. He even got to drink alcohol.”
Zaw Myo Win was commander of ground operations under Light Infantry Division 33, which was responsible for a large share of the 2017 atrocities.
It is unclear if Zaw Myo Win was one of the three soldiers that Zaw Min Tun was referring to in 2020.
There is, Nay Myo Thet said, no desire in the military for any genuine accountability for crimes against the Rohingya.
“The military as a whole thinks that the Rohingya are the source of all the problems,” he said. “They just want the Rohingya people gone. That’s all they want.”
Myanmar Now News
Human Rights Situation in Myanmar 4 April 10 April 2022
/in HR SituationWeekly Update: Atrocity Crimes in Myanmar Must be Met with Consequences
Since 1 Feb 2021, the Myanmar military has boasted their flagrant disregard for rule of law & human rights as they continue to wage a war against the people. Their failed bid for power must be met with consequences. International repercussions long over-due.
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Myanmar Health Care Workers are Not a Target
/in Briefing Papers, ND-Burma's ReportsThe human rights situation in Myanmar is becoming increasingly unstable. Hundreds of thousands have been forcibly displaced. Among those trying to help injured civilians, protesters and combatants from the People’s Defense Forces are medical professionals. They too have been targeted by the Myanmar junta who have used their weapons to destroy clinics and confiscate medicine. In the midst of a pandemic, these actions are increasingly volatile.
Doctors and nurses, who have joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) have been forced into hiding. Despite mass arrest warrants issued, many are still providing treatment and care in secret. Their will and spirit cannot be marred by the junta.
The war that the Myanmar military is waging in their cruel pursuit for power has destabilized the country beyond repair. The health care sector is one of many which has been obliterated. Health care services are now largely beyond reach of every day civilians who are struggling to survive on the bare minimum as conflict wreaks havoc across the country.
On World Health Day, the Network for Human Rights Documentation – Burma recognizes the many injustices perpetrated against health care workers by the soldiers of the Myanmar Army. We condemn these unlawful attacks and call for their immediate protection, as well as for those arrested and detained to be released and all charges dropped.
Weekly Update : Human Rights Situation (28 March to 3 April)
/in HR SituationYoung people in Myanmar who protested against the junta are facing increasingly unjust punishments in military backed courts. Daily reports of the growing numbers of arrests and those who have ‘disappeared’ have only contributed to ongoing worries and concerns.
Myanmar military abducts, tortures 11-year-old boy in Mandalay
/in NewsThe boy was among four locals from Myitnge Township beaten in junta custody after they were accused of supporting the armed resistance
Junta soldiers arrested and abused four people from Mandalay Region’s Myitnge Township over the weekend, accusing them of supporting the anti-dictatorship People’s Defence Force (PDF), locals said.
Among them was Moe Lun, age 11, who was reportedly tortured while in military custody on March 26.
“The child was beaten and taken from his home. They also brutally beat and took a married couple and another man,” a local man from Myitnge told Myanmar Now on the condition of anonymity.
The other victims were identified as a man named Htay Win, and Tayote and Win Kyi, who are husband and wife.
They were reportedly held in the compound of the Yadana Gu monastery in Amarapura Township, but only Win Kyi and Moe Lun were released later that day. The two men—Htay Win and Tayote—are believed to have been sent to the interrogation centre situated within Mandalay Palace, “if they are still alive,” the local man said.
Moe Lun’s face was badly bruised upon his return, but, fearing repercussions from the military, his family did not dare send him to a hospital, he added.
“Win Kyi was brutally tortured as well. They accused her of providing a sack of rice to the PDF,” the local said.
Myanmar Now called the Myitnge Police Station to obtain comment on the claims but all calls went unanswered.
Myanmar Now News
US declares Myanmar’s 2017 atrocities against Rohingya a ‘genocide’
/in NewsThe move will bring greater scrutiny on the Myanmar military, says a Rohingya activist.
UPDATED at 4:30 P.M. EDT on 2022-03-21
The United States has declared as a genocide the Myanmar military’s 2017 deadly crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority that killed thousands and forced an exodus to neighboring Bangladesh, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday.
Human rights activists welcomed the move as overdue and essential for stepping up pressure on the military, and making it accountable for crimes against humanity. According to American investigators, the military was responsible for atrocities including mass killings, gang rapes, mutilations, crucifixions, and the burning and drowning of children.
>> Myanmar army joins brutal list of US-recognized genocides
Blinken said that as of Monday, the United States had concluded that other than the Holocaust, genocide had occurred eight times – the eighth time against the Rohingya.
“I have determined that the members of the Burmese military committed genocide and crimes against humanity against Rohingya,” Blinken said in remarks at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on Monday.
“The attack against Rohingya was widespread and systematic, which is crucial for reaching a determination of crimes against humanity.”
Blinken said that among the sources for the determination was a joint report published in November 2017 by the museum’s Simon Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide and the human rights group Fortify Rights. The report was based on a survey of more than a thousand Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, all of whom were displaced by the violence in 2016 or 2017.
“Three quarters of those interviewed said that they personally witnessed members of the military kill someone. More than half witnessed acts of sexual violence. One in five witnessed a mass casualty event, that is, the killing or injuring of more than 100 people in a single incident,” Blinken said.
“These percentages matter. They demonstrate that these abuses were not isolated cases. … This demonstrates the military’s intent went beyond ethnic cleansing to the actual destruction of Rohingya.”
Following Blinken’s announcement, New York-based Human Rights Watch said that the U.S. needed to coordinate its “long overdue action” with other countries to pursue justice for the mass crimes committed against the Rohingya.
“The U.S. government should couple its condemnations of Myanmar’s military with action,” John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “For too long, the U.S. and other countries have allowed Myanmar’s generals to commit atrocities with few real consequences.”
The rights watchdog said that to deter future abuses, Washington should impose tougher sanctions on the foreign currency revenues the Myanmar military makes from oil and gas revenues, and increase the enforcement of existing sanctions.
“The military utilizes the bulk of these revenues to support its expenditures, which include extensive purchases of arms and attack aircraft from Russia, China, and other countries,” the group said in its statement.
Similarly, the U.K.-based Burma Human Rights Network said Washington’s recognition of the Rohingya genocide was overdue but greatly welcomed.
“By formally declaring a genocide took place against the Rohingya, the U.S. is firmly acknowledging the scope and horror of the junta’s violence,” the group’s Executive Director Kyaw Win said in a statement Monday.
“This declaration must be followed by further action. The junta must be completely cut off from the world, deprived of cash flow and weapons, and resisted until they fall from power.”
Years-long patterns
In 2018, U.N. investigators found that Myanmar’s military carried out mass killings and gang rapes of Muslim Rohingya with “genocidal intent.” The rights group Doctors Without Borders has estimated that at least 6,700 Rohingya died in the 2017 crackdown.
But to date, the U.S. government had described it as “ethnic cleansing” – not using the “genocide” designation, which carries more legal weight.
Under Article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”
The atrocities were committed during the tenure of the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi who in December 2019 defended the military against allegations of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The Nobel Peace Prize winner and one-time democracy icon now languishes in prison – toppled by the same military in its Feb. 1, 2021 coup.
Myanmar, a country of 54 million people about the size of France, recognizes 135 official ethnic groups, with majority Burmans accounting for about 68 percent of the population. The Rohingya ethnicity is not recognized.
The Rohingya have faced decades of discrimination in Myanmar and are effectively stateless. They have been denied citizenship. Burmese administrations have refused to call them “Rohingya” and instead use the term “Bengali.”
The 2017 crackdown was triggered by a Rohingya insurgent group’s attack on police outposts in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, leading to a disproportionate military response that caused about 740,000 Rohingya civilians to flee to neighboring Bangladesh – what the military and Aung San Suu Kyi, then the civilian ruler of Myanmar, called a “clearance operation.”
But a State Department-commissioned investigation found that the Rohingya were in a highly precarious situation in the months and years leading up to the attacks on the police stations, and their situation was fast deteriorating, according to Daniel Fullerton of Public International Law & Policy Group, who managed the probe.
“The collected data revealed years-long patterns of gradually worsening violence and widespread human rights violations targeted against the Rohingya, which began to dramatically increase in severity and frequency in the year leading up to the major attacks of 2017,” Fullerton said in testimony at a U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom hearing last May.
The military’s retributory attacks for the Rohingya insurgents’ August 2017 assault on police posts was swift – and brutal.
“These attacks included brutal large-scale ground assaults, indiscriminate shootings, mass killings, executions, crucifixions, rapes and gang rapes, beatings, mutilations, the burning and drowning of children, the widespread destruction of Rohingya homes and villages, among many other brutal acts,” investigator Fullerton said.
“There were credible reports of Rohingya community leaders being gathered into buildings and burned alive, of imams being beaten and having their beards burned off, and of Rohingya religious or community leaders being shot or stabbed in front of the members of their village. Symbolic burnings of mosques, madrassas, and Korans were widely documented,” he said.
Blinken spoke of the planning that went into pre-attack preparations – such as military personnel “blocking exits to villages before they began their attacks, [and] sinking boats full of men, women and children as they tried to flee to Bangladesh.”
He said that the “immeasurable pain wrought by every heinous abuse” ripples outward from the individual victims to the survivors and to the wider community.
Therefore, he said, the U.S continues to provide significant support to help meet the humanitarian needs of Rohingya and all affected by their persecution. He said Washington had provided nearly $ 1.6 billion since 2017 for Rohingya refugees’ shelter and education, specialized mental health and for the psychosocial support for the victims of trauma.
‘Generosity of Bangladesh’
Blinken said he wanted to “recognize the exceptional generosity of Bangladesh” in hosting over 900,000 Rohingya refugees, and the South Asian country’s recent efforts to vaccinate this stateless community against COVID-19.
In Dhaka, Bangladesh’s Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan Kamal on Monday welcomed the Biden administration’s decision to declare the military’s 2017 oppression of the Rohingya a genocide.
“The U.S. announcement would help restore the civil rights of the Rohingya in Myanmar and speed up their repatriation,” he told BenarNews.
“The international community and all people should know about the genocide and other inhuman atrocities committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar.”
In no-man’s land on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border, Dil Mohammad, a Rohingya leader, said Washington’s declaration was a positive development.
“The massacre of the Rohingya in Myanmar is a classic example of genocide. The international community believes it but they did not officially recognize it,” the Rohingya leader in Bandarban district told BenarNews.
“If the international community speaks in one voice against the brutality of the military, the decades-old genocide and atrocities targeting the Rohingya would cease and our return to our homeland be ensured.”
The designation of the Rohingya expulsion campaign as genocide follows the January 2021 decision by Blinken’s predecessor, Mike Pompeo, who determined that China’s mass incarceration and coercive birth control policies toward the Uyghur minority in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region constituted genocide.
The State Department has since the Cold War recognized genocides in Bosnia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Iraq (1995), Darfur (2004), and areas under the control of ISIS (2016 and 2017), according to Holocaust Museum data.
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