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 National Organizing Committee for ACSC/APF ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum 2024
- Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 1 to 7, 2024)
- Red Cross chief calls for greater aid access after visit to Myanmar
- Over 67 killed by airstrikes in Arakan State since Sunday; ICRC requests humanitarian access during visit to Naypyidaw
- Myanmar junta airstrikes kill dozens, including prisoners, rebels say
Human Rights Situation weekly update (June 15 to 21, 2024)
/in HR Situation, NewsHuman Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from June 15 to 21, 2024
Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region, Kachin State, and Rakhine State from June 15th to 21st. The Military Junta used drones and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region and Mon State. The political prisoners from O-Bo Prison, Mandalay Region, and Kyaikmaraw Prison, Mon State, were relocated. The head of the Prison who works under The Military threatened, arrested, and tortured the female political prisoners, and over 80 people were injured in Daik-U Prison, East Bago Region. The Military arrested the civilians who sold and wore the flowers on the birthday of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on June 19th.
Almost 20 civilians died, and over 20 were injured by the Military’s heavy and light artillery attacks within a week. The Military Junta arrested over 280 civilians within a week. 3 civilians died in the land mines of the Military Junta Troop.
Infogram
Collapse at notorious Myanmar rare earth mine kills 15 people
/in NewsBoom in unregulated mining is fueled by demand from China and beyond for minerals used in electric vehicles.
Rescuers recovered the bodies of 15 mine workers in northern Myanmar on Friday after a landslide at a rare earths mine, residents said, the latest deaths in an unregulated industry feeding surging demand for the minerals in China and beyond.
Thirty workers, most of them young men, were trapped in the Pang War mine in Kachin state when the collapse occurred at around midnight on Wednesday, a relative of one of the missing miners told Radio Free Asia.
“Fifteen bodies have been found so far. Two women were among them,” said the resident, who like other sources in this article declined to be identified for security reasons.
A Chinese national and 13 other workers were still missing on Thursday, residents told RFA.
The landslide was the second major disaster at the mine this month. A June 4 landslide killed more than 20 people, including three Chinese citizens.
There have been several other smaller landslides there since late May. Wednesday’s slide overtook a living area and facility where the minerals are processed, a Pang War miner said.
“Currently, it is the rainy season,” he said. “Over the past week, continuous rainfall has weakened the ground.”
Another Pang War resident told RFA that landslides weren’t a common occurrence during previous rainy seasons.
“However, due to the fragmentation caused by extensive digging, the mountains have weakened significantly and lost their stability,” he said. “Additionally, deforestation has exacerbated this situation.”
Elements for electric vehicles
A surge in the illegal mining of rare earth metals in northern Myanmar is being driven by demand from neighboring China for terbium and dysprosium – elements that are used in the production of electric vehicles, environmental activists say.
Pang War is in an area under the control of junta forces but the mining and the pollution it generates are largely unregulated.
RFA called Kachin state’s junta spokesperson, Moe Min Thein, for information on the landslide but he did not immediately respond.
Environmentalists say companies from China, where mining has become increasingly regulated due to safety and environmental concerns, fund the mining and ship the ore across the nearby border for processing and sale into global supply chains.
Chinese nationals are increasingly seen working at the mines, residents say. RFA contacted China’s embassy in Myanmar for comment but it did not reply by the time of publication.
The number of rare earth mines in resource-rich Kachin state grew by 40% between 2021 and 2023, the environmental group Global Witness said in a recent report. There are more than 300 mines in the state’s Special Region 1 of the township, it said.
There has also been an increase of fighting in the state between junta forces and the autonomy-seeking Kachin Independence Army, at times over access to resources and trade routes.
The fighting this year has displaced and killed civilians and comes as forces of the junta that seized power in a 2021 coup have faced setbacks in several parts of the country including Kachin state.
Environmental activists say all sides in Myanmar’s northernmost state seek profits from its resources, including from rare earths.
RFA News
Myanmar: a breakneck speed “disintegration of human rights,” says High Commissioner
/in News, Other Human Rights ReportsMr. President,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
As we convene here in the Council, yet again discussing Myanmar, we are bearing witness to a country being suffocated by an illegitimate military regime.
Myanmar is in agonizing pain.
And the disintegration of human rights continues at breakneck speed.
This is a crisis emblematic of a decades-long legacy of military domination, the stifling of dissent, and division.
And right now, these very same dynamics are playing out in terrifying form with the Rohingya and Rakhine communities.
We are hearing stories of horrific war tactics, such as beheadings.
Midnight drone attacks.
The burning of homes as people sleep.
People being shot at as they flee for their lives.
The military has lost control over a considerable amount of territory. So it is resorting to increasingly extreme measures.
Forced conscription. Indiscriminate bombardment of towns and villages. Brutal atrocity crimes.
Mr. President,
I have just returned from a visit to south-east Asia.
I had the opportunity to hear from Myanmar civil society on the spiralling regional impacts of the crisis and the urgent need for leadership and influence to halt this catastrophe.
The Myanmar military continues to gain access to foreign currency and weapons it needs to sustain its campaign of terror, while international financial support for the people of Myanmar is meagre at best.
But I also witnessed a profound sense of hope. In my discussions with Myanmar civil society, human rights defenders and refugee communities, it was clear to see there is a new generation of young people from all ethnic communities leading the struggle to create an inclusive vision for the future of Myanmar.
In Malaysia, I met with representatives of almost all ethnic communities – together. A few years ago, it would have been unthinkable to meet with Rohingya and other ethnic communities around one table. I was moved by their solidarity and shared hopes.
In Thailand, representatives of Myanmar civil society and human rights defenders from different communities and backgrounds were also united by a common sense of purpose. Their rejection of the military’s seizure of power and violence. Their demand for accountability. Their desire for a better future.
These young people have strong expectations of the international community. They seek for the extent of Myanmar’s suffering to be genuinely acknowledged and given the attention it deserves. They hope that funding will be made available to those on the ground to deliver humanitarian assistance and services directly to communities throughout the country.
They have risked their lives and livelihoods to help communities in need and resist the repression by the military.
And with them, a future is possible.
Mr. President,
We are witnessing a people’s revolution against decades of oppression and violence.
In some areas outside the military’s control, new local governance structures have emerged, supported by ethnic armed groups and activists alike. They are providing food, shelter, education and healthcare for hundreds of thousands who are otherwise receiving little to no humanitarian support.
And they are delivering critically needed protection services in the complete absence of a functioning public system.
The Karenni Interim Executive Council in Kayah State, for example, has created a local governance system, where seven members have been elected by the people to respond to the community’s needs.
I call on all anti-military armed groups to ensure the protection of civilians, defectors and surrendees at all times.
Mr. President,
The people of Myanmar must be spared more despair, more suffering, more fear.
Armed conflicts continue to rage brutally across the country, taking an increasingly grim toll on the lives of civilians. My Office is investigating several reported attacks against civilians in Rakhine State and Sagaing over recent days with large numbers of civilians allegedly killed — in airstrikes, naval artillery barrages and shootings.
I am very concerned about the situation in Maungdaw. The Arakan Army this weekend gave all remaining residents – including a large Rohingya population – a warning to evacuate.
But Rohingya have no options. There is nowhere to flee.
Following a similar pattern in Buthidaung, where Rohingya were ordered to flee, and then the town burned, I fear we are – yet again — about to bear witness to displacement, destruction and abuses.
The military also reportedly ordered evacuation of ethnic Rakhine villages around Sittwe, where they have been conducting mass arrests in recent days.
In another instance, the village of Byaing Phyu was reportedly emptied of its several hundred residents, as the military tried to identify men of fighting age who sympathised with their armed opponent, the Arakan Army.
Men were separated from women. Dozens of men were allegedly tortured, shot and killed. Multiple reports allege that at least five women were also raped and killed in the incident. Their village was burned. Hundreds of men taken away are now missing.
In a cynical move, the military has pressured and threatened young Rohingya men to join their ranks. Some reports have indicated thousands of Rohingya youth have been conscripted into the very same forces that displaced hundreds of thousands of their community in 2016 and 2017.
In response, the Arakan Army has exhorted Rohingya to fight with them against the military. They have targeted their communities by forcibly displacing residents. On multiple occasions, they have detained or killed men of fighting age who they suspected of taking up arms against them.
These tactics have brought back the shocking images and memories from 2017 of systematic terrorisation, persecution and forced displacement of populations. Today, sections of Maungdaw and Buthidaung have been alternately burned. Ethnic Rakhine houses and neighbourhoods were set alight, followed days later by the burning of Rohingya villages.
And tens of thousands of civilians from these communities have been forced to flee, among them entire Rohingya communities with no guarantees of finding safe haven. Over one million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are still living in limbo in dire conditions, with no prospect for durable solutions.
All this, in the face of binding provisional measures ordered by the International Court of Justice for the protection of Rohingya while it examines the case alleging genocide brought before it by the Gambia and other intervening Member States.
Accountability, including in proceedings currently pending before the International Criminal Court, is absolutely critical. The failures to ensure accountability in Myanmar’s past transition, are now allowing history to repeat itself and are haunting the present and the future.
Mr. President,
The situation in Rakhine State is – tragically – just one example of how this coup, which has resulted in three years of conflict, has brought pain and suffering to an entire country.
The attacks by the military have been, and continue to be, indiscriminate.
Since February 2021, at least 5,280 civilians, including 1,022 women and 667 children, have been killed at the hands of the military. At least 26,865 individuals have been arrested and 20,592 remain in detention.
There are now three million people internally displaced by these conflicts, the vast majority still without proper shelter. Without access to food or water. Without essential medicines and healthcare. And so many more of the cruel consequences of the military’s continued denial of humanitarian access remain invisible and under-reported.
Mr. President,
The violence must end. The attacks against civilians must end. The forced conscription must end. And the denial of humanitarian assistance must end.
I urge all parties to prevent the recurrence of the atrocity crimes committed against the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017.
I also call on countries in the region to ensure international protection, and provision of adequate shelter, support and long-term access to essential services to people fleeing the violence and persecution. Special provisions need to be made for human rights defenders, who are particularly exposed and often face transnational threats and refoulement.
Nobody should be forcibly returned to Myanmar at this time.
We need an urgent rethink of how we can respond collectively to this unmitigated crisis.
I had the opportunity to discuss this with the leadership of the Lao Peoples’ Democratic Republic and Malaysia as the current and future ASEAN Chair, as well as with Thailand as a near neighbour.
It is time to go beyond the ASEAN Five Point Consensus that has failed to stem the violence or restore democracy.
ASEAN’s efforts must be reenergised and backed by a consortium of influential States to develop a new roadmap that can restore the destiny of Myanmar to its people. This must factor in the new realities of local governance emerging on the ground that can provide building blocks towards a democratic future from the bottom up.
Myanmar’s people must have a place at the table. This means reaching out to the democracy movement and youth, involving them meaningfully in the resolution of this crisis.
The new generation in Myanmar – particularly the women’s leadership that has emerged – should be supported in a “visioning process” for the future of the country.
With more attention, more investment, more political will and more action, this situation can be turned around for a better tomorrow for the people of Myanmar.
Thank you.
OHCHR
Myanmar’s displaced people tell their stories on World Refugee Day
/in NewsMore than 3 million people from Myanmar have been uprooted by conflict.
More than 3 million people in Myanmar have been uprooted from their homes, most of them due to intensifying conflict in the country’s three-year civil war, according to the United Nations.
They are among the 120 million people globally who have been forcibly displaced by conflict or persecution on this World Refugee Day, marked annually on June 20 – refugees who have crossed borders and internally displaced people who have fled homes but remain within their country’s borders.
RFA Burmese asked several displaced people to share their stories.
Khin Yadana Soe and three families from the Bago region in the south fled to the Thai border town of Mae Sot three months ago when the junta forces entered their village.
“The fighter jets dropped bombs on the nearby villages, suspecting they were sheltering rebel militia members, and they hit the houses,” she said. “As we lived in a large compound, we feel depressed living here in this narrow space. We are used to living on farms. We also have no jobs here. Only one family member has been able to secure a job but this family has five family members – my mother, my daughter, my husband, my sister and me.”
Khin Maung said he feels sad whenever World Refugee Day comes around. He is one of 750,000 Rohingya who fled violent crackdowns in Rakhine state in 2017 and now lives in a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.
“We always feel sad on this significant day. We have no future, with no access to education or a job. The United Nations also needs to consider this matter,” he said. “I wish Bangladesh would help us go back to our own country.”
Aung Myint, who lives in a camp in the western state of Rakhine, said his family had fled their home six years ago.
“We want to go back to our hometowns, but we don’t even have the money it would take to return home,” he said. “We also no longer have our own houses in our hometown. Additionally, we are dependent on the land for our livelihood, and there is no way to access our land. So it will be difficult for us to go back home. If we stay here, though, we have no access to food and drinking water.”
A woman in Kachin state, in the north, who had been displaced since 2011 said she “was really hoping to return home, but it seems that the likelihood is even worse. Fighting is taking place everywhere,” she said. “As more people have fled the war, we understand now that we have no realistic hope to return home.”
Min Min, who has been living in Thailand’s Noh Poe refugee camp for 17 years, said he desperately wants to go to a third country.
“We are living in a very tight camp on World Refugee Day. We have been living here for 17 years, but the situation has not improved at all,” he said. “The project has not worked. We are living at the camp as it is not possible to go back home. So I want to go to a third country.”
A woman from the northern Sagaing region, where some of the worst righting has happened, said that his family is living in the forest.
“When I came here to escape the fighting, my children couldn’t go to school here because they previously attended junta schools. All the displaced people have suffered a lot. We have to work odd jobs on farms. We are facing difficulties getting food.”
A man who fled from Kayah state in eastern Myanmar, said he just wants to go home.
“We had to leave our house, and we could not carry anything. Our property and belongings were stolen. We fled with just the clothes we were wearing, and it was a struggle just to eat. We want to go back home, and hope for an end to ongoing tragedies immediately.”
RFA News
JOINT STATEMENT ON WORLD REFUGEE DAY: END THE MYANMAR MILITARY JUNTA’S ATROCITIES CAUSING MASS DISPLACEMENT
/in Member statements, Press Releases and StatementsJoint Statement on World Refugee Day
End the Myanmar military junta’s atrocities causing mass displacement
Ensure protection and locally led cross-border aid for displaced communities
20 June 2024
On the occasion of World Refugee Day, we, the undersigned 128 organizations, call on the United Nations, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Myanmar’s neighboring countries, and the wider international community to act now to address the root cause of the unprecedented mass displacement in Myanmar and its impacts across the region: the Myanmar military junta. We urge the international community to act urgently to end the military junta’s atrocities and hold the perpetrators accountable under international law through all available avenues.
We call on the international community to directly support trusted local frontline humanitarian responders in delivering much-needed humanitarian aid to displaced communities through locally led cross-border channels. We call on Myanmar’s neighboring countries to allow and support such cross-border channels for these frontline humanitarian responders to deliver aid to displaced communities.
We further call on Myanmar’s neighboring countries and the wider international community to respect the principle of non-refoulement; end the arbitrary detention, pushbacks, and deportations of Myanmar people; and provide them with legal protection, humanitarian aid, and access to essential services.
Over 2.8 million internally displaced in Myanmar by the Myanmar military junta’s violence since 2021
The Myanmar military junta’s ongoing mass atrocity crimes continue to intensify mass displacement and suffering across the country and beyond its borders into neighboring Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. Since its illegal coup attempt in 2021, the junta’s relentless violence has internally displaced more than 2.8 million people countrywide—an 87% increase as compared to 1.5 million at this time last year. Prior to the coup attempt, the Myanmar military’s violence had already forced an estimated 328,000 into protracted displacement—particularly in Rakhine, Kachin, Chin, Shan, and Mon States. The actual figures are likely significantly higher given reports from humanitarian responders on the ground with direct access to the affected populations.
As of April 2024, the military junta had launched at least 2,471 airstrikes since its failed coup—targeting internally displaced person (IDP) camps, schools, medical facilities, religious sites, and other places where IDPs were seeking refuge. Since late 2023, the junta has exponentially increased its use of indiscriminate airstrikes and shelling attacks against civilians, including IDPs, countrywide as a form of collective punishment against the people’s democratic resistance movement to topple military tyranny. In this vein, the junta has also conducted horrific ground raids marked by massacres, sexual violence, and burning down civilian homes—destroying entire towns and displacing entire communities. IDPs who attempt to return to their homes after these attacks face the severe risk of junta-planted landmines and unexploded ordnances.
Since February of this year, the junta’s forced conscription has further exacerbated mass displacement, as the junta desperately seeks to fill its ranks, including through violent abductions of young adults off the street. With their lives on the line, countless young adults have been forced to flee either to resistance-controlled areas or across international borders to avoid being forced to take up arms for the junta.
Myanmar refugees in neighboring countries lack protection and face deplorable conditions
For the thousands of Myanmar people crossing international borders to seek safety from the junta’s violence, protection remains far from guaranteed. In addition to facing arbitrary arrest and detention, many Myanmar people have been pushed back or otherwise forcibly returned to Myanmar by neighboring countries, including Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, and Thailand. This is occurring despite the undeniable reality that any Myanmar person will face irreparable harm at the hands of the Myanmar military junta upon return.
Moreover, in many neighboring countries, Myanmar refugees lack access to legal protection, humanitarian assistance, employment, formal education, healthcare, and other essential services. Forced to live in the shadows, countless Myanmar people seeking safety across the region are instead denied their human dignity and subjected to exploitation, violence, and other human rights violations with no means of legal recourse.
In Bangladesh, the deplorable, inhuman conditions in Rohingya refugee camps continue to deteriorate for the approximately 1 million Rohingya there. They face overcrowding, fires, severe food shortages, inadequate healthcare, violence, and heavy restrictions on movement, among other unlivable conditions. Many Rohingya refugees are also suffering from hunger and malnutrition, receiving rations of only USD 11 per person per month as of June 2024. To escape these horrific conditions, thousands have embarked on dangerous sea crossings every year. 2023 was the deadliest year for Rohingya sea crossings in nine years. Many of those who have survived these perilous crossings have been met by extremely hostile local reception, including physical violence and hate speech.
Along the Thailand-Myanmar border, there are more than 90,000 refugees across nine camps. Today, these communities are suffering from funding cuts for healthcare and education, and continue to receive meager food rations of approximately 300 Thai Baht (USD 8) per person per month. In these camps, refugees urgently need real access to lifesaving medicine, medical facilities and care, weather-appropriate clothing, educational and employment opportunities, and local integration, among other essentials. In addition, since the coup attempt, persons displaced from Myanmar and now hiding in Thailand have been facing a myriad of challenges, including extreme protection concerns, with no option to return home.
In particular, Myanmar refugees’ severely limited access to educational opportunities continues to have a devastating impact on Myanmar’s youngest generations. Formal education for Myanmar refugees, including formal recognition of ethnic education pathways, must be prioritized not only to ensure brighter futures for Myanmar’s youth, but also to support the people’s transition and rebuilding of Myanmar as an inclusive federal democracy.
Dire needs of Myanmar’s IDPs demand aid through locally led cross-border channels
For IDPs in Myanmar, the humanitarian conditions are exceedingly dire, with millions in desperate need of food, shelter, and healthcare. Skyrocketing inflation, especially for staple foods, has significantly increased the food insecurity that IDPs are facing across the country. Many cannot return home to cultivate or harvest their crops due to the severe risks of junta-planted explosives or junta attacks. IDPs countrywide are also suffering from extreme weather conditions, nearly no access to education and livelihoods, extremely poor sanitation resulting in devastating health outcomes, and a dearth of essential supplies for survival.
In Sagaing Region, a stronghold of the people’s democratic resistance movement, there are more than 1 million IDPs, as the junta repeatedly and deliberately attacks villages, monasteries, and other civilian infrastructure where IDPs take refuge.
In Rakhine State, 200,000 newly displaced Rohingya are facing imminent starvation after being forcibly displaced from their towns and villages since mid-May by arson attacks and other grave human rights violations by the Myanmar military junta and the Arakan Army. At the same time, the junta’s brutal, all-out attacks on ethnic Rakhine civilians have forcibly displaced entire villages in recent weeks. For all communities in Rakhine State, the military junta has intentionally ensured a near-total absence of humanitarian assistance.
Across the country, the military junta continues to weaponize and manipulate humanitarian assistance, preventing its delivery by constraining “access” for aid agencies to operate, blocking roads and waterways, confiscating aid, and targeting aid workers. As such, any humanitarian assistance through the military junta cannot and will not reach IDPs who are in the direst need.
Despite this fact, the international community—including many UN agencies and big aid organizations—continues to partner with the junta, instead of partnering with the National Unity Government (NUG) and Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs), and directly supporting IDPs through locally led cross-border channels. In late March, Thailand’s cross-border aid initiative—in collaboration with the Myanmar Red Cross Society, an auxiliary and long-time security apparatus of the Myanmar military, and with the support of the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre)—failed to reach the IDPs in direst need, meet the needs of those served, and consult with local groups. Considering the junta’s systematic weaponization of aid, this initiative and any others in partnership with the junta or its auxiliaries are extremely dangerous for the human security of the communities intended to be served.
Meeting the needs of IDPs in Myanmar—in its border areas and beyond, including in central and upper Myanmar—remains possible through locally led cross-border channels, as has proven effective over the past three years. Local humanitarian and civil society groups have been on the frontlines for decades and are equipped with the years of experience, knowledge, and trust to effectively deliver aid hand in hand with local communities. Also at the forefront of these people-to-people and Humanitarian Resistance approaches—ready and able to deliver aid effectively to IDP communities—are ethnic service providers, members of the Civil Disobedience Movement, EROs, people’s administrations, and the NUG.
Calls for emergency crisis response
Once again, we are reminded that the Myanmar military is the root cause of Myanmar’s human rights and humanitarian crisis, including the ongoing mass displacement—both internally and beyond Myanmar’s borders—as people are forced to flee their homes in record numbers to seek safety from the junta’s violence. It is high time that the international community coordinated a crisis response to address the rapidly intensifying crisis in Myanmar, and support the people of Myanmar’s collective will, efforts, and sacrifices to establish inclusive federal democracy and ensure a voluntary, safe, dignified, and durable return to their homes.
On this World Refugee Day, we call on the United Nations, ASEAN, Myanmar’s neighboring countries, and the wider international community to:
For more information, please contact:
Signed by 128 civil society organizations, including six organizations that have chosen not to disclose their names because of the junta’s continued violence in Myanmar.
Download the statement in PDF: English I Burmese
Human Rights Situation weekly update (June 8 to 14, 2024)
/in HR Situation, NewsHuman Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from June 8 to 14, 2024
Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Tanintharyi Region, Chin State, and Rakhine State from June 8th to 14th. The Military Junta Troop arrested a youth for Military Service from Nyaung-U Township, Mandalay Region, and tortured and murdered. The Military Junta did not confirm Cyber Security Law, but Junta troops checked the Mobile Phones at their controlled places and arrested and blackmailed the VPN users. Almost 100 civilians from the Magway Region and Shan State were arrested as human shields.
Over 20 civilians died, and over 30 were injured by the Military’s heavy and light artillery attacks within a week. A civilian died and one was injured by the land mines of the Military Junta Troop.
Infogram