Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 15 to 21, 2023)

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Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 15 to 21, 2023

Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing and Mandalay Region from September 15th to 21st. Over 130 civilians including women from Mandalay, Sagaing, Tanintharyi Region and Kachin State were arrested and used as human shields. Military Junta burnt and killed a civilian from Shweku Township, Kachin State.  The families of political prisoners were extorted by prison authorities in Pathein Prison, Ayeyarwady Region.

18 Civilians died and over 29 were injured by the heavy and light artillery attacks of the Military Junta. They arrested around 50 civilians and killed 36 within a week. An underage child died and other 3 were injured by the Military junta committed violations.

Military raids villages in Sagaing following murder of local junta police official

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At least seven civilians were killed during military raids in Sagaing Township, located in the region by the same name, after a junta airport policeman and his wife were recently murdered in the area. 

The police sub-inspector from Mandalay’s Tada-U Airport Than Min Soe and his wife, Thuzar Tun, were reportedly shot dead by a group of gunmen on the morning of September 13 in Sagaing town. The couple’s children, aged 9 and 2 and who were with them at the time, were said to have been spared. 

“They were shot dead on their way back from paying respect to their parents,” a Sagaing Township local said. “They were walking towards their car which was parked in the Shwe Bon Thar monastery compound when they were attacked. I heard that the children survived.”

After the incident and from their bases in the villages of Nyaung Kone and Thalun Phyu and the Shwe Bon Thar monastery, the military started launching massive assaults in the area. They also blocked exits of villages in western Sagaing Township in order to search and detain residents.

More than 3,000 people fled their homes, seeking shelter in Sagaing town and in monasteries. 

“They arrested some 10 men that were sitting inside a tea shop near Ngar Htet Gyi Pagoda,” a local source said. “Some 40 people from several villages including Thalun Phyu were arrested and seven were also killed.” 

The troops were said to be from Light Infantry Division 33 in Sagaing, and numbered around 100. 

Pro-junta Telegram channels reported that a drone and handmade rifle, weapons commonly used by resistance forces, were seized during searches of Thalun Phyu and other nearby communities. 

Myanmar army soldiers also overran a resistance camp near the village of Te Gyi, more than 5km southwest of Sagaing town, on Monday morning, killing two guerrilla fighters, according to a man from the area, who added that some weapons were also confiscated. 

That afternoon, the same troops torched homes in Te Gyi and detained two residents who were later killed, according to the local man. The identities of the victims could not be confirmed at the time of reporting. 

The same military-aligned Telegram channels said that there were two casualties on the side of the resistance during the camp raid, that weapons were seized, but there was no mention of the slain civilians in Te Gyi. 

Some 14 more villagers were reportedly detained on Monday, seven from the sites of the raids and seven others who were sheltering in Sagaing town after fleeing their homes, according to locals. 

Myanmar Now News

Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 8 to 14, 2023)

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Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 8 to 14, 2023

Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Shan State, Sagaing Region, and Bago Region from September 8th to 14th. The local civilians were arrested and used as human shields in Mandalay Region and Kachin State. A woman from Mogaung was arrested, tortured, and killed under interrogation by the Junta in Kachin State. Military Junta’s navy attacked with heavy and light artillery the villages along the river in Thabeikkyin Township, Mandalay Region including Salingyi Township and Kani Township from Sagaing Region.

About 13 civilians died and over 19 were injured by the Military Junta Soldiers’ light and heavy artillery attacks. Over 70 civilians were arrested within a week. 3 underaged children died by the Military Junta Soldiers’ Human Right Abuses and Violations.

Monywa Prison authorities agree to hunger strike participants’ demands

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While prison administrators promised adequate medical treatment following negotiations, the current health status of the striking inmates—who refused food for five days—is unconfirmed

After opening negotiations with political prisoners on a hunger strike on Wednesday, authorities at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison have agreed to meet their demands, according to sources connected to the prison.

Some 50 political prisoners including Wai Moe Naing, leader of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee, initiated a hunger strike on September 9.

On the fifth day of the strike authorities including the prison superintendent came to the participants to negotiate, according to Shin Thant, one of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee’s senior members.

“I was told that the prison complied with all of the requests including those about care packages, medical care, and return of the inmates’ personal items,” Shin Thant said.

Thaik Tun Oo of the Political Prisoners Network confirmed he had the same information about the agreement between the prison authorities and strike participants.

The current health status of the prisoners participating in the strike, who refused food for five days, is still unknown. 

The hunger strike started after a “special search force,” made up of members of the military as well as junta police, fire department, and administrative personnel, inspected Monywa Prison on September 8 and confiscated personal items such as books, clothes, and appliances from the inmates. 

Initially, 14 participants demanded the return of the confiscated items, permission to receive care packages from relatives outside the prison, and adequate medical care for sick and injured inmates. Wai Moe Naing was among more than 30 additional political prisoners to join the strike after authorities ignored these demands.

Authorities denied medical treatment to three of the participants after they fainted from malnourishment during the strike, and reportedly put Wai Moe Naing in solitary confinement after he joined. 

Wai Moe Naing is currently serving a 50-year prison sentence following his arrest in April 2021 while participating in protests against the coup regime. 

Political prisoners face exceptionally harsh treatment in Myanmar’s prisons. 

In one incident in December 2021, authorities at Yangon’s Insein Prison brutally beat, and later denied medical treatment, to over 80 prisoners for singing songs associated with the resistance and refusing to leave their cells in solidarity with a “Silent Strike” taking place throughout Myanmar that day. 

In June and July of 2023, several political prisoners removed from their cells in Mandalay and Bago regions, purportedly for transfers to other prisons, later proved to have been executed by prison authorities. 

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Myanmar junta steps up use of banned cluster bombs

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The US and Myanmar have not signed an international convention banning the weapons that often kill civilians.

Myanmar’s junta is using internationally-banned cluster bombs to attack rebel forces in ethnic areas of the country, said residents, officials from armed ethnic groups and an international campaign working to eradicate the weapons.

Cluster bombs, which can be fired from cannons or dropped from airplanes, explode in mid-air, releasing dozens or hundreds of smaller bombs that scatter and explode, often killing or maiming civilians.

Neither Myanmar nor the United States are among the 123 signatories to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty outlawing the use of such weapons. 

“Myanmar’s production and use of cluster bombs is gravely concerning as these indiscriminate weapons primarily kill and injure civilians. There can be no justification for using them,” said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, a researcher with the Cluster Munition Monitor, the research and monitoring wing of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines-Cluster Munition Coalition based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“All governments should condemn this use of an internationally-banned weapon,” he said.

In a report issued on Aug. 31, the Cluster Munition Coalition said the ruling junta has used domestically-produced cluster bombs in attacks in several parts of the country since 2021, including as recently as early this June.

For example, the junta used cluster munitions in attacks near the villages of Kon Tha, Nam Mae Kon, and Warisuplia, in Demoso township of Kayah state from Feb. 17 to Mar. 7, the CMC’s report said.

The CMC also cited evidence that the Myanmar military used cluster bombs during an Apr. 16 airstrike on Pan Pa village in Chin state’s Mindat township, which killed three people, including a child, and injured seven others.   

Denial

Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the pro-military Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, denied that the military was using cluster bombs.

“As far as we understand, as far as we have studied so far, we have never heard of the military using cluster bombs,” he said. 

“Has the other side got any evidence?” he asked. “For example, the details of where and how a cluster bomb was dropped, [and] what the ground situation was like when it was dropped. They need these details to accuse.”

The Myanmar military displays its weaponry during a parade commemorating the country’s 78th Armed Forces Day in Myanmar's capital Naypyitaw, March 27, 2023. Credit: Aung Shine Oo/AP
The Myanmar military displays its weaponry during a parade commemorating the country’s 78th Armed Forces Day in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw, March 27, 2023. Credit: Aung Shine Oo/AP

Radio Free Asia could not reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment. 

Former military Capt. Kaung Thu Win, who joined the anti-regime civil disobedience movement, said unexploded submunitions from cluster bombs can detonate later from a mere touch of the hand and are a danger to children and rural residents. 

“They will remain unexploded in forests, ditches and forest valleys,” he said. “They are hidden for a while and explode only when children are playing near them or civilians go into the forests.”

Spreading horror

Salai Htet Ni, spokesman of the Chin National Front, said the junta has been dropping cluster bombs in western Myanmar’s Chin state, including on Mount Victoria, where the ethnic Chin nationalist political organization is based, for a long time.

When junta dropped bombs onto the group’s headquarters from a plane, the explosions sent out submunitions that exploded again and again in a 61-meter (200-foot) radius, he said.

“And if they strike a forest, all nearby trees and plants are [destroyed], and they won’t regrow,” he said.

An official from the Karenni National Defense Force’s information department said he has seen junta forces use cluster bombs to attack civilian communities in Kayah state, burning down homes in villages and wiping out entire neighborhoods.

“The junta usually uses these highly explosive cluster bombs when attacking nonmilitary targets [and] civilian areas or places where war refugees shelter,” he said. “In 2023, the military started to frequently use 500-pound bombs, missiles and cluster bombs.”

The junta’s use of these weapons against civilian targets is a violation of international law and a crime against humanity, said Banyar Khun Aung, executive director of the Karenni Human Rights Group. 

“The intention behind these cluster bombs … is to deliberately kill and destroy a large number of the civilian population, causing mass casualties and forcing them to flee to other locations,” he said. “That is evidently a horrible human rights violation.”

RFA News

Dozens of political prisoners join hunger strike in Monywa

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The striking inmates’ demands included the return of confiscated personal items, removal of existing restrictions on receiving care packages, and adequate medical care

Wai Moe Naing, leader of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee, is among the political prisoners participating in a mass hunger strike at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison since last week, sources familiar with conditions at the prison said. 

The strike was a response to the harsh restrictions prison authorities had imposed on inmates, including limitations on the receipt of care packages and stricter enforcement of contraband rules. 

A “special search force”—including junta police, members of the military, fire department staff, and administrators—had come to the prison in the Sagaing Region capital and confiscated inmates’ books, clothing, and other personal items on September 8. 

The following day, 14 political prisoners initiated a hunger strike, demanding the return of the inmates’ personal items, the removal of existing limitations on receiving care packages, and adequate medical care for Monywa Prison inmates. 

The prison authorities ignored these demands, prompting more political prisoners including Wai Moe Naing to join the strike, according to two sources who spoke with Myanmar Now. 

Around 50 political prisoners in total are now participating in the strike, the sources said. 

Prominent Monywa-based protest leader Wai Moe Naing is serving a sentence of nearly 50 years on several charges–including sedition, unlawful assembly, abduction with intent to murder, murder, and treason–after participating in the city’s protests following the February 2021 coup. He was arrested after being hit by a vehicle driven by regime forces during a protest, and has been in detention since April 2021. 

According to Shin Thant, a member of the Monywa People’s Strike Steering Committee, authorities have placed Wai Moe Naing in solitary confinement, while three other hunger strike participants have fainted from hypoglycaemia and anaemia. 

“The authorities refused to provide medical care for the three prisoners that fainted,” Shin Thant said. “The prison still hasn’t agreed to the conditions set by the prisoners.”

The Political Prisoners Network (PPN), a prisoners’ rights monitoring group, reported on September 12 that prison authorities said the striking inmates had not received treatment because it was against the law to go on strike in prison.

Thaik Tun Oo, a spokesperson for the PPN, said that in addition to the prisoners participating in the hunger strike, others held at Monywa Prison were refusing the prison’s food and subsisting only on what they received from their families.

“I have been told that they will continue the strike until the authorities meet their conditions,” he added.

Political prisoners’ families have said that oppression and mistreatment in prisons throughout the country became even worse after Myo Swe, an official in the junta’s defence ministry, was appointeddirector-general of the home affairs ministry’s Prison Department.

The military is not allowing in-person visits at most prisons, citing the risk from the COVID-19 pandemic as justification. The military has also refused to grant access to prisons to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that the regime was still holding at least 19,458 political prisoners throughout Myanmar as of September 12 of this year.

Myanmar Now News