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
- Open letter: Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest signal urgent need for investigation and complete end of mandate
- Myanmar children, monks among dozens killed in heavy airstrikes
- UN chief: Discussing humanitarian aid corridor from Bangladesh to Myanmar
- Rodrigo Roa Duterte makes first appearance before the ICC: confirmation of charges hearing scheduled for 23 September 2025
- Myanmar junta troops massacre 11 villagers, most too old to flee, residents say
Elderly man, child killed as Myanmar junta launches mortar shells at Rakhine State village
/in NewsThe military is using combat drones and heavy weapons in intensifying attacks on villages in Kyauktaw Township, the Arakan Army says
An elderly man and a child were killed during indiscriminate shelling by the Myanmar military on Friday morning in Rakhine State’s Kyauktaw Township, according to locals.
They said that the heavy artillery fire was an act of retaliation in response to the Arakan Army’s (AA) ambush of two junta vessels on the Kaladan River at 9am.
The ethnic armed organisation reportedly intercepted the boats around two miles outside of Kyauktaw town. Nearby military bases then began firing heavy and light weapons into the surrounding villages along the Kaladan, residents told Myanmar Now.
Some five mortars exploded in Shwe Pyi, a village six miles northeast of the town, a local said. Maung Tu Chay, 86, and an eight-year-old boy named Aung Min Naing were killed in blasts.
“The elderly man died soon after he arrived at a hospital and the child was killed when more shells hit,” said the resident, who described the shelling as unprovoked, and insisted that no fighting had taken place near his village.
Other civilians were said to have been injured in the attack, and at least one house damaged.
“We don’t dare to go outside the village and look around. We are hiding in bunkers now,” another villager told Myanmar Now by phone on Friday afternoon.
In Kyauktaw town, schools and businesses closed due to the weapons fire, residents said.
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Fragments of bombs seen after a junta drone strike in Tanintharyi Region’s Palaw Township on October 13 (Photo: Palaw K-PDF)
On Monday night, the Kyauktaw-based Military Operations Command (MOC) No. 9 also fired artillery into the area that killed a family of three, according to locals.
A Tuesday statement by the AA that the MOC and Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 374 had used heavy artillery and drones to in attacks on the township on October 28.
The following morning, AA troops clashed with those from the junta’s forces for around 20 minutes near Yoke Thar village, allegedly causing five Myanmar Army casualties. The AA said that the military then dropped bombs on the area at 2pm using drones, damaging a monastery.
Drone strikes were also reportedly carried out in Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships in January, the AA said, noting that the military’s use of the devices in Rakhine State dates back to intense periods of fighting in 2020. The group confiscated an Israeli-made Skylark I-LEX combat drone in Rathedaung in June of that year.
Other ethnic armed organisations, including the Karen National Union, have accused the Myanmar army of surveilling their bases in southeastern Myanmar with drones since 2018; drones were also seen flying over internally displaced persons camps in territory controlled by the Restoration Council of Shan State in 2020.
A military council spokesperson confirmed the armed forces’ use of the devices at a press conference on January 23.
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AA members hold an Israeli-made Skylark I-LEX combat drone confiscated in Rathedaung Township in June 2020 (Arakan Army)
Myanmar Now News
Political prisoner hospitalised after beating by criminal convicts
/in NewsThe victim was also severely beaten by prison authorities after taking part in a Silent Strike protest in Insein Prison late last year
A political prisoner being held in Yangon’s Insein Prison had to have his jaw wired shut after it was shattered during a beating by criminal convicts, according to a prison source.
The prisoner, Hlaing Nyi (also known as Kyaw Thut Myint), is still being treated at the prison hospital for his injuries, said the source, who was unable to say when the incident occurred.
Hlaing Nyi, who has been in regime custody since his arrest on March 27, 2021, for allegedly attacking junta personnel with a bomb, reportedly got involved in a dispute with another inmate while they were hanging their clothes out to dry.
To resolve the issue, he went to another prisoner regarded as the leader of the prison’s criminal convicts. After he was accused of being disrespectful towards this individual, a number of prisoners started punching and kicking him, the source said.
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Hlaing Nyi, right, seen in a military report about his arrest on March 27, 2021
Hlaing Nyi was then moved to another cell, and only later—after several of his friends said that he was complaining of dizziness and disorientation—was he admitted to the prison hospital, said the source.
“His mouth is wrapped in wires now, so he can’t eat solid food. He has to rely on fluids,” said the source, who added that Hlaing Nyi was expected to remain in this condition for around 45 days.
Hlaing Nyi was also one of 89 Insein prisoners who were brutally beaten for taking part in a Silent Strike protest against military rule in late 2021.
Late last month, prison authorities also cracked down on 21 prisoners who offered alms in memory of four activists executed in July.
All of the prisoners were tortured, and their four leaders—Ye Yint Ko, Ye Yint Bo, Wa Thone San and Han Thar—were placed in solitary confinement and forced to do hard labour, sources told Myanmar Now.
The situation inside Insein Prison has been tense since October 19, when an explosionthere killed eight people, including prison officers and the relatives of prisoners.
On Monday, prison authorities lifted a ban on sending packages to inmates imposed in the wake of that attack, but relatives of prisoners say that strict new security measures remain in place.
In addition to having to present household registration papers and other documents before being allowed into the prison compound with parcels of food, medicine or books for prisoners, family members must now go through a second round of examinations once they get inside, relatives said.
On Thursday, hundreds of people were seen waiting outside the prison in the rain due to delays caused by the new rules, residents of the area told Myanmar Now.
Myanmar Now News
Arbitrary illegal arrest detention
/in Cartoon Animation, Multimedia, Video NewsDisplacement crisis in southeastern Myanmar requires local humanitarian response, Karen groups say
/in NewsCommunity-based organisations suggest that the number of IDPs is double the estimates provided by UN agencies, whose access to the region continues to be restricted by the junta
Data recently released by Karen community-based organisations indicates that the number of people displaced in southeastern Myanmar since the 2021 coup may be more than double the figures previously provided by the UN.
Representatives of the Karen Peace Support Network (KPSN) said on October 27 that more than 347,500 people had been forced to flee their homes by military offensives throughout the seven districts of Kawthoolei—a predominantly ethnic Karen territory that includes all of Karen State and parts of Mon State and Bago and Tanintharyi regions.
“Our members are working very closely with the IDPs [internally displaced persons] on the ground. That’s how we have these details,” KPSN’s Saw Lay Ka Paw told Myanmar Now.
On Monday, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that there were a total of 169,700 IDPs in the region, including all of Karen and Mon states, Tanintharyi and eastern Bago—an area much larger than that described by KPSN.
An OCHA representative did not respond to Myanmar Now’s specific inquiry regarding the discrepancy in IDP numbers, but said on October 28 that the agency was “staying and delivering [aid services] despite serious access challenges and funding shortfalls in Myanmar, including in the country’s Southeast.”
Duncan McArthur, Myanmar programme director for The Border Consortium—an alliance of international humanitarian organisations working with conflict-affected populations from the region in question—confirmed that the number of displaced “could be double OCHA’s estimate,” citing documentation from multiple groups on the ground.
“Estimating IDP numbers is always difficult, especially for those who are dispersed and not in camps,” he told Myanmar Now. “However, there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that OCHA is grossly underestimating the scale and distribution of internal displacement in Myanmar.”
The data has raised questions regarding which organisations have the access necessary to distribute aid to the region’s displaced people amid what KPSN says is an ongoing “humanitarian emergency.”
In an online briefing last week, the network pointed out that since the February 2021 coup, Karen community-based organisations—particularly Thai border-based groups—had delivered US$8.7m in food support to these IDPs, but that $17m more was required in order to meet their needs over the next year.
Naw K’nyaw Paw, general secretary of the Karen Women’s Organisation, described this aid structure as decentralised, involving coordination between local networks and the emergency response committees of the Karen National Union, an ethnic administrative body opposed to military rule. She noted that over the past 30 years, $32m worth of food—mostly rice—had been provided to some 1.7m people in conflict-affected areas through these mechanisms, “without benefitting the previous military regimes or the [current junta].”
However, this aid delivery system has been “largely ignored by international donors,” she said, adding that half of the funding for food assistance since the coup came from private patrons.
Several UN agencies have come under criticism from rights advocates and civil society organisations for carrying out aid operations in Myanmar under the oversight of the junta. It is an approach which, opponents argue, lends legitimacy to the coup regime and does not allow access to the large displaced populations outside of military-controlled areas.
UN accessibility to most of southeastern Myanmar was categorised as “difficult” or “very difficult” in the mid-year update on the Myanmar Humanitarian Response Plan, compiled by OCHA.
Operating in conflict areas “remains challenging due to the de-facto authorities denying travel authorizations for large-scale operations in areas outside their control,” the June report said.
In OCHA’s statement to Myanmar Now, a representative said that they had provided assistance to 500,000 people in southeastern Myanmar during the first half of the year, but did not offer further details about the recipients or the type of aid.
The agency acknowledged that “access restrictions are preventing us from reaching everyone who needs support” and that they would “engage with all stakeholders to lift access constraints that are delaying support to people in need.”
Most food assistance that was distributed under the Humanitarian Response Plan during the same period went to 2.2m people largely belonging to “vulnerable populations other than IDPs” in urban areas, particularly Yangon.
Only 22 percent of the Humanitarian Response Plan’s massive $826m budget had been raised as of Monday, according to OCHA. However, local aid providers have pointed out that the implementing agencies’ lack of access to communities outside of junta-controlled territories is likely to continue even if the funding targets are met.
“The majority of the IDPs are in the areas of the opposition [to the Myanmar military], and the UN Country Team needs permission from the military to deliver aid,” another KPSN representative, Saw Alex Htoo, said, calling on international institutions to “re-strategise” and include border-based groups.
“Delivery of humanitarian aid from Yangon faces a lot of limitations. Aid delivered through cities won’t reach these people.”
Editor’s Note: This article was updated on the afternoon of October 31 to include UN OCHA’s newest data, which was released after initial publication. It suggests that 7,100 more people in the region were displaced since the agency’s previous October 1 report.
Myanmar Now News
Children Targeted by the Junta
/in Justice NewslettersThe human rights landscape in Myanmar has been rapidly deteriorating as the military junta expands their reign of terror, targeting the most vulnerable and innocent, including children. Across the last month, young children and infants have been killed and seriously wounded in the crossfire of the violence waged by the Myanmar Army. The regime continues to perpetrate widespread and systematic assaults with full fledged impunity.
Heavy firing launched by the military junta in Loikaw Township, Karenni State led to an eight-year old boy seriously injured by shrapnel that struck his thigh. His parents were also hit by the shelling. Witnesses said incidents like this are ‘happening all over the country.’ Another child was killed in Loikaw township following junta shelling civilian areas, as reported by the Karenni Human Rights Group.
Civilians are being directly targeted as was the case in the aerial strike that took place in Kachin State which killed at least 80 innocent civilians. Among those dead were young people, musicians, families, including children, who were celebrating the founding of the Kachin Independence Organisation on 23 October 2022. Those who survived, many of whom are in critical condition, are being denied medical assistance as soldiers block routes needed to transport civilians to hospitals and nearby facilities. This airstrike was the worst one committed by the Burma Army since they unlawfully attempted their coup on1 February 2021.
Nearly 200 children have had their lives cruelly taken from them since the assault on democracy nearly two years ago. Hundreds of thousands of children compromise the rising number of internally displaced people (IDPs) across the country as the humanitarian crisis worsens and is plagued by a lack of accessible pathways for food and medicine. At the end of September 2022, horror bombarded a local community in Let Yat Kone Village, Sagaing Region following a series of air and ground attacks which claimed the lives of eleven school children. Following the horrific attack, over a dozen of the children were missing. Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, has warned that the attacks on children by the junta risk a ‘lost generation’.
The military junta has given no indication of any halt in their attacks. The ongoing assaults against children are in stark violation of international norms, law and treaties which Myanmar is bound by. And yet, these assaults are taking place without enough action from the international community who must go beyond their words of condemnation. The UN Child Rights Committee has urged ‘swift action’ but also failed to follow up and put pressure on stakeholders with the power to hold the junta to account.
Worryingly, children’s rights based groups including Save the Children and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) have shared disapproving sentiments of the military’s action but once again, have not taken the steps necessary to protect the lives of endangered children in Myanmar.
The dangers that people in Myanmar face must be taken seriously, particularly children who are routinely targeted in conflict by the military junta.
THE ATTACK IN KACHIN STATE MUST PROMPT UN SECURITY COUNCIL’S URGENT ACTION AGAINST MYANMAR MILITARY JUNTA
/in Member statementsUN Security Council must stop deferring to ASEAN and take urgent action
[28 October 2022] The UN Security Council should stop evading its responsibility to act to stop the Myanmar military’s war of terror by continuing to defer to ASEAN’s desultory Five-Point Consensus, Progressive Voice, Kachin Women’s Association Thailand and Women’s League of Burma said today.
In the face of the Myanmar military’s mounting atrocities against millions of civilians, the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ decision to retain the failed Five-Point Consensus is yet another indication that the UN Security Council must take concrete action by adopting a resolution on Myanmar, the groups said.
On 23 October, the Myanmar military killed nearly 100 people and injured over 100 in Hpakant, Kachin State, when it targeted a music festival that was attended by around a thousand people who were celebrating the founding of an ethnic revolutionary organization, the Kachin Independence Organisation. The military refused to allow those injured access to treatment at a nearby hospital.
The ASEAN Foreign Ministers concluded the special meeting on Thursday, which assessed the implementation of the Five-Point Consensus. Despite junta’s total contempt for the Five-Point Consensus, ASEAN reaffirmed its importance, opting to hold on to the failed Consensus.
In responding to the atrocity crimes in Kachin State, Moon Nay Li of Kachin Women’s Association Thailand said: “The UN Security Council must act with utmost urgency in response to the Myanmar military’s airstrikes in Hpakant, Kachin State, that has killed nearly 100 people.
“If the Security Council had acted decisively, we may not be in this situation where we mourn the loss of our friends, family, and colleagues. The lives of Myanmar people are at even greater risk as the Myanmar military continues to target civilians indiscriminately as they commit atrocity crimes.
“The Council must immediately exercise its power to pass a resolution on Myanmar that imposes a global arms embargo and targeted economic sanctions against the military and its associates. It is crucial that the Council refers the situation of Myanmar to the International Criminal Court to end its killing spree, and to hold perpetrators accountable for the genocide committed against the Rohingya and war crimes and crimes against humanity against other ethnic minorities.”
In consideration of the inevitable veto of a resolution by Russia and China on the Security Council that continue to provide weapons to the Myanmar military, the groups called for the resolution to be brought to the UN General Assembly for an open debate and vote.
Khin Ohmar of Progressive Voice said: “The Security Council and ASEAN must acknowledge that their inaction has emboldened the military, sending a signal that it could commit a massacre without facing any consequences. The timing of the massacre — just days before the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ special meeting and the Special Rapporteur’s reporting to the UN General Assembly — is blatant evidence of the junta’s defiance against condemnations, which have proven to be empty. The decision by ASEAN Foreign Ministers to retain the Five-Point Consensus only further reinforces this message.
“In failing to act decisively, ASEAN is only working in favor of the illegal junta, shielding any effective action against this junta by the Security Council. This opens ASEAN up to becoming complicit in the junta’s atrocity crimes, including in the massacre in Hpakant.
“Instead of addressing the crisis in Myanmar, the UN are partnering with the very perpetrators who committed the massacre in Kachin State. The UN cannot even name the perpetrators of these crimes in a statement that condemns this act of terror in Hpakant, despite them standing accused of serious international crimes before the world’s highest courts.
“You cannot solve the crisis in Myanmar by shaking hands with war criminals who created this crisis, while neglecting the will of the people of Myanmar.”
Naw Hser Hser of Women’s League of Burma said: “Lending further legitimacy to the junta by inviting them to summits, meetings and other platforms will only lead to more deaths and displacements on the ground as the junta becomes ever more emboldened to increasingly carry out these airstrikes.
“While the UN are signing MoUs and Letters of Agreement with the junta who are responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe, local grassroots networks are the ones responding immediately to overcome immense challenges the people are facing on the ground and to provide aid to those most vulnerable and most in need, including along the Myanmar’s borders.
“Local humanitarian responders in Myanmar are resourceful, knowledgeable experts in responding to situations of conflict and have the trust of local communities. What they need is practical support with flexible funding from the UN and the international community to continue to carry out their invaluable life-saving work.
“The solution lies with the people of Myanmar, not the military junta. If the international community, the UN and ASEAN are serious about resolving the crisis in Myanmar and ensuring peace and stability in the region, they must stand with the Myanmar people to end the military’s atrocity crimes and hold them accountable.”
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During 17 – 21 October, Progressive Voice, Women’s League of Burma and Adelina Kamal, former Executive Director of ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on disaster management (AHA Centre), joined by Professor Hugo Slim in New York spoke to UN Member States and UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, urging them to support local humanitarian responders in Myanmar. During the trip, Progressive Voice and Women’s League of Burma also urged members of the UN Security Council to pass a resolution on Myanmar. The groups also visited Washington DC to meet with lawmakers and the US Agency for International Development.
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