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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- Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 8 to 14, 2024)
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Weekly Update Human Rights Situation in Myanmar 11 April to 17 April 2022
/in HR SituationIt’s time to set fire to the dictatorship; the Myanmar military has used arson + scorched earth campaigns to deliberately terrorize civilians. Thousands of homes and sanctuaries including churches, monasteries & IDP camps have been burned. Villagers forced to watch in horror as their homes go up in flames.
More in weekly update:
Monasteries, churches are not spared from Myanmar’s conflict
/in NewsAbout 100 structures have been fully or partially destroyed during the chaos that followed the 2021 coup.
Nearly 100 religious buildings have been destroyed in two regions and two states in Myanmar more than a year after the military seized control from the elected government and plunged the Southeast Asian country into chaos and violence, according to data compiled by RFA.
The 97 religious buildings that have been demolished since the Feb. 1 coup include 15 Buddhist monasteries in Sagaing region, five Buddhist monasteries and one Christian church in Magway region, 62 Christian churches in Chin state, and 13 Christian churches and a mosque in Kayah state.
In some cases, soldiers raided the religious buildings and beat locals who had taken shelter there.
Residents of Sagaing region in northwestern Myanmar said several Buddhist monasteries and Christian churches in Ye-U, Mingin, Yinmarbin and Khin-U had been burned down, while other monasteries had been destroyed in Ye-U, Tanze, Kalay, Myaung, Pale and Ayadaw townships.
Zaw Zaw, a resident of Pale township, said Buddhist monks there are being fed by locals offering alms after military troops raided villages and robbed and torched their monasteries.
“They were swearing at the Buddhist monasteries [and] fired several shots into the air,” he said. “They seized cell phones from the monks at the gunpoint. They also robbed civilians who took shelter in the monasteries of their money, gold and jewelry.”
Whenever a military detachment entered Zaw Zaw’s village, residents remained behind closed doors and did not go to the monastery to offer alms to the monks, he said.
“Even Buddhist monks are on the run,” Zaw Zaw added.
Other civilians told RFA that they have been appalled to see bullet holes and other damage from bomb blasts on Buddhist pagodas that serve as landmarks in many small communities.
Locals used to take shelter in monasteries when military units arrived in their villages, but now these places are no longer safe, they said.
Soldiers no longer honor religious buildings in the Buddhist-majority nation because they only want to ensure they maintain power, said a member of the People’s Defense Force (PDF) in Yesagyo township in Magway region who wanted to remain anonymous for safety reasons.
“They are a fascist, terrorist army,” he said. “They no longer venerate the religion. They don’t care about the well-being of the people. They don’t care anything else. All they care about is upholding their power and increasing their wealth.”
“They also prosecute and assault the people,” said the PDF member. “They will do the same thing to the sacred buildings of any religion. They won’t be reluctant to destroy anytime.”
‘Horrible acts’
Largely Christian Chin state in western Myanmar has had 62 religious structures destroyed — the largest number of such of any single state or region since the military takeover — including 22 that were burned to ashes, and 20 more destroyed by artillery blasts, according to the Institute of Chin Affairs, a human rights organization.
“We feel that this is result of lacking respects on the people with different religious beliefs,” the organization said in a March 22 statement. “Many of us have perceptions that they treated us this way because they disrespect to people with different religious beliefs. Losing the mutual respect to other religions is not acceptable, and assaulting the believers of different religions is violation of international laws.”
The Rev. Dennis Ngun Thang Mang said some of the churches destroyed were on fire though there were no armed conflicts in their vicinity, and when he and other asked the military about the blazes, they claimed they didn’t know anything about it.
Additionally, military forces arrested 20 Christian ministers. While a dozen of the captives were later released, four remain in detention and four were killed, the Institute of Chin Affairs said.
In Loikaw, Demoso and Hpruso townships of Kayah state, three Baptist churches, 10 Catholic churches and a mosque have been destroyed.
Military commanders are supposed to avoid hitting religious buildings during armed conflicts, said a Christian religious leader in Loikaw, who requested anonymity for safety reasons.
“During the armed conflicts in Kayah state, most of the bombs from air raids and artillery blasts fell inside the compound of the churches,” he told RFA. “That’s why many churches were destroyed.
“We don’t know why they did it,” he said. “We strongly condemn their actions. We want to appeal them to avoid targeting religious buildings.”
The military regime’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, denied that army forces targeted religious buildings during armed conflicts.
“The Tatmadaw never targeted any religious buildings,” he said, using the Burmese name for the Myanmar military. “There were incidents of raiding them when we received credible information that terrorists were hiding in the buildings.”
In cases where monasteries and churches were accidentally hit by military fire, soldiers took the lead in helping to repair them, Zaw Min Tun said.
Aung Myo Min, human rights minister of the shadow National Unity Government, said the U.N.’s Geneva Convention lays out guidelines to protect religious building amid armed conflict.
“Religious buildings and sacred places are icons of religious freedom,” he told RFA. “They should not be assaulted or destroyed, even by society’s norms. But targeting religious buildings in armed conflicts and firing weapons at them are horrible acts.”
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
RFA News
Woman abducted by junta with 3-year-old son accused of ties to urban guerrilla forces
/in NewsInformation obtained from the woman while in detention led to the arrest of resistance force members allegedly planning bombings during Thingyan, the Myanmar military claims
Myanmar’s military council announced the arrest of 15 alleged members of anti-junta resistance forces in Yangon as well as the confiscation of several weapons in a statement published on Thursday.
The announcement claimed that the crackdown in Yangon was based on information provided by Thiri Wai, a 28-year-old woman who they said they had detained on April 5. Some 13 people were reportedly arrested hours after she provided the alleged testimony in junta custody, and two more people were detained on April 11, according to the junta.
Myanmar Now reported on Tuesday that Ma Wai—who is 35, according to a friend—was blindfolded and taken from her Insein Township home by troops on the morning of April 5. It was also her three-year-old son’s birthday, and he too was reportedly kidnapped by junta forces from his kindergarten that afternoon. They are still believed to be in military custody, and Myanmar Now remains unable to speak with her family.
The military council did not mention the abduction of the child in their Thursday statement.
The military identified the 15 detainees as members of the urban guerrilla forces known as Union Myanmar Civil Development (UMCD) and God of Death, and accused them of planning to perpetrate bombings in seven Yangon locations during the Thingyan water festival, which took place this week.
They claimed to have seized 12 guns, including nine handmade rifles, as well as improvised explosive devices and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition.
Speaking to Myanmar Now anonymously, a UMCD officer confirmed that the group’s members had been arrested. He said that there were inaccuracies in the junta’s statement regarding the dates of the victims’ arrests and denied the allegation that they were planning bombings during Thingyan.
While he did not disclose further information on the detainees, he described Ma Wai as “a woman with guts of steel,” and speculated that she may have been forced to give the alleged statement to her captors in order to protect her son, Thant Hpone Waiyan.
“I think they’re torturing the child to extract information from her,” he said.
The officer added that her family members had been afraid to contact the military to inquire about her and her son’s well-being.
Myanmar Now called the kindergarten attended by Thant Hpone Waiyan in Ahlone Township to inquire about his abduction, but all calls went unanswered.
The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar declared that until April 29, they are accepting submissions of reported violations of child rights in Myanmar since the February 2021 coup to be considered for inclusion in a forthcoming report on the issue.
The shadow National Unity Government (NUG) announced that they had reported the three-year-old’s kidnapping by the military to the Special Rapporteur.
According to an April 8 report released by the NUG’s Ministry of Women, Youths and Children Affairs, 132 minors have been killed by the Myanmar military during the post-coup period. Some 216 have been detained, of whom two have been handed death sentences by junta courts, the ministry said.
The administration called for justice for the crimes.
The military council has not responded to the allegations.
Myanmar Now News
‘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.
Nay_myo_thet.jpeg
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.
Nay_myo_thets_military_id.jpeg
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.