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 from Myanmar, regional and international civil society organizations to ASEAN to End Myanmar Military’s Violence, Advance Accountability and Operationalize Cross-border Humanitarian Aid
- Press Release – Rights-Based Reform: ASEAN Five Years on from the 5-Point Consensus
- Rights-Based Reform: ASEAN Five Years on from 5-Point Consensus
- [Open Letter] SEANF must remove membership of junta-controlled Myanmar National Human Rights Commission
- President Win Myint freed in broad Myanmar prisoner amnesty
AAPP Launches its New Report on Justice, the Judiciary and the Weaponization of Law to Repress Civilians in Burma
/in ND-Burma Members' ReportsToday, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners launches its new report, highlighting the inherently repressive colonial legislation that has been amended, enacted and weaponized by the junta to systematically commit a campaign of terror and ongoing human rights violations against the people of Burma.
“The military junta is weaponizing its unjust law, using its interrogation camps, and prisons as the epicenter of its campaign of fear. This brutal strategy seeks to crush any resistance, while systematically employing torture to silence those who dare oppose them. We must strive to ensure that such atrocities never happen again within Burma’s territory. We believe that the NUG and ethnic groups who govern in their areas of control will not use existing laws, law enforcement agencies, and penal institutions to oppress the people.” (Ko Bo Kyi – Joint Secretary of AAPP)
The success of the Spring Revolution has been undeniable. As resistance groups take control of large swathes of territory across the country, it is imperative that the laws used in these areas take on a people-centred and human rights based approach, crucial to ensuring that these laws protect the fundamental freedoms of the people.
AAPP encourages all resistance groups, including Ethnic Resistance Organizations (EROs), to use this report as a foundation to review laws currently in use in their areas of control. It draws comparison between Burma’s domestic laws and the conditions within international human rights standards and other comparative domestic laws, to make suggestions for future legal and judicial reform.
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground makes it increasingly clear that junta rule can no longer continue. United Nations, ASEAN, and global leaders must place increased pressure on the junta to release all political prisoners who were detained under these repressive laws, including President U Win Myint and State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Only then will the country be on a path to a federal democratic state, where human rights are fostered and enjoyed by all.
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
AAPP: info@aappb.org
File Download: law report.eng.ebook
Junta offensives leave 4 dead, thousands displaced in northwest Myanmar
/in NewsDisplaced residents are in critical need of clean water and medicine, aid workers said.
Read RFA coverage of these topics in Burmese.
Junta attacks on Thursday claimed four lives in northwest Myanmar, where tens of thousands displaced residents remain in desperate need of emergency aid, volunteers and locals told Radio Free Asia.
The offensives in the embattled Sagaing region have intensified since insurgent militias rose up against Myanmar’s military, which seized power in a 2021 coup, forcing tens of thousands from their homes and claiming thousands of lives through shootings, village burnings and bombings.
In the latest offence on Thursday, junta soldiers killed four residents in Sagaing’s Myaung town, leaving one injured.
“Today at 10 a.m., they were firing wildly with heavy weapons and circling the area with parachutes, looking for targets to drop bombs on,” said one resident on Thursday, declining to be named for security reasons.
Residents added they could not confirm the identities of the dead, but it was junta’s retaliatory move as junta forces clashed with a local militia a day before.
Sagaing region’s junta spokesperson Nyant Win Aung refused to comment.
According to data compiled by RFA, 3,531 people have been killed by heavy weapons since the coup, and another 5,007 have been injured.
As conflict between militias and junta troops escalates, tens of thousands have fled to safer areas, but they are desperately in need of supplies to survive and cope with water-borne illnesses.
More than 30,000 internally displaced people have been sheltering in Sagaing region’s Kale township, roughly 210 kilometers [130 miles] northwest of Myaung Township, since early February, and according to aid workers, they are facing “new challenges” with the hot season approaching.
“It’s the time when the weather gets really hot, so we’re helping as much as we can with shelter, access to water and food,” said one aid worker, who declined to be named for security reasons. “Mainly, people need medicine, shelter and drinking water.”
A lack of water sources has forced displaced people from nearly 30 villages to make due with unclean water, leading to skin diseases and diarrhea, he added.
Junta forces are frequently bombing villages around the township, preventing them from returning home.
On Jan. 31, for instance, junta forces bombed the Koke Ko Su Camp, a shelter for displaced people in Kale township, killing 11 people, including pregnant women, and injuring 15, according to residents.
Translated by Kiana Duncan. Edited by Taejun Kang.
RFA News
Open letter: Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest signal urgent need for investigation and complete end of mandate
/in Press Releases and StatementsTo:
United Nations Secretary-General
United Nations General Assembly
Open letter: Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest signal urgent need for investigation and complete end of mandate
17 March 2025
We—the undersigned 290 Myanmar, regional, and international civil society organizations—call on United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to urgently open an investigation into conflicts of interest over the business activities of UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar Julie Bishop and make the findings public. We also call on the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to immediately end the mandate of the Special Envoy, and on the Secretary-General to assume a leadership role in addressing the crisis in Myanmar directly.
We are alarmed by the Special Envoy’s business activities and connections to the mining industry and Chinese state-owned companies with possible or confirmed commercial interests in Myanmar, including Shenghe Resources and China Communications Construction Company. Her involvement with Chinese state-owned companies raises serious concerns about the impartiality and independence required to engage with China as the Special Envoy on Myanmar. Such conflicts of interest actively endanger the human rights of the Myanmar people as China remains a top source of military support and false legitimacy for the illegal military junta. The Chinese government is evidently aiding and abetting the junta’s ongoing crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Myanmar people.
The UN’s response thus far is wholly unacceptable. As the appointing authority, the UN Secretary-General bears a significant responsibility to the people of Myanmar to ensure the integrity and impartiality of the Special Envoy. That the UN would allow the Special Envoy tasked with addressing the Myanmar crisis to continue given such blatant commercial interests that jeopardize the lives of the people of Myanmar, is unconscionable.
The Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest are the latest reminder that the UN’s decades of peace-brokering attempts through special envoys and “dialogues” have produced absolutely no meaningful, positive change for the people of Myanmar. Instead, this ongoing approach continues to embolden the junta to commit atrocity crimes with complete impunity and harm the people of Myanmar. Given the outdated and ineffectual mandate, civil society organizations have previously called for the UN to abolish the position. The UN must transform its destructive approach into principled, ethical, and concerted efforts that fully respect the human rights of the Myanmar people and support their collective will to dismantle military tyranny.
This moment must finally mark the end of the UN’s relegation of responsibility on the crisis in Myanmar. We urge the UNGA to immediately revoke the mandate of the Special Envoy, particularly given the current Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest that jeopardize the lives of the Myanmar people.
We call on the Secretary-General to immediately open an investigation regarding these conflicts of interest and publish the findings. The Secretary-General must urgently take the lead to end the military junta’s terror campaign, ensure accountability for the perpetrators under international law, and robustly support the Myanmar people’s revolution to build sustainable peace and an inclusive federal democracy.
For more information, please contact:
Signed by 290 civil society organizations, including 41 organizations that have chosen not to disclose their names:
Myanmar children, monks among dozens killed in heavy airstrikes
/in NewsAttacks in Shan state and Mandalay region aimed at civilians, rebels say.
Myanmar’s military killed 40 civilians, including Buddhist monks and children, in airstrikes in northern Myanmar as it tries to pound its enemies into submission, insurgents told Radio Free Asia on Monday.
Myanmar’s rising toll of civilian casualties comes as a humanitarian crisis is looming and a major food aid agency announced it will have to cut support because of a funding shortfall.
Myanmar has been engulfed by conflict since the military overthrew an elected government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, with thousands of civilians killed, villages razed and some 3.5 million people displaced by war and natural disasters.
Forced onto the defensive by unprecedented opposition from young people from the majority Barmar community teaming up with ethnic minority insurgents, the military has increasingly turned to its air force to unleash devastation, often on civilian areas, rights groups and insurgents say.
“We can say they are purposefully attacking civilians,” said Lway Yay Oo, spokesperson for the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, or TNLA, an ethnic minority insurgent force in Shan state, which is on the border with China.
Junta airstrikes on the Sein Yadanar monastery in Shan state’s Nawnghkio town on Sunday, killed 13 civilians, including six monks, four of them young novices, said Lway Yay Oo.
Seventeen people were wounded in the air attack, 13 of them monks, she said, adding that the military was trying to force the TNLA back into peace talks that China, with extensive economic interests in Myanmar, is trying to broker.
The Myanmar army has a long record of trying to overcome insurgencies by undermining their civilian support, often by attacking villagers, rights investigators say.
Lway Yay Oo said there was no question the military was targeting civilians.
“They’re deliberately attacking religious buildings in Nawnghkio and they also bombed the hospital …. We’ve also seen that they’re burning and destroying homes.”
The spokesperson did not say anything about prospects for talks with the military, which is keen to roll back insurgent gains over the past year as it prepares for an election, due by January, which it hopes will bolster its legitimacy at home and abroad.
Myanmar’s military rarely releases information about the fighting, which has erupted in almost all corners of the country, and attempts by RFA to reach the junta spokesperson, Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, by telephone were not successful.
Blood on road to Mandalay
On Friday, a junta air attack on Let Pan Hla village, on a main road 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of Mandalay city, killed up to 27 people, according to a spokesperson for a pro-democracy insurgent force operating in the area.
“They attacked for no reason and deliberately targeted the public. They were targeting customers and vendors in a busy street near the village market,” said Mandalay People’s Defense Force spokesperson, who goes by the one name Osman.
The People’s Defense Force, or PDF, captured the area in July and junta forces have been on the attack ever since, he said.
The PDF commander, Soe Thu Yazaw, said in a social media post that six children were among the dead and many people were wounded.
“The bombing targeted people going about their daily activities at the market, so the number of injured is also high,” he said. “Long distance buses often stop in Let Pan Hla for food and a break, so it’s busy.”
The death and destruction from the fighting is compounding a dire humanitarian outlook in a country where the U.N. says a “staggering” 15.2 million people are unable to meet their minimum daily food needs and some 2.3 million people are facing emergency levels of hunger.
The U.N. food agency has warned that more than one million people will be cut off from its food assistance from April due to critical funding shortfalls.
“The impending cuts will have a devastating impact on the most vulnerable communities across the country, many of whom depend entirely on WFP’s support to survive,” Michael Dunford, representative and country director of the World Food Programme, said in a statement.
Internally displaced people in Rakhine state, where fighting has been particularly heavy, would be hard hit, the WFP said.
Aid agencies helping in Myanmar have been under pressure since a January order by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump to freeze all global aid until a review was completed.
RFA News
Open letter: Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest signal urgent need for investigation and complete end of mandate
/in Member statements, Press Releases and StatementsTo:
United Nations Secretary-General
United Nations General Assembly
Open letter: Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest signal urgent need for investigation and complete end of mandate
17 March 2025
We—the undersigned 290 Myanmar, regional, and international civil society organizations—call on United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to urgently open an investigation into conflicts of interest over the business activities of UN Special Envoy of the Secretary-General on Myanmar Julie Bishop and make the findings public. We also call on the UN General Assembly (UNGA) to immediately end the mandate of the Special Envoy, and on the Secretary-General to assume a leadership role in addressing the crisis in Myanmar directly.
We are alarmed by the Special Envoy’s business activities and connections to the mining industry and Chinese state-owned companies with possible or confirmed commercial interests in Myanmar, including Shenghe Resources and China Communications Construction Company. Her involvement with Chinese state-owned companies raises serious concerns about the impartiality and independence required to engage with China as the Special Envoy on Myanmar. Such conflicts of interest actively endanger the human rights of the Myanmar people as China remains a top source of military support and false legitimacy for the illegal military junta. The Chinese government is evidently aiding and abetting the junta’s ongoing crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Myanmar people.
The UN’s response thus far is wholly unacceptable. As the appointing authority, the UN Secretary-General bears a significant responsibility to the people of Myanmar to ensure the integrity and impartiality of the Special Envoy. That the UN would allow the Special Envoy tasked with addressing the Myanmar crisis to continue given such blatant commercial interests that jeopardize the lives of the people of Myanmar, is unconscionable.
The Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest are the latest reminder that the UN’s decades of peace-brokering attempts through special envoys and “dialogues” have produced absolutely no meaningful, positive change for the people of Myanmar. Instead, this ongoing approach continues to embolden the junta to commit atrocity crimes with complete impunity and harm the people of Myanmar. Given the outdated and ineffectual mandate, civil society organizations have previously called for the UN to abolish the position. The UN must transform its destructive approach into principled, ethical, and concerted efforts that fully respect the human rights of the Myanmar people and support their collective will to dismantle military tyranny.
This moment must finally mark the end of the UN’s relegation of responsibility on the crisis in Myanmar. We urge the UNGA to immediately revoke the mandate of the Special Envoy, particularly given the current Special Envoy’s conflicts of interest that jeopardize the lives of the Myanmar people.
We call on the Secretary-General to immediately open an investigation regarding these conflicts of interest and publish the findings. The Secretary-General must urgently take the lead to end the military junta’s terror campaign, ensure accountability for the perpetrators under international law, and robustly support the Myanmar people’s revolution to build sustainable peace and an inclusive federal democracy.
For more information, please contact:
Mulan, Blood Money Campaign; bloodmoneycampaign21@protonmail.com
Naw Aung, Defend Myanmar Democracy; communication@defendmyanmardemocracy.org
Naw Cherry, Karen Peace Support Network; kpsn14@gmail.com
Khin Ohmar, Progressive Voice; info@progressive-voice.org
UN chief: Discussing humanitarian aid corridor from Bangladesh to Myanmar
/in NewsAmid fighting in Rakhine state, immediate ‘dignified return’ for refugees is difficult, he says.
DHAKA, Bangladesh — The United Nations is discussing the possibility of a humanitarian aid corridor to Myanmar from Bangladesh in an effort to create equitable conditions for Rohingya refugees to eventually return, the U.N. chief said in Dhaka on Saturday.
However, the Rohingya refugees sheltering in Bangladesh could not make and immediate, “dignified return to their homeland in Myanmar’s Rakhine state amid the continued fighting there, added U.N. Secretary General António Guterres at a media briefing.
“We need to intensify the humanitarian aid inside Myanmar to create a condition for that return to be successful,” Guterres said on the penultimate day of his four-day visit to Bangladesh.
Setting up a humanitarian aid channel “is obviously a matter that would require authorization and cooperation,” he said without further specifying.
Humanitarian corridors are designated and secure routes that allow for the safe passage of humanitarian relief, according to Southeast Asian NGO Fortify Rights.
The NGO said this week that the Bangladesh government and the rebel Arakan Army comprising ethnic Rakhine should immediately facilitate humanitarian aid and cross-border trade to reach war-affected civilians the state.
“The crisis in Myanmar demands urgent global attention and action,” said Ejaz Min Khant in a statement Wednesday.
“A humanitarian corridor between Myanmar and Bangladesh would be a lifeline for civilians impacted by the conflict.”
The statement said Bangladesh should also lift restrictions on border trade with Myanmar “to help ease access to basic commodities for civilians in Rakhine state.”
The NGO noted that Bangladesh’s interim leader, Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus had said in an interview aired earlier this month on Sky News that his government was in ongoing negotiations with the Arakan Army to create a “safe zone” for Rohingya refugees to return to Rakhine.
Bangladesh’s Foreign Adviser Touhid Hossain, who also spoke at the joint media briefing, said the establishment of a humanitarian channel was not discussed with the U.N. chief during his visit.
“This is much more of an operational matter, which we will of course deal [on] with the local offices of the U.N.,” Hossain said.
Nearly a million Rohingya, a persecuted minority Muslim community in Myanmar, live in refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh.
Almost 800,000 of them crossed into neighboring Bangladesh to flee a deadly Myanmar military crackdown in 2017.
Their return to Rakhine has been prolonged after civil war broke out in Myanmar following the military coup of February 2021.
U.N. human rights experts had said on Thursday that the Myanmar junta had not been allowing in relief supplies, with the situation “particularly critical in Rakhine,” which is home to the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.
Rakhine State was “on the brink of famine,” with two million people at risk of starvation, the statement added citing another U.N. agency.
Meanwhile, heavy fighting continues in Rakhine between the Myanmar military and the rebel Arakan Army, Guterres said on Saturday.
“There is a consensus that it would be extremely difficult in such a situation for an immediate and dignified return of the Rohingya,” he told the mrdia in Dhaka on Saturday.
Guterres further noted that in the past, the relationship between the ethnic Rakhine and the Rohingya has not been an easy one.
“So I think it is important to engage with the Arakan Army in order for ensure full respect of the rights of the Rohingya population in Rakhine,” the U.N. chief said.
The Arakan Army founded in 2009 is fighting to “liberate” Rakhine towards its goal of self-determination. It has made significant gains over the past year to root out the military and now controls a majority of Rakhine’s townships, reported radio Free Asia, a news service affiliated with BenarNews.
Comprising mainly Rakhine Buddhists, the Arakan Army claimed it respects the rights of Rohingya. But experts have said there was plenty of evidence that the Arakan Army carried out mass arson attacks on Rohingya villages in May and August last year.
Guterres again made an impassioned plea to donor nations for more humanitarian aid for the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, whose food ration is set to be cut by more than half starting next month due to a funds shortage.
“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40% in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said.
“This would have terrible consequences starting with the drastic reduction of food rations. That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer and people will die.”
He said that by offering the Rohingya refuge, Bangladesh had shown its humanitarian spirit.
“By offering Rohingya refugees sanctuary, Bangladesh has demonstrated solidarity and human dignity, often at significant social, environmental and economic cost,” he said.
“The world must not take this generosity for granted.”
RFA News