ND-BURMA: A Significant and Substantial Increase in Documented Human Rights Violations in the First Six Months of 2019

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ND-BURMA: A Significant and Substantial Increase in Documented Human Rights Violations in the First Six Months of 2019

18 September, 2019

For immediate release

As the conflict escalated in Rakhine State and continued in the north and northeast of Burma, from January to June 2019, ND-Burma and its member organisations documented a substantial and significant increase in the number of human rights violations—a 360% increase over the entire 2018 reporting period in only 6 months. This disturbing increase was, contrary to ND-Burma’s previous report, largely the consequence of the intensification of the conflict in Rakhine (and Chin) State, which saw large numbers of skirmishes between the Arakan Army (AA) and Burma Army, as well as the latter’s use of indiscriminate gunfire, shelling and airstrikes. Out of the 156 armed clashes documented throughout Burma from January to June 2019, 98 were between the AA and the Tatmadaw.

Despite the military’s declaration of a unilateral ceasefire in the north and northeast of the country, the Burma Army still engaged in a number of armed skirmishes with Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) in Kachin and northern Shan states. Moreover, conflict among EAOs, particularly in northern Shan State, was also documented by ND-Burma member organisations.

Due to the intense fighting between the military and EAOs over the reporting period and the large number of those occurring in Rakhine State, there was a significant number of conflict-related human rights violations perpetrated against civilians. The majority were committed by government security forces and involved the use of indiscriminate gunfire, shelling and airstrikes which often led to injuries and civilian deaths. Conflict and military operations near villager settlements also led to the displacement of approximately more than 27,000 villagers in the first six months of 2019, and many IDPs are still unsure when it will be safe to return.

Ethnic armed organisations also committed human rights violations against civilians during the reporting period. This included arbitrary arrest and detention, forced recruitment, inhumane and degrading treatment, extrajudicial killings as well as injuries and displacement due to the presence of conflict nearby and/or in civilian settlements. In particular, EAOs have been reported to arbitrarily detain villagers, or even entire villages, who are suspected of having ties with other EAOs, while subjecting them to torture and forced disappearances.

As always, civilians are the ones who bear the brunt of conflict. Communities, especially ethnic populations in conflict areas, have suffered significantly over Burma’s 70 years of civil war. When Burma is restored to genuine peace, civilian populations living in conflict-affected areas will be relieved of the burden of war. Therefore, the government and military must explore ways to achieve genuine peace with EAOs, including announcing a nationwide ceasefire and implementing realistic and all-inclusive peace negotiations with EAOs and CSOs monitoring the conflict and human rights situation. In addition, humanitarian groups and communities unfairly impacted by injustices against the backdrop of negotiations must be allowed to participate in every stage of the peace process.

Key Findings

  • ND-Burma documented 239 cases of human rights violations across 7 states and regions during January–June 2019, all of which occurred during 2019. In comparison, for the entire reporting period of 2018, ND-Burma documented a total of 52 cases—meaning the first 6 months of 2019 saw a 360% increase in the number of documented human rights violations over the entire 2018 reporting period.
  • Deviating from the January to December 2018 report, the conflict in Rakhine State was responsible for the majority of human rights violations documented by ND-Burma member organisations, where 70% of violations (169 cases) occurred, and the skirmishes in Kachin and northern Shan states were responsible for 10 cases and 42 cases, respectively.
  • The majority of the cases involved indiscriminate gunfire, shelling and aerial bombardments, often leading to deaths and injuries; extrajudicial killings; injuries and deaths due to landmines; inhumane and degrading treatment; and arbitrary arrest, detention and forced disappearance.
  • The majority of human rights violations were committed by government security forces (150 cases) including torture and inhumane and degrading treatment; extrajudicial killings; arbitrary arrest, detention and forced disappearance; and indiscriminate shelling and bombardments from air strikes. ND-Burma member organisations also documented human rights violations committed by EAOs (22 cases), including arbitrary arrest, detention and forced disappearance, inhumane and degrading treatment, forced recruitment, and deaths as a result of fighting among armed groups in civilian areas. In 32 cases, unknown perpetrators were responsible for deaths and injuries of individuals due to landmines.

ND-Burma’s documentation shows that there was a substantial increase in human rights violations during the first 6 months of 2019, largely due to the Burma Army’s use of indiscriminate gunfire, shelling and airstrikes near civilian settlements, and particularly in Rakhine and Shan states. As always, civilians in conflict zones in Burma continued to bear the brunt of the conflict and were subject to numerous human rights violations by both government security forces and EAOs. Now, more than ever, an urgent end to armed conflict and a government-sponsored reparations programme are essential to address both the impact of human rights violations and to end impunity for such abuses.

Media Contacts

Name: Ting Oo
(English & Burmese)		 Name: Lway Chee Sangar
(English & Burmese)
Contact: +66 (0) 815956138 Contact: +95 9791530451

ND-Burma is a network that consists of 13-member organisations who represent a range of ethnic nationalities, women and former political prisoners. ND-Burma member organisations have been documenting human rights abuses and fighting for justice for victims since 2004. The network consists of six Full Members and Seven Affiliate Members as follows:

Full Members:

  1. Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma 
  2. Human Rights Foundation of Monland
  3. Kachin Women’s Association – Thailand
  4. Ta’ang Women’s Organization
  5. Ta’ang Students and Youth Union
  6. Tavoyan Women’s Union

Affiliate Members:

  1. All Arakan Students’ and Youths’ Congress
  2. Association Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
  3. Chin Human Rights Organization
  4. East Bago – Former Political Prisoners Network
  5. Pa-O Youth Organization
  6. Progressive Voice
  7. Future Light Center

| Download PDF |Briefer |

Human Rights Situation in Burma(2019 January – June)

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Our latest human-rights report is now available in English and Burmese online. The report is a collection of data from our members which details abuses from January to July 2019.

Among our observations, there was a 360% increase in the number of documented human rights violations in the first six months of 2019 compared to the entire 2018 reporting period.

The conflict in Rakhine State was responsible for the majority of human rights violations with skirmishes in Kachin and northern Shan states responsible for 4% of cases and 18%, respectively.

ND-Burma is grateful for the continued work of our members who work tirelessly to bring justice to survivors by advocating for stronger legal mechanisms to uphold the rule of law. Without their contributions, our work would not be possible.

Download full Report

Download PDF
https://www.rfa.org/…/progra…/ffm-report-09162019092143.html

ရခိုင်မြောက်ပိုင်းမှာ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှု အန္တရာယ်ဆက်ရှိနေကြောင်း FFM ထုတ်ပြန်

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ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်းမှာ ကျန်ရှိနေသေးတဲ့ ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ခြောက်သိန်းကျော်ဟာ ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအရ ဖိနှိပ်ချုပ်ချယ်မှုတွေ ကြုံနေရပြီး လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှု အန္တရာယ် ဆက်ရှိနေတယ်လို့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အချက်အလက်ရှာဖွေရေး မစ်ရှင်က FFM က ဂျနီဗာကို ဒီကနေ့ တင်သွင်းတဲ့ အစီရင်ခံစာမှာ ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။

၂ဝ၁၇ ခုနှစ်က တပ်မတော်ရဲ့ နယ်မြေရှင်းလင်းရေး စစ်ဆင်ရေးကြောင့် ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မြောက်ပိုင်းက ရိုဟင်ဂျာ ၇ သိန်း ၄ သောင်းကျော် ဘင်္ဂလားဒေ့ရှ်နိုင်ငံကို ထွက်ပြေးခဲ့ပြီး ထောင်ပေါင်းများစွာ သတ်ဖြတ်ခံခဲ့ရတာကြောင့် လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုကို တပ်မတော်က ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့တယ်လို့ အစီရင်ခံစာမှာ ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။

ဒါပေမယ့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဟာ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှု တားဆီးဖို့၊ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုတွေကို စုံစမ်းစစ်ဆေးဖို့၊ လူမျိုးတုံးသတ်ဖြတ်မှုကို ရာဇဝတ်မှုအဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ပြီး အရေးယူအပြစ်ပေးတာတွေ ဆောင်ရွက်ဖို့ တာဝန် ပျက်ကွက်နေတယ်လို့ ဆိုပါတယ်။

ပြီးခဲ့တဲ့နှစ်ကလည်း လူသားမျိုးနွယ်အပေါ်မှာ ကျူးလွန်တဲ့ ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွေနဲ့ စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှုတွေအတွက် တာဝန်ရှိတဲ့ တပ်မတော် ထိပ်ပိုင်းခေါင်းဆောင် ခြောက်ဦးအမည်ကို လူသိရှင်ကြား ကြေညာခဲ့ပြီးဖြစ်သလို၊ ရာဇဝတ်မှုကျူးလွန်သူတွေလို့ သံသယရှိတဲ့ လူဦးရေ တစ်ရာကျော်ပါတဲ့ လျှို့ဝှက်စာရင်းကိုလည်း ရရှိထားတယ်လို့ အချက်လက်ရှာဖွေရေးအဖွဲ့ရဲ့ အစီရင်ခံစာမှာ ရေးသားထားပါတယ်။

တပ်မတော်ပြောခွင့်ရပုဂ္ဂိုလ် ဗိုလ်မှူးချုပ် ဇော်မင်းထွန်းကတော့ FFM အစီရင်ခံစာအပေါ် အခုလို တုံ့ပြန်ပါတယ်။

“လက်တေ့ွအခြေအနေကြည့်ရင် သိနိုင်ပါတယ်။ ဖိနှိပ်ညှဉ်းပမ်းမှု ရှိတယ်ဆိုရင် ဖုံးကွယ်လို့ရတဲ့နေရာ မဟုတ်ပါဘူး။ ဖုံးကွယ်လို့လည်း မရပါဘူး။ လက်တေ့ွမှာ ဖိနှိပ်ညှဉ်းပမ်းမှုတွေ မရှိလို့ သူတို့ ဆက်နေနိုင်တာပါ။ အဲဒီမှာနေတဲ့လူတွေက အရင်ကထက် ပိုမိုပွင့်လင်းမြင်သာလာတယ်။ အတွင်းထဲမှာဖြစ်တဲ့အခြေအနေကို လေ့လည်းမလေ့လာ၊ သိလည်းမသိဘဲ အပြင်ကနေ ဝေဖန်နေတာကတော့ နိုင်ငံတစ်နိုင်ငံရဲ့ အုပ်ချုပ်နေတဲ့အစိုးရရဲ့ ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာကို ကျဆင်းစေပါတယ်”

တပ်မတော်ခေါင်းဆောင်ပိုင်းတွေကို နိုင်ငံတကာရာဇဝတ်ခုံရုံး (ICC) မှာ တရားစွဲတင်မယ့်ကိစ္စမှာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဟာ ICC အဖွဲ့ဝင်အဖြစ် လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးထားခြင်း မရှိတာကြောင့် တရားစွဲလို့မရဘူး ဆိုပြီး ပြောထားကြပေမယ့်၊ FFM အချက်လက်ရှာဖွေရေးအဖွဲ့ကတော့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဟာ ၁၉၄၈ ခုနှစ် ဂျီနီဗာသဘောတူစာချုပ်အရ လိုက်နာရမယ့် တာဝန်တွေ ပျက်ကွက်တဲ့အတွက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံး ICJ မှာ တရားစွဲဆိုနိုင်တယ်လို့လည်း ဆိုထားပါတယ်။

ဒါကြောင့် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ ရာဇဝတ်ခုံရုံးကို လွှဲပြောင်းဖို့အတွက် အရင် ယူဂိုဆလားဗီးယားနဲ့ ရဝမ်ဒါ လူမျိုးတုန်းသတ်ဖြတ်မှုတွေကို အရေးယူခဲ့သလို၊ အထူးရာဇဝတ်ခုံရုံး တည်ထောင်ဖို့လည်း ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီကို FFM အဖွဲ့က တိုက်တွန်းထားပါတယ်။

မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကို အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံးမှာ တရားစွဲဆိုဖို့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီကို အချက်လက်ရှာဖွေရေးမစ်ရှင်ရဲ့ တိုက်တွန်းချက်နဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံခြားရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန ညွှန်ကြားရေးမှူးချုပ် ဦးချမ်းအေးကို RFA က ဆက်သွယ်ခဲ့ပေမယ့် ဒီကနေ့ညနေထိ ဆက်သွယ်လို့ မရခဲ့ပါဘူး။

အစီရင်ခံစာမှာ… တပ်မတော်ဟာ ၂ဝ၁၇ တုန်းက လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှုတွေကို ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သလို၊ လက်ရှိ ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်မှာ ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော် AA နဲ့ ဖြစ်ပွားနေတဲ့ တိုက်ပွဲတွေမှာလည်း အရပ်သားတွေကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား တိုက်ခိုက်တာတွေ တွေ့ရှိရကြောင်း ရေးသားထားပါတယ်။

လက်တလော ရက္ခိုင့်တပ်တော်နဲ့ ဖြစ်ပွားနေတဲ့ အရပ်ဒေသတွေမှာ တပ်မတော်ရဲ့ နာမည်ဆိုးနဲ့ ကျော်ကြားတဲ့ ဖြတ်လေးဖြတ် စစ်ဆင်ရေးအပြင်၊ ဖြတ်ငါးဖြတ် လို့ လူပြောများလာတဲ့ အင်တာနက်လိုင်းဖြတ်တောက်တာ၊ လူသားချင်းစာနာကူညီရေး လုပ်ငန်းတွေကို ကန့်သတ်တာတွေကိုပါ ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့ကြောင်း ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။

(RFA သတင်းထောက် ကိုမိုးမြင့် တင်ပြသည်)

UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar hands over evidence to new body

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The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, set up by the Human Rights Council in 2017 (resolution 34/22), has handed over its evidence under international law to a new mechanism that is mandated by the Human Rights Council to follow up and prepare files for criminal prosecutions, according to a statement.

The Mission’s short report to the Human Rights Council, released on Monday, explained the preparations it made to consolidate and hand over to the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) the extensive information it collected over the last two years. The Mission’s evidence has been preserved and transferred to the IIMM in a manner that ensures its integrity so it can be used in criminal trials in courts outside Myanmar.

A more detailed report containing the Mission’s findings on the latest activities of Government security forces and conflict-related human rights developments in Myanmar will be released on 17 September when the Mission appears before the Human Rights Council.

The Mission’s three members – Chairman Marzuki Darusman and Experts Radhika Coomaraswamy and Christopher Sidoti – will hold a news conference in Geneva on 17 September, the statement said.

Mizzima News

Myanmar holding court martial after Rakhine grave probe

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Myanmar said its military was conducting a rare court martial following a probe into mass graves in crisis-hit Rakhine state, two years after a crackdown drove some 740,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh.

In February 2018, an Associated Press report alleged at least five mass graves of Rohingya in Rakhine’s Gu Dar Pyin village — a claim denied by the government, which said the bodies were those of “terrorists”.

But the military’s official website said Saturday that an investigation had found “weakness in following instructions” in Gu Dar Pyin, and that a court martial would “proceed in accordance with the procedures of Military Justice.”

No additional details were provided.

The report described grisly violence at the hands of soldiers and Buddhist vigilantes, who allegedly attacked villagers with guns, knives, rocket launchers and grenades before dumping bodies into pits and dousing them with acid.

Estimates from survivors in Bangladesh put the death toll in the hundreds, the report said.

Security forces claimed they were under attack by some 500 villagers, and that they had acted “in self-defence”, according to state-run media last year.

Rights groups say the military has done little to hold anyone accountable for abuses in Rakhine state.

© AFP