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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Myanmar’s junta threatens media that don’t report official cyclone death numbers
/in NewsJunta says 100 Rohingya died from Cyclone Mocha, but others have counted more than 400.
Myanmar’s junta says that 100 Rohingya died from last weekend’s Cyclone Mocha – and that news outlets that say it’s higher will be sued.
The shadow National Unity Government, made up of former parliamentarians and opponents of the military, which took control of the country in a 2021 coup, puts the number at 455 – more than four times higher.
Reports by media that more than 400 were killed “were baseless and have frightened the public,” a junta statement Friday said. “We will take action against those media using existing laws.”
The storm that hit the coast of Rakhine state and parts of Bangladesh last weekend, flooded villages and battered camps where displaced Rohingya have lived for years.
Authorities evacuated the Rakhine population before the storm and accommodated 63,302 of the 125,789 Rohingyas from 17 refugee camps who needed to be evacuated, the junta statement said.
Those who died in the storm were people who didn’t comply with the authority’s evacuation procedure and remained in their homes on their own accord, the military said.
Radio Free Asia reported earlier this week that many people couldn’t evacuate because emergency shelter centers quickly became overcrowded.
Some 130,000 Rohingya have lived for more than a decade in internally displaced persons camps in and around Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine.
The deaths of so many villagers from the storm was a result of their poor living standards in restricted camps near the seashore, Rohingya activists told RFA. Many villagers weren’t properly informed of the coming cyclone, they said.
Two Rohingya villagers told RFA that it has been difficult to collect every dead body that was washed into the sea after the storm struck the coast.
The junta said Friday that 18 army officers would be assigned to each township to oversee rehabilitation work for the 18 townships in Rakhine and Chin state that were affected by the storm.
In those areas, transportation infrastructure and some telephone networks have been out of service, and there are still areas where food, medicine and shelters haven’t arrived.
NUG’s statement on Wednesday said more than 42,000 acres of agricultural land in four states and regions were destroyed by the storm.
RFA News
Human Rights Situation weekly update (May 8 to 14, 2023)
/in HR Situation, NewsA civilian died and civilian houses were burnt by the Military junta troops launched an airstrike and dropped bombs in Mon State, Chin State, and Sagaing Region from May 8th to 14th.Military junta troops committed a massacre by burning 18 civilians from Nyaung Pentha village in Bago Region. Over 30 civilians were arrested as human shields in Yebyu Township, Tanintharyi Region and most of them are women. 3 children died by the Military’s heavy and light attack within a week.
Junta soldiers destroyed the road that connects Monywa and Chaung-U in Sagaing Region and streets from Kawkareik in Kayin State. Military and SNA troops were forced to recruit 1 person in every 10 houses in Banmauk, Sagaing Region.Military junta ordered the destruction of civilians’ houses from Ayeyarwady Region and Naypyidaw including monasteries.
Infogram
Six dead as Cyclone Mocha makes landfall in western Myanmar coast
/in NewsU.N. had warned of ‘a nightmare scenario’ in Bay of Bengal region home to crowded refugee camps.
Powerful Cyclone Mocha made landfall in western Myanmar Sunday, killing six people and bringing down trees, residents said, as humanitarian agencies warned of a severe impact on “hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people.”
The cyclone had earlier on Sunday intensified to a Category Five storm, with wind speeds reaching as high as 220 kilometers per hour (137 miles per hour), according to the Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology.
At least six people have been reported dead across Myanmar.
Reuters reported that parts of Sittwe, the capital of western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, were flooded. A video posted on social media showed the ground floors of several buildings under water, according to the news service.
“The whole northern Rakhine has suffered severe damage,” said Khine Thu Kha, spokesperson for the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine rebel group. “People are in trouble.”
The United Nations and its humanitarian partners spent the last week preparing for a “scaled-up cyclone response” by pre-positioning supplies and personnel.
“With the cyclone now losing intensity and moving inland, humanitarian teams” will start responding to those in need on Monday, the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Myanmar said in a statement Sunday.
“The ongoing wild weather in Rakhine and telecommunications interruptions mean it has not yet been possible to assess the full magnitude of the disaster,” the U.N. statement said.
“But early reports suggest the damage is extensive and needs among already vulnerable communities, particularly displaced people, will be high.”
Before the cyclone, the U.N. had estimated six million people were “already in humanitarian need” in Rakhine state, and the regions of Chin, Magway and Sagaing.
“Collectively, these states in the country’s west host 1.2 million displaced people, many of whom are fleeing conflict and are living in the open without proper shelter,” said OCHA, warning of “a nightmare scenario.”
Earlier fears that the cyclone might directly hit Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh – where up to one million Rohingya refugees live in crowded, low-lying camps – did not materialize, reported a correspondent for BenarNews, an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
The cyclone made landfall at around 3 p.m. and moved on from the area after 5 p.m. It missed Cox’s Bazar city but hit the sub-district and town of Teknaf, refugee camps in Teknaf and Saint Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal, damaging houses and uprooting trees, the correspondent reported.
About 2,000 houses were destroyed – including 1,200 houses on Saint Martin’s Island – and there was damage to 10,000 other homes, according to Muhammad Shaheen Imran, the head of Cox’s Bazar district civil administration.
There were no reports of landslides in Teknaf, as feared by authorities.
“Thank God, we have been saved,” Bangladesh’s Minister for Disaster Management and Relief Md. Enamur Rahman told BenarNews. “We feared for huge damage, but we have yet to get reports of major damage.”
Saint Martin’s Island resident Halim Ali told BenarNews that his house was flattened and his belongings were washed away.
“Saint Martin’s is a devasted place: houses destroyed, trees uprooted,” he said.
Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in Pune, said that Mocha is one of the biggest storms that has ever occurred in the Bay of Bengal.
“It is stronger than Nargis,” Koll told RFA, referring to the cyclone that left nearly 140,000 people dead and missing in 2008.
Cyclone Mocha formed on Thursday, causing heavy rains and a coastal surge in Rakhine state starting on Friday.
“Cyclone frequency is more or less the same in the Bay of Bengal – but once they form, they are intensifying quickly,” the scientist said. “This is in response to warmer oceans under climate change.”
Killed by falling trees
Mocha was weakening Sunday evening and moving toward Myanmar’s northwest. It was expected to become a depression by Monday when it’s over the Sagaing region, and will eventually move toward Kachin state.
Heavy rainfall and winds were expected as it moves into areas prone to flooding and landslides, according to the U.N.
In Tachileik city in northeastern Shan state, a married couple were buried in their house in a landslide caused by heavy rains on Sunday morning, according to the Hla Moe Tachilek Social Assistance Association.
Two people in Rakhine state, one man in the Irrawaddy region and another man in the Mandalay region were killed by falling trees.
In Sittwe, a telecom tower collapsed under high winds and mobile phone signals are down. Residents have been sharing images of damaged houses and roads on social media.
A large number of structures in Sittwe and Kyauktaw, another town in Rakhine, were damaged, and the schools and monasteries where people had been sheltering were left without roofs, Reuters reported.
The winds were still ravaging Sittwe as of Sunday afternoon and local authorities warned its 150,000 inhabitants to stay indoors.
Hundreds of Sittwe’s residents were already evacuated to the inland town of Mrauk-U on Saturday.
The Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine rebel group, said more than 10,000 people had been relocated from 21 villages on the coast and in low-lying areas in the state since Thursday.
RFA News
Shan armed group ‘investigating’ members after viral video depicts torture of civilian
/in NewsA video shared widely on social media shows a man suspended by rope from a tree while SSPP soldiers watch him squirm to avoid being burnt by a fire on the ground below
The Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) is carrying out an internal investigation after a video shared widely on social media this week showed its members torturing a man, a spokesperson for the ethnic armed organisation said.
The footage showed a man—identified as a civilian—hanging from a tree by rope with his hands tied behind his back, dangling over a fire on the ground and writhing mid-air to avoid being burnt. The act was reportedly part of an SSPP interrogation, and took place at a location between Mong Kung and Laikha townships in southern Shan State in early May.
“It is the nature of interrogations to get intense at times. However, this was considered crossing the line, and we need to investigate the matter,” SSPP spokesperson Sai Phone Harn said, adding that “action would be taken” against the members responsible.
A “trial” in an SSPP-controlled court regarding the incident was ongoing, he told Myanmar Now.
“Because this was done by our troops, it is our responsibility to deal with the consequences. Our command centre is trying to prevent this from happening again.”
Sai Phone Harn claimed that the victim pictured in the video was an informant for a rival armed organisation, the Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA), and alleged that he had been involved in several explosive attacks targeting SSPP convoys.
The man was still in SSPP custody at the time of reporting, with the armed group maintaining that he retained no injuries during the incident in question.
Frequent battles have broken out between the RCSS and SSPP in Mong Kung and Laikha, with area civilians often taken in by the armed groups for questioning. Thousands of people have been displaced for more than one month by the clashes, seeking refuge in local monasteries, the Shan Herald Agency for News reported on Monday.
Representatives of both the RCSS and SSPP attended so-called “peace talks” in the junta capital of Naypyitaw earlier this year.
The RCSS was signatory to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement with the government and military in 2015. The SSPP opted not to sign, and is a member of the Federal Political Negotiation and Consultative Committee, a negotiating body of ethnic armed organisations that includes the powerful United Wa State Army.
Myanmar Now News
Myanmar junta forces commit more atrocities, burn 19 civilians to death
/in NewsThe death toll could rise because the area is ‘now like a battlefield,’ ethnic armed group says.
Myanmar troops burned alive 19 civilians, including eight minors, on Wednesday, relatives of the dead, witnesses and a spokesman for the shadow government said, in the latest atrocity committed by junta soldiers in the country’s civil war.
The attack came in the south-central Bago region, where junta troops were fighting ethnic Karen rebels and members of the People’s Defense Force, a loose group of ordinary people who have taken up arms since the February 2021 military coup.
The slaughter came hours after remote mine attacks by rebels. Junta forces arrested people living in Nyaung Pin Thar village in Htantabin township and burned them to death around 5 p.m. on May 10, residents said.
Five members of the same family, including a 6-year-old, were killed, said a relative.
“The military junta forces just killed them like that,” another villager said.
The initial count was 18 dead, but on Friday, the Karen National Union, the political wing of the Karen National Liberation Army, announced that another resident had been burned to death in Nyaung Pin Thar village of Htantabin township.
Junta forces are still near the village and the death toll could be higher because the area is now like a battlefield, the KNU’s statement said.
The junta’s military’s 44th Battalion and units of 73rd, 599, 590 and 48 Light Infantry Divisions are operating the region and fighting with the KNU and its affiliate armed groups, according to the statement.
Another atrocity
The shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, and witnesses told Radio Free Asia that the victims ranged in age from 5 to 70 years old.
“They killed a total of 18 innocent villagers, 10 women and eight men,” NUG spokesman Nay Phone Latt said, adding that most of the adults killed were over 50.
“This is yet another massacre committed by the military council,” he said, referring to the junta which has ruled Myanmar with an iron fist since seizing power in a February 2021 coup.
The troops killed the villagers after a battle broke out between them and joint forces from the Karen National Liberation Army and the anti-junta People’s Defense Force near Nyaung Pin Thar village, said a local militia member.
“We detonated landmines about 15 times and about 30 junta soldiers were killed,” he said. “After that, the junta troops advanced to Nyaung Pin Thar village. More battles broke out there too.”
“We only found out last night, after the battles ended, that they had killed the villagers,” said a member of the local People’s Defense Force, a loose grouping of ordinary people who have taken up arms to fight the military. “We found the bodies only this morning.”
The 73rd and 36th infantry battalions based in Htantabin township raided other nearby villages including Nyaung Pin Thar and killed local villagers, he said.
He also said that during the battle, anti-regime forces killed about 20 junta soldiers and captured three officers.
RFA could not reach Bago region military junta spokesman Tin Oo or junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment.
Junta troops have conducted 64 mass killings across Myanmar between the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and mid-march 2023, resulting in the deaths of 766 people, according to the NUG’s Ministry of Human Rights.
RFA News
School damaged, five resistance fighters killed in three separate military airstrikes
/in NewsNo one was injured in the attack on a high school in Sagaing Region on Tuesday, but casualties were reported in similar incidents in Mon and Chin states earlier in the week
The junta air force struck a high school operating under the publicly mandated National Unity Government in Sagaing Region, as well as resistance targets in Chin and Mon states this week.
A fighter jet attacked the high school in Htan Taw, a village located around a mile west of the administrative centre of Ye-U Township, on Tuesday afternoon.
Around 300 students are currently registered at the school, where classes are led by teachers participating in the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement. Having gone home after classes ended, around 30 minutes before the attack began, none of the schoolchildren were harmed.
The fighter jet, which reportedly flew in from Manadalay’s Tada-U airport, made three passes over the school, firing several volleys of bullets at the ground, local sources told Myanmar Now on Tuesday afternoon.
A member of a local defence team who saw the wreckage after the attack said the brick barrier around the school and the entrance gate received direct hits, while parts of the school building were also damaged.
“Two rounds hit the brick wall near the school entrance and knocked down a tree. The walls of the school were riddled with shrapnel and a haystack outside a house near the school caught fire,” said the defence team member.
Eight pieces of shrapnel were later found in and near the school compound.
Another military airstrike in Hakha Township, Chin State, resulted in two deaths and three injuries among members of the Chinland Defence Force (CDF) on Monday evening.
According to the CDF Senthang (which is active in villages inhabited by mostly ethnic Senthang Chin people), a military jet bombed Khuapi village, located some 30 miles south of Hakha, near the office of the group’s central executive council.
“A person was killed by the bombing at the CDF Senthang office, although the bomb didn’t hit the office directly; it fell 50 feet away. The office wasn’t damaged but the strike hit several people,” a CDF information officer said.
Salai Siang Cung Hnin, a 24-year-old assistant secretary general, was killed on the spot. Salai Duh Lian Hmung, a 23-year-old company commander, died of his injuries at around 2pm on Tuesday, according to the CDF Senthang information officer.
No detailed information is yet available on the three injured CDF members. There were no civilian casualties, as non-combatants had already been evacuated from the area.
Starting on Sunday and lasting two days, air attacks also injured civilians and killed three anti-junta resistance fighters in Ye Township, Mon State.
The slain fighters–two men and a woman–died in the bombing of Wei Pa Thea, a village located around 20 miles north of Ye. Two other resistance fighters were also injured during the air raid, according to Saw Liston, district secretary of Brigade 6 of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).
The deceased belonged to a unit known as the Albino Tiger Column–made up of allied People’s Defence Force (PDF) and KNLA members–which released a statement on Tuesday identifying them as Zwe Marn Lin, Tun Lin Aung, and Khin Thandar Swe.
Naw Nyin Nyo, a resident of Wei Pa Thea in her 70s, also suffered a back injury during the airstrike, and a woman in her 30s named Naw Sandar Aye was also seriously injured. The bombing also started a fire that destroyed two houses, according to the statement.
Junta aircraft also came to attack as the resistance fighters’ bodies were being prepared for burial, according to Saw Liston.
“An Mi-35 helicopter shot at the village again while we were setting up for the funeral. No one was injured though,” he said.
Since seizing power in February 2021, Myanmar’s military has relied heavily on air power in its fight against resistance forces, which continue to challenge its control of the country.
The military council has now imposed martial law in 37 townships throughout the country, 11 of which are in Sagaing Region.
Martial law has also been declared throughout Chin State, where serious battles have broken out in recent months. In a statement released on Monday, the Chin National Army claimed that the military had carried out an average of more than one airstrike per day in the state, dropping more than 120 bombs, in March and April.
The military has been conducting airstrikes in KNLA territory since March 2021. A few months later, the group’s political wing, the Karen National Union, publicly condemned the coup and began offering shelter and military training to anti-junta activists.
Myanmar Now News