Patterns of Military Oppression In 2023-2024
Since its coup in February 2021, the military have perpetrated a more than three-year long terror campaign, resulting in widespread and systematic human rights violations committed against the civilian population. The military has failed to consolidate power and territorial control in the aftermath of its February 2021 coup and has reacted to calls for democracy and rule of law with violent tactics that recall Burma’s decades-long history of military-perpetrated violence and repression. According to observations by our organization, the so-called armed forces both disregard the existence of human rights norms, and relish in dehumanizing a civilian population.
The scope and scale of the atrocities committed by the military junta make their documentation a challenging one, but consequentially, all the more necessary. In this report, AAPP looks to examines the range of military tools and tactics inflicted between January 1, 2023 to July 29, 2024, that has resulted in patterns of military oppression, violence and human rights violations perpetrated across the country in a widespread and systematic manner. Whilst these tools and tactics have been used by the military throughout its history, in this reporting period, these patterns of violence have been re-applied in a distinct and increasingly brutal ways, in a desperate attempt to exert control over a country in which, the military are increasingly losing control.
The report comes at a critical moment in the long arc of resistance against the military junta, which as a result of such resistance efforts, has been considerably weakened. The past year and a half has seen a fundamental undermining of the junta’s strength, due in part to the concerted offensives launched by armed resistance groups, namely Operation 1027 in October 2023 and the consequential successes across the country throughout the first seven months of 2024. Ethnic groups have joined forces in achieving a shared common goal – ending the military junta’s rule and with it an end to the human rights violations and likely war crimes and crimes against humanity it has and continues to commit throughout its history.
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners AAPP
