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Fire station raid triggers junta attacks in Budalin Township

August 11, 2023/in News

The attacks come as resistance forces continue to hold the township’s fire department chief and others for helping the regime to target dissidents Regime forces have begun carrying out raids in Sagaing Region’s Budalin Township following the capture late last week of fire department staff and their families by local resistance groups. According to sources […]

‘Dramatic increase’ in Myanmar war crimes: UN probe

August 9, 2023/in News

Investigators say they are looking for evidence linking crimes to specific individuals, especially high-level officials UN investigators said Tuesday they had gathered strong evidence of surging war crimes in Myanmar, including mass executions and sexual violence, and were building case files to help bring perpetrators to justice. The Southeast Asian country has been ravaged by […]

Fire station raid triggers junta attacks in Budalin Township

August 11, 2023/in News

‘Dramatic increase’ in Myanmar war crimes: UN probe

August 9, 2023/in News

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Fire station raid triggers junta attacks in Budalin Township

August 11, 2023/in News

The attacks come as resistance forces continue to hold the township’s fire department chief and others for helping the regime to target dissidents

Regime forces have begun carrying out raids in Sagaing Region’s Budalin Township following the capture late last week of fire department staff and their families by local resistance groups.

According to sources in the area, a column of around 100 soldiers based in the Depayin Township village of Saing Pyin started attacking villages north of the town of Budalin early Thursday morning.

This column was later joined by another of around 70 troops based in Ku Taw, a village in western Budalin Township. At around 11am, the two columns converged in Kin San, a village some 20km north of Budalin, the sources said.

“The two columns combined to make one large force that I think will now start searching for the firefighters,” a local with ties to a resistance group told Myanmar Now.

The raids have forced hundreds of civilians from Kin San and other villages in the area to flee, according to residents.

Last Sunday, anti-regime groups stormed a fire station in downtown Budalin and detained 21 people, including the township’s fire department chief, 12 firefighters and other staff, and eight family members.

The resistance groups said they targeted the fire department because of its collaboration with the junta in sealing off dissidents’ houses and arresting civilians, and for its failure to help put out fires set by regime soldiers.

The groups say the detainees are being held in a safe place as they face prosecution for their role in supporting the junta.

There were also reports that the army column from Saing Pyin is holding around 30 local villagers hostage. Myanmar’s military routinely uses civilians as human shields in areas where it faces attack from resistance forces.

“Many of the hostages were middle-aged people just going about their business when they were taken away. Some of them didn’t seem to think that the army posed a threat to them,” said the source close to local resistance forces.

Budalin is less than 40km north of Monywa, Sagaing Region’s capital and largest city, and the seat of the junta’s Northwestern Regional Military Command.

In late July, three student leaders were tortured and killed following a raid on their office in western Budalin Township. Sources say they were repeatedly stabbed in the chest before being put to death.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, around 1.6 million people have been displaced from their homes in Myanmar since the military seized power in February 2021, with Sagaing Region alone accounting for more than half of this figure.

Myanmar Now News

‘Dramatic increase’ in Myanmar war crimes: UN probe

August 9, 2023/in News

Investigators say they are looking for evidence linking crimes to specific individuals, especially high-level officials

UN investigators said Tuesday they had gathered strong evidence of surging war crimes in Myanmar, including mass executions and sexual violence, and were building case files to help bring perpetrators to justice.

The Southeast Asian country has been ravaged by deadly violence since a coup deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021, unleashing a bloody crackdown on dissent that has sparked fighting across swathes of the nation.

The United Nations’ Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said it had evidence that Myanmar’s military and affiliated militias were “committing increasingly frequent and brazen war crimes.”

It pointed among other things to indiscriminate aerial bombardments, the burning of villages and mass killings of civilians and detained combatants, as well as torture and horrific sexual violence.

The investigation team warned in its annual report that “the number of incidents bearing the hallmarks of serious international crimes” had surged since the coup.

“Every loss of life in Myanmar is tragic, but the devastation caused to whole communities through aerial bombardments and village burnings is particularly shocking,” Mechanism chief Nicholas Koumjian said in the statement.

“Our evidence points to a dramatic increase in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the country, with widespread and systematic attacks against civilians, and we are building case files that can be used by courts to hold individual perpetrators responsible.”

‘Highest level of cruelty’

The IIMM was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes and prepare files for criminal prosecution.

While the team has never been permitted to visit Myanmar, it said it had engaged with over 700 sources and had collected “over 23 million information items,” including witness statements, documents, photographs, videos, forensic evidence and satellite imagery.

The team—already cooperating with the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court—said it “plans to accelerate its collection of evidence of the most serious international crimes.”

The investigators said they were particularly looking for “linkage evidence” demonstrating responsibility of specific individuals, especially high-level officials.

The IIMM report explained that military commanders have a duty under international law to prevent and punish war crimes committed by those under their command.

“Repeatedly ignoring such crimes may indicate that the higher authorities intended the commission of these crimes,” the report said.

It highlighted evidence of the use of child soldiers by “various armed actors,” and said it was seeing “more and more evidence concerning torture, sexual violence and other forms of severe mistreatment at numerous detention facilities.”

The evidence indicated that such crimes were “being committed with the highest levels of cruelty and harm to the victims, including rape with objects, other forms of humiliation, mutilation, gang or serial rape and sexual enslavement,” the report said.

The IIMM said it was also investigating rampant sexual violence committed during the bloody crackdown on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority that in 2017 resulted in the displacement of nearly a million people.

“Sexual and gender-based crimes are amongst the most heinous crimes that we are investigating,” said Koumjian, saying these were “pervasive during the Rohingya clearance operations.”

Myanmar Now News

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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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‘Highest level of cruelty’

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