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Monywa Prison authorities agree to hunger strike participants’ demands

September 15, 2023/in News

While prison administrators promised adequate medical treatment following negotiations, the current health status of the striking inmates—who refused food for five days—is unconfirmed After opening negotiations with political prisoners on a hunger strike on Wednesday, authorities at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison have agreed to meet their demands, according to sources connected to the prison. Some […]

Myanmar junta steps up use of banned cluster bombs

September 13, 2023/in News

The US and Myanmar have not signed an international convention banning the weapons that often kill civilians. Myanmar’s junta is using internationally-banned cluster bombs to attack rebel forces in ethnic areas of the country, said residents, officials from armed ethnic groups and an international campaign working to eradicate the weapons. Cluster bombs, which can be fired […]

Monywa Prison authorities agree to hunger strike participants’ demands

September 15, 2023/in News

Myanmar junta steps up use of banned cluster bombs

September 13, 2023/in News

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Monywa Prison authorities agree to hunger strike participants’ demands

September 15, 2023/in News

While prison administrators promised adequate medical treatment following negotiations, the current health status of the striking inmates—who refused food for five days—is unconfirmed

After opening negotiations with political prisoners on a hunger strike on Wednesday, authorities at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison have agreed to meet their demands, according to sources connected to the prison.

Some 50 political prisoners including Wai Moe Naing, leader of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee, initiated a hunger strike on September 9.

On the fifth day of the strike authorities including the prison superintendent came to the participants to negotiate, according to Shin Thant, one of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee’s senior members.

“I was told that the prison complied with all of the requests including those about care packages, medical care, and return of the inmates’ personal items,” Shin Thant said.

Thaik Tun Oo of the Political Prisoners Network confirmed he had the same information about the agreement between the prison authorities and strike participants.

The current health status of the prisoners participating in the strike, who refused food for five days, is still unknown.

The hunger strike started after a “special search force,” made up of members of the military as well as junta police, fire department, and administrative personnel, inspected Monywa Prison on September 8 and confiscated personal items such as books, clothes, and appliances from the inmates.

Initially, 14 participants demanded the return of the confiscated items, permission to receive care packages from relatives outside the prison, and adequate medical care for sick and injured inmates. Wai Moe Naing was among more than 30 additional political prisoners to join the strike after authorities ignored these demands.

Authorities denied medical treatment to three of the participants after they fainted from malnourishment during the strike, and reportedly put Wai Moe Naing in solitary confinement after he joined.

Wai Moe Naing is currently serving a 50-year prison sentence following his arrest in April 2021 while participating in protests against the coup regime.

Political prisoners face exceptionally harsh treatment in Myanmar’s prisons.

In one incident in December 2021, authorities at Yangon’s Insein Prison brutally beat, and later denied medical treatment, to over 80 prisoners for singing songs associated with the resistance and refusing to leave their cells in solidarity with a “Silent Strike” taking place throughout Myanmar that day.

In June and July of 2023, several political prisoners removed from their cells in Mandalay and Bago regions, purportedly for transfers to other prisons, later proved to have been executed by prison authorities.

Myanmar Now News

Myanmar junta steps up use of banned cluster bombs

September 13, 2023/in News

The US and Myanmar have not signed an international convention banning the weapons that often kill civilians.

Myanmar’s junta is using internationally-banned cluster bombs to attack rebel forces in ethnic areas of the country, said residents, officials from armed ethnic groups and an international campaign working to eradicate the weapons.

Cluster bombs, which can be fired from cannons or dropped from airplanes, explode in mid-air, releasing dozens or hundreds of smaller bombs that scatter and explode, often killing or maiming civilians.

Neither Myanmar nor the United States are among the 123 signatories to the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty outlawing the use of such weapons.

“Myanmar’s production and use of cluster bombs is gravely concerning as these indiscriminate weapons primarily kill and injure civilians. There can be no justification for using them,” said Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan, a researcher with the Cluster Munition Monitor, the research and monitoring wing of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines-Cluster Munition Coalition based in Geneva, Switzerland.

“All governments should condemn this use of an internationally-banned weapon,” he said.

In a report issued on Aug. 31, the Cluster Munition Coalition said the ruling junta has used domestically-produced cluster bombs in attacks in several parts of the country since 2021, including as recently as early this June.

For example, the junta used cluster munitions in attacks near the villages of Kon Tha, Nam Mae Kon, and Warisuplia, in Demoso township of Kayah state from Feb. 17 to Mar. 7, the CMC’s report said.

The CMC also cited evidence that the Myanmar military used cluster bombs during an Apr. 16 airstrike on Pan Pa village in Chin state’s Mindat township, which killed three people, including a child, and injured seven others.

Denial

Thein Tun Oo, executive director of the pro-military Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies, denied that the military was using cluster bombs.

“As far as we understand, as far as we have studied so far, we have never heard of the military using cluster bombs,” he said.

“Has the other side got any evidence?” he asked. “For example, the details of where and how a cluster bomb was dropped, [and] what the ground situation was like when it was dropped. They need these details to accuse.”

The Myanmar military displays its weaponry during a parade commemorating the country’s 78th Armed Forces Day in Myanmar's capital Naypyitaw, March 27, 2023. Credit: Aung Shine Oo/AP — The Myanmar military displays its weaponry during a parade commemorating the country’s 78th Armed Forces Day in Myanmar’s capital Naypyitaw, March 27, 2023. Credit: Aung Shine Oo/AP

Radio Free Asia could not reach junta spokesman Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment.

Former military Capt. Kaung Thu Win, who joined the anti-regime civil disobedience movement, said unexploded submunitions from cluster bombs can detonate later from a mere touch of the hand and are a danger to children and rural residents.

“They will remain unexploded in forests, ditches and forest valleys,” he said. “They are hidden for a while and explode only when children are playing near them or civilians go into the forests.”

Spreading horror

Salai Htet Ni, spokesman of the Chin National Front, said the junta has been dropping cluster bombs in western Myanmar’s Chin state, including on Mount Victoria, where the ethnic Chin nationalist political organization is based, for a long time.

When junta dropped bombs onto the group’s headquarters from a plane, the explosions sent out submunitions that exploded again and again in a 61-meter (200-foot) radius, he said.

“And if they strike a forest, all nearby trees and plants are [destroyed], and they won’t regrow,” he said.

An official from the Karenni National Defense Force’s information department said he has seen junta forces use cluster bombs to attack civilian communities in Kayah state, burning down homes in villages and wiping out entire neighborhoods.

“The junta usually uses these highly explosive cluster bombs when attacking nonmilitary targets [and] civilian areas or places where war refugees shelter,” he said. “In 2023, the military started to frequently use 500-pound bombs, missiles and cluster bombs.”

The junta’s use of these weapons against civilian targets is a violation of international law and a crime against humanity, said Banyar Khun Aung, executive director of the Karenni Human Rights Group.

“The intention behind these cluster bombs … is to deliberately kill and destroy a large number of the civilian population, causing mass casualties and forcing them to flee to other locations,” he said. “That is evidently a horrible human rights violation.”

RFA 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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