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Prospects for Peace in Myanmar

October 3, 2022/in Justice Newsletters

Seven civilians killed in 3 shootings in Myanmar’s Yangon

September 30, 2022/in News

The 3 incidents involved the military or anti-junta forces, sources said. At least seven civilians were killed in three separate shootings involving the military or anti-junta forces in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon on Thursday evening, according to witnesses. The incidents took place in Yangon’s Pabedan and southern Dagon Myothit townships and left six men and […]

Prospects for Peace in Myanmar

October 3, 2022/in Justice Newsletters

Seven civilians killed in 3 shootings in Myanmar’s Yangon

September 30, 2022/in News

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Prospects for Peace in Myanmar

October 3, 2022/in Justice Newsletters

Achieving peace in Myanmar has been a long and troubling journey as the Myanmar junta has historically jeopardized and devastated all possibilites. This is evident through a long line of broken ceasefires and attacks on vulnerable, unarmed populations. Throughout different periods, the violence perpetrated against ethnic people has led to hundreds of thousands fleeing for their lives to border areas in order to seek refuge. Since the attempted military coup on 1 February 2021, efforts for peace have all but exhausted themselves as the terrorist-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, attempts to engage on a peace dialogue with ethnic armed organizations.

To ND-Burma members, such as the Association Human Rights Defenders and Promoters, peace is rooted in freedom from civil war, and agreement and harmony among all people. One challenge that has remained across Myanmar’s seven decades of brutal warfare has been building a truly federal arrangement that addresses the self-governance aspirations:

“For a multicultural society like Myanmar, the greatest test of democracy and peace is whether the government treats its minorities equal to the majority,” said Ko Aung Zaw Oo of the Association Human Rights Defenders and Promoters.

“Peace building becomes strategic when it works over the long run and at all levels of society to establish and sustain relationships among people locally and globally,” he added.

Unity is also a significant challenge as noted by ND-Burma affiliate member the Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO). A free and fair federal union has long been the goal of ethnic people who believe peace is rooted in, “the right to work without any interference and disturbance when working in a group,” said Salai Benjamin, a field staff at CHRO, adding peace requires that everyone is equal.

At its core, one of the major challenges to achieving peace in Myanmar has been the deeply flawed and problematic 2008-military drafted Constitution. The document protects the military junta across nearly all legal and social sectors of society. This on its own also enables and emboldens impunity.

In addition, chauvinism and authoritarian rule have undermined prospects for peace as the military corrupts the economy. There is a lack of rights for ethnic people who have long felt marginalized and discriminated against. Consequently, there is a lack of trust in the peace building process.

ND-Burma member, the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, has advocated for truth-seeking and protection mechanisms to be developed.

“The Myanmar Army commits atrocities against civilians and deliberately commits genocide and war crimes as well as crimes against humanity,” said Ah San, the Program Coordinator of the Documentation and Research Program at ND-Burma member organization, the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT).

Women have also routinely been denied roles in the peace building process, and have had their inputs and experience side-lined. “Women must be involved and must be supported in any matters related to peace,” said Ah San from KWAT.

Another key element discussed by ND-Burma members as it relates to peace is the importance of reparations and truth-seeking initiatives to ensure that past grievances are resolved through an inclusive process of national reconciliation. This begins by dismantling the Myanmar military and reinstating the democratically elected National League for Democracy.

Justice Newsletter-Sep 2022

Seven civilians killed in 3 shootings in Myanmar’s Yangon

September 30, 2022/in News

The 3 incidents involved the military or anti-junta forces, sources said.

At least seven civilians were killed in three separate shootings involving the military or anti-junta forces in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon on Thursday evening, according to witnesses.

The incidents took place in Yangon’s Pabedan and southern Dagon Myothit townships and left six men and a woman dead, sources told RFA Burmese.

In one of the shootings, a rickshaw driver and two young men were killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a junta soldier on duty near the Maha Thein Dawgyi Ordination Hall in Pabedan at around 3:30 p.m., according to a resident of the township, who declined to be named for security reasons.

“[The soldier] was shot near a betel nut stall on a side street near Ordination Hall. I didn’t hear anything for a while, and then a [military truck] arrived on the scene. The soldiers were yelling and cursing,” the resident said.

“Then I heard [around 10] gunshots continuously. The rickshaw man and two other young men who were hit died on the spot. I feel sad that these men were shot for no fault of their own.”

The resident said the bodies of the three victims were taken away by a Red Cross ambulance around 30 minutes later.

Other residents of Pabedan told RFA that authorities closed Maha Bandoola and Sule Pagoda roads, which run through the center of the township, following the shooting, but reopened them this morning. Meanwhile, the security force presence inside the Maha Thein Dawgyi Ordination Hall has been doubled, they said.

Posts on a Telegram social media network channel used by junta supporters said the two young men had “carried out an attack” on the soldier at the betel nut stall and were killed when security forces returned fire.

However, a spokesman for an anti-junta armed group known as the Yangon UG Association rejected the claims.

“We will attack and flee with motorcycles or cars. We will even attack on foot and run when we have an escape route. But it doesn’t make sense to attack [a military post] with a rickshaw,” said the spokesman.

“[The military] might be trying to protect themselves. Or they might just be lying to cover up the act. These urban guerrillas are young people in an age of globalization, they aren’t morons. Everyone knows you can’t launch an attack from a rickshaw.”

The spokesman added that urban guerrillas don’t carry weapons in Yangon because junta troops carry out strict security checks in the city.

Southern Dagon Myothit shootings

Also on Thursday, a resident of southern Dagon Myothit’s Ward 53 said junta soldiers shot and killed a man in his 40s and a woman in her 30s inside their home.

“When we found them, they were already dead. The man had gunshot wounds on his chest and stomach,” the resident said.

“They were shot in their own house. When we checked with people nearby, they said the two who had been killed were peaceful people. We don’t know exactly who shot them.”

Later the same night, the anti-junta South Dagon Urban Guerrilla Group said that its members had killed the deputy administrator of Ward 71 and an office worker from Ward 25’s General Administration Department, who it claimed were military informers.

RFA was unable to independently confirm the killings in southern Dagon Myothit township.

The military has yet to release any information about the killings, and further details about the incidents were not immediately available.

Nan Lin, a member of the Yangon-based anti-junta group University Old Students’ Association, told RFA that urban guerrilla units have attacked bunkers, police posts and local administration offices, leaving authorities on edge and ready to fire at anything they deem suspicious.

“More and more people have lost their lives because of the military’s indiscriminate shootings,” he said.

“Urban guerrilla forces are staging all kinds of different attacks. Because of this, the soldiers feel they aren’t safe anywhere,” Nan Lin said. “There are quite a lot of cases now where [troops] open fire at anything suspicious, sometimes even at their own people.”

In Yangon, authorities are regularly arresting people at their homes during checks of guest lists and shooting at anyone they suspect of being members of anti-junta groups, residents told RFA.

According to Thailand’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), authorities have killed at least 2,327 civilians and arrested 15,691 others in the nearly 20 months since Myanmar’s military seized power in a Feb 1, 2021, coup — mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests.

Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

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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