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Myanmar military admits mass murder of Rohingya

January 11, 2018/in News

YANGON: Myanmar’s military admitted on Wednesday its soldiers had murdered 10 captured Muslim “terrorists” during insurgent attacks at the beginning of September. Local Buddhist villagers joined in the mass murder by digging the mass grave and forcing the captured men into it. “Villagers and members of the security forces have confessed that they committed murder,” […]

ND-Burma December justice news: Mon rights organisation details 22 years of rights abuses in Mon state and clear demands for justice from government; Conflict ramps up in Shan and Kachin; Ta’ang lawyer arbitrarily arrested and tortured; Reuters journalists on trial…

January 10, 2018/in Justice Newsletters

Seeking Justice in Burma December 2017 New ND-Burma member report details victims’ demands for justice ND-Burma member the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) published a new reportdetailing human rights abuses by the military and ethnic armed organizations in Mon areas of Burma over the last 22 years. Having conducted dozens of interviews, HURFOM found that […]

Myanmar military admits mass murder of Rohingya

January 11, 2018/in News

ND-Burma December justice news: Mon rights organisation details 22 years of rights abuses in Mon state and clear demands for justice from government; Conflict ramps up in Shan and Kachin; Ta’ang lawyer arbitrarily arrested and tortured; Reuters journalists on trial…

January 10, 2018/in Justice Newsletters

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Myanmar military admits mass murder of Rohingya

January 11, 2018/in News

YANGON: Myanmar’s military admitted on Wednesday its soldiers had murdered 10 captured Muslim “terrorists” during insurgent attacks at the beginning of September.

Local Buddhist villagers joined in the mass murder by digging the mass grave and forcing the captured men into it.

“Villagers and members of the security forces have confessed that they committed murder,” the military said in a statement.

A five-member military team led by Lt Gen Aye Win visited the mass grave (seen in photo above) and interviewed 49 witnesses, according to the armed forces’ statement.

It was the first known admission of wrongdoing by the Myanmar military during its operations in the western state of Rakhine.

A statement released by watchdog Amnesty International condemned the massacre but said it has strong evidence of other mass murders of Rohingya by the tatmadaw, or Myanmar armed forces.

The Wednesday statement, said AI, “is only the tip of the iceberg and warrants serious independent investigation into what other atrocities were committed amid the ethnic cleansing campaign that has forced out more than 655,000 Rohingya from Rakhine State since last August”.

“Amnesty International and others have documented overwhelming evidence that far beyond Inn Din, in villages and hamlets across northern Rakhine State, the military has murdered and raped Rohingya, and burned their villages to the ground. These acts amount to crimes against humanity and those responsible must be brought to justice.”

The army launched a sweeping counter-offensive in the north of the state in response to Rohingya militant attacks on Aug 25, triggering an exodus of more than 650,000 Rohingya Muslim villagers.

The United Nations has condemned the army’s campaign as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar denies that, saying its forces were carrying out legitimate counterinsurgency operations.

The military announced on Dec 18 that a mass grave containing 10 bodies had been found at the coastal village of Inn Din, about 50 kilometres north of the state capital Sittwe. The army appointed a senior officer to investigate.

Related: Journalists on trial for Rohingya crisis reporting

The military said on Wednesday its investigation had found that members of the security forces had killed the 10 and that action would be taken against them.

Photo released on the Myanmar armed forces’ Facebook page ‘True News Information Team’ purports to show investigators questioning a soldier over the Inn Din mass murder.

Security forces had been conducting a “clearance operation” in the area on Sept 1 when “200 Bengali terrorists attacked using sticks and swords”, the military said in a statement posted on the Facebook page of its commander-in-chief, Snr Gen Min Aung Hlaing.

The military refers to members of the Rohingya Muslim minority as “Bengalis”, a term the Rohingya reject as implying they are illegal migrants from Bangladesh.

Ten of the attackers were captured after the security forces drove the rest off by firing into the air, according to the statement on Facebook, which the military often uses to make announcements.

The captives should have been handed over to the police, in line with procedures, but the militants were attacking “continuously” and had destroyed two military vehicles with explosives, it said.

“It was found that there were no conditions to transfer the 10 Bengali terrorists to the police station and so it was decided to kill them,” the military said, referring to the findings of the investigating team.

Angry ethnic Rakhine Buddhist villagers, who had lost relatives in militant attacks, wanted to kill the captives, and stabbed them after forcing them into a grave on the outskirts of the village. Then members of the security forces shot them dead, the military said.

“Action will be taken against the villagers … and the security force members who violated the rules of engagement according to the law,” the statement said.

Action would also be taken against those who had failed to report the incident to their seniors, and those responsible for supervising the operation, it added.

The military investigation was led by Lt Gen Aye Win. The same officer had been in charge of a wider probe into the conduct of troops in the conflict that concluded in a report in November that no atrocities had taken place.

ND-Burma December justice news: Mon rights organisation details 22 years of rights abuses in Mon state and clear demands for justice from government; Conflict ramps up in Shan and Kachin; Ta’ang lawyer arbitrarily arrested and tortured; Reuters journalists on trial…

January 10, 2018/in Justice Newsletters

Seeking Justice in Burma

December 2017

New ND-Burma member report details victims’ demands for justice
ND-Burma member the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) published a new reportdetailing human rights abuses by the military and ethnic armed organizations in Mon areas of Burma over the last 22 years. Having conducted dozens of interviews, HURFOM found that victims overwhelmingly want justice in the form of acknowledgments, apologies, reparations or criminal justice.

Conflict ramps up in Shan and Kachin states displacing hundreds;
Ta’ang lawyer arbitrarily arrested in Shan state;
4 Karenni soldiers allegedly executed by Tatmadaw
Renewed Tatmadaw offensives in December displaced approximately 900 people in Shan State and 100 in Kachin State. The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) wrote a letter to local government objecting to individuals and private companies making use of lands belonging to to IDPs who fled conflict in 2011. A landmine in Muse township, Shan State, killed one child and injured 4; it is unclear who laid the mine. A local church group called on authorities to re-open the unsolved case of two Kachin school teachers raped and murdered in 2015. A detailed look at the Tatmadaw’s ‘other ethnic atrocity’ in Kachin State by Stella Naw can be found here.

Ethnic Ta’ang lawyer Mai Myo Aung was detained by police in Muse Township following a shooting at a gambling den, despite reportedly not being at the scene – police claim they have CCTV footage implicating him but have refused to release it. His wife says he has been beaten by police and authorities say he faces prosecution for homicide under sections 302 and 307 of the penal code.

In Loikaw, the capital of Kyah State, 3 soldiers of the Karenni National Progressive Party and a civilian were allegedly executed at an army base after having been arrested during a raid on the rebel camp. 5 youths who protested the killings have been summoned to appear in court accused of violating Section 19 of the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law.

Two Reuters journalists working on Rakhine story arrested;
Press team arrested for flying a drone cleared of all charges;
Journalist attacked and in critical condition
Two Burmese Reuters reporters were arrested and accused of planning to provide state secrets to foreign media. Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were reportedly arrested after accepting documents from police officers and face charges under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act, which carries a maximum jail term of 14 years. The journalists had reportedly been researching a story on military abuses in Rakhine State.

A piece of good news towards the end of the year as the two foreign journalists and their two local staff arrested for flying a drone over the parliament have been released and cleared of all charges.

A journalist for the local media organisation Democratic Voice of Burma was stabbed in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State, and is in critical condition. No case has been opened into the attack as of yet and there are no suspects.

Burmese government blacklists UN Special Rapporteur;
UN Fact Finding Mission finds similar patterns of abuse in Rakhine, Shan and Kachin
The Burmese government has banned UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, from entering the country and withdrawn all cooperation for the duration of her tenure. Yanghee Lee said in response: “This declaration of non-cooperation with my mandate can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country.”

Meanwhile the UN Fact Finding Mission concluded its first set of interviews with victims of human rights abuses and found “patterns” in the allegations of Shan, Kachin and ethnic Rakhine groups similar to those they heard from the Rohingya. If true, these would “constitute serious human rights violations,” according to the FFM investigators.

A mass grave containing ten bodies was found by the military in Rakhine state. A general has been appointed to investigate whether state troops are culpable; internal military investigations in Burma consistently absolve ist forces of any wrongdoing.

Third session of Panglong planned for early 2018: civil society demands to join discussions;
Tatmadaw blocking Shan State preparations for peace conference
The third session of the Panglong peace conference should be held at the end of January. Civil society organisations have demanded they be allowed to join discussions in a letter to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, signed by 145 representatives from 92 groups.

Shan leaders have been unable to prepare for the upcoming Panglong conference due to the Tatmadawobstructing preparations for State level political dialogues.

Ethnic groups called on the government and Tatmadaw to move away from general statements and deliver a detailed vision of what a future federal system would look like.

Majority of defamation complaints filed by government officials
A report by Free Expression Myanmar found that the majority of complaints filed under Article 66(d) of the Telecommunications Law were by people closely related to the government. Article 66(d) has been widely used to punish criticism of people in power and has been deployed increasingly frequently since the NLD government took power.

Activists begin bid to get UNESCO recognition for 8888 uprising;
Aspiring 88 Generation politicians register as ‘Four Eights Party’
Activists have started the process of putting Burma’s 8888 uprising forward for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register. U Any Bwe Kyaw, a member of the group pushing for the nomination, said: “We want the world to recognize this movement so that no future governments can erase the history recorded in this museum.”

Some of the leading voices from the 8888 uprising have registered a new political party called the ‘Four Eights’, with the aim of taking ‘political responsibility’ as opposed to power.

Only 10% of land grab complaints have been settled;
Letpadaung copper mine complaints ignored
Only 10% of cases submitted to the committee on land complaints have been settled since it was formed in 2016. A total of 543 out of 5735 complaints have been resolved.

A letter to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from Letpadaung residents affected by the controversial copper mine project has been ignored.

Government fails to pay ethnic language teachers
Hundreds of ethnic language teachers in Mon and Karen states have not been paid their salaries for several months.

Spring Revolution

Civil Society Position Paper on ASEAN’s Goal of a Myanmar-Owned and -Led SolutionDecember 18, 2024 - 12:11 pm
Recommendations to ASEAN and Its Member States (1) Move beyond the 5PC to achieve a Myanmar people-led and people-centered solution to the crisis in Myanmar. ASEAN’s “Myanmar-owned and -led” approach must be backed by genuine political will that aligns with and supports the collective aspirations of the people of Myanmar. (2) Cease all pressure on […]
The Airstrikes after the journey to the China of the Junta Military LeaderDecember 10, 2024 - 1:28 pm
Operation 1027 was a coordinated military attack against the junta on October 27th, 2023. It was carried out by the Northern Brotherhood, which includes the Arakan Army, Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army. Several months later, the Three Brotherhood Alliance held three meetings to negotiate with China on January 11 […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 15 to 21, 2024)September 27, 2024 - 8:26 am
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 15 to 21, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Shan State, Chin State, Rakhine State, and Kachin State from September 15th to 21st. The Military Junta committed arresting, occupying the properties, threatening by using power, and […]

Multimedia

Reparation (Cartoon Animation)December 21, 2024 - 8:08 am
Human Rights Basic 4 signs Cartoon AnimationDecember 8, 2024 - 9:07 am
Human Rights Cartoon AnimationDecember 8, 2024 - 9:03 am
JusticeOctober 7, 2024 - 10:28 am

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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