Blog Elements – Page 97

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

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 […]

Dozens of political prisoners join hunger strike in Monywa

September 13, 2023/in News

The striking inmates’ demands included the return of confiscated personal items, removal of existing restrictions on receiving care packages, and adequate medical care Wai Moe Naing, leader of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee, is among the political prisoners participating in a mass hunger strike at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison since last week, sources familiar with […]

Myanmar junta steps up use of banned cluster bombs

September 13, 2023/in News

Dozens of political prisoners join hunger strike in Monywa

September 13, 2023/in News

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

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

Dozens of political prisoners join hunger strike in Monywa

September 13, 2023/in News

The striking inmates’ demands included the return of confiscated personal items, removal of existing restrictions on receiving care packages, and adequate medical care

Wai Moe Naing, leader of the Monywa People’s Strike Committee, is among the political prisoners participating in a mass hunger strike at Sagaing Region’s Monywa Prison since last week, sources familiar with conditions at the prison said.

The strike was a response to the harsh restrictions prison authorities had imposed on inmates, including limitations on the receipt of care packages and stricter enforcement of contraband rules.

A “special search force”—including junta police, members of the military, fire department staff, and administrators—had come to the prison in the Sagaing Region capital and confiscated inmates’ books, clothing, and other personal items on September 8.

The following day, 14 political prisoners initiated a hunger strike, demanding the return of the inmates’ personal items, the removal of existing limitations on receiving care packages, and adequate medical care for Monywa Prison inmates.

The prison authorities ignored these demands, prompting more political prisoners including Wai Moe Naing to join the strike, according to two sources who spoke with Myanmar Now.

Around 50 political prisoners in total are now participating in the strike, the sources said.

Prominent Monywa-based protest leader Wai Moe Naing is serving a sentence of nearly 50 years on several charges–including sedition, unlawful assembly, abduction with intent to murder, murder, and treason–after participating in the city’s protests following the February 2021 coup. He was arrested after being hit by a vehicle driven by regime forces during a protest, and has been in detention since April 2021.

According to Shin Thant, a member of the Monywa People’s Strike Steering Committee, authorities have placed Wai Moe Naing in solitary confinement, while three other hunger strike participants have fainted from hypoglycaemia and anaemia.

“The authorities refused to provide medical care for the three prisoners that fainted,” Shin Thant said. “The prison still hasn’t agreed to the conditions set by the prisoners.”

The Political Prisoners Network (PPN), a prisoners’ rights monitoring group, reported on September 12 that prison authorities said the striking inmates had not received treatment because it was against the law to go on strike in prison.

Thaik Tun Oo, a spokesperson for the PPN, said that in addition to the prisoners participating in the hunger strike, others held at Monywa Prison were refusing the prison’s food and subsisting only on what they received from their families.

“I have been told that they will continue the strike until the authorities meet their conditions,” he added.

Political prisoners’ families have said that oppression and mistreatment in prisons throughout the country became even worse after Myo Swe, an official in the junta’s defence ministry, was appointeddirector-general of the home affairs ministry’s Prison Department.

The military is not allowing in-person visits at most prisons, citing the risk from the COVID-19 pandemic as justification. The military has also refused to grant access to prisons to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that the regime was still holding at least 19,458 political prisoners throughout Myanmar as of September 12 of this year.

Myanmar Now News

Spring Revolution

Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 8 to 14, 2024)September 20, 2024 - 2:30 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 8 to 14, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Magway Region, Shan State, Kachin State, and Rakhine State from September 8th to 14th. Military Junta arrested the civilians as human shields from Mindon Township, Magway Region, and Salingyi Township, […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (September 1 to 7, 2024)September 13, 2024 - 5:08 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Sep 1 to 7, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Mandalay Region, Magway Region, and Shan State from September 1st to 7th. The Military Junta threatened that they would launch airstrikes on the townships which they lost. The […]
Human Rights Situation weekly update (Aug 22 to 31, 2024)September 7, 2024 - 4:09 pm
Human Rights Violations took place in States and Regions from Aug 22 to 31, 2024 Military Junta Troop launched airstrikes and dropped bombs in the Sagaing Region, Magway Region, Bago Region, Mandalay Region, Tanintharyi Region, and Shan State from August 22nd to 31st. Head of Prison which works under Military Junta, tortured and blackmailed the […]

Multimedia

What is the Truth (Cartoon Animation)May 31, 2024 - 4:58 pm
What is Transitional Justice (Cartoon Animation)May 3, 2024 - 8:38 am
Close the SkyApril 11, 2024 - 7:45 am
Forced MarriageJanuary 9, 2024 - 2:12 pm

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.

Half Sized Blog Element (Single Author Style)

Half Sized Blog Element (Multi Author Style)

Full Sized Blog Element (Big Preview Pic)

ND Burma

Recent Posts