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Newborns and women among 50 detained in southern Myanmar

October 26, 2023/in News

Junta troops arrested civilians after soldiers died in a nearby clash. Myanmar troops arrested around 50 villagers in an act of retaliation, locals told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday. After a local People’s Defence Force attacked a junta outpost, soldiers captured women, children and entire families from a nearby village. While the army has already […]

Myanmar victims file war crimes complaint in Philippines court

October 25, 2023/in News

Lawyers and advocates are relying on the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’ to have the case heard. UPDATED on Oct. 25, 2023 at 1:40 p.m. ET Five Myanmar nationals on Wednesday asked the Philippines’ Department of Justice to open a war crimes investigation into 10 members of the Burmese junta for a range of alleged atrocities, […]

Newborns and women among 50 detained in southern Myanmar

October 26, 2023/in News

Myanmar victims file war crimes complaint in Philippines court

October 25, 2023/in News

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Newborns and women among 50 detained in southern Myanmar

October 26, 2023/in News

Junta troops arrested civilians after soldiers died in a nearby clash.

Myanmar troops arrested around 50 villagers in an act of retaliation, locals told Radio Free Asia on Wednesday. After a local People’s Defence Force attacked a junta outpost, soldiers captured women, children and entire families from a nearby village.

While the army has already released some detainees, others remain in custody in Tanintharyi, the country’s southern coastal region. Locals from Myeik township said soldiers captured them on Monday following a clash that allegedly left several junta soldiers dead.

The arrests are ongoing, a resident who did not want to be named for security reasons told RFA on Wednesday.

“They arrested all the villagers in Tone Byaw Gyi village. There are entire families, even mothers with newborn babies,” he said. “Some were released. Some are still being arrested.”

The militia group attacked the post in Tone Byaw Gyi last week, an official from the local People’s Defense Force said.

“We tried to seize the outpost, but we couldn’t because they laid many landmines around it,” he said, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.

“We left the battle because we were out of arms and ammunition. Our side lost a drone in the battle.”

Junta forces are treating villagers harshly because of their heavy losses, he said, adding that 12 soldiers were killed and six were injured.

RFA has been unable to confirm these claims.

Tanintharyi region’s junta spokesperson Thant Zin did not respond to RFA’s request for comment by the time of publication.

The junta outpost in Tone Byaw Gyi is the site of many ongoing clashes since the country’s 2021 coup, with local resistance groups bombing the outpost in July.

Regime troops arrested over 3,200 people in Tanintharyi region between April 2022 and September 2023. Among them, 2,141 were released, according to the independent research group that goes only by the initials FEB Tanintharyi.

More than 25,000 people, including pro-democracy activists, have been arrested since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

RFA News

Myanmar victims file war crimes complaint in Philippines court

October 25, 2023/in News

Lawyers and advocates are relying on the principle of ‘universal jurisdiction’ to have the case heard.

UPDATED on Oct. 25, 2023 at 1:40 p.m. ET

Five Myanmar nationals on Wednesday asked the Philippines’ Department of Justice to open a war crimes investigation into 10 members of the Burmese junta for a range of alleged atrocities, including the killing of civilians, mutilation of bodies and torching hundreds of homes and churches.

Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief whose forces ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in a February 2021 coup, was named among the 10 targeted in the criminal complaint.

It comes two years after a mass arson attack by junta forces on the town of Thantlang, which was part of an offensive in Chin state in northwestern Myanmar that saw some 2,000 homes destroyed, at least 250 people killed and 60,000 driven into India, according to the plaintiffs and rights groups.

The alleged crimes committed in the region were “part of Myanmar’s forgotten war against the Chin,” said one of the complainants, Salai Za Uk Ling, who is also the deputy executive director of the Chin Human Rights Organization.

“We are a Christian people whose pastors are being murdered and whose churches and faith-based schools are being destroyed in a systematic campaign by junta forces,” Salai, who lives in exile in India, told a news conference in Manila.

“With this persecution of Myanmar’s Christians continuing, we pray that our brothers and sisters in the Philippines will hear our cry and grant us justice.”

Thantlang residents were quick to oppose the military coup, which toppled an elected government, and by September of that year had formed several anti-junta People’s Defense Force groups. Their resistance put them firmly in the sights of Myanmar’s feared military, known as the Tatmadaw.

Another claimant, Zing Ral Tu, described how her father Pul Ral Tu was shot and killed by junta troops in Thantlang in 2021 along with his friend, Pu Hram Cung.

The men, who were senior members of the local Baptist church, were transporting medicine for civilians fleeing the violence.

“We will never get justice through Burmese courts,” the 47-year-old said on Wednesday through tears. “We pray the Filipino people will hear our cry for help.”

Landmark case

But whether the claimants will find justice in the Philippines is far from certain.

Lawyers are relying on the principle of “universal jurisdiction,” a concept in international law which recognizes that some crimes are so serious that they transcend borders and national courts can prosecute perpetrators. There is no precedent for such a case in the Philippines.

The claimants’ Filipino lawyers, Romel Bagares and Gilbert Andres, argue that the landmark Philippine Act on Crimes Against International Humanitarian Law obligates Manila to prosecute “war crimes” committed anywhere in the world.

“The law builds on a long humanitarian legal tradition in the Philippines,” said Andres in a statement. “It doesn’t matter that the crimes were committed by non-Filipinos against non-Filipinos outside Philippine territory.”

Prosecution in the Philippines would send a “strong statement” to the international community, he separately told RFA-affiliated news organization BenarNews. However, he acknowledged the country’s notoriously backlogged justice system would be an obstacle.

“We can only hope and pray,” he said. “It is only up to the discretion of the DOJ. We hope that the prosecutors here are really up to the challenge.”

Speaking to RFA Burmese, Andres noted that this is the first time that universal jurisdiction had been invoked through the Filipino penal code, calling it a “history-making filing.”

“I think the filing in itself will be a form of victims’ rights, access to justice,” he said. “The mere filing in itself [makes] a strong statement both for the Philippines and also for the Myanmar military junta, because, in fact, the Philippines has been declaring before the United Nations that we have universal jurisdiction and we have jurisprudence that says that there’s no jurisdiction for war crimes.”

Fellow lawyer Bagares said there was already a plethora of evidence gathered by the U.N.’s Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar concerning the alleged crimes in Chin state, as well as by rights advocacy groups.

“We have also petitioned ASEAN to promote regional justice mechanisms and this case in the Philippines sends a powerful signal to our regional partners,” he said in a statement, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Salai Za Uk Ling, one of the five Myanmar nationals who filed a criminal complaint against the military junta, addresses reporters during an impromptu news conference outside the Philippine justice department in Manila, Oct. 25, 2023. Credit: Jojo Riñoza/BenarNews

The Philippines is already struggling with its own allegations of human rights abuses after the blood-soaked presidency of Rodrigo Duterte from 2016-22.

His brutal war on suspected drug addicts and dealers left 8,000 dead. He now faces at least two cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity, though he is not facing prosecution at home.

Duterte’s successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., meanwhile said at an ASEAN summit in September that the solution to the Myanmar crisis should be Myanmar-led.

Chris Gunness, the director of the Myanmar Accountability Project, which is supporting the case, said Philippine law “allows” the case to be heard in the country’s courts.

“If your house has been burned down, if your town has been destroyed, if 60,000 of your own people have been driven to another country … how desperate can you be?” Gunness told reporters.

He said this was an opportunity for Manila to show the world an image “rooted in the rule of law, in decency, democracy and Christian values,” rather than one where daily murders occurred under Duterte.”

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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