Restless: Protesters running from tear gas and charging riot police in Mandalay in this file picture. — AP
THE military rulers of Myanmar now see civilians as their adversary and are making war on the country’s own people, undermining the basic ability to live, the United Nations said.
Two years on from the Feb 1, 2021 coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government, the situation is a “festering catastrophe”, UN human rights chief Volker Turk said, adding that the military was operating with “complete impunity”.
In a report examining the first two years since the takeover, the UN Human Rights Office said that at least 2,940 people had been verified as killed, of which nearly 30% had died in detention.
However, the true death toll is likely to be much higher.
James Rodehaver, head of the UN rights office’s Myanmar team, said the armed forces were now actively fighting on around 13 different fronts.
“The military is stretched increasingly thin,” he said in Geneva, so has relied increasingly on air power and artillery to clear the way for ground forces, with more than 300 airstrikes in the last year.
The report documented deadly airstrikes on schools and hospitals.
Nearly 80% of the country’s 330 townships have been affected by armed clashes, the report said.
“There has never been a time and a situation in which a crisis in Myanmar has reached this far, this wide throughout the country,” said Rodehaver.
“In the past, the conflicts have been more isolated in the ethnic states.
“Now it’s reaching even the Bamar heartland.”
UN reports indicate that nearly 39,000 houses nationwide have been burnt or destroyed in military operations since February 2022, “a more than 1,000-fold increase compared to 2021,” the UN rights office said.
The military and its affiliates have made 17,572 arrests in the first two years since the coup, it added.
The junta is using a so-called “four cuts” strategy – an attempt to cut off its adversaries’ food, communications, ability to recruit, and access to money or a livelihood, said Rodehaver.
“What they’re doing now is they are treating Myanmar’s people as their opponent and adversary,” he said.
“You have a military making war against its own people.
“They have really created a crisis that’s resulted in a loss, a regression in every human right, and that includes the basic ability to live and to have an economic future.”
Turk said Myanmar’s generals, “emboldened by continuous and absolute impunity”, had embarked on a scorched earth policy to stamp out opposition.
“There are reasonable grounds to believe that the military and its affiliated militias continue to be responsible for most violations, some of which may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes,” he said. — AFP
