Last week, soldiers of the Myanmar/Burma military reportedly beheaded three men in Pale Township in the Sagaing Region of Myanmar. Two of them were civilians, and the third a member of a People’s Defense Force in Nyaunggon Village.
A witness told The Irrawaddy news website that the men had been killed as they returned to their village on 27 September, thinking that the junta troops who had occupied it for the past two and half weeks had left. One man’s head was hung on a fence, another placed on a chair, and the third ‘had his abdomen cut open, intestines taken out, limbs cut off and [then] put into his abdomen.’
The same day, at least 19 children and their teacher were injured when the regime shelled a monastic school in Wuntho Towsnhip, also in the Sagaing Region. Most were aged between five and eight, and seven of them were critically wounded.
Emblematically, and tragically, these atrocities took place just one day after the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk delivered a powerful address to the UN Human Rights Council in which he roundly condemned the regime’s human rights violations and called on the international community to bring an end to ‘an unspeakable tragedy’.
The statistics speak for themselves. The High Commissioner’s report presents 22 documented incidents of mass killings, the burning of entire villages, and over 687 airstrikes against civilians in the period from 1 April 2022 until 31 July 2023.
This is backed up by data from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which, as of 2 October, reports that at least 4,137 people have been killed by the military since the coup took place in February 2021. More than 25,000 people have been arrested, and over 19,000 of them remain in detention.
In addition, the UN estimates that at least 1.7 million people have been internally displaced – though the real figure is believed to be much higher – and as many as 15.2 million people are facing food insecurity due to the crisis.
Some UN officials have concluded that the junta’s violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, and of course it had already been accused of genocide against the Rohingya people following ‘clearance operations’ in 2017 that led to over 730,000 Rohingyas being forced into refugee camps, where almost all still reside.
These recent developments make the decision to invite the junta to the ASEAN-EU 5th Policy Dialogue on Human Rights on Tuesday 3 October all the more incomprehensible, and unacceptable. The junta’s invitation comes despite the fact that the European Union has so far taken the strong position of refusing to recognise the junta following its February 2021 coup and imposing sanctions on connected entities and individuals.
In response to the junta’s invitation to the dialogue, participants of the ASEAN-EU Civil Society Organisation Forum – a platform that has been convening during these days ahead of the Forum, and which includes CSW – have formally written a statement for the attention of the ASEAN and EU authorities, urging the disinvitation of the junta from the human rights dialogue.
‘This would send a clear and principled message to the Myanmar military that while it continues its litany of atrocities it has no business sending a representative to a human rights dialogue. It would allow the EU and other ASEAN representatives to hold more open and frank discussions on how to better respond to the human rights crisis in Myanmar, exchanging more freely on shortcomings in either bloc’s approach. It would also address safety concerns that some CSO Forum representatives may perceive and strengthen the credibility of the EU-ASEAN human rights dialogue.’
By CSW’s Europe Liaison Officer Jonathan de Leyser
Featured Image: ‘EEAS Headquarters‘ by European External Action Service is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED.