Burma – Page 2 – FoRB in Full

European External Action Service Headquarters in Brussels.

The Myanmar junta should have no place at the ASEAN-EU Human Rights Dialogue

Posted on 03/10/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma, European Union, International Arenas

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.

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Ruins of Nan Lan Village in Myanmar. Credit: Free Burma Rangers.

The brutal ‘Four Cuts’ strategy is causing untold suffering in Myanmar, yet the international community remains slow to react

Posted on 04/09/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

The ‘Four Cuts’ strategy, designed to sever insurgents’ supplies of food, funds, information and recruits, is an approach that has been used for decades by a series of military dictatorships in Myanmar/Burma. This devastating tactic is once again being employed, but in one of its bloodiest forms yet.

Breaking society

In a remarkable piece of reporting, in a country where foreign journalists have no official access to the true story of Myanmar’s civil war, Sky News recently released details of an undercover mission deep into southeastern Myanmar. Chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay encountered first-hand the Myanmar military regime’s devastating campaign of violence.

Ramsay and his team discovered shocking evidence of sustained attacks on civilian homes and infrastructure, including daily artillery and aerial bombardment as well as arson attacks, which are forcing people from their homes with over 1.5 million people currently displaced and in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.

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Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson, one of Myanmar/Burma’s most senior and internationally renowned Christian pastors.

The continued imprisonment of Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson is proof that no one is safe in Myanmar

Posted on 27/06/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

By Benedict Rogers

When I heard that my friend Reverend Dr Hkalam Samson, one of Myanmar/Burma’s most senior and internationally renowned Christian pastors, had been arrested at Mandalay airport on 5 December as he attempted to travel to Bangkok, several thoughts went through my mind.

On one level I was not surprised, because the current illegal military junta, which seized power in a coup on 1 February 2021, has been even more brutal, ruthless and inhumane than any of the succession of military dictatorships that have ruled Myanmar for most of the past six decades.

On another level, due to his international connections, I thought his arrest might simply lead to a brief detention, for the purposes of interrogation. I half expected him to be released within a matter of days. This is a man, after all, who has met the President of the United States in the White House, a Minister of State in the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, parliamentarians around the world and has attended international fora including the International Ministerial Conference on freedom of religion or belief in Washington, DC in 2019.

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Protesters with Myanmar/Burma flag painted on their wrists.

Two years after the coup, we must do all we can to stop the carnage in Myanmar

Posted on 01/02/202320/08/2024 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

By Benedict Rogers

Two years ago today, the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar/Burma’s military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, shattered the dream of a democratic, free Myanmar and plunged the country back into bloody, brutal repression. When he seized power in a coup d’etat on 1 February 2021, overthrowing the country’s democratically elected civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government, he tore up a decade of the military’s own reform process and returned Myanmar to pariah status in the international community.

The coup unleashed a new war on this beautiful but benighted country that has already endured 76 years of civil war. The impoverished country which had been beginning to emerge into the world economy, attracting foreign investment as it liberalised politically, has been consigned to even harsher levels of poverty, and a humanitarian and human rights crisis even more severe than under previous military regimes.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), 17,492 people have been arrested in the past two years since the coup, and 13,689 are still in prison. The junta has killed at least 2,894 people, including 282 children. At least 143 people have been sentenced to death, including 42 in absentia. But these are only the figures recorded – the real death toll, taking into account the military’s offensives in the ethnic regions, is likely to be much, much higher. Indeed, in his September 2022 report, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar Thomas Andrews estimated that more than 13,000 children have been killed, while 1.3 million people have been displaced and 28,000 homes have been destroyed. He said Myanmar’s crisis was spiralling from ‘bad to worse to horrific.’

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Rohingya Muslims displaced from Myanmar/Burma.

We must not let the Rohingya people slip to the bottom of the international agenda

Posted on 16/01/2023 by cswpress in Asia, Burma

On 2 December 2022 a group of approximately 180 Rohingya refugees boarded a boat in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh. Their intended destination was Malaysia, where many hoped to be reunited with family and loved ones, or to build a better life than the one available to them in the overcrowded, unsanitary and increasingly dangerous camps in Bangladesh.

They never made it.

In a statement issued on 25 December, the United Nations expressed concern that the boat had sank after it went missing in the Andaman Sea. Relatives of those onboard told the Guardian that they had little hope that their family members were still alive, and if confirmed it would bring the number of Rohingya refugees who have died on sea crossings to Malaysia in 2022 close to 400.

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