‘Incredible brutality’ prevalent in battle for Myanmar

This article is published in association with United Nations.

Conflict in Myanmar between the military junta and opposition forces is increasingly brutal, with both sides likely responsible for international crimes including summary executions, top independent rights investigators said on Tuesday.

In a call to regional bloc ASEAN to help end the violence and support efforts to bring perpetrators to justice, the head of the Human Rights Council-appointed probe into the Myanmar emergency Nicholas Koumjian described an increasingly “desperate” junta whose devastating military tactics were being matched by opposition fighters acting with total impunity.

“Aerial bombings have increased very substantially in this last year,” Mr. Koumjian told journalists in Geneva. “In Kayah state in February of this year, four children were killed and around 10 injured when fighter jets dropped bombs and deployed machine gun fire on the school.”

Mr. Koumjian added that his investigators had also seen a video “that showed resistance forces beheading two captured soldiers in Loikaw in Kayah state in November, December of last year”, along with another video posted on social media of two young men being burned to death in Magway region. “So, this kind of incredible brutality is going on,” he said.

The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) was created by the Human Rights Council in 2018 to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes committed in Myanmar since 2011. It released its latest annual report on Tuesday.

Civilians frequently targeted

“Unfortunately, what our report conveys is that the number of these crimes is only increasing and the armed conflict is increasing in intensity and in brutality and crimes are happening more and more frequently,” Mr. Koumjian noted.

UN News/Vibhu Mishra

Nicholas Koumjian, Head of IIMM

The veteran rights expert and former international criminal justice prosecutor expressed his opinion that the junta which seized power in Myanmar on 1 February 2021 was becoming more “desperate” over the period covered by the report from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024, a time when armed conflicts increased across the country as challenges to military rule intensified.

“The targets of these bombings are usually civilian targets,” Mr. Koumjian said. “Schools, churches and hospitals are often the only structures in the area, and those are the structures…that are being bombed.”

ASEAN influence

In a direct appeal to the regional bloc ASEAN, Mr. Koumjian urged it to respond to “substantial evidence” that the Myanmar military was committing war crimes and crimes against humanity “at an alarming rate” by putting pressure on the junta to halt the conflict.

ASEAN, a “very key player in Myanmar”, according to the human rights investigator, has drawn up a five-point consensus to end the fighting that has been signed by “the junta itself”.

Nonetheless, “we see instead an increase in violence and an increase in the violence targeting civilians,” he said. “So, I think absolutely, it’s time for ASEAN to put some bite into its consensus. It’s not enough simply to say we support ending the violence. There have to be steps taken to ensure that, in fact, the violence has ended.”

Broad reach

The head of the IIMM noted that the panel’s report was based on information and evidence collected from more than 900 sources, including more than 400 eyewitness testimonies along with additional evidence such as photographs, videos, audio material, documents, maps, geospatial imagery, social media posts and forensic evidence.

Fighting impunity remains a core objective of the IIMM, which has shared its findings and evidence with authorities at the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice and in Argentina, Mr. Koumjian said.