Myanmar generals intensify brutality against civilians

UN Human Rights chief warns scale of the military’s crimes has escalated due to foreign-sourced air power and heavy weaponry.

Members of the Myanmar military take part in a parade to mark the country's 78th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw in March. Picture: AFP

Myanmar civilians are being burned alive, dismembered, raped, beheaded and bludgeoned to death by their own military in a campaign of grotesque violence that has only intensified as the international community has looked away, the UN Human Rights Commissioner said this week as he called for an urgent rethink on how to end the crisis.

Volker Turk described the catalogue of atrocities committed against the Myanmar people since the February 2021 coup on Wednesday as “inhumanity in its vilest form”, and warned the scale of the military’s crimes had escalated thanks to foreign-sourced air power and heavy weaponry.

Moscow continues to pour arms and equipment into Myanmar notwithstanding international sanctions against the junta led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, though evidence the ban on jet fuel sales to the regime imposed by some nations was starting to have an effect should prompt more countries to take similar action, Mr Turk said.

Incredibly, this week the two pariah states are co-hosting an ASEAN members and dialogue partner nations defence meeting and counter-terrorism exercises in Russia. While Australia, the US, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan have boycotted the event, India and China have opted to attend. Singapore is believed to be the only ASEAN nation that has opted to skip it altogether, raising serious questions about ASEAN’s commitment to ending the violence.

ASEAN member states and partner nations participate in this week’s Russia and Myanmar co-hosted defence exercises in Russia.

The exercises have prompted predictable outrage among rights groups, with Justice for Myanmar claiming ASEAN nations’ attendance only “deepens the bloc’s complicity in the junta’s atrocities which are often carried out under a false pretext of counter-terrorism”. The activist group called for Australia and other boycotting nations to skip all ASEAN military activities involving the junta, and ramp up sanctions against the junta and its businesses.

The federal government has imposed just one round of sanctions on the junta since the coup, compared to the hundreds it has slapped on Russia since its invasion of Ukraine.

In Geneva, Mr Turk decried the “insufficient attention being paid by the international community” to the plight of the Myanmar people. “That must change. The responsibility of protecting civilians and restoring conditions conducive to peace and stability therefore also rests with the international community, who I urge to act now,” he said.

“New thinking on Myanmar is needed - urgently – to bring this unspeakable tragedy to an end.”

Aung San Suu Kyi. Picture: AFP

Between April 2022 and July 31, 2023, the military launched 687 airstrikes — more than double the number carried out in the 14 months following the coup — with evidence it was also using thermobaric bombs against civilians. The aerosol bombs are enhanced-explosive weapons made of toxic chemical agents designed to explode in the air before impact to maximise casualties by increasing the radius of the shockwave and blast.

At least 22 mass killings with a death toll of at least 563 were recorded in the 15 months to July, bringing the total number of killings to more than 4000 since the coup. More than 1.6 million people have been displaced, close to 25,000 people have been arrested, 19,264 are still detained — including ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and 150 have been sentenced to death by military-controlled kangaroo courts.

Denial of humanitarian access throughout the whole country _ in the wake of Cyclone Mocha and a precipitous economic slide _ is also having dramatic consequences. There are now severe shortages of rice in many parts of Myanmar, forcing millions of people into food insecurity, and at risk of starvation. But those food shortages have been grossly exacerbated by the military’s “four-cuts strategy” which punishes perceived hostile populations by burning their homes, food stores, seed banks, and livestock.

Volker Turk. Picture: AFP

The UN says military ground operations have grown deadlier in line with rising junta frustration at its inability to quash widespread civilian and armed resistance. Photographic evidence pointed to soldiers inflicting “unimaginable pain on their victims, including by burning them alive, dismembering, raping, beheading, stabbing, bludgeoning, and using them as human shields against attacks and landmines”, Mr Turk said.

“Entire families, including elders and toddlers, have been slain. While the military has often sought to destroy evidence by burning the victims’ bodies, it also displayed beheaded or otherwise defiled corpses to instil terror in those discovering them.”

In some cases the severed heads of victims have been left spiked on trees, in others the partially-burned remains of women showed clear signs of violent sexual abuse, including “foreign objects lodged in their bodies”. Still more had their eyes gouged out.

In light of such evidence, the UN Human Rights commissioner called once again for the Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court.