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The number of mass murders in Myanmar increased for the fourth consecutive year, with at least 435 people killed in massacres in the first nine months of the year, an independent research group announced on Friday.
In the midst of the generalized opposition to the rule of the junta, the Myanmar army embarked on an offensive of the earth burned in all the country's remote border regions after its February 2021, the coup.
The FRG Burma regularly receives junta troop reports that have arrested, torturing and briefly performing civilians they accuse of supporting rebel groups. And in the midst of losses on the battlefield against ethnic armies and armed opposition groups, the military has increasingly used strong artillery and air strikes to target villages, often causing mass events.
Friday, the institute of strategy and policy of politics, said that it had documented mass murder – defined as the murder of 10 or more people at the same time – at least 435 people between January 1 and the first week of October.
Friday, this number increased to at least 466 – including 25 civilians killed by the junta in the Canton of Budalin of the Sagaing region from October 9 to 20 and six other killed on an air strike in Junta in the canton of Myaung de Sagaing, according to data compiled by RFA.
The number of civilians killed during mass events to date in 2024 marks the last of an annual increase since the coup, against 379 in 2023, 245 in 2022 and 113 in 2021, according to ISP-MYANMAR.
The research group said that the number of victims increased as the junta is using more and more artillery and air strikes that target houses, schools and religious buildings, in addition to massacres and crime crises by ground troops.
Civilians treated like “ animals ''
In one of the most recent events, around 100 soldiers from the battalion junta No. 33 made a descent into the village of Si by De Budalin Township on October 19, arresting and performing 22 civilians, including two elderly men, said a resident to RFA.
“The forces of the junta treat people and animals, not human beings,” said the resident who, like others interviewed for this report, said anonymity due to security problems. “They killed people of various ages, including sixties and the 1970s … It was so cruel that I can't talk about it in detail.”
Another incident occurred on September 5 in the north of the canton of Namhkan in the state of Shan, which is under the control of the rebel national liberation army Ta'ang. A Junta air strike that night killed 13 civilians, residents said.
One day earlier, a Junta air strike on a camp for people displaced by a conflict in the canton of South Pekon of Shan's state killed nine people, including seven children.
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At least 176 civilians were massacred in May only, including 32 in an artillery strike in a village in the canton of Myingyan in the Mandalay region on May 9.
The Arakan ethnic army, or AA, announced on June 4 that the junta had killed more than 70 civilians during a raid in a village in the canton of Sittwe in the state of Rakhine on May 19.
Junta's troops pulled and killed the victims in the village of Phyu and burned other people in a criminal fire after having accused them of supporting the AA, residents said.
A woman whose husband and younger brother were killed during the incident told RFA that she wanted justice for their death.
“I couldn't see their bodies. The others told me that my young husband and my younger brother were burnt down, and all that I had left of them was my husband and Sarong's shirt,” said the woman. “I felt such an anxiety and I pray that no one else is made to suffer like that.”
A lawyer, who also refused to be appointed, condemned the murder of civilians by the military, qualifying acts of “war crimes under international law”.
“Intimidation strategy”
RFA's attempts to contact Junta’s spokesperson, Major-General, Zaw Min Tun, for his response to massacres reports, remained unanswered on Friday, but the army said it does not target civilians.
Kyaw Zaw, a spokesperson for the office of the National Government of National Unity of Myanmar, said the military loses territories, the more his war crimes commit.
“In addition to the air bombing, the junta's land forces brutally killed civilians during their offensives,” he said.
Kyaw Win, director of Birma Human Rights Network, said that the junta uses fear as a weapon in her attempt to erode public support for armed opposition.
“This is a strategy of the junta to threaten the people … to prevent them from associating with [rebels]”He said.” It is an intimidation strategy. »»
On October 16, Kyaw Moe Tun, the United Nations Ambassador to the United Nations, called on the United Nations Security Council to file a complaint against the International Criminal Court, saying that it is impossible to hold the military regime responsible for his war crimes before the courts of the country given the conflict.
Translated by Aung Naing. Published by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.