The world must pay more attention to Myanmar’s civil war and redouble efforts to deny the military junta access to the weapons it has used to unleash violent terror against its civilian population, 12 U.N. experts said in a statement Monday.
Published as the civilian death toll in the nearly four-year civil war surpassed 6,000, the declaration calls for a “change of course” by the international community to stop “failing the people of Myanmar” and to bring the “disaster” out of “the shadow of international attention.”
Thousands of these 6,000 civilians have seen their lives cut short by “indiscriminate attacks” perpetrated by junta forces, it says, adding that the army “often deliberately targets civilian homes and infrastructure.”
“Unlawful killings by junta forces are common and characterized by their brutality and inhumanity,” the experts said. “According to credible reports, nearly 2,000 people were killed while in the custody of junta forces, 365 were shot in the head and 215 burned alive. »
“Many victims were tortured to death. Others were subjected to acts amounting to enforced disappearance before their execution,” they added. “Beheadings, dismemberment and disfigurement of bodies are shockingly common. »
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Some 21,000 people arrested by the junta since the start of the civil war also remain in detention, the statement said, with most held with their families “without any information about their fate or whereabouts.”
Among others, the statement is signed by Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar, and Gabriella Citroni and Grażyna Baranowska, Chair and Vice-Chair Rapporteurs of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.
“Largely insufficient”
Myanmar’s military seized power from the country’s democratically elected government in February 2021 and has since been locked in fighting against various militias and rebel armies across the country.
Andrews, the UN special rapporteur for Myanmar and a former US congressman, released a report last year titled “The Billion Dollar Death Business”, which detailed in detail how Chinese, Russian and Singaporean companies profited from selling arms to the junta.
Since then, the world has taken several steps to try to limit the junta’s access to weapons, including efforts by the U.S. government to cut off access to weapons. of its air-fuel supply limit air attacks against civilians.
However, observers say the junta is find ways to get around such initiatives and many others must be made to disarm the junta.
In their statement, the UN experts said global efforts had reduced the junta’s access to “weapons, dual-use technologies and manufacturing equipment” by about a third since the release of Andrews’ report.
“As welcome as these actions are, they remain largely inadequate and lack the coordination and strategic targeting needed to provide the support the people of Myanmar need and deserve,” the experts said in the statement. “We can and must do better.”
The statement also calls on governments around the world to reject the junta’s plans to hold “elections” for a new government next year.
“You cannot hold elections when you overthrew a democratically elected government in an unconstitutional coup and continue to arbitrarily arrest, detain, disappear, torture and execute opposition leaders,” they said, calling the election plans a “fraud.”