YANGON (AsiaNews) – For the fourth consecutive year – since the military returned to power following the coup in February 2021 – the number of mass killings in Myanmar has increased, with at least 435 people killed in massacres in the first nine months of this year. The alarm was raised by theInstitute for Strategy and Policy-Myanmar in a report published recently, which documents cases in which at least 10 or more people were killed at the same time, for a total of several hundred between January and the first week of October. Added to this are systematic events of arrests, torture and summary justice against civilians by the army, often with spurious accusations of support for the rebels.
The macabre count. To the count must be added at least 25 civilians killed by the junta in Budalin in the Sagaing region between the 9th and 20th of this month, and another six in an air raid in the town of Myaung for a total total of 466. According to reports Radio Free Asia (RFA) relaunching the document, civilians killed in mass events so far in 2024 mark the latest in an annual increase since the coup with 379 in 2023, 245 in 2022 and 113 in 2021.
Casualties increasing with artillery and air attacks. The researchers explain that the number of victims has grown with the junta’s increasingly frequent use of artillery and air strikes targeting homes, schools and religious buildings, as well as massacres and arson by troops in the field. In one of the most recent events, on 19 October, around a hundred soldiers from the battalion No.33 they raided the Si Par village in the town of Budalin, arresting and killing 22 civilians on the spot, including two elderly people.
People treated like animals. “The junta forces treat people like animals, not like human beings” explains a source, who like other interviewees interviewed in the report speaks under the guarantee of anonymity to protect his safety. “They killed – he adds – people of various ages, including sixty and seventy year olds… It was so cruel that I cannot talk about it in detail.”
The attempt to erode support for the opposition. Kyaw Win, director of Burma Human Rights Networksaid the junta – which denies documented cases of mass killings – was using fear as a weapon in an attempt to erode public support for the armed opposition. “This is a strategy of the junta to threaten the people… to prevent them from joining the [ribelli]”, he said. “It’s a strategy of intimidation.” On October 16, Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, called on the UN Security Council to submit a case against the junta to the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying it was impossible to hold the military regime accountable for its actions. war crimes in the country’s courts given the conflict situation.
The thousands trapped in Rakhine State. Meanwhile, at least a thousand civilians are trapped in the fighting in the western state of Rakhine, while rebel groups are approaching a coup army headquarters in the city of Ann, blocking roads and leaving residents without exits. The offensive is launched by the Arakan Army, accused in the past of attacks and violence against the Roinghya Muslim minority, which continues to steal large portions of territory from the junta.
The 10 thousand internally displaced people. Most of the city’s 10,000 residents fled when the fighting intensified in July, but some families, totaling a thousand people, remained because they had no safe place to take refuge. The insurgents are now a couple of kilometers away from their headquarters, with the military having closed all roads, leaving the few remaining civilians in Ann with no way out. “We have nowhere to go. Every road is closed – says a witness – and the fighting is becoming extremely intense”.
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