AP – Myanmar’s military has consistently targeted civilians and their communities as a form of collective punishment in the country’s southeast since the army seized power in early 2021, a rights group said in a report.
Documented airstrikes on villages examined by researchers from the Karen Human Rights Group based in Myanmar’s southeast, are emblematic of a broader assault on civilians across the war-torn nation, said the Bangkok-based chief of the Myanmar team of the United Nation’s (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights James Rodehaver, He spoke in an online panel discussion accompanying the release of the new report.
Military officials were not immediately available for comment on the report, but in the past has said it attacks only legitimate targets of war, accusing the resistance forces of being terrorists.
Myanmar is racked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and brutally suppressed nonviolent protests. That triggered armed resistance and combat in many parts of the country, with the military increasingly using airstrikes to counter the opposition and secure territory.
The army is on the defensive against ethnic militias in much of the country as well as hundreds of armed guerrilla groups collectively called the People’s Defense Forces, formed to fight to restore democracy.
Rights organisations and UN investigators have found evidence that security forces indiscriminately and disproportionately target civilians with bombs, mass executions of people detained during operations and large-scale burning of civilian houses.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which tallies political arrests and attacks, at least 540 people, including 109 children, have been killed by the army’s airstrikes across the country between January and October this year.
The Karen Human Rights Group identified 227 airstrikes on villages, schools and medical facilities in seven districts in the country’s southeast where guerrilla fighters from the main ethnic Karen fighting force have battled the military.
A self-proclaimed Karen state there also includes towns in the nearby region of Bago, the southern Mon state and Tanintharyi region.
