A newly released report from a group of independent human rights experts says there is “substantial evidence” that Myanmar’s military junta has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, with civilians deliberately targeted in violation of international human rights law.
“Our mandate is to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes in Myanmar. Our report shows that the number of these crimes is only increasing. The armed conflict is increasing in intensity and brutality,” Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, IIMM, told journalists Tuesday in Geneva.
“We have collected substantial evidence showing horrific levels of brutality and inhumanity across Myanmar. Many crimes have been committed with an intent to punish and induce terror in the civilian population,” he said at the launch of IIMM’s annual report.
There was no immediate response from Myanmar’s junta, which the United Nations does not recognize as a legitimate government.
Koumjian said the IIMM has not sent the report to any authorities in Myanmar, though a public information officer noted the U.N. sent a copy to all member states, including Myanmar.
The 18-page report by IIMM, a body created by the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018, covers the period between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
Investigators say the report is based on evidence collected from more than 900 sources, including more than 400 eyewitness testimonies, along with additional evidence such as photographs, videos, geospatial imagery, social media posts and forensic evidence.
Authors of the report say that since the military toppled the country’s democratically elected government in February 2021, “the number of serious international crimes in Myanmar has continued to increase in frequency and scale.”
They note that in the civil war, the military has lost territory in outlying regions to ethnic armed organizations and the People’s Defense Force, or PDF, causing it to increasingly rely “on aerial and artillery bombardments of populated areas, resulting in numerous injuries and fatalities among the civilian population.”
The report documents many incidents proving that civilians “are often the victims of the conflict, not simply collateral damage, but often are targeted in the conflict,” Koumjian said.
“In Kayah state in February of this year, four children were killed and around 10 injured when fighter jets dropped bombs and deployed machine gun fire on the school,” he said.
One of two captured videotapes that he viewed shows PDF fighters “being tied between two trees and a fire built underneath them,” burning them to death. Another video shows “resistance forces beheading captured soldiers in Loikaw in Kayah State” in November and December of last year.
“It is incredible, not just the level of brutality, but the obvious feelings of impunity of those that committed the offense that they actually would videotape what occurred and then put it on social media so it would be broadcast,” he said.
The report accuses security forces of violently suppressing protests with disproportionate, often lethal force, “causing civilian deaths and serious bodily injury.” It says thousands of people have been arrested and many tortured or killed in detention, “particularly in military detention.”
Investigators say they have also collected reliable evidence of sexual and gender-based crimes in detention committed against males and females, including children under age 18, including gang rape and multiple rapes.
“I think the desperation of the regime is leading to more ferocity, more brutality in their attacks against the civilian population,” Koumjian observed. “But I would add that we are also seeing a very concerning increase in violence and brutality by opposition forces, and we are very concerned about that also.”
The chief investigator is calling on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regional bloc, or ASEAN, to help end the violence and bring the perpetrators of crimes to justice.
“ASEAN is a very key player in Myanmar,” Koumjian said, noting that the group “has drawn up a five-point consensus to end the fighting, that the junta itself has signed.”
“Yet we have seen an increase in violence, and we have seen an increase in the violence targeting civilians. … It is not simply enough to say we support ending the violence,” he said. “There have to be steps taken to ensure that, in fact, the violence has ended.
“It is time for ASEAN to put some bite into its consensus.”
