ACLED monitoring group report on the first half of 2022. Yesterday there were protests against the visit of the UN special envoy. The military putschists are getting closer and closer to the Russian regime, from which they will import oil starting next month.
Yangon ( / Agencies) – In the first six months of 2022, there were twice as many violent incidents by the armed forces against the civilian population in Myanmar as in Afghanistan. The latest report of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) shows that in the first half of the year there were at least 668 violent acts carried out by the army and 11,000 victims of the civil conflict that the country has been experiencing for more than a year. According to United Nations figures, there are about 1.25 million displaced people, 903,000 of whom are due to the war.
In 2022, the armed struggle has intensified against the coup junta that on February 1, 2021 overthrew the government headed by Aung San Suu Kyi – sentenced to 17 years in prison and still on trial – and her party, the National League for Democracy (LND) . The military has failed to consolidate its control over the country and often resorts to extreme violence, including against minors: “They kill civilians at checkpoints, torture them in prisons and kill them after clashes in the villages. They have also killed children and family members of those fighting the coup.In many cases the military desecrates the bodies of the people they kill, amputating body parts and burning the corpses,” the report says.
Pro-regime militias have also committed violent crimes, particularly against the last remaining NLD members in the country. The objective is to eliminate all kinds of opposition before the general elections, which the military junta has decided to call in 2023.
In the conflict, the Burmese army and the People’s Defense Forces -the armed wing of the government of national unity in exile- face each other, along with ethnic militias historically present in the different Burmese states. In the coming months the conflict could spread to Rakhine, where the Arakan Army, the local militia, had signed an armistice with the military in 2020. However, in recent months regime troops have attacked several Arakan bases, although whether there will be an escalation remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, the UN special envoy, Noeleen Heyzer, met yesterday with the head of the Burmese junta, General Min Aung Hlaing. According to statements by the diplomat, the meeting “was intended to speak personally about the practical steps to reduce the escalation of violence and deal with the crisis”, specifying later that the visit should not be considered as a legitimization of the regime. Heyzer called on the army to suspend further executions, following which four well-known pro-democracy activists were carried out.
Yesterday some anti-regime activists staged a protest on the ruins of a village burned by Burmese troops on the west bank of the Chindwin River in the Sagaing region. On the metal plates recovered from the fire they had written: “How many dead bodies does the UN need to act?” (view photo).
According to experts, the dialogue with the coup generals proved useless: the junta refused to implement the five-point peace plan of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which recently decided to exclude Myanmar from all future ASEAN summits.
Increasingly isolated from the international community, Myanmar is consequently drawing ever closer to anti-democratic regimes like Russia, from which the Burmese army already receives most of its ammunition and weapons. And as the Tatmadaw declared yesterday, from next month Myanmar will also import Russian fuel, in order to circumvent Western sanctions imposed on both countries. The army spokesman added that Myanmar might also consider joint oil exploration with Moscow and Beijing.
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