At least 435 people were killed by the army in the first nine months of the year. In 2021 there were 113. Added to this are artillery attacks and air attacks against houses, schools and religious buildings, as well as massacres and fires set by troops on the ground. The junta uses fear as a weapon. At least a thousand civilians trapped in fighting in Rakhine state.
Yangon () – For the fourth consecutive year – since the military returned to power after the February 2021 coup – the number of mass killings has increased in Myanmar, with at least 435 people killed in massacres in the first nine months of this anus. The Myanmar Strategy and Policy Institute has sounded the alarm in a report published in recent days, documenting cases in which at least 10 or more people were killed at the same time, numbering several hundred between January and the first week of October. Added to this are the systematic incidents of arrests, torture and summary justice against civilians by the army, often under specious accusations of supporting the rebels.
To this we must add 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 attack in the city of Myaung, for a total of 466 As reported by Radio Free Asia (RFA), the number of civilians killed in mass events so far in 2024 marks the latest in an annual increase since the coup, with 379 in 2023, 245 in 2022 and 113 in 2021.
Researchers explain that the number of victims has increased with the junta’s increasing use of artillery and airstrikes against homes, schools and religious buildings, in addition to massacres and arson attacks by troops on the ground. In one of the most recent events, on October 19, around 100 soldiers from the 33rd Battalion raided the village of Si Par in the city of Budalin, arresting and killing 22 civilians on the spot, including two elderly people. “Junta forces treat people like animals, not like human beings,” explains one source, who like others interviewed in the report speaks with the guarantee of anonymity to protect his safety. “They killed,” he adds, “people of different ages, including people in their sixties and seventies….. It was so cruel that I can’t talk about it in detail.”
Kyaw Win, director of the Burma Human Rights Network, said the junta – which denies documented cases of mass killings – is 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 people… to prevent them from associating with the [rebeldes]», he stated. “It is an intimidation strategy.” On October 16, Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN, called on the UN Security Council to bring a case against the junta to the International Criminal Court (ICC), stating that it was impossible to hold the military regime responsible for its actions. war crimes in the country’s courts, given the conflict situation.
Meanwhile, at least a thousand civilians are trapped in fighting in the western state of Rakhine, as rebel groups approach a coup army headquarters in the town of Ann, blocking roads and leaving residents with no way out. At the forefront of the offensive is the Arakan Army, also accused in the past of attacks and violence against the Roinghya Muslim minority, which continues to seize large portions of territory from the Junta. Most of the city’s 10,000 residents fled when fighting intensified in July, but some families, numbering about a thousand people, stayed because they had nowhere safe to shelter. The insurgents are now a couple of kilometers from headquarters, and the military has closed all roads, leaving the few remaining civilians in Ann with no way out. “We have nowhere to go. All the roads are closed,” says one witness, “and the fighting is getting more and more intense.”
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