UN says Myanmar’s army killed over 700 civilians in six months

GENEVA: Myanmar’s military was responsible for more than 700 civilian deaths over the six-month election period last year, the UN said Monday.

A fresh UN report covering the period from last August, when Myanmar’s military announced elections would be held, through the conclusion of the voting period at the end of January, said credible sources had verified “a minimum of 702 civilian deaths” over that time.

“Of these, 224 were women and 153 children,” the report from the UN rights office said, adding that “air strikes remained the single largest cause of destruction and suffering”.

“At least 505 civilians, including 175 women and 112 children, or 57 percent of the total, were killed in attacks carried out with jet fighters, drones, para-motors and gyrocopters,” it said.

Asked who was responsible for the killings, spokesman Ravina Shamdasani told AFP that “those 702 are attributable to the Myanmar military”.

“That doesn’t mean that there are no civilian casualties attributable to other armed groups,” she stressed, adding that the report relied on “credible data that we have access to. It is not a comprehensive figure”.

Civil war engulfed Myanmar in 2021 when the military staged a coup, ending a decade-long democratic interlude and deposing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar was ruled directly by the military for five years after the coup, before the junta held deeply restricted polls which this year delivered a walkover win for its allies in civilian politics.

New MPs elected coup leader Min Aung Hlaing as president in a transition which democracy watchdogs derided as a ploy to rebrand his continuing rule.

The UN’s rights office, which was harshly critical of the elections from the start, said in its report that “serious human rights violations and abuses, amid generalised insecurity and instability, characterised the period preceding the military-controlled elections”.

It said it had “verified incidents that evinced trends and patterns of violations and abuses that significantly undermined the essential fundamental rights and freedoms necessary for credible elections”.

The rights office determined that civilian deaths had spiked particularly in two periods — in August-September and December — coinciding with “the announcement of the elections and advancements by the military on the battlefield as it attempted to secure its territorial reach”.

It called on countries to refer the Myanmar situation to the International Criminal Court and to “cease and prevent the transfer to Myanmar of arms…, as well jet fuel and dual-use items, where there is a risk that they could facilitate violations” of international law.