Myanmar, NGO: “Junta bombs civilians, arms embargo needed”

ROME - An appeal to the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution imposing an immediate embargo on the supply of aviation fuel and weapons to the military junta of Myanmar comes in a note from Fortify Rights, a US body that monitors human rights violations around the world. The non-governmental organization accuses the […]

ROME – A call to the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution imposing an immediate embargo on the supply of aviation fuel and weapons to the military junta of Myanmar comes in a note from Fortify Rights, a US body that monitors human rights violations around the world.

The non-governmental organization accuses the military junta, which seized power in a coup on February 1, 2021, of “indiscriminate attacks against civilians,” such as the one the NGO documented last September 5. That day, according to testimonies collected, “a military aircraft of the junta bombed an internally displaced persons camp – known as the ‘Bangkok Camp’ – located near the village of La Ei. This location is in the municipality of Pekon, on the border between the states of Karen and Shan. The toll is nine dead including six minors between the ages of two and 16. Another 19 people were injured. The camp would have housed a total of about 600 people. A school and 49 shelters were also destroyed. According to accounts and videos obtained by the organization, a Burmese fighter “dropped two large bombs around 9:15 p.m. local time”. Fortify Rights claims to have “analyzed cell phone videos and dozens of photographs of the aftermath of the attack”, which allowed them to confirm the information.
In the note, the group reports the testimony of Akayar, a fictitious name of a 47-year-old math teacher. In the attack, the man lost his wife and two-year-old son.

TESTIMONY: MY WIFE DIED SHIELDING OUR TWO-YEAR-OLD SON WITH HER BODY

“At around 9:00 p.m.,” the teacher said, “a jet flew very low over us. My wife woke me up and we headed for the air-raid shelter, located under our hut. It’s a tight space, so I told my wife to stay there and sleep with the kids while I slept just above them. I heard the jet approaching for the second time. The sound was deafening. I found myself on the ground, the shack destroyed above me.” Soon after, Akayar found his wife lying face down on the ground, already lifeless. Because of the shock, he didn’t immediately realize that his son was there, wrapped in a sling around the woman’s body: “She was trying to protect him with her arms,” explained the man, who, helped by rescuers, took the child to the hospital: “The doctor told me he wouldn’t make it. A shrapnel from the bomb was lodged in his head.” The child, Akayar concluded, died after ten minutes.

Chit Seng, a human rights researcher for Fortify Rights, comments: “Myanmar’s junta jets continue to target civilian communities with total impunity while the world watches in silence.” The UN Security Council and member states, Seng urges, “can and must cut off aviation fuel supplies and arms flows.”

Yesterday, at the Third Committee on Human Rights at the 79th UN General Assembly, the delegate for Myanmar – linked to the elected government, then deposed by the military in 2021 – cited “the atrocious killing of civilians” last October 19 in Budalin, in the center of the A country where people have been “beheaded, bodies dismembered.” Since 2021, he continued, “daily airstrikes and indiscriminate bombing have destroyed more than 100,000 homes and killed 5,800 people, while 3.4 million people have been displaced.” In this context, the Rohingya minority “is increasingly marginalized.” Finally, he urged countries to impose an arms embargo and not support the junta.