The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) should back a UN Security Council-mandated arms embargo prohibiting the sale of weapons to Myanmar’s junta, an international human rights group said Tuesday, citing reports of military abuses in Kayah state it warned could amount to war crimes.
A day ahead of a planned annual retreat for ASEAN foreign ministers, watchdog group Fortify Rights published a report entitled “Ongoing War Crimes in Karenni (Kayah) State, Myanmar” which it said documents the murders of at least 61 civilians by military personnel in Kayah between May 2021 and January 2022.
The report includes details on what has become known as the “Christmas Eve Massacre” in Kayah’s Hpruso township, when troops killed at least 40 civilians, including a child and two aid workers with the London-based group Save the Children, on Dec. 24, 2021.
Ismail Wolff, regional director at Fortify Rights, said in a statement accompanying the release of the report that Myanmar’s junta “is murdering people with weapons procured on the global market,” and called on ASEAN to help put an end to the situation.
“Clear and definitive action is needed to compel the Myanmar junta to rethink its attacks on civilians,” he said. “The U.N. Security Council must urgently impose a global arms embargo on the Myanmar military, and it would be strategic and sensible for ASEAN to support it.”
Fortify’s report was based on testimony from 31 people who witnessed abuses by the military in the eight months until January, as well as photographic and video evidence and documentation from humanitarian agencies and armed ethnic groups in Kayah.
It found that as the junta stepped up an offensive in Kayah in December and January, military troops murdered civilians, and used bombs, heavy artillery, and arson in residential areas. The military has tried to justify its actions by saying the areas were a haven for members of armed ethnic groups and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias formed to protect civilians following the Feb. 1, 2021 coup.
But sources interviewed by Fortify Rights, as well as RFA’s Myanmar Service in earlier reports, described troops using civilians as human shields and forced porters in Kayah state, as well as committing other rights violations including arbitrary arrests, torture, sexual abuse, and even murder.
Fortify cited a doctor in Myanmar who said he was called in to examine the bodies retrieved from the site of the Christmas Eve Massacre but was unable to conduct autopsies on several of them because they were too badly burned.
He described how he had identified at least 31 bodies, including five women and one girl, and said several appeared to have been gagged, hit over the head, and even burned alive.
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