Reports of massacres and atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military junta are shocking but not uncommon, and the bodies keep piling up while the international community, the United Nations, and ASEAN are at a total loss for an appropriate response.
At least 25 people from around 17 wards and villages near Budalin Township in Sagaing Region northwest of Mandalay were the latest to be slaughtered, according to the National Unity Government (NUG) in exile. The killings took place during October 11-20, in what appears to be a payback for a recent resistance operation.
They included three children, three women, and an elderly person, while six villagers in Sipar village were dismembered and their bodies were found hanging from the fence posts of local homes. A separate report said bodies were decapitated and disfigured beyond recognition.
“They are taking revenge for losing a battle with us late last month, but those they are killing are civilians. This is very cowardly,” Ko Thitsar, a leader of the People’s Defense Force (PDF), the armed wing of the NUG, in Sagaing Region’s Depayin Township, told The Irrawaddy.
NUG officials said the killings erupted after the Northwest Regional Military Command suffered significant casualties during a clash with anti-regime forces near Sipar, in Budalin Township. A column of about 100 troops was then deployed and houses razed, backed by airstrikes.
Another 60 people were taken and used as human shields during raids on neighboring villagers as the column went from one civilian house to the next, forcing hundreds to flee.
Again, the NUG is urging the international community to hold the junta, led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, accountable for war crimes. It has again warned that if such massacres are allowed to continue with impunity, then such tactics and doctrine will persist and increase.
It’s more than a fair point. Despite the public outcry over the atrocities of war in the Middle East and Ukraine which are reported daily in the Western media, barely a word is said about the tragedies in Myanmar or the failures of regional policies like ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus.
Even less has been said by Julie Bishop, the former Australian foreign minister who was appointed by the U.N. as special envoy to Myanmar in April. A month after Bishop’s appointment, 76 people were tortured and killed in Byian Phyu, in Rakhine State, over two days.
Then, in June, independent media and the NUG came out in support of claims made by the Arakan Army (AA) that up to 80 people were massacred after being subjected to “horrific and insidious” torture in Rakhine State by drunken soldiers at the military’s behest.
Accounts of massacres committed against the Rohingya in July and August were as many as they were varied and, as the BBC noted, difficult to report.
The International Criminal Court was asked to expand a long-running investigation into previous slaughters of the Rohingya, to include massacres committed on February 28 and March 2 last year that claimed at least 37 lives.
A month later, 165 people were killed by an air force bombardment, now known as the Pazigyi massacre, on Pazigyi village west of Mandalay.
According to Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica, which compiles lists of civilian deaths attributed to the military, more than 2,000 people died in about 210 massacres between February 2021, when the junta ousted an elected government, and December 2023.
Since then the military has lost control of much of the country to an array of ethnic armed organizations and PDFs, yet those outside with an interest at stake still insist that talks must continue with the military while the anti-regime forces are quietly ignored.
Min Aung Hlaing is expected to visit China next month for talks with Premier Li Qiang about promised elections to be held next year, which have been encouraged by China. Genuine elections are an impossible prospect and an insult to the thousands of victims of war.
Of the few words uttered by Bishop about her mandate was that she is willing to maintain close communication and strengthen cooperation with China and ASEAN to reach a consensus on the proper handling of the Myanmar issue. That won’t work and the massacres will continue.