The Myanmar military continues to wage war on those resisting its rule, despite the unilateral ceasefire that it announced in the wake of last month’s powerful earthquake. On Friday, Reuters news agency published a report stating that “the frequency of junta aerial attacks has increased since the ceasefire announcement, compared to the six months prior.”
On March 28, Myanmar was hit by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that destroyed bridges, roads, schools, pagodas, and thousands of buildings across the country’s central dry zone. The disaster killed 3,763 people and injured more than 5,100 as of April 24, according to the junta’s figures, while another 110 people remain missing.
On April 2, Myanmar’s military State Administration Council (SAC) announced a 20-day ceasefire to support humanitarian relief efforts, following similar moves by resistance groups. This was then extended until April 30 after rare talks between junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in Bangkok earlier this month.
Since the earthquake and the ceasefire announcement, the junta has been widely condemned for continuing to carry out attacks and airstrikes, even as earthquake survivors were forced to dig survivors from the rubble with their bare hands.
The Reuters report now adds some statistical backing to these reports, revealing just how little the earthquake has done to interrupt the military’s battlefield operations. Citing unpublished data from the United Nations Human Rights Office and data provided by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), it stated that between March 28 and April 24, the military launched “at least 207 attacks, including 140 airstrikes and 24 artillery barrages.” Of these, more than 172 attacks occurred after the ceasefire. Seventy-three of them took place in areas heavily affected by the earthquake.
Remarkably, this represented an increase from the six months leading up to the ceasefire. During this period, Reuters reported, the junta conducted an average of 7.6 attacks using aircraft or drones per day that killed more than five people, including civilians, according to ACLED data. Between April 2 and April 18, this rose to 9.7 aircraft or drone attacks per day on average, which left more than six people dead. The report added that 105 people were estimated killed by aerial attacks during this period.
Some resistance groups, not all of whom have declared ceasefires, have continued their own military operations since the earthquake, and the junta would likely cite these as extenuations of its own actions. When the regime announced the extension of the ceasefire agreement last week, it warned resistance groups not to attack military forces or state infrastructure, engage in recruitment, or do anything to “harm” the country’s “peace process.” Failing this, the military reserved the right to “take necessary actions and respond as part of protecting the people.”
According to the figures cited by Reuters, however, opposition groups only conducted three aerial attacks, all via drone, during April 2-18.
The figures compiled by Reuters reveal the military’s priorities – namely, its narrow focus on survival, its desire to take advantage of the post-earthquake chaos to advance its own military objectives, and its prevention of its opponents from doing the same. It also shows the partial nature of unilateral ceasefires that are subject to no enforceable conditions and liable to revision at the SAC’s whim.