Myanmar’s military regime has ramped up arrests in an apparent bid to enforce conscription and silence its opponents, with tens of thousands detained since the 2021 coup and over 5,000 killed, according to a report released on Tuesday by the U.N. human rights office.
“Even though many people assume that the arrests, the mass arrests, were really a feature of 2021 and 2022, they continue to happen throughout the country,” said James Rodehaver, the head of the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Myanmar team.
The military seized power on Feb. 1, 2021 after deposing the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and triggering nationwide street protests that it violently crushed.
The protest movement has since morphed into an armed rebellion that has widened, and fighting has flared on multiple fronts, prompting authorities to introduce military conscription in February.
The OHCHR report is partly based on remote interviews with hundreds of victims and witnesses in Myanmar since investigators are denied access to the country.
Of those, 2,414 died in the period covered by the report between April 2023 and June 2024, with hundreds killed by airstrikes and artillery attacks, amounting to an increase of 50 percent versus the previous reporting period.
The report also revealed the scale of detentions across the country with nearly 27,400 individuals arrested since 2021, including more than 9,000 in the latest reporting period, of whom many are thought to be in military training centres.
“Over a third of the over 27,000 individuals that have been arrested for expressing dissent against the military, those arrests have been verified in the period that is in the report. So it is a phenomenon that still exists,” added Rodehaver.
The report added that among those seized by the regime were children, who were taken when the parents could not be located “as a form of punishment for political opposition.”
Liz Throssel, the OHCHR spokesperson, told a press briefing in Geneva, Switzerland on Sept. 17 that at least 1,853 people have died in custody in Myanmar since 2021, including 88 children.
“Many of these individuals have been verified as dying after being subjected to abusive interrogation, other ill treatment in detention or denial of access to adequate health care,” said Throssel.
Rodehaver added that detainees interviewed reported cases of abuse that amount to torture, such as suspension from the ceiling without food or water, the use of snakes and insects to instill fear, and beatings with bamboo sticks and motorcycle chains.
“But then, of course, you have what happens to those people once they are arrested. It is lengthy periods of pretrial detention in detention facilities that have horrific conditions. And then, of course, you have the pervasive use of torture and ill treatment,” he concluded.
REUTERS
