Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), said that the “frequency and brutality” of war crimes has risen over the last 12 months, during his speech at the U.N. in New York City on Thursday.
He claimed that airstrikes conducted by the Myanmar Air Force have killed hundreds of civilians and has created a sense of terror among the civilian population.
“Very, very regrettably, the frequency and the brutality of crimes in Myanmar has only increased in the past year,” said Koumjian during a press conference on Oct. 31. “The number of casualties that have been affected by these attacks has increased.”
Koumjian added that the IIMM has gathered evidence of the systematic use of torture in detention by the regime authorities, which seized power in Naypyidaw following the 2021 military coup.
“Particularly note the very disturbing use of sexual violence and against those who are detained, and that includes against both women and men, people of all genders, of all sexual preferences and people, including against both adults and minors,” he said.
Since May, the Rohingya in northern Arakan State have faced targeted attacks from both the military and the Arakan Army (AA), which launched an offensive to take control of Arakan on Nov. 13, 2023. The AA now controls 10 of Arakan’s 17 townships, including the Myanmar-Bangladesh border town of Buthidaung.
“Frequently they’ve been told to leave their homes, but there really is nowhere for them to go. They cannot cross the border, although some have managed to cross the border into Bangladesh, and Bangladesh has accepted some the borders generally closed. People have to pay bribes to get across into the safety of the refugee camps,” said Koumjian.
The IIMM is investigating and collecting evidence of crimes committed by all sides in the Myanmar crisis, including those committed by resistance forces, if it rises to the level to fall within the mechanism’s mandate, according to Koumjian.
“We’ve seen increasing evidence of very brutal crimes committed by opposition forces, and we’re concerned with that, and we want the message to go out. Our mandate is to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes committed in Myanmar, and that’s regardless of the ethnicity, religion, political persuasions of either the perpetrators or the victims,” he concluded.
The IIMM was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council on Sept. 27, 2018, and welcomed by the General Assembly on Dec. 22, 2018.
