The UN’s human rights head suggested that the military may have committed war crimes as it fights to stifle opposition to its rule, and the junta in Myanmar has blasted him for making “irrelevant” comments.
The human rights situation in Myanmar is a “festering catastrophe” two years after the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government, according to a report released last week by the international organization’s rights division.
With limited ground forces, the military has been forced to depend more and more on air power and artillery to combat the widespread opposition. According to the UN, there have been over 300 airstrikes in the past year, including attacks on hospitals and schools.
The report is founded on “sweeping allegations against the government and its security forces,” the junta’s foreign ministry claimed in a statement posted on its Facebook page on Tuesday.
The High Commissioner’s irrelevant suggestions are, therefore, strongly objected to by Myanmar.
The junta admitted that the UN report “slightly” acknowledged the violence carried out by some of the groups allied against it.
Large portions of the nation are in upheaval, and low-level junta officials and anti-coup fighters are killed almost every day; the circumstances surrounding these murders are murky, and retaliation is frequently swift.
The junta asserts that since the coup, “terrorist” organizations have murdered more than 5,000 civilians.
Due to the generals’ adamant refusal to negotiate, diplomatic attempts to end the bloody standoff, spearheaded by the UN and the regional bloc of ASEAN, have made little progress.
The UN Security Council approved its first statement on the situation in Myanmar in December, urging the junta to release Suu Kyi and all “arbitrarily detained prisoners”.
China and Russia, two regular members of the Security Council, chose to refrain from exercising their vetoes after changes were made to the text.
India, another country with links to the junta, did not vote.
According to a local monitoring organization, the military’s crackdown on dissent has resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 individuals.
