Myanmar’s military has consistently targeted civilians and their communities as a form of collective punishment in the country’s southeast since the army seized power in early 2021, a rights group said in a report released Friday.
Documented airstrikes on villages examined by researchers from the Karen Human Rights Group based in Myanmar's southeast, are emblematic of a broader assault on civilians across the war-torn nation, said James Rodehaver, the Bangkok-based chief of the Myanmar team of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Myanmar is racked by violence that began when the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and brutally suppressed nonviolent protests. That triggered armed resistance and combat in many parts of the country, with the military increasingly using airstrikes to counter the opposition and secure territory.
The army is on the defensive against ethnic militias in much of the country as well as hundreds of armed guerrilla groups collectively called the People’s Defense Forces, formed to fight to restore democracy.
Rights organizations and United Nations investigators have found evidence that security forces indiscriminately and disproportionately target civilians with bombs, mass executions of people detained during operations and large-scale burning of civilian houses.
The report said the military had failed to distinguish between armed resistance fighters and villagers, and in some cases the airstrikes appear to have been conducted as a form of collective punishment over the military activities of local resistance groups.
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