Researchers backed by the UN say that they have found significant evidence of “systematic torture” in the detention centers of Myanmar, where the military government has children up to 2 years as representatives of their parents.
The Southeast Asian nation of approximately 54 million people has been plunged into agitation since 2021, when the democratically chosen leader Aung San Suu Kyi was overthrown by the military. The blow triggered mass protests throughout the country that were violently repressed, followed by an armed resistance movement nationwide that has displaced millions of people.
The researchers said on Tuesday that there was evidence of “a continuous increase in the frequency and brutality of atrocities” in Myanmar, with war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by government security forces and affiliated militias, as well as armed opposition groups.
That includes an increase in crimes committed against those who are detained, many of which are detained without due process, said Nicholas Koumjian, head of the independent investigation mechanism for Myanmar.
“We have documented torture against those who are detained, including power and power unloads, strangulations, taking off nails, group violation, burning of sexual parts of the body and other forms of sexual violence,” journalists in Geneva told journalists when his team published their annual report.
Koumjian said researchers had seen evidence that children of only 2 years were being arrested, often instead of their parents if they are accused of being associated with the opposition and cannot be found.
“Some of the children have undergone torture, ill -treatment or sexual and gender crimes,” says the report.
The Myanmar Military Government has arrested about 30,000 people in the last four years, according to the Association of Assistance for Political Prisoners, a defense group that tracks the arrests in the country.
Myanmar’s army could not be contacted to comment. He has denied any atrocity that is happening and blamed “terrorists” for riots.
The 16 -page report, which covers a period of one year until June 30, is based on more than 1,300 sources, including almost 600 ocular witness testimonies, photographs, videos, documents, maps and forensic evidence.
Koumjian said that Myanmar’s army seemed to increase its use of air attacks, since it loses control of more territory. They continued even after a devastating earthquake in March, he said, often against “blatant civil targets”, such as schools, hospitals and places of worship.
“Often there is no military objective that we can identify anywhere in the area that may have been the intention of the air attack,” he said.
Koumjian said the researchers were working to determine how air attacks were ordered, which were in the chain of command and that the airplanes flew.
In addition, he said, there is growing evidence of crimes committed by opposition forces, including summary executions of captured combatants of other armed groups.
The team is also investigating the 2017 Rohingya refugee crisis, during which more than 700,000 people from the mostly Muslim ethnic minority fled a military repression in Myanmar as a Buddhist majority for Bangladesh neighbor. Together with other ethnic groups, the remaining Rohingya population is again in danger, since they are persecuted by the rebel group of the Arakan Army that now has effective control of the state of Rakhine, its ancestral home.
Koumjian said that investigators had advanced in the identification of some of the people responsible for the crimes in Myanmar, including commanders who supervise the detention facilities, and that “we are ready to support any jurisdiction arranged and capable of processing these crimes.”
“We are working towards the day the perpetrators will have to answer for their actions in a court of justice,” he said in a press release.
The work of Myanmar investigators is already being used in cases before the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice and in Argentina. In November, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for General Min Aung Hlaing, Chief of the Military Government of Myanmar, for crimes committed against the Rohingya.
Min Aung Hlaing hardened his control over power last month in an administrative restructuring, since the Board said it was finishing the state of emergency that declared in 2021. A general election is planned for December, but faces a generalized boycott of critics who say it will not be free or fair.
