Date : May 20^th, 2022

Following the Myanmar military’s attempted coup on 1^st February 2021, the Myanmar military junta exploited the COVID-19 pandemic in Tanintharyi Region and used Covid 19 as a weapon, according to a report by local civil society groups based on four-months’ research and ten case studies.

Political activists and revolutionary forces are therefore demanding that international organizations, including the United Nations, should not distribute humanitarian emergency aid through the junta or cooperate with any organization affiliated with the Myanmar military junta.

1. From December 2021 to March 2022, 260 people in 10 townships in Tanintharyi Region shared their COVID-19 response experiences, which were compiled into a four-month preliminary survey, exposing eight major impacts of the Covid 19 pandemic and the coup.
2. The report “Myanmar Military’s Weaponization of Covid-19 in Tanintharyi Region”, launched on May 4, 2022, shows that the junta has used the pandemic as a pretext to target and persecute politicians and activists opposed to their coup attempt, and to further oppress the population.
3. Therefore, we, the Tanintharyi Region-based political forces and partner democracy and human rights groups across the country, make the following urgent recommendations:

• International humanitarian assistance is immediately required in all parts of Myanmar including Tanintharyi Region, but such assistance must not be delivered through or in cooperation with the Myanmar military junta.
• The UN Secretary-General must lead a UN-coordinated humanitarian emergency intervention to combat the catastro3phic COVID-19 crisis in Myanmar.
• UN agencies and INGOs should work with and put trust in local CSOs, ethnic CSOs and ethnic health service providers, including through cross-border channels.
• International stakeholders delivering humanitarian assistance should maintain close and regular communication, consultation and collaboration with the National Unity Government, Ethnic Armed Organizations, National Unity Consultative Council, and the COVID-19 Task Force.
• The UN Security Council must adopt a resolution on Myanmar to end the military’s violence by referring the situation of Myanmar to the ICC and imposing global arms embargo.

Contact us for more information;

1) Mae Su Su Swe
Email address: [email protected]

2) U Moe Thu Aung
Email address: [email protected]

The findings and recommendations of research report and recommendations are endorsed by the following (70) Civil Society Organizations, including (3) networks, (13) individual activists and (2) international organizations. There are (37) Anonymous Civil Society organizations endorsed.  For full report, please visit at the footnote links.

Endorsed organizations:

1. တနင်္သာရီတိုင်းလူထုအသံ (PVT)
2. Network for Advocacy Action ( Tanintharyi)
3. Tanintharyi Women’s Network
4. Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
5. Tavoyan Youth Organization
6. Tavoyan Women’s Union
7. 88 Open Society (Myeik)
8. Youth Newtork (Tanintharyi)
9. Youth Network Dawei
10. Green Network (Myeik)
11. Dawei Human Rights Group
12. Human Rights Documentation Group (Dawei)
13. All Arakan Students’ and Youths’ Congress (AASYC)
14. Action Committee for Democracy Development (ACDD)
15. Kachin Human Rights Watch
16. Kachin Gender Star Group- KGSG
17. All Kachin Youth Union
18. Karen New Generation Youth (KNGY)
19. Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
20. Kuki Women’s Human Rights Organization (KWHRO)
21. Sisters2Sisters
22. Green Development Network (သထုံ)
23. Women’s Peace Network
24. Mon State Development Center
25. Save and Care Organization for Ethnic Women at Border Areas
26. Future Thanlwin
27. Human Rights Foundation of Monland
28. Shan MATA
29. Keng Tung Youth
30. Tanintharyi MATA
31. Southern Youth Development Organization
32. Karenni National Women’s Organization
33. Myanmar People Alliance (Shan State)
34. Solidarity with all Tanintharyi Friends
35. Synergy Social Harmony Organization
36. Solidarity of Trade Union Myanmar (STUM)
37. IFI Watch
38. Kawthaung Youth Network
39. United Ethnic Women Alliance Association
40. Morning stars
41. New Myanmar Foundation
42. Progressive Voice
43. Youth Development Institute (YDI)
44. Spring Volunteer Program
45. Zomi Students and Youth Organization (ZSYO)
46. Myanmar Human Rights Alliance Network (MHRAN)
47. Thandaunggyi Women’s Group
48. ပညာဥပတ္ထမ္ဘကလူငယ်များအသင်း (ပုလော)
49. ပြည်သူ့လှုပ်ရှားဦးဆောင်အဖွဲ့- ပုလောမြို့နယ်
50. တောင်သူလယ်သမားများ ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောင်ရေးအဖွဲ့ (မြိတ်)
51. ဒေသခံစစ်ဘေးရှောင်များ ထောက်အပံ့ပေးရေးအဖွဲ့ -ထား၀ယ်
52. ကြယ်စင်တန်းဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးအသင်း (KSTDA)
53. ပင်လယ် ပျော်သမဂ္ဂ
54. တောင်သူလယ်သမားသမဂ္ဂ ( သရက်ချောင်းမြို့နယ်)
55. ဟိန္ဇဲဒေသဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးအဖွဲ့
56. ရေလုပ်သားများအဖွဲ့
57. ၈၈မျိုးဆက်ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးနှင့်ပွင့်လင်းလူ့အဖွဲ့အစည်း (ထား၀ယ်)
58. နယ်စပ် ဒေသဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက် ရေးပရဟိတအဖွဲ့ (ကော့သောင်း)
59. ရွှေ့‌ပြောင်းမိတ်ဖက်နယ်စပ် ဒေသဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်ရေး ပရဟိတအဖွဲ့ (ကော့သောင်း)
60. လယ်သမားများ သမဂ္ဂ (ထား၀ယ်ခရိုင်)
61. ကော့သောင်းပညာရေးဘုတ်အဖွဲ့
62. ရောင်နီစစ်ဘေးရှောင်ကူညီထောက်ပံ့ရေးအဖွဲ့
63. Assistance Association for Political Prisoners(AAPP)
64. Association of Human Rights Defenders and Promoters
65. စာနာ-SaNaR (Save the Natural Resources)

Networks/Alliance groups/ Umbrella organization

66. Network for Human Rights Documentation (ND-Burma)
    • consist of 9 members organizations

67. Students and Youth Congress of Burma (SYCB)
    • Consist of 11 youth organizations

68. Tanintharyi Nationalities Congress (TNC)
    • Consist of 14 member organizations

International Organizations

69. Institute for Asian Democracy
70. ALTSEAN-Burma

Individuals’ activists

• နော်မီရှဲ
• Swe Wint Paing
• Thiha Maung Maung (Freelance Trainer)
• Arker Hein
• Saw Lu Pway Doh
• Chit Win Maung
• Nickey Diamond (Human Rights Activist)
• Khin Lin Lin Phyu (Singpore)
• Ei Ei Chaw (Thailand)
• Mi Sein (Thailand)
• Mi Kun Chan Non (Mon Women Activist)
• Thu Thu Mar (Edicational Activist)
• Yar Zar Soe

Anonymous
37 Anonymous organizations endorsed.

Burmese version.

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