Global Action Can End the Junta’s Violence
“It’s time for the world to step up and act on the Myanmar people’s calls to end the junta’s violence. The international community must stop sitting on its own hands and use the tools already at its fingertips to weaken the junta’s capacity to continue its war of terror.”
How much more brutality must the people of Myanmar endure for the world to take their lives seriously and prove it through concrete action? In recent weeks, the military junta’s horrifying and unspeakable violence has devastated Myanmar’s communities—from Budalin Township, Sagaing Region, to northern Shan State—as the world looks on without lifting a finger. In actuality, the international community holds the tools to incapacitate the military junta and save the lives of Myanmar’s peoples. It’s high time for the world to impose a targeted embargo on arms, aviation fuel, aircraft, and other dual-use goods to the Myanmar military.
On 17 October, the full moon day of Thadingyut, a column of around 100 junta troops committed unspeakable atrocities against civilians, including women and elderly people, in Si Par Village, Budalin Township, Sagaing Region. The junta troops dismembered victims’ bodies, severed their heads, slashed their faces with knives, and burned down 300 of the village’s 500 homes, among other horrifying inhuman acts. On 21 October, the same junta troops raided the nearby Se Wa Village, brutally murdering at least two villagers there. As of 26 October, the junta has killed at least 466 people in massacres so far this year, including at least 25 in its murderous raids in Sagaing Region. In conjunction with ground attacks, the junta launched airstrikes on seven villages in the same township, forcing thousands to flee.
Last week, in northern Shan State, the junta unleashed a barrage of airstrikes targeting civilians across three townships. Intentionally dropping bombs on civilian homes, the junta killed eight civilians, including two children, and injured 12. Over the past three and a half years, the junta’s aerial attacks have become both more lethal and more frequent. In the first eight months of 2024 alone, the junta conducted 1,639 airstrikes—accounting for 50% of its total airstrikes since the coup attempt 45 months ago.
How utterly shameful and sickening then that ASEAN allowed the murderous junta to host a conference on transnational crime and, even worse, the international community attended. From 21–25 October, amid its commission of mass atrocity crimes, the criminal junta hosted the 42nd ASEANAPOL Conference in Naypyidaw. Attendees shaking the junta’s blood-soaked hands included the president of INTERPOL, heads of police from ASEAN Member States, and officials from Australia, China, and Russia. The entire situation is not only senseless—it is a grave and gut-wrenching insult from ASEAN and the international community to the people of Myanmar who continue to endure the junta’s indescribable violence.
Meanwhile, the people of Myanmar continue to urge the world to stop enabling the junta’s countrywide terror campaign. This past week, the #Airbusted campaign led by Justice For Myanmar, Blood Money Campaign, and Info Birmanie targeted Airbus—a European aerospace company owned in part by the Governments of France, Germany, and Spain—and its key business partner AVIC, a Chinese state-owned aerospace and defense conglomerate that has been selling aircrafts to the junta for its war of terror against civilians. During the campaign from 25–31 October, the people of Myanmar and others in solidarity with them urged Airbus to stop putting profits over people and to demand that AVIC end all business with the military junta—and if not, Airbus must divest from AVIC entirely.
From ground raids to airstrikes, the junta’s patterns of lethal violence clearly show its strategy of deliberately targeting civilians to crush dissent. Across the country, the junta’s widespread and systematic violence is intended as punitive retaliation against the people’s revolution advancing on the ground, with the goal of instilling fear and deterring any resistance to the junta. In response, the world isn’t acting to protect the people. Instead, international actors—including ASEANAPOL attendees, Airbus, and AVIC—are deepening their complicity in the junta’s atrocity crimes by actively emboldening and enabling its terror campaign against Myanmar’s peoples.
It’s time for the world to step up and act on the Myanmar people’s calls to end the junta’s violence. The international community must stop sitting on its own hands and use the tools already at its fingertips to weaken the junta’s capacity to continue its war of terror. A targeted embargo on arms, aviation fuel, aircraft, and other dual-use goods directed to Myanmar must be imposed. To be effective, this embargo must include coordinated and targeted sanctions against all nodes of the supply chains enabling the junta’s heinous international crimes. These sanctions must be properly enforced through strong coordination both across countries and among domestic agencies in each implementing country. By failing to institute and strongly enforce such measures, the world will remain complicit in the junta’s international crimes.
In Myanmar, not a single day passes without more and more lives being violently taken away by the junta, which could be prevented by the international community. And still, with incredible commitment and bravery, the people’s revolution is gaining ground against the junta and building a new Myanmar, free from military tyranny. At the very least, the international community should take real action to stop the flow of arms, aviation fuel, and aircraft to the junta to help end its violence.
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[1] One year following the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, the former military junta changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar overnight. Progressive Voice uses the term ‘Myanmar’ in acknowledgement that most people of the country use this term. However, the deception of inclusiveness and the historical process of coercion by the former State Peace and Development Council military regime into usage of ‘Myanmar’ rather than ‘Burma’ without the consent of the people is recognized and not forgotten. Thus, under certain circumstances, ‘Burma’ is used.
Resources from the past week
Statements and Press Releases
Myanmar/Bangladesh: Rohingya community facing gravest threats since 2017
By Amnesty International
APHR Urges Indonesia to Act Swiftly to Protect Stranded Rohingya Refugees
By ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
Abducted Rohingya Among Those Stranded on Trafficking Boat
By Burma Human Rights Network
Myanmar Junta Airstrike Apparent Laws-of-War Violation
By Human Rights Watch
By National Unity Government and Ministry of Human Rights
By National Unity Government and Ministry of Human Rights
Statement by Ms. Wai Wai Nu at the UN Security Council Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security
By NGO Working Group on Women, Peace, and Security
By Legal Action Worldwide
By Women’s Peace Network
U.N. Security Council: Impose an Aviation Fuel and Arms Embargo on Myanmar Junta
By Fortify Rights
By Fortify Rights
Reports
Patterns of Military Oppression in 2023-2024
By Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
October 2024 Bulletin of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
By Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ လွတ်လပ်သော စုံစမ်းစစ်ဆေးမှုယန္တရား၏ အောက်တိုဘာလ သတင်းလွှာ
By Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
Budalin Tragedy and Further Atrocities Committed by the SAC
By Institute for Strategy and Policy
ဘုတလင်ဖြစ်စဉ်အပါအဝင် စစ်ကောင်စီကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သော အစုအပြုံလိုက်သတ်ဖြတ်မှုများ
By Institute for Strategy and Policy
Humanitarian Aid Crisis Report 2021 – 2024
By Women’s League of Burma
The situation of Women, Peace, and Security in Myanmar
By Women’s Peace Network
Progressive Voice is a participatory, rights-based policy research and advocacy organization that was born out of Burma Partnership. Burma Partnership officially ended its work on October 10, 2016 transitioning to a rights-based policy research and advocacy organization called Progressive Voice. For further information, please see our press release “Burma Partnership Celebrates Continuing Regional Solidarity for Burma and Embraces the Work Ahead for Progressive Voice.”
