2024 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices: Burma

Executive Summary

The human rights crisis in Burma deteriorated during the year as the conflict between the military regime and opposition forces (including ethnic armed organizations) intensified, marked by increased regime airstrikes and artillery attacks on or near civilian sites. The regime’s arbitrary detentions claimed more lives, including those of senior opposition leaders Zaw Myint Maung and U Win Khine; leading members of the deposed government and opposition political parties were held by the regime.

Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; serious abuses in a conflict; unlawful recruitment or use of children in an armed conflict by the government and some ethnic armed organizations; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and censorship; restrictions of religious freedom; trafficking in persons, including forced labor; prohibiting independent trade unions and significant restrictions on workers’ freedom of association; violence or threats against labor activists; and significant presence of any of the worst forms of child labor.

The regime did not take credible steps or action to identify and punish officials who committed human rights abuses.

Some ethnic armed organizations and groups or members of antiregime People’s Defense Forces committed human rights abuses, including killings, disappearances, physical abuse, and degrading treatment. This included a number of abuses of civilians in connection with the armed conflict.

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