Community spaces under fire: Attacks and destruction of community buildings and cultural events in Southeast Burma by the State Administration Council (SAC) (January – June 2025)

1. Introduction

Since the 2021 coup[1], and following the subsequent escalation of armed conflict, villages have become unsafe across Southeast Burma(/Myanmar)[2] due to the State Administration Council (SAC)[3]’s targeted and indiscriminate attacks. By bombing, shelling, and burning villages, the SAC is also destroying community buildings and endangering community life. Community buildings, including monasteries, churches, schools, and clinics, are used by many villagers to worship, participate in social and cultural activities, study, and receive medical treatment. They are important for community members given their role at the centre of the social lives of villagers. Similarly, cultural events are created by villagers to celebrate their culture and community together. SAC attacks on community buildings and ceremonies have continued in 2025 in locally-defined Karen State[4], limiting villagers’ ability to practice religion and culture, access medical care, and access education. This is in flagrant violation of their human rights, as well as international humanitarian law.

This briefing paper presents evidence reported by villagers and incidents documented by KHRG that took place during January to June 2025, highlighting the challenges that the destruction of community buildings by the SAC posed to villagers’ access to religious practices, cultural celebrations, schooling, and medical treatment throughout locally-defined Karen State. The first section provides a brief overview of the situation of human rights in Southeast Burma, past and present. The second section presents testimonies of SAC attacks on community buildings and cultural events in Southeast Burma during the first half of 2025, as well as the impacts of these attacks on villagers. The last section highlights the legal implications of such attacks, and, finally, the paper provides a set of recommendations for local and international stakeholders.

2. Contextual Overview: attacking villages and community buildings; a decades-old practice for the Burma Army

The Burma Army[5] has systematically attacked villagers and destroyed their communities across Southeast Burma ever since the Karen National Union (KNU)[6] and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)[7] took to arms to push for political autonomy in 1948. This targeting of villagers has been embodied in the Burma Army ‘four cuts’ (‘pyat lay pyat’) counter-insurgency approach. This is a scorched-earth strategy that aimed to destroy the funding, supplies, recruits, and intelligence of insurgents. Under this approach, the Burma Army viewed villagers in Karen State as synonymous with soldiers and targets for military attack and destruction.

For decades, Burma Army soldiers operating in ‘black areas’[8] torched and shelled villages indiscriminately, shot villagers on sight, arbitrarily disappeared villagers, took others as porters and human shields, perpetrated widespread sexual violence, and forcibly relocated entire communities, alongside a litany of other human rights abuses amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.[9]

The 2012 bilateral ceasefire between the KNU and the Burma Army, and the subsequent 2015 National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA)[10], allowed for a partial return of some communities to their homes. However, the Burma Army also expanded their presence in certain areas during this period, leading to heightened tensions between villagers and Burma Army soldiers.[11]During that period, local elites and outside businesses  pushed for the introduction of several small and large-scale environmentally exploitative developmental projects across Southeast Burma. Meanwhile, hostile policy from the central Burma government enabled the further expropriation of villagers’ small-scale landholdings.[12] Across most areas of Southeast Burma, Burma Army soldiers continued to commit human rights abuses against villagers.

The truce during this period fell apart in the aftermath of the February 1st 2021 seizure of power by Burma Army leaders from the National League for Democracy (NLD)[13]. First elected in 2015, the NLD had won a landslide victory in the November 2020 national elections. Since February 2021, the Burma Army, under the command of the State Administration Council (SAC), has responded to country-wide resistance by increasing its attacks on civilians. As a result, the SAC has committed a wide number of human rights violations. These have included but are not limited to the repeated torching of villages; the torture and murder of imprisoned activists and human rights defenders; rape and sexual assault, including against children; and the extensive use of civilians as human shields.[14]

In Southeast Burma, the SAC’s reinvigoration of the ‘four cuts’ strategy following February 2021 has seen a dramatic increase in the use of air strikes to target villagers and their community buildings.[15] During this most recent period, community buildings (such as monasteries, churches, schools and clinics) have served as centres for community while also being used to shelter and support civilians fleeing conflict.[16] SAC attacks have both undermined these foundational community structures, while also having an outsized impact on many of the villagers worst affected by conflict.[17]

From January 2021 to June 2024, KHRG documented that the SAC conducted at least 203 air strikes on villages in locally-defined Karen State, damaging at least 89 community buildings.[18] Similarly, the Karen Peace Support Network (KPSN) reported that, during February 2021 to November 2024, Burma Army air strikes and shelling across Southeast Burma destroyed 22 schools, 21 hospitals/clinics, 23 churches, and 31 monasteries.[19] Other organisations also reported further attacks which damaged or destroyed hundreds of hospitals, clinics and schools across Burma.[20] All of those numbers likely undercount the actual number and impact of attacks.

In 2025, the SAC’s ongoing attacks on civilians in Burma have been punctuated by the destruction wrought by the March 28th 2025 Sagaing Fault earthquake and the SAC’s (unimplemented) unilateral ceasefire declarations, which followed shortly afterwards.[21] These events have done little to slow the SAC’s attacks on village community buildings and cultural spaces in Southeast Burma.

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