The Junta is Bombing Children While Selling “Peace”

For the children of Myanmar, the simple act of sitting in a classroom has become a potential death sentence. 12 May marked the one-year memorial anniversary of the Oe Htein Kwin school massacre, a grim milestone exposing the deadly hypocrisy driving the military junta’s political strategy. While the junta projects an illusion of national reconciliation through a deceptive “100-day peace plan” following its sham elections, this theatrical 31 July deadline is nothing but a public relation stunt to cover for the military’s accelerating, unprecedented, scorched-earth campaign against the civilian population. The international community must unequivocally reject this propaganda and take decisive action to hold the military accountable under international law. To ground the fighter jets and halt the slaughter of Myanmar’s children, neighboring countries, particularly China and India, must immediately cease all complicity in the junta’s atrocities. Furthermore, the European Union (EU) must close its humanitarian loopholes, sanction the junta’s financial and logistical lifelines, and impose a comprehensive embargo on aviation fuel.

The human cost directly contradicts the junta’s peace narrative. On 12 May, Myanmar civil society groups marked the one-year anniversary of the military MiG-29 bombing of a school in Oe Htein Kwin village, Sagaing Region, which killed 20 children and two teachers. The attack was not an isolated incident. Data shows that children have been killed or injured in at least 640 separate military airstrikes since the illegal coup attempt on 1 February 2021. The targeting of schools and hospitals remains systematic. In Tanintharyi Township, Tanintharyi Region, a military fighter jet bombed a school in Taku village on 13 May, destroying two buildings, following an earlier airstrike on the same village in March that killed four people, including a child. The military has also been targeting religious sites. On 9 March, the military dropped two 500-pound bombs on a church in Ta Phi Lay Kho village during a Bible study class, killing 11 people, including seven children. The consequences for Myanmar’s children are devastating. According to ISP Myanmar, up to 7 million children — more than half of the country’s school-aged population — are now out of school.

Rather than seeing a decrease in violence under the junta’s current deceptive “100-day peace plan,” field reports show a massive, ongoing surge. Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica documented that in late 2025 alone, the military conducted 712 separate airstrike incidents. This relentless escalation has continued unabated into 2026, with the military increasingly targeting areas where civilians and children gather. In late February, an airstrike hit Yoe Ngu village in Ponnagyun Township, Rakhine State, slaughtering 17 civilians, including women and children. Concurrently, in Sagaing Region, military paramotors dropped explosives on residents gathered to use a Starlink internet device in Myinmu Township, killing nine civilians, including two children. This deadly wave of aerial terror has spiked directly into May. Just earlier this month, a devastating attack struck a playground in Chin State, killing five children ranging from a five-month-old infant to a ten-year old.

This localized terror is part of a broader, nationwide assault. In mid-May, the junta launched at least 11 airstrikes within a 48-hour window across Chin State, targeting Mindat, Kanpetlet, Matupi, and areas bordering Sagaing Region. Simultaneously, in Sagaing’s Kantbalu Township, brutal military ground operations forced more than 30,000 civilians from 44 villages to flee just as the monsoon paddy cultivation season was beginning. This calculated displacement weaponizes starvation by crippling food security and strips families of the means to educate their children in times of crisis.

The military cannot sustain this high-intensity terror campaign without external lifelines providing political cover, spare parts, and fuel. As warned in our Weekly Highlights “India’s Inhumanity Fuels Junta’s Terror” and “India: Foe of Myanmar Democracy,” New Delhi’s ongoing appeasement continues to embolden the junta. In a grotesque display of hypocrisy, India opened a UN Peacekeeping Officer Course in Naypyidaw on Monday, teaching “civilian and child protection” to 30 military officers while the military deliberately bombs schools and massacres children. The training followed a series of high-level engagements between Indian and junta officials, including Indian Navy Chief Admiral Dinesh Kumar Tripathi’s recent visit to Naypyidaw and meetings with senior military leaders. Furthermore, Indian institutions continue to normalize relations with the junta despite escalating atrocities, including recent medical and academic cooperation involving junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and military-linked institutions.

Materially, the junta relies on international negligence and sanctions evasion. As exposed by the Blood Money Campaign, the junta is not only deploying fighter jets but is also actively utilizing Czech-manufactured Let L410-UVP E20 Turbolets. Flight-tracking data from mid-2025 confirmed these aircraft operating out of Pathein and Tada-U Air Bases for transport and training missions. Furthermore, the EU has yet to sanction the Myanma Foreign Trade Bank (MFTB), Myanma Economic Bank (MEB), and Myanma Agricultural Development Bank (MADB). These banks are central to the junta’s international financial transactions, playing a critical role in purchasing weapons and technology, as is the Myanma Petrochemical Enterprise (MPE), which is heavily involved in importing and distributing the aviation fuel that directly enables airstrikes. The EU continues to rely on the deadly fiction that a fuel ban would cripple vaccine transportation. While the EU’s extension of existing sanctions is welcome, expanding targeted measures against these specific entities is critical to dismantling the junta’s capacity for violence and ending the suffering of the people.

The Myanmar military must be held accountable for its heinous crimes against the people of Myanmar. Global leaders must stop indulging the junta’s hollow rhetoric and start confronting the raw data of mass displacement, engineered starvation, and targeted civilian slaughter. They must instantly sever all diplomatic and economic ties with the junta. The EU must immediately align with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia by imposing a comprehensive aviation fuel ban, and also sanction the MPE, MFTB, MEB, and MADB. Concurrently, they must close the enforcement gaps that allow the military junta to bypass sanctions through third countries, specifically Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, China, and India. It is past time to cut the lifelines powering these war crimes and crimes against humanity and to definitively ground the jets terrorizing Myanmar’s children.

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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.

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.”