Myanmar’s civilian government must work harder to remove the military from politics, the members of a UN fact-finding mission said today as they released a damning report that documents in fine detail the military’s atrocities in Rakhine, Shan, and Kachin states over the last year.
The report, compiled over the last 18 months, is based on interviews with more than 850 people, including victims of military violence.
“Soldiers separated the groups into men and women. The men were all in one group and were killed. Men who were not shot dead, who were struggling or severely injured, were killed with a knife,” said one Rohingya man who was shot by Myanmar troops during “clearance operations” in Aug. 2017.
Last month, the members of the fact-finding mission described the clearance operations as “genocidal” and have called for Myanmar’s military leaders to face prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
They also accused Myanmar’s civilian government, led by State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, of having “contributed to the commission of atrocity crimes”.
The 444-page report is full of grisly details on Myanmar’s brutal treatment of ethnic minorities, including murder, torture, gang rape, and enslavement. But to ensure that the basic facts are not buried under the mountain of evidence and testimony, the fact-finding mission published five infographics to summarize its findings.
Here they are:
