Urgently
investigate, hold perpetrators accountable
(YANGON, May 28,
2017)—Myanmar authorities should immediately investigate graphic video footage
that appeared online yesterday showing Myanmar Army and militia soldiers
kicking, punching, and threatening to kill six unidentified ethnic men under
interrogation, Fortify Rights said today. The actions of Myanmar Army and
militia soldiers in the video constitute torture and cruel, inhuman, and
degrading treatment under international law, Fortify Rights said.
The Myanmar
authorities should urgently account for the whereabouts and well-being of those
who appear in the video and whom are believed to be from an ethnic minority
community in northern Shan State.
“We’re gravely
concerned about the men who were savagely beaten in this video,” said Matthew
Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights. “The Myanmar authorities
should take urgent action to protect the lives of these men.”
Myanmar Army Soldiers Savagely Beat Ethnic
Men
Fortify Rights film
analyzing video of Myanmar Army soldiers torturing ethnic men believed to be
from northern Shan State.
The 17-minute video
first appeared on Facebook at approximately 1 a.m. Myanmar time on May 27. The
video depicts five Myanmar Army soldiers from Light Infantry Division (LID) 88
and one militia personnel interrogating six men in civilian clothing whose
wrists are tied or handcuffed. Watch here: https://youtu.be/EBkOfyPXPDg
Soldiers question
the men about the location of a handgun and other firearms while administering
32 kicks, four punches and slaps, and three violent blows with a helmet to
three of the unarmed, bound men. Two victims bleed from their faces and mouths.
More than two-dozen Myanmar Army soldiers—including at least four militiamen—appear
in the video, menacing more than 18 men and one woman in civilian clothes,
including those being interrogated.
Soldiers in the
video mention Nant Phat Kar village—a village in Kutkai Township in northern
Shan State, near the Myanmar-China border—and accuse the men in their custody
of being “Palaung soldiers.” The Palaung, also known as Ta’Ang, are an ethnic
minority predominantly from northern Shan State.
Soldiers in the
video are wearing Myanmar Army uniforms with a patch on their left shoulders
identifying their unit as LID 88. Unit LID 88 is known to be operational in
areas surrounding Nant Phat Kar and in northern Shan State. The soldiers are
also heard speaking Burmese in the video, while several soldiers from an
unidentified militia—presumably affiliated with the Myanmar Army—are heard
speaking in both Burmese and a barely audible ethnic language, possibly
Palaung.
The video begins
with the apparent commanding officer interrogating a bound man about the
location of firearms—“Where are the guns?”—while hitting him in the face with a
helmet.
“Even though you
don’t have a gun, you are still part of the resistance,” says the officer to
the detainee. “If you say you don’t have anything, I’m going to break all your
teeth.”
“I will cut your
throat and kill you,” says another soldier to one of the detained men. “If I
don’t get [the information], I am going to kill everyone,” says the apparent
commanding officer in the video.
Later in the video,
the apparent commanding officer threatens another detainee: “If we find [guns],
I’m going to break all your teeth and cut out your tongue.”
“I know you guys are
Palaung soldiers,” the same officer shouts at the detainees after beating
several of them for more than 15 minutes, adding, “If I don’t get the guns, I’m
going to kill him”—referring, presumably, to one of the detainees.
At one point in the
footage, the same man—the apparent commanding officer—holds a machete to the
front and back of the neck of a bound detainee, threatening to cut his throat.
Between kicks to the face and head, he scolds the detainees to “speak in
Burmese”—presumably as opposed to their native ethnic language—later saying
again, “Speak in Burmese if you want to talk.”
At one point in the
video, a soldier threatens a young ethnic man while he is standing upright with
his legs tied together with rope. Waving a knife, the soldier says: “Don’t say
anything. I know you are a Palaung soldier.”
“We won’t set you
free,” the commanding officer says ominously to the detainees just before the
video ends. Soldiers are seen tying several men together, as if they will be
taken away.
Myanmar is not a
party to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment (CAT), but the proscriptions against torture are still
applicable to Myanmar as part of customary international law. Torture is banned
in every context. Torture is defined under international law as the intentional
infliction of “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,” for
specific purposes such as obtaining “information or a confession,” as
punishment, as intimidation or coercion, “or for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind.” Cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or
punishment involves the infliction of “significant” physical or mental pain or
suffering.
The Government of
Myanmar should immediately ratify the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other
Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and its Optional Protocol,
Fortify Rights said.
Fighting in northern
Shan State between the Myanmar Army and various ethnic armies, including the
Ta’Ang National Liberation Army, the Kachin Independence Army, and the Myanmar
National Democratic Alliance Army has escalated in the last year.
LID 88 of the
Myanmar Army has been accused of human rights violations in northern Shan State
in recent months. For example, in late November 2016, LID 88 allegedly detained
18 civilians, including a two-year-old boy, in Mung Lung Nam Hkye Ho village in
Mong Koe Region. On December 20, local residents reportedly discovered the
badly burned bodies of the 18 civilians in a mass grave in a nearby forest.
Kachin and Shan
civil society organizations have documented torture and arbitrary detention by
Myanmar Army soldiers as well as unlawful killings, rape, forced labor, and
other human rights violations against civilians in northern Shan and Kachin
states for many years. In 2014, Fortify Rights documented the systematic use of
torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment of more
than 60 civilians by government forces during fighting in northern Myanmar from
June 2011 to April 2014.
The graphic video
footage appeared yesterday on the third day of the Union Peace Conference, also
known as the 21st Century Panglong Conference—a meeting convened by Myanmar’s
de-facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi, ostensibly to end the country’s long-running
wars and achieve “national reconciliation.” The meeting includes leaders of the
Myanmar military and ethnic armed groups, elected officials, and observers from
civil society. It concluded today.
This is the second
video in six months to emerge showing Myanmar state security forces beating
civilians. In December 2016, a video surfaced online showing police in northern
Rakhine State beating ethnic Rohingya men in a similar manner. As a result of the
video, the Myanmar authorities reportedly sentenced three police officers to
two months in police detention and demoted and reduced the service terms of
three senior police officers for failing to enforce discipline.
Last week, 59
Myanmar-based civil society organizations called on the Government of Myanmar
to cooperate with a United Nations Fact-Finding Mission into the human rights
situation “in at least Rakhine, Kachin, Shan, and other ethnic states of
Myanmar.” The U.N. Human Rights Council mandated the forthcoming mission to
“establish the facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights
violations by military and security forces . . . with a view to ensuring full
accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims.”
The joint statement
from civil society organizations warned that any failure by the government to
cooperate with the Fact-Finding Mission could lead to further atrocity crimes
in Myanmar.
“Silence in this
case is not an option. Impunity is not an option,” said Matthew Smith.
“Perpetrators must be held accountable if there’s any hope for genuine peace in
Myanmar.”
For more
information, please contact:
Matthew Smith,
Executive Director, +66.85.028.0044, matthew.smith@fortifyrights.org;
Twitter:
@matthewfsmith, @fortifyrights
David Baulk, Myanmar
Human Rights Specialist,
Fortify Rights,
+95.979.311.1685,
Twitter: @davidbaulk
@FortifyRights
Nickey Diamond,
Myanmar Human Rights Specialist, Fortify Rights, (Burmese/English),
+95.997.568.3114,
Twitter: @NickeyMdy
@FortifyRights