Myanmar junta forces have committed about 210 massacres killing over 2,000 people since the military coup in February 2021, according to a report by Nyan Lynn Thit Analytica group compiling the number of civilian deaths at the regime’s hands.
A lack of meaningful action by the UN and the rest of the international community has encouraged the military regime to commit arbitrary and extrajudicial killings of its own people, human rights and democracy activists said.
The watchdog said last Friday the junta committed 210 massacres from February 2021 to December 2023, in which a total of 2,079 people were slain.
The research group defines a massacre as the killing of five or more unarmed people in a single incident. Massacres by the junta involve the killing of innocent civilians, it said.
Over half of the massacres were reported in Sagaing Region, a hotbed of resistance where many anti-regime groups are putting up intense armed resistance against junta forces using whatever weapons are available, including makeshift firearms as well as improvised fixed-wing drones and explosive devices.
In just the four-month period from September to December 2023, junta forces committed 37 massacres across the country, in which 283 civilians were killed.
Of the 283 victims, 142 were killed by junta ground troops who massacred civilians while engaged in clashes with armed groups and in “clearance operations” in which they raided and burned down villages; and 126 others were killed in aerial massacres by junta aircraft. The remaining 15 were killed by indiscriminate junta shelling, the research group said.
In December, regime forces arbitrarily killed seven Rakhine civilian detainees including a former journalist and a rapper amid an escalation of attacks by the ethnic Arakan Army in Rakhine State.
The watchdog said in a separate report in February that the junta also conducted 1,652 indiscriminate airstrikes killing 936 people and injuring 878 between February 2021 and December 2023.
It estimated the airstrikes destroyed 137 religious buildings, 76 schools and 28 hospitals.
Another rights group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, said 4,654 people had been slain by military junta forces and 26,228 people including elected government leaders had been arrested or detained since the coup.
In recent months the junta has lost control of a large amount of territory amid daily attacks by People’s Defense Forces and ethnic armed organizations across the country.
