Human rights in Myanmar
[17] In March 2017, a three-member committee in the United Nations Human Rights Council ran a fact finding mission.
This mission was aimed to "establish the facts and circumstances of the alleged recent human rights violations by military and security forces, and abuses, in Myanmar … with a view to ensuring full accountability for perpetrators and justice for victims".
Amidst a “profound crisis” facing access to basic human rights in Myanmar following the coup in February 2021, hundreds of localized armed resistance groups have now formed across the country, triggering “widespread violence in areas that were previously stable”.
[30] An estimated 90,000 people have been displaced in the recent sectarian violence between Rohingya Muslims and Buddhists in Burma's western Rakhine State.
[35] In 2012, a riot broke out between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, which left 78 people dead, 87 injured, and thousands of homes destroyed.
[40] According to the Myanmar authorities, the violence, between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, left 78 people dead, 87 injured, and thousands of homes destroyed.
[40] A number of monks' organisations that played vital role in Burma's struggle for democracy have taken measures to block any humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya community.
[44] "The new operations in Rakhine State show an unrepentant, unreformed and unaccountable military terrorising civilians and committing widespread violations as a deliberate tactic", Amnesty's Regional Director for East and Southeast Asia said.
[48] On 4 July 2022, a United Nations investigator has documented apparent war crimes by the Myanmar military and released shocking footage of brutal killings allegedly in Sagaing region.
Few images obtained by Radio Free Asia (RFA) gives damning evidence of the brutal operation which reinforce a pattern of killings that bear the hallmarks of the military’s atrocities.
[58][59][60][61][62] In 2020 Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur to Myanmar, stated the Tatmadaw had been emboldened by extra powers granted to them during the coronavirus pandemic.
[63] In 2022, the US Secretary of State determined that members of the Burmese military had committed genocide and crimes against humanity against the Rohingya people.
[64] Investigations led by Amnesty International concluded that the airstrikes taken place in March/April 2020 by the Myanmar military, killed civilians including children.
She had run for election in 2010 and also actively campaigned against the Myitsone Dam and took Yuzana Company to court for its land confiscations in Kachin State's Hukawng Valley region.
Restrictions on media censorship were significantly eased in August 2012 following demonstrations by hundreds of protesters who wore shirts demanding that the government "Stop Killing the Press".
[70] The most significant change has come in the form that media organisations will no longer have to submit their content to a censorship board prior to publication, however, as explained by one editorial in the exiled press Irrawaddy, this new "freedom" has caused some Burmese journalists to simply see the new law as an attempt to create an environment of self-censorship as journalists "are required to follow 16 guidelines towards protecting the three national causes – non-disintegration of the Union, non-disintegration of national solidarity, perpetuation of sovereignty – and "journalistic ethics" to ensure their stories are accurate and do not jeopardise national security.
"[70] On 3 September 2018 Myanmar court sentenced two Burmese reporters working for Reuters to seven years in prison allegedly for protecting state secrets.
[71] In August 2019, a Myanmar court sentenced a filmmaker to one year in prison with hard labor for criticizing the military on Facebook.
[73] On June 19, 2020, HRW urged the Myanmar government to immediately end a year-long government-enforced internet shutdown, which has affected more than a million people living in a conflict zone.
According to the report, "the Burmese military regime is allowing its troops systematically and on a widespread scale to commit rape with impunity in order to terrorize and subjugate the ethnic peoples of Shan State."
According to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions several hundred thousand men, women, children and elderly people are forced to work against their will by the administration.
In June 2000, the ILO Conference adopted a resolution calling on governments to cease any relations with the country that might aid the junta to continue the use of forced labour.
In 2010, amid growing calls for reform to labour laws, unofficial industrial action was taken at a number of garment factories in Rangoon, causing concern at government level.
This was believed to be the first time an American corporation has been sued in a US court on the grounds that the company violated human rights in another country.
"[89] From 2005 to 2007 NGOs found that violations of human rights included the absence of an independent judiciary, restrictions on Internet access through software-based censorship,[90][91] that forced labour, human trafficking, and child labour were common,[92] and that sexual violence was abundantly used as an instrument of control, including systematic rapes and taking of sex slaves as porters for the military.
[16] In a press release on 16 December 2005 the US State Department said UN involvement in Burma was essential[93] and listed illicit narcotics, human rights abuses and political repression as serious problems that the UN needed to address.
In April 2019, the UN appointed an American prosecutor as head of an independent team that will probe human rights violations in Myanmar's volatile Rakhine state, focusing on atrocities committed against Rohingya Muslims.
[94] On 14 August 2022, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet began a four-day official visit to Bangladesh.
