A human rights researchers group officially launched a Web site on Wednesday that they hope would help see justice for victims of state violence in Myanmar, where one of the world’s less-noticed but still brutal armed struggles is occurring.
Since the army’s coup against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, thousands of people have been killed by security forces seeking to quash pro-democracy resistance. According to the UN, more than 1.8 million people have been displaced by military offensives, which critics said have involved gross human rights violations.
War crimes have become easier to document thanks to the ubiquity of cellphone cameras and near-universal access to social media, where photos and videos can easily be posted and viewed.
Photo: AP
Yet it is harder to establish who is responsible, especially generals and other high-ranking officers behind the scenes who plan and give orders.
“Generals and lower ranking officers should fear being dragged before a court of law and imprisoned for crimes they ordered or authorized,” Tom Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, said by e-mail. “Research must move beyond merely stating the obvious — that crimes are occurring — and connect those who are responsible to specific atrocities. The victims of these crimes deserve justice and that will require the research necessary to hold those responsible fully accountable.”
The new Web site, myanmar.securityforcemonitor.org, is an interactive online version of a report, Under Whose Command? — Human rights abuses under Myanmar’s military rule, compiled by Security Force Monitor, a Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute project, to connect alleged crimes with their perpetrators.
The project team constructed a time line of senior commanders and their postings, which could be correlated with documented instances of alleged atrocities that occurred under their commands. It exposes the army’s chain of command, identifying senior army commanders and showing the connections from alleged rights violations to these commanders, study director Tony Wilson said.
“This is one of the pieces of the jigsaw that has up until now been missing in terms of accountability — demonstrating how the system works and that these abuses are not just the result of rogue units or individual soldiers,” Wilson said.
He said the Myanmar data show that 65 percent, or 51 of all 79 senior army commanders from the end of March 2011 to the end of March this year, “had alleged disappearances, killings, rape or instances of torture committed by units under their command.”
He said the study also shows the officer with the most links to serious human rights violations is General Mya Htun Oo, who became the country’s minister of defense and a member of the ruling military council when the army seized power in 2021. He also became deputy prime minister this year.
The legal significance leans on the established doctrine of “command responsibility,” which allows the prosecution under international law of military commanders for war crimes perpetrated by their subordinates.
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