YANGON, Myanmar – According to new research published on Thursday, Myanmar’s army and the police deliberately killed civilians opposed to its rule in the six months following the February 2021 coup. This policy amounts to crimes against humanity.
The rights group Fortify Rights and Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights published “Nowhere is Safe,” a report that documents acts of murder, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearances, forced population transfer, and persecution between February and July 2021.
It discovered “reasonable grounds to suspect the Myanmar junta of crimes against humanity.”
It also named 61 senior officials, including coup leader and armed forces chief Min Aung Hlaing and his deputy Soe Win, who the report said should be investigated and potentially prosecuted for the alleged abuses.
The report shows how the military used snipers and live ammunition against civilians, with doctors detailing a significant number of deaths from single bullet wounds to the back of the head or through the heart, based on testimony from 128 witnesses, including protesters, medics, and some former members of the armed forces.
Military deserters told Fortify Rights and the Schell Center that the military had deployed snipers to kill protesters as a matter of state policy to instill fear in those who disagreed with the government’s” rule.
