Myanmar was plunged into chaos after a 2021 coup ousted democratically elected civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, sparking fighting between the military, ethnic rebel groups and newer People’s Defence Forces.

The UN and human rights groups have denounced alleged rights violations including attacks on civilians and humanitarian workers, arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, sexual violence and torture.

“We need to prevent the supply of arms to the military and to analyse the economic interests that are behind it,” said UN human rights chief Volker Turk.

In a new report presented to the UN Human Rights Council, Turk also called for “targeted measures” to limit the generals’ access to “foreign currency, aviation fuel and other means that enable attacks on Myanmar’s people”.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights for the Southeast Asian nation, Thomas Andrews, said foreign currency allowed the junta to buy arms, supply its weapons factories and refuel combat aircraft.

The targets included a communications and public relations office in Bahan Township, the immigration department, the central police station in Hlaing Tharyar Township, the township court in South Okkalapa, and a checkpoint in Thanlyin Township.

According to a statement by the involved resistance groups, 12 bombs were used in the attacks between 8 pm and midnight.""

The junta’s choreography was on full display this week, with the State Administration Council partially pardoning ousted state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and deposed president Win Myint on Tuesday following Monday’s extension to the state of emergency. They were part of a mass amnesty for 7,749 prisoners to mark Waso, the Buddhist Lent.
Despite the fanfare, the regime only pardoned Aung San Suu Kyi for five of her 19 convictions and two of Win Myint’s eight convictions. These flimsy olive branches are likely aimed at dividing the resistance and giving its regional cheerleaders something to hold up as the benefits of engagement.

Many have long worried that Aung San Suu Kyi might not approve of the parallel National Unity Government or the armed revolution, and that releasing her could undermine the resistance movement. The NUG seems to have gotten a heads up that something was happening. Speaking at a meeting with members of the National Unity Consultative Committee on Tuesday, NUG Prime Minister Mahn Win Khaing Than said the parallel government’s approach “will not change” even if Aung San Suu Kyi is released.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the regime can always take both leaders back to its kangaroo courts and add more charges whenever it wants.

Meanwhile, to no one’s surprise, the National Defence and Security Council extended the state of emergency for another six months on Monday, pushing the regime’s planned election well into next year.

Hmone Yati Hlaing and Shoon Le Yadi, both 8, were best friends and neighbors in the quiet village of Pa Zi Gyi in central Myanmar.
On April 11, just after daybreak, they cycled together to a community event in a residential neighborhood near where they lived. It was a few days before Thingyan, the Buddhist water festival that marks the start of the Myanmar New Year, and several hundred people had gathered to inaugurate the opening of a local administrative building.

Hmone Yati Hlaing and Shoon Le Yadi arrived a little before 7 a.m. They were two of the last ones in, their relatives said, before a military jet flew overhead, dropping an explosive that tore apart the new building and most of the people in it.

At least 157 people were killed, according to two local groups that have verified the toll over several months. It was the single deadliest attack by the Myanmar military since it seized control from a civilian government in 2021, and a stunning demonstration, analysts said, of how far the junta is willing to go to crush the resistance movement that has pushed it out of large swaths of the country.

The military acknowledged responsibility for the airstrike hours after it happened, announcing on state television that it had killed members of the rebel People’s Defense Force, whom the military called “terrorists,” active in the northern Sagaing region where resistance groups have a stronghold.

But records documenting the deaths and injuries from the attack that were provided exclusively to The Washington Post by a network of local medics, along with more than 100 photos and videos obtained from multiple people, show that at least 25 children were among the dead, including babies as young as 10 months. Survivors said most of the people killed were civilians from Pa Zi Gyi and nearby villages.

For more than three months, this small northeast Indian state has been at war with itself, wracked by a conflict that has killed at least 180 people, wounded at least 400 others, and displaced more than 54,000. Homes and ambulances have been set alight, children orphaned, women raped. Victims’ corpses have been mutilated beyond recognition. After decades of tension, political disharmony between the majority Meitei and minority Kuki ethnic communities has boiled over into near unprecedented bloodshed.

Myanmar’s junta will likely hold elections in 2025, party officials told Agence France-Presse on Tuesday, even as the military struggles to crush resistance to its rule.

The military justified its February 2021 putsch with unsubstantiated claims of widespread fraud in 2020 elections won resoundingly by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.

The coup ended a 10-year democratic experiment and plunged the country into turmoil, with the military now battling opponents across swathes of the country.

“Elections are likely to be held in 2025,” a senior member of the military proxy Union Solidarity and Development Party told AFP, requesting anonymity.

Myanmar had already been reeling under a public health and economic crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The military coup in February 2021 only made the situation worse. Its adverse ramifications can be felt in every sector of the country.

The determined fight of opposition groups resisting military rule has prompted the military-appointed State Administration Council (SAC) to embark upon the “four cuts” strategy, which relies on the burning of entire villages, the use of airstrikes and artillery shelling, as well as arbitrary arrests, torture, and killings. The primary objective of this policy, which has been pursued for decades against the ethnic armed organizations (EAO) in regions such as Kachin and Karen states, is to sever grassroots support for the resistance groups.

The consequences of the “four cuts” policy can be gleaned from data compiled by the United Nations human rights office, which revealed that between February 2021 and April 2023, at least 3,452 persons were killed by the military and its affiliates, 21,807 people were arrested, and 5,839 were convicted. Around 1.5 million people have been displaced due to the conflict and another 75,000 people have reportedly fled to neighboring countries. The junta troops had burned 70,324 civilian houses through the end of May 2023 in 13 of the country’s 14 states and regions. Around 18 million people — comprising about a third of Myanmar’s population — need humanitarian aid because of the conflict and the post-coup economic crisis.

At least 29 people, including 13 children—one was just one-and-half-years old—lost their lives, while another 57 people were also injured in the attack, according to the KIA.

“Fourteen men and fifteen women were killed by junta shelling. Eleven children under the age of 16 were among the victims,” KIA spokesperson Colonel Naw Bu told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday afternoon.

Mung Lai Hkyet Village is about two miles north of Laiza Town, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which resumed fighting the junta’s military after the 2021 coup.

Several hundred internally displaced persons (IDPs) had called the village home before it was turned into rubble. Residents and volunteers say the village was obliterated in the blink of an eye shortly before midnight on Monday.

Junta troops and allied Pyu Saw Htee militia have cut electricity supplies and driven more than 10,000 civilians out of their homes in Sagaing’s Kantbalu over the past week.

Around 120 junta soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 361 and militia have been attacking southern Kantbalu since the last week of September, forcing civilians from 10 villages to flee. The troops looted Nga Pyaw Tine village last week, two days after they occupied its electricity supply station, according to local charity Kyun Hla.