War crimes committed by Myanmar’s military, including mass executions and sexual violence, have become “increasingly frequent and brazen”, a team of United Nations investigators said.
In a report published on Tuesday, the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) said there was “strong evidence that the Myanmar military and its affiliate militias have committed three types of combat-related war crimes with increasing frequency and brazenness”.
The Southeast Asian country has been ravaged by deadly violence since a coup deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021, unleashing a bloody crackdown on dissent that has triggered fighting across swaths of the nation.
The report, which covered the period between July 2022 and June 2023, cited “killings of civilians or combatants detained during operations”, as well as torture and horrific sexual violence.
The IIMM was established by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018 to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes and prepare files for criminal prosecution.
While the team has never been permitted to visit Myanmar, it said it had engaged with more than 700 sources and had collected “over 23 million information items”, including witness statements, documents, photographs, videos, forensic evidence and satellite imagery.
The team – already cooperating with the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court – said it “plans to accelerate its collection of evidence of the most serious international crimes”.
The investigators said they were particularly looking for “linkage evidence” demonstrating the responsibility of specific individuals, especially high-level officials.
The IIMM report explained that military commanders have a duty under international law to prevent and punish war crimes committed by those under their command.
It highlighted evidence of the use of child soldiers by “various armed actors”, and said it was seeing “more and more evidence concerning torture, sexual violence and other forms of severe mistreatment at numerous detention facilities”.
The evidence indicated that such crimes were “being committed with the highest levels of cruelty and harm to the victims, including rape with objects, other forms of humiliation, mutilation, gang or serial rape and sexual enslavement”, the report said.
The IIMM said it was also investigating rampant sexual violence committed during the bloody crackdown on Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority that in 2017 resulted in the displacement of nearly a million people.
The military government has previously denied atrocities have taken place, saying it is carrying out a legitimate campaign against “terrorists”.
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