Myanmar people recount attacks, torture in first six months after military coup: 'they burned my skin like barbecue'

"Dr Phi Phi", a senior emergency doctor in Myanmar, remembered treating a patient with a gunshot wound to his chest and abdomen in Yangon last March.

"We managed to put in the chest tube, but there was a lot of bleeding. One litre of blood came out, and there was a lot of blood in his abdomen, in every part of his abdomen."

A 25-year-old woman witnessed police in Mandalay storm into her home and shoot and kill her six-year old sister who was sitting on her father's lap.

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"[My sister] told my dad she was scared, and he asked her, "Why are you scared?" and then [the officer] shot her."

In May last year, police arrested Myanmar poet Zaw Htun, also known as Khet Thi, in Shwebo Township, Sagaing Region. He would later die in custody.

His wife, Chaw Suge remembered how an officer told her the only way she could claim her husband's body was to sign for it at the hospital.

His face was swollen and full of broken bones with stitches on his abdomen

A relative of "Aung Thein" recalled the moments before the 22-year-old, who gathered in Magwe to protest the coup had most of his hand blown off with a rubber bullet shot from close range.

"Soldiers ordered my brother to put up his hands and when he did, they said, 'We just came from the front lines. Why do you want to protest? Raise your three fingers and see what happens. You will call out for your mother [a reference to Aung San Suu Kyi] and she can't save you.'"

A man in his 20s who works as an electrician in Mandalay remembered how four Myanmar Army soldiers burned the tattoo of Aung San Suu Kyi off his forearm.

"[They] burned my skin like barbecue. It hurt. I didn't shout, I was resisting the pain," the man said, adding the soldiers also kicked him from behind, kicked him in the face, and struck him in the head with a gun.

His harrowing tale was among the countless accounts found in the 193-page report released on Thursday by Fortify Rights and the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law School.

Titled "Nowhere is Safe": The Myanmar Junta's Crimes Against Humanity Following the Coup d'Etat, the report is based on more than 120 testimonies with survivors, eyewitnesses, protesters, medical professionals, members of armed resistances, and former military and police across the country.

The report, which focuses on the first six months after the military's coup last February, found that the junta murdered, imprisoned, tortured, disappeared, forcibly displaced, and persecuted civilians in acts that amount to crimes against humanity.

In a forward to the report, Tom Andrews, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar said the report "on the junta's horrendous crimes can help guide efforts to ensure accountability."

The report identified 61 senior military and police officials who should be investigated and possibly prosecuted for international crimes, and topping the list are armed forces chief Min Aung Hlaing, vice senior general Soe Win, and the joint chief of staff general Mya Tun Oo.

"All individuals responsible for these crimes should be sanctioned and prosecuted," said Matthew Smith, Fortify Rights CEO and co-author of the report.

Apart from establishing the locations of 1,040 military units nationwide, the report also revealed new information about the military chain-of-command during the crackdown on peaceful protesters throughout the country.

These include the establishment of a "Special Command" in Naypyidaw which had the sole authority to deploy and command troops in civilian-populated cities and townships where soldiers have not typically been operational.

The report also provided what it called the most thorough legal analysis to date of the junta's widespread and systematic attacks on the people of Myanmar in the first six months after the coup. Among the leaked documents and information obtained by Fortify Rights and Schell Center are internal memos instructing forces to commit crimes.

For instance, a "fieldcraft" manual for military soldiers makes no mention of the laws of war or human rights and, in one section, advises soldiers to "make sure a bullet equates to an enemy killed."

Another leaked memo from the Myanmar Police Force ordered officers to arbitrarily arrest protesters, members of the National League for Democracy, the former party ousted by the junta, and specific human rights defenders.

The report also examined the junta's crackdown under international criminal law and found that from February to July last year, forces under the junta's command committed the atrocities as part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

There are reasonable grounds to believe the atrocities meet the standard required by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue an arrest warrant, the report added.

The report recommended that governments should ensure international justice for past and ongoing crimes in Myanmar and press the UN Security Council (UNSC) to refer the situation in Myanmar to the ICC.

UNSC member states should also support a Security Council resolution to impose a global arms embargo on the Myanmar military, while governments should impose targeted sanctions against military-owned enterprises.

"The Myanmar military poses a threat to international peace and security," said Roger Polack, Schell Center Visiting Human Rights Fellow and co-author of the report, adding that the Security Council must live up to its mandate to respond to such threats.

Mikael Gravers, associate professor emeritus at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the current situation in Myanmar is urgent as the "military's 'kill all, torch all' violence against civilians is escalating and a humanitarian catastrophe is developing".

Gravers noted that the military is under strain as many soldiers are tired of fighting, and many battalions have suffered severe casualties.

Troops have also had to deal with a lack of food, unpaid wages, and can't leave camps to visit their families, Gravers said, adding the question is how much strain the military and its network can take.

"They have been used to hard times in the 1980s and 1990s. Thus, it will be extremely difficult for the civilian resistance to win without international help," Gravers added.

Htwe Htwe Thein, an associate professor in Australia's Curtin University said the international community should have acted earlier and with greater coordination in a fashion similar to the decisive action taken against Russia after its recent invasion of Ukraine.

Countries such as Australia and Japan should also be involved in the Myanmar situation, she added, and more pressure should be put on Asean, or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, "to deliver meaningful results and real change on the ground".

"That doesn't seem to be happening right now," Htwe Htwe Thein said, adding that the junta who is used to being isolated by the international community is ready to return to a "pariah era" again if need be.

"So for change to occur the pressure will have to be broadened and sustained," Htwe Htwe Thein added.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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