Oct. 8 (UPI) — At least 24 protesters in Myanmar were killed and 47 injured after they were bombed from the air as they participated in a demonstration against the military government in a town in the country’s central Sagaing region.
Regime forces launched the attack on the gathering of about 100 people from motorized paragliders over the town of Chaung-U, 200 miles northwest of the capital, Naypyidaw, according to the exiled National Unity Government formed after Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration was ousted in a 2021 military coup.
The incident occurred Monday night as the Southeast Asian nation celebrated the full-moon phase of its lunar Lighting Festival, which, according to Buddhist belief, marks the descent to earth of the Buddha.
The quasi self-governing region was targeted because it is a center of resistance to the ruling military junta, with People’s Defence Force volunteer militias running the local administration.
An official in the local PDF told BBC Burmese it discovered an attack was imminent but was not able to clear the area in time. The official, who was himself injured but saw others killed, said the whole event lasted less than 10 minutes.
Amnesty International condemned what it said was an unprovoked attack on a peaceful candlelight vigil calling for the release of arbitrarily detained prisoners, opposing military conscription and a December “election” being held by the military junta.
“The sickening reports emerging from the ground in central Myanmar following a nighttime attack late on Monday should serve as a gruesome wake-up call that civilians in Myanmar need urgent protection,” said Joe Freeman from Amnesty.
“The international community may have forgotten about the conflict in Myanmar, but the Myanmar military is taking advantage of reduced scrutiny to carry out war crimes with impunity. It continues to kill civilians on a daily basis, using methods such as motorized paragliders, a disturbing trend that Amnesty International has documented in the same area that this attack occurred.”
Freeman said the incident was the latest in a list dating back to the coup that overthrew Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government, with the junta stepping up deadly attacks on its opponents ahead of an election being held with the sole aim of tightening its grip on power
Amnesty called on the Association for Southeast Asian Nations to step up pressure on Myanmar’s military regime at its Oct. 26-28 meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and for the U.N. Security Council to request the International Criminal Court in The Hague launch an investigation into the situation.
A 2024 U.N. Human Rights Council report found the conflict in Myanmar had descended into a pattern of systematic atrocities, including attacks targeting civilians, torture and sexual violence.
In testimony to the council in Geneva, Nicholas Koumjian, the head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, said civilians were routinely “not just collateral damage but rather the target of attacks”.
“Victims and witnesses have recounted beatings, electric shocks, strangulations and torture by pulling out fingernails with pliers. There is evidence that minors and other victims of all genders have been subjected to gang rape, burns on sexual body parts and other violent sexual and gender-based crimes,” said Koumjian.
More than 3 million people were displaced and tens of thousands forced to flee the country, with Shan state and the Muslim Rohingya minority in the north of the country being heavily targeted.
