GROUP COMPILES ABUSE DOSSIER
Reps of ousted govt highlights junta’s alleged tortures, killings to UN
AGROUP representing Myanmar’s ousted civilian government said yesterday it has gathered 180,000 pieces of evidence showing rights abuses by the junta, including torture and extrajudicial killings.
A lawyer for the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) — a group of lawmakers from Suu Kyi’s National
League for Democracy (NLD) party — met United Nations investigators yesterday to discuss alleged atrocities by the junta.
“CRPH has received 180,000 items of evidence. This evidence shows wide-scale abuses of human rights by the military,” the group said.
They include more than 540 extrajudicial executions, 10 deaths of prisoners in custody, torture, illegal detentions and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protests.
Demonstrations calling for the return of democracy and the release of Suu Kyi from detention have rocked Myanmar almost daily since the coup.
Civil servants, doctors and other key workers have downed tools as part of a civil disobedience movement
aimed at preventing the military from running the country.
In response, the security forces have used rubber bullets and live rounds to break up rallies and detained thousands of activists, some in night raids.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a local monitoring group, says 581 civilians have been killed in the crackdown and more than 2,700 arrested. Nearly 50 of the dead were children.
With many protesters and NLD activists now in hiding to escape arrest, the junta is increasingly taking their family members hostage, according to AAPP.
The head of the military authorities, General Min Aung Hlaing, insisted they had dealt with the protests “in a democratic way”, in
a speech reported yesterday by the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper.
He accused the protest movement of wanting to “destroy the country” and said only 248 protesters had been killed, along with 16 police officers.
And so far, the diplomatic pressure appears to be having little effect as the deaths and detentions continue every day.
At least three people were killed yesterday in the northern town of Kalay, when security forces broke up a protest camp, an NLD lawmaker and an activist said.
The activist from Women For Justice in Kalay accused the military of using at least one rocketpropelled grenade on the protesters, and said the true death toll could be higher.