The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, as represented by the National Unity Government, welcomes the interactive dialogue on Myanmar with the High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as OHCHR’s corresponding report on the human rights situation in Myanmar. 

Myanmar is deeply grateful to High Commissioner Türk and to OHCHR’s Myanmar Team for their committed efforts to expose the military junta’s horrors and to push the world to act.

OHCHR has delivered eight strong reports and multiple updates on Myanmar since February 2021. They document the arcing scale of the junta’s bloodshed which, to the High Commissioner, comprises “inhumanity in its vilest form”. The High Commissioner concludes that there is “no reason to believe that the military will radically change and break the cycle of impunity that has characterized its operations for decades.” 

The UN in Myanmar and the international community must wake up to the grave risk of being instrumentalized by the junta and co-opted into its crimes. To the High Commissioner, the junta’s blocking of humanitarian assistance to Rakhine State after deadly Cyclone Mocha is a clear example of it “prioritizing its own political interests over the wellbeing of a population in dire need of life-saving assistance.” 

OHCHR’s new report showcases the junta’s murderous use of airstrikes, its mass killings of civilians and its razing of villages. An emblematic investigation into the junta airstrikes in Pa Zi Gyi on 11 April 2023 found that it used a thermobaric or fuel-air explosive weapon designed to ‘explode in the air before impact to maximize destruction and casualties’. It left ‘charred bodies, severed body parts, and organs scattered across the area’.

The report’s address of the junta’s slaughter during its ground operations is even more horrific: 

Witnesses and photographic evidence indicated that soldiers made use of an appalling selection of methods likely amounting to inhuman treatment to inflict unimaginable pain on their victims, including by burning them alive, dismembering, raping, beheading, stabbing, bludgeoning, and using them as human shields against attacks and landmines. Entire families, including elders and toddlers, have been slain. While the military has often sought to destroy evidence by burning the victims’ bodies, it also displayed beheaded or otherwise defiled corpses to instil terror in those discovering them. 

The High Commissioner is right. The international community has a responsibility to protect civilians in Myanmar and there is no time to lose. 

The international community must urgently take up ASEAN Leaders’ call for support, including by pressing the UN Security Council to mark the anniversary of resolution 2669 on Myanmar by adopting a follow-up text. This new resolution should hold the junta accountable for its total disregard of the Council’s earlier demands and, acting on the High Commissioner’s repeated calls, refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court. 

OHCHR’s report also addresses alleged violations and abuses by anti-junta groups. While it clarifies that their reported ‘scale and intensity cannot be compared to the violations committed by the military’, Myanmar regardless agrees that the contravention of international law and norms by any party is utterly unacceptable and demands investigation and accountability. Myanmar, as represented by the National Unity Government, is fully committed to its obligations under international human rights law and international humanitarian law, particularly norms relevant to the protection of civilians. 

Furthermore, Myanmar remains committed to addressing the root causes of the severe discrimination, marginalization and atrocities against the Rohingya people, and to bringing the Rohingya and other displaced Myanmar communities home in voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable ways.

Myanmar supports the recommendations set out in the High Commissioner’s report and will continue to extend its full cooperation to OHCHR, including by advancing efforts to establish a country presence in Myanmar.

We extend this same spirit of cooperation to the Human Rights Council, to the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar and other mandate-holders, to the IIMM, and to international, regional and national accountability mechanisms.