UN Security Council must act to end the violence in Myanmar, says Special Advisory Council for Myanmar

BANGKOK, March 14 (Bernama): The United Nations (UN) Security Council must take action to ensure that the Myanmar military complies with Resolution 2669 which was enacted last year to end violence and restore democracy.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2669, its first resolution on Myanmar in 74 years, on December 21, last year.

The resolution expressed "deep concern at the ongoing state of emergency imposed by the military in Myanmar on February 1 2021 and its grave impact on the people of Myanmar” and demanded "an immediate end to all forms of violence throughout the country”.

Resolution 2669 further called for immediate and concrete actions to "effectively and fully implement ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus (5PC) agreed on April 24, 2021”.

Operative demands made by the UN Security Council are considered binding under international law.

According to Chris Sidoti of Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M), the military has been routinely violating international human rights law, international humanitarian law, and serious international criminal offences for the past two years. These violations include acts of terrorism as defined by international and Myanmar law.

"The Security Council must act to enforce the military’s compliance with its resolution, including through targetted sanctions on military financial interests, a comprehensive arms embargo, and referral to the International Criminal Court,” he said in a statement.

SAC-M said UN Security Council must respond to the Myanmar military’s non-compliance with action, not mere words.

"Violence in Myanmar at the hands of the military has increased this year in direct defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2669 and Asean’s 5PC.

"Since the resolution was adopted, credible reports indicate that the military has continued to launch airstrikes and artillery fire on civilian targets, massacred civilians and resistance fighters and burned civilian homes and property on a near-daily basis, in the north, northwest, east and southeast of Myanmar,” it said.

SAC-M stated incidences of a single military force beheading up to 18 members of the resistance and two children, as well as massacring 16 civilians, including three women who were raped before being slain, across three townships in the Sagaing Region, had been documented over the previous two weeks.

Meanwhile, Yanghee Lee of SAC-M said Myanmar’s junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, and his military have willfully defied the UN Security Council’s resolution.

"This is the same military that committed genocide against the Rohingya five years ago. Once again, the international community is watching on, this time as they attack an entire country and erode the security of South and Southeast Asia. This is a global issue upon which the Security Council must act,” she said.

Founding member of the SAC-M Marzuki Darusman said the extreme violence being inflicted on the population by the military must stop - this is an absolute minimum requirement for any progress, by Asean and by the UN towards an eventual resolution of the crisis in Myanmar.

"The simple truth is that the 5PC is failing while the junta’s violence intensifies. But Min Aung Hlaing has demonstrated no intention of curbing the atrocities.

"The UN Security Council must act in support of Asean to compel him to do so. There is no other option,” the former chair of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar said.

The Security Council will hear reports on Monday from the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on Myanmar and the Foreign Minister of Indonesia, this year’s Asean Chair, on UN support for the implementation of the 5PC.

Since the Feb 2021 military coup, more than 3,000 civilians have been killed, over 16,000 arrested, and more than 1.5 million were internally displaced or have fled the country, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). - Bernama