YANGON – A group representing Myanmar’s ousted civilian government said today it has gathered 180,000 pieces of evidence showing rights abuses by the junta including torture and extrajudicial killings.
The country has been in turmoil since the army deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, with nearly 600 people killed in a crackdown on anti-coup protests.
A lawyer for the Committee for Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) – a group of MPs from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party -- met UN investigators today 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 in a statement.
They include more than 540 extrajudicial executions, 10 deaths of prisoners in custody, torture, illegal detentions, and disproportionate use of force against peaceful protests, the statement said.
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 protest supporters and NLD activists now in hiding to escape arrest, the junta is increasingly taking their family members hostage, according to AAPP. – AFP pic, April 7, 2021
