U.S. Statement on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar

 

Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews

Statement by the Delegation of the United States of America
As Delivered by Mark Cassayre
Chargé d’affaires, U.S. Mission Geneva


Human Rights Council – 46th Session

March 11, 2021

Thank you, Mr. Andrews, for your continued focus on human rights in Myanmar following the February 1 coup. The United States strongly supports the independence of mandate holders.

We stand with the people of Myanmar as they pursue democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms, and respect for the rule of law.

We call on all members of the international community to join efforts to press the military to refrain from violence against peaceful protestors and restore power to the democratically elected government.

Myanmar Coup: Asean, once again, don’t look away

The Daily Star

Raudah Yunus , Gideon Lasco

March 11, 2021

Anti-coup demonstrators spray fire extinguishers over a barricade during a protest in Yangon, Myanmar, on March 9, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Stringer

The military coup in Myanmar that overturned its election results and put the country's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, in house arrest is a shocking, if unsurprising, reminder that even as the Covid-19 pandemic rages, political strife continues around the world and the pandemic itself is used to enact and perpetuate authoritarianism. As the harrowing scenes unfold, we can only express outrage over this turn of events: No country deserves to be ruled by force, and no country deserves to be deprived of their elected leaders.

How Myanmar's military-controlled government is cracking down on journalists

Q107

Elaine Kurtenbach
The Associated Press
March 9, 2021

WARNING: This story contains graphic content. WATCH: Myanmar's violent crackdown on protests becomes deadlier

Myanmar’s military-controlled government is cracking down on coverage of mass protests, raiding media companies and detaining dozens of journalists since its Feb. 1 coup, including Thein Zaw of The Associated Press.

Exclusive: 'Shoot till they are dead' - Some Myanmar police say fled to India after refusing orders

REUTERS

Devjyot Ghoshal
APAC
MARCH 9, 2021

CHAMPHAI, India (Reuters) - When Tha Peng was ordered to shoot at protesters with his submachine gun to disperse them in the Myanmar town of Khampat on Feb. 27, the police lance corporal said he refused.

“The next day, an officer called to ask me if I will shoot,” he said. The 27-year-old refused again, and then resigned from the force.

On March 1, he said he left his home and family behind in Khampat and travelled for three days, mostly at night to avoid detection, before crossing into India’s northeastern Mizoram state.

“I had no choice,” Tha Peng told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday, speaking via a translator. He gave only part of his name to protect his identity. Reuters saw his police and national ID cards which confirmed the name.

Dozens of Rohingya camping outside UNHCR office in India detained

Aljazeera
Bilal Kuchay
11 Mar 2021

At least 88 Rohingya detained in New Delhi while camping outside the UN refugee body’s office in second such move in a week.

Rahima Kato, a Rohingya woman, displays identity cards of her family members issued by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) at their makeshift camp on the outskirts of Jammu [File: Channi Anand/AP]

New Delhi, India – Dozens of Rohingya refugees have been detained while they were camping outside the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in the Indian capital, New Delhi – the second such move in a week.

“A total of 88 people have been detained,” an officer at Vikaspuri police station in the capital’s southwest told Al Jazeera over telephone on Thursday.

Canada must help find a safe zone for Rohingya in Myanmar

HAMILTON THE SPECTATOR

By Washim Ahmed
Wed., March 10, 2021

Myanmar is once again attracting international attention after its military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government declaring a state of emergency for a period of one year. All G7 members condemned the coup and Canada has introduced sanctions against nine additional Myanmar military officials under the Special Economic Measures (Burma) Regulations passed in 2007, bringing the total count to 54.

Biden Sanctions Myanmar Coup Leader’s Children, Their Businesses

Bloomberg News 

11 March 2021 

Min Aung Hlaing, Photographer, Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Image

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The U.S. sanctioned the adult children of Myanmar coup leader Min Aung Hlaing along with their business holdings, saying they “have directly benefited from their father’s position and malign influence.”-

The U.S. Treasury Department put the children -- Aung Pyae Sone, 36, and Khin Thiri Thet Mon, 39 -- on a list that prohibits American citizens from doing business with them or their six businesses. Their operations include a restaurant, gyms, a gallery and a media production business.-

Myanmar’s military on ‘killing spree’ against protesters: Amnesty

Aljazeera
11 Mar 2021

New report finds evidence the military is using battlefield weapons and conflict-hardened troops against peaceful protesters.

Riot police hold their firearms as they face-off with protesters in the capital, Naypyidaw on Monday [Stringer/AFP]

The Myanmar military is using lethal tactics and an arsenal of battlefield weapons to carry out a “killing spree” against peaceful protesters who oppose the February 1 coup, Amnesty International said on Thursday after analysing video and photographic evidence from the past few weeks of mass protests.

The cache of 55 video clips offer visual proof of the “systematic and premeditated killings”, Amnesty said in a report on Thursday, as it called on the UN Security Council and the international community to take action to halt the violence.

႐ိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြကို ျပန္မပို႔ဖို႔ အိႏိၵယအစိုးရကို ေတာင္းဆို

VOA
ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)
11 မတ္၊ 2021

အိႏိၵယႏိုင္ငံ Jammu ျမိဳ႕ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းမွာ ေတြ႔ရတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္မ်ား။ (မတ္ ၇၊ ၂၀၂၁)

 

အိႏိၵယႏိုင္ငံေရာက္ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာဒုကၡသည္ေတြကို ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံျပန္ပို႔ေရး အစီအစဥ္ ရပ္တန္႔ေပးဖို႔ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး အဖြဲ႔ေတြက ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္ပါတယ္။

အိႏိၵယႏိုင္ငံ ေျမာက္ပိုင္း Jammu ၿမိဳ႕မွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာမြတ္ဆလင္ ဒုကၡသည္ ၂၂၀ ေလာက္ကို ျမန္မာ  နိုင္ငံျပန္ပုိ႔မယ္လို႔ အိႏိၵယရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႔က ေၾကညာခ်က္ထုတ္ၿပီးတဲ့ေနာက္ အခုလိုေတာင္းဆိုတာပါ။

ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္ အၾကမ္းဖက္ေနမႈ ကုလ လုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီ ရႈတ္ခ်

ဧရာဝတီ

11 March 2021

ကုလသမဂၢ လုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္အာဏာသိမ္းမႈ ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ားအား စစ္တပ္ႏွင့္ ရဲက အၾကမ္းဖက္ေနျခင္းကို ရႈတ္ခ်ခဲ့သည္ / ဧရာဝတီ 

ကုလသမဂၢ လုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတြင္ စစ္အာဏာသိမ္းမႈ ဆန္႔က်င္ေရး ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ားအား စစ္တပ္ႏွင့္ ရဲက အၾကမ္းဖက္ေနျခင္းကို ရႈတ္ခ်ခဲ့ၿပီး လုံးဝ ခ်ဳပ္တည္းရန္ စစ္ေကာင္စီကို တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ သည္။

အဖြဲ႕ဝင္ ၁၅ နိုင္ငံလုံး၏ သေဘာတူ ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္တြင္ ေကာင္စီအေနျဖင့္ “အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား၊ လူငယ္ မ်ား၊ ကေလးသူငယ္မ်ားအပါအဝင္ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းစြာ ဆႏၵျပသူမ်ားကို အၾကမ္းဖက္ၿဖိဳခြဲျခင္းအား ျပင္းထန္စြာ ရႈတ္ခ် သည္”ဟု ေရးသားထားသည္။

Shahriar: Saudi Arabia won't send back Rohingyas to Bangladesh

Dhaka Tribune
UNB
March 10th, 2021

File photo of Scores of Rohingya Muslims sit on the floor of the Shumaisi detention centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, as the authorities prepare to deport the men to Bangladesh Nay San Lwin/Al Jazeera

KSA assures of interim arrangement for irregular Bangladesh expatriates to have health facilities and employment, he said

The Saudi government did not say that the Rohingyas, living in Saudi Arabia, will be sent back to Bangladesh, said State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md. Shahriar Alam on Wednesday.

“No, Saudi Arabia didn’t say that they’ll send back Rohingyas to Bangladesh,” he told reporters at his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs referring to his meeting with his Saudi counterpart Adel Al-Jubeir during his recent visit there.

The state minister said his Saudi counterpart made it clear that “they’ve no as such issue” with Bangladesh.

India police detain more than 150 Rohingya refugees, begin process for deportation

JURIST
Ananaya Agrawal | National Law U. Delhi, IN
MARCH 9, 2021

The Indian police on Saturday apprehended at least 168 Rohingya refugees living in the northern territory of Jammu valley under the directions of the Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration. The detained Rohingya, including the elderly and children, have been taken to a makeshift holding centre near the Hira Nagar jail in Kathua district of Jammu where local authorities have begun the identity verification process using biometrics and other documents-based verification, such as place of stay.

The drive aims to trace Rohingyas residing without legal documentation in Jammu and comes after the Home Department of the J&K administration issued a notification last Thursday under Section 3(2)(e) of the Foreigners Act, 1946.

'Kill Me Instead': Despite Nun's Pleas, Military Junta Shoots Pro-Democracy Protesters in Myanmar

Common Dreams

Kenny Stancil, staff writer
Tuesday, March 09, 2021

"We heard loud gunshots, and saw that a young kid's head had exploded, and there was a river of blood on the street," said Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng. "We need to value life. It made me feel so sad."

"I knelt down… begging them not to shoot and torture the children, but to shoot me and kill me instead," Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng said of her attempt to dissuade police officers in Myitkyina, Myanmar from shooting people at a pro-democracy demonstration on March 8, 2021. (Photo: Twitter screengrab via Reuters)

Kneeling before a group of police officers in a northern Myanmar city on Monday, Sister Ann Rose Nu Tawng courageously begged the forces of the country's new military junta to refrain from shooting pro-democracy activists—a plea that was ultimately ignored by the officers who went on to kill at least two people and injure several others as the violent repression of peaceful demonstrations against last month's coup continues.

"I knelt down… begging them not to shoot and torture the children, but to shoot me and kill me instead," Tawng told AFP on Tuesday after a video of the incident went viral.

Japan to give $19 mil. grant aid to support Myanmar's Rohingya

The Mainichi

March 9, 2021 (Mainichi Japan)

In this Feb. 15, 2021 file photo, Rohingya refugees heading to the Bhasan Char island prepare to board navy vessels from the south eastern port city of Chattogram, Bangladesh. (AP Photo)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan will contribute $19 million in emergency grant aid via international organizations to support Myanmar's Rohingya people who have fled homes in the country's Rakhine State to escape persecution and violence by the military, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

Japanese officials said Tokyo will maintain humanitarian assistance to Myanmar even as it condemns the military coup on Feb. 1 that ousted a democratically elected government and saw State Councillor Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders detained.

‘I appeal to all, no lip service ple

The Daily Star
Diplomatic Correspondent
March 09, 2021

Foreign minister urges int’l community about Rohingya repatriation

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen. File photo

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has appealed to the international community to work sincerely, instead of paying "lip service" for repatriation of the Rohingyas to Myanmar.

"There are 1.1 million Rohingyas in camps in Bangladesh. The majority of them are girls and women. It's time for the world leaders to come forward to help repatriate and reintegrate them in Rakhine and give them a future," he said yesterday.

Myanmar's military to pay Israeli-Canadian lobbyist $2m to explain 'real situation' to US following coup

SKY NEWS

Wednesday 10 March 2021 

Former arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe will "assist" in explaining the army's coup situation to the US and other countries.

Some 1,900 people have been arrested since 1 February when Myanmar's generals seized power

An Israeli-Canadian lobbyist hired by Myanmar's military will be paid $2m (£1.4m) to help explain the "real situation" to the US and other countries, documents filed with the US Justice Department show.

It comes after more than 60 protesters have been killed and 1,900 people arrested since 1 February when Myanmar's generals seized power and began detaining civilian leaders including State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi.

Former arms dealer Ari Ben-Menashe and his firm, Dickens & Madson Canada, will represent Myanmar's military government in Washington, as well as lobby Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and Russia, and international bodies like the United Nations, according to a consultancy agreement.

Diplomats: UN to condemn violence against Myanmar protesters

INDEPENDENT

Via AP news wire

10th March 2021

U.N. Security Council diplomats say members have approved a statement calling for a reversal of the military coup in Myanmar and strongly condemning the violence against peaceful protesters and urging “utmost restraint” by the military.

Myanmar(Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

U.N. Security Council members approved a statement Wednesday calling for a reversal of the military coup in Myanmar and strongly condemning the violence against peaceful protesters and calling for “utmost restraint" by the military, three council diplomats said.

The diplomats, who said the presidential statement had been approved by all 15 council members including Myanmar’s neighbor and friend China spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of its official adoption at a council meeting expected later Wednesday. A presidential statement is a step below a resolution but becomes part of the official record of the U.N.’s most powerful body.

လုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီမှာ မြန်မာ့အရေး ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်မချနိုင် သေး

လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ ( RFA )
မြန်မာဌာန | သတင်းများ
2021-03-10

 အမေရိကန်ပြည်ထောင်စု နယူးယောက်မြို့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂလုံခြုံရေးကောင်စီမှာ မြန်မာ့အရေး ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက် ချနိုင်ဖို့ မနေ့ကဆွေးနွေးခဲ့ကြပေမဲ့ မအောင်မြင်ခဲ့ပါဘူး။

Exclusive: EU preparing sanctions on Myanmar military businesses, documents show

REUTERS

Gabriela Baczynska, Robin Emmott
MARCH 8, 2021

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union is preparing to widen its sanctions on Myanmar’s armed forces to target businesses they run, in protest at the Feb. 1 military coup, according to diplomats and two internal documents seen by Reuters.

A woman shows a three-finger salute during a protest against the military coup in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, March 8, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer

The measures, which diplomats said could be agreed by EU foreign ministers on March 22, would target companies “generating revenue for, or providing financial support to, the Myanmar Armed Forces”, said one of the documents dated March 5.

While the bloc has an arms embargo on Myanmar, and has targeted some senior military officials since 2018, the measures would be its most significant response so far since the coup.

Separated from families, uncertainty looms over deportation in Rohingya settlements

Hindustan Times

Ravi Krishnan Khajuria, 

Jammu
UPDATED ON MAR 09, 2021 

Over the weekend, police rounded up the 169 people from the city and took them to the Hiranagar jail detention centre

Rohingyas at Kiryani Talab in Jammu on Monday (HT Photo)

The family members of the 169 Rohingya community members who were taken to a detention centre at a prison in Jammu have now been confined to their settlement clusters in the city’s Kathua district, where many described a sense of dread since the detentions and repeated appeals to the government of India not to deport them to Myanmar.