The US and six other nations on Friday issued a joint statement calling on the international community to suspend all assistance to the Burmese military, and expressing grave concern over reports of human rights abuses by Myanmar’s security forces.
The statement came as fears of an escalation of violence grow in the Southeast Asian nation, whose army is attempting to crush an increasingly active armed opposition movement seeking to end military rule.
“We are concerned about allegations of weapons stockpiling and attacks by the military, including shelling and airstrikes, use of heavy weapons, and the deployment of thousands of troops accompanying what security forces assert are counterterrorism operations, which are disproportionately impacting civilians,” the statement said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
It said the rights abuses include “credible reports of sexual violence and torture,” and highlighted the country’s northwest, where tens of thousands of people have been reported to have been displaced by government attacks.
The countries issuing the statement — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, the UK and the US — already have embargoed arms sales to Myanmar, whose army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February. They also have instituted targeted diplomatic and economic sanctions meant to pressure the ruling generals behind the takeover.
Although such measures harm Myanmar’s economy, they have done little to help restore democracy and peace.
China and Russia are allies of the military-installed government, and as members of the UN Security Council, have effectively blocked concerted international action to isolate the generals. Beijing and Moscow are also the top suppliers of arms to Myanmar.
Friday’s statement, released by the US Department of State, applauded a consensus declared earlier this month by the UN Security Council, which called for “the immediate cessation of violence, protection of civilians, and full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access.”
The consensus, issued as a press statement, has no binding power and falls short of the influence a formal resolution would carry.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency