Junta foreign minister defends regime’s killing of civilians

By Admin 08 Jul 2023

DMG Newsroom
8 July 2023, Sittwe

The Myanmar military has followed the Vienna Convention rules of engagement and exercised restraint to minimise damage to civilians in its hostilities with anti-regime forces across the country, the junta’s foreign minister U Than Swe told diplomats on Thursday in Yangon.

U Than Swe gave a diplomatic briefing on July 6, with ambassadors, heads of missions, other senior diplomats and the United Nations resident coordinator in Myanmar attending the briefing, reported the junta’s propaganda newspapers.

At the briefing, former military official U Than Swe, who was Myanmar’s ambassador to the US under U Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government, defended the military regime while blaming the resistance forces fighting the Myanmar military.

He insisted that the Myanmar military does not use disproportionate force but strictly follows the Vienna Convention rules of engagement. The military also abides by the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement and never launched an assault, he claimed.

Political analysts said quite the opposite is true.

“The regime is just spreading propaganda. They arbitrarily detain and kill people. They drop bombs on civilian villages. It is what terrorists do. They are deliberately attacking civilians. But they would defend themselves on the international stage,” said political analyst U Than Soe Naing.

The regime has committed at least 147 massacres — defined as involving five people or more — since the coup on February 1, 2021. A total of 1,592 people were killed in those massacres, said the Nyan Lan Thit research group on March 26, 2023.

Some of the most deadly were an air raid on Pazi Gyi village in Sagaing Region on April 11, 2023, which killed more than 100 people, and a massacre of more than 40 people on December 24, 2021, in Kayah State’s Hpruso Township.

On November 10 of last year, junta troops torched 10 houses and killed nine civilians in Sininngyi Village, part of Arakan State’s Ponnagyun Township, as junta troops retaliated for an attack by the Arakan Army on a military convoy near the village.

The regime’s foreign minister is simply defending the indefensible, according to former lawmaker and political analyst U Pe Than.

“They are torching houses every day, and unfairly arrest locals. They did the same during the fighting in Arakan State,” he said.

Successive governments have held more than 5,000 rounds of peace talks with ethnic armed organisations in an effort to achieve a permanent peace in Myanmar, claimed U Than Swe.

Fighting between the military regime and several resistance forces has been a constant across much of Myanmar in the post-coup period.