U.N. Security Council: Impose An Aviation Fuel And Arms Embargo On Myanmar Junta

October 24, 2024

The U.N. Security Council should immediately impose an embargo on the supply of aviation fuel and weapons to the Myanmar military junta to prevent further indiscriminate attacks on civilians, Fortify Rights said today. On September 5, 2024, a Myanmar junta jet bombed a camp housing internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pekon Township on the border between Karenni and Shan states, killing nine displaced persons, including six children.

“The Myanmar junta’s jets continue to pound civilian communities with complete impunity as the world watches and stays silent,” said Chit Seng, Human Rights Associate at Fortify Rights. “The nations of the U.N. stand idly by as the junta continues to mercilessly attack and kill innocent people, including children, from the skies. The U.N. Security Council and U.N. Member States, more broadly, can and should cut the aviation fuel supplies and weapon flows that enable the junta’s continued reign of terror.”

On the evening of September 5, at approximately 9:15 p.m., a Myanmar junta air force jet dropped two large bombs on displaced persons sheltering in the “Bangkok Camp” located close to La Ei Village in Pekon Township. The airstrike killed nine, including six children aged between two and 16, and injured 19 additional displaced persons. The airstrike also destroyed approximately 49 shelters and a school in the camp, which is reportedly home to more than 600 people.

Fortify Rights received and reviewed mobile-phone videos and dozens of photographs from the aftermath of the attack, showing sites of destroyed IDP shelters, a school, and craters where the bombs were dropped as well as the funeral ceremony for the victims. Fortify Rights interviewed six eyewitnesses to the airstrike and its aftermath, including three survivors, a doctor, and two Myanmar aid workers. Fortify Rights worked closely with the Karenni Human Rights Group and residents of the camp to gather and verify information.

Fortify Rights changed the names of all survivors and eyewitnesses, as quoted below, for security purposes.

“Akayar,” 47, a math teacher in the Bangkok IDP camp who lost both his wife and two-year-old son in the airstrike on September 5, described the attack to Fortify Rights:

Around 9 p.m., a jet flew very low above us. My wife woke me up, and we moved toward our bomb shelter [located under our hut]. It’s a tight space, so I told my wife to go and sleep in there with the children, and I said I would sleep just above them. I heard the jet approaching for a second time. The sound was deafening. I dropped to the ground, and the hut disappeared from above me.

Akayar described to Fortify Rights the moment he found his dead wife and mortally wounded son in the wreckage of their shelter:

I found her lying face down on the ground. I tried to wake her, but there was no response. I turned her around and saw that her face was gone. She was dead. … I didn’t know what to do anymore, so I just focused on finding my son. He was in a cloth sling attached to her body. She was hugging [him] tightly to protect him.

“Thar Thar,” Akayar’s two-year-old son, was still alive when he was pulled from his mother’s arms. A rescue vehicle took Akayar and Thar Thar to a nearby hospital:

My phone was destroyed, so I vividly remember looking at the clock in the hospital. It was a little after 10 p.m.. The doctor there asked me questions about my son and my wife. I told him my wife was gone. I asked him to tell me what was wrong with my son. He told me my son wouldn’t make it. The bomb shrapnel was lodged in his brain.

Fortify Rights spoke to “Dr. Hla,” who was part of the medical team that tried to save Thar Thar:

We treated the child for 10 to 15 minutes before he passed away. ... When he arrived at the hospital, it was difficult for us to find a vein in the child for injections because he was in shock, and his veins were quite flat. There was a lot of blood and brain tissue. We were unable to save him.

Speaking about the location of the displaced persons camp, Dr. Hla noted that it was far away from the frontlines and any fighting positions, stating, “The bad news was the IDP camp is not on the frontline, so they do not have any prepositioned medical facilities or emergency medicines.”

On the night of the airstrike, “Jr. Nine Nine,” 20, an aid worker, was one of the first to arrive at Akayar’s shelter. He told Fortify Rights:

[Akayar’s] two-year-old son was also hard to rescue because the mother held her son tightly. We had to cut her clothes to rescue her son. … The junta has the habit of conducting two airstrikes in a row, so we quickly moved … to a safer location.

Fortify Rights also spoke to “Arr Muu,” 52, a teacher and a person in charge of a school in the Bangkok IDP camp, who shared that the airstrike on September 5 also killed an entire family in a second shelter:

We heard an aircraft approaching at approximately 9 p.m. …. Then, we heard again … after 10 to 15 minutes … and [this time] the bombs were dropped. … One of the bombs fell into the camp, while the other struck the football field about 20 meters [more than 65 feet] from the camp shelters. … The bomb that was dropped [in the camp] struck the bomb shelter of a family. The attack killed all six family members who were taking refuge in the shelter.

“Doh Rah,” 49, a camp committee member, described the scene at the second shelter after rushing to the place where the bomb dropped:

My house was two houses away from the place where the bomb dropped, around 30 feet away. … After the bomb dropped, I rushed to the place where people were screaming. … The bomb dropped exactly on the bomb shelter and killed the entire family. There was nothing left of their house. … We heard some whimpering sounds and tried to remove the twigs and dirt and pull people out. … But it was so difficult because the remains of the family who got hit were truly scattered all over the place.

Arr Muu described the location of the camp and the absence of combatants in the area, saying:

There are no armed resistance combatants in the vicinity of the Bangkok IDP camp. … We didn’t have People’s Defense Force or resistance fighters at the camp. But sometimes, they would visit our camp since it’s in their controlled area. … Most of the time, we told them not to come in uniform or bring their firearms when entering the camp area.

Akayar, who lost his wife and son during his first airstrike experience, told Fortify Rights:

All we have here are internally displaced persons who are helpless and facing many struggles already. No one in the camp can even defend against a soldier with a single gun. They didn’t need to attack us with an airstrike. The bomb that they brutally and recklessly dropped killed nine people.

According to a recent report from the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), between April 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024, the Myanmar junta killed at least 2,414 civilians, including 334 children. OHCHR also noted that, in the same period, airstrikes killed 613 civilians and artillery attacks killed at least 637 civilians, representing a 793 percent increase in civilian deaths from airstrikes and a 238 percent increase in civilian deaths from artillery attacks compared to the previous 15-month reporting period.

“The death of two-year-old Thar Thar and the deaths of thousands of other civilians by the Myanmar junta is a collective stain on the consciousness of the world, which is failing to act in the face of mass atrocity crimes occurring daily in Myanmar,” said Chit Seng.

International humanitarian law — also known as the law of war — applies to the situation throughout much of Myanmar, which constitutes a non-international armed conflict. In particular, the Geneva Conventions provide the underlying basis for the law of war, setting forth fundamental rules regulating the conduct of armed conflict. Specifically, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions protects civilians in a non-international armed conflict, stating:

Persons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

Under the law of war, parties involved in the conflict are required to distinguish between, on the one hand, civilians and “civilian objects,” such as homes and schools that are not being used for military purposes, and, on the other hand, combatants and “military objectives.” Both direct attacks and indiscriminate attacks that target civilians and “civilian objects” are expressly prohibited by the law of war.

The junta’s airstrikes on the Bangkok IDP camp, which resulted in the deaths of nine displaced civilians and the destruction of civilian homes and infrastructure, did not serve any legitimate military purpose. This attack appears to represent a grave breach of international humanitarian law, said Fortify Rights.

In February 2022, Fortify Rights published a report documenting how the Myanmar military junta massacred civilians, used human shields, and committed other atrocities in Karenni State in acts that amount to war crimes.

Individual governments, including the United States, have imposed sanctions targeting the sale and supply of jet fuel to the Myanmar junta. Despite these efforts, the junta continues to maintain a regular supply of aviation fuel, which its air force is using to kill and maim civilians.

On December 21, 2022, the U.N. Security Council adopted an historic resolution denouncing human rights violations by the Myanmar military since the February 1, 2021, coup d’état and expressing “deep concern at the increasingly large numbers of internally displaced persons, and dramatic increase in humanitarian need, particularly among women, children and persons in vulnerable situations.” This was the first Security Council resolution on Myanmar since the country became independent in 1948, but while significant, it failed to mandate action from U.N. Member States.

The U.N. Security Council has recognized that military coups, mass atrocity crimes, and refugee crises can threaten international peace and security sufficiently to invoke its authority under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. Under Chapter VII, the Security Council has the legal authority to mandate a global embargo on the sale and supply of aviation fuel to the Myanmar military junta. Since 1966, the Security Council has established 31 sanctions regimes under Chapter VII, many of which the Council established to protect human rights.

As the incoming president and the “penholder” on Myanmar at the Security Council, the U.K. should table a resolution mandating an aviation fuel and arms embargo on the Myanmar military junta, Fortify Rights said today.

“Grounding the junta’s jets would go a long way to prevent any more needless deaths and ending the crisis in Myanmar,” said Chit Seng. “The junta’s reliance on imported aviation fuel is a strategic lifeline that must now be cut.”

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