Violation of Media Freedom in February 2024

In February 2021, there were two specific cases of violation of media freedom–one deceased and one arrested case in the previous month–reflecting the continuous pattern of restriction on Myanmar’s independent media. 

To impose a more systematic measure and restriction on the flow of information and to discredit news conducted by independent media, the military junta has established a new committee consisting of several union-level deputy ministers (such as the Junta’s Home Affairs Ministry and Information Ministry) in the last month of 2023. 

With the support backed by this committee and the regime, pro-military lobbies and social media accounts on different platforms are continuing to harm the reputation of news media outlets and journalists as a propaganda tactic to picture journalists as national traitors.

A former journalist, who had worked for several local media outlets and was recently working as a volunteer in a social welfare association, was arrested in the last week of December 2023 in a city from the Northern Shan State. 

The arrest case has not been reported or published since the very days due to the potential measure that could be imposed by the junta’s controlled count as well as for his security concerns.

According to the source, he was allegedly accused of having contacts with the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and was reported to the military’s security forces. For that reason, he was prosecuted under sections 505A and 505(b) of the Penal Code which imprisoned him for three years behind bars on 24 February 2024.

Phoe Thiha (aka Myat Thu Tun), a former journalist, was shot to death by the military soldiers in the station of (378) military custody located in the Western Rankine’s Mrauk-U township on 31 January 2024.

Despite his retirement from the journalism field five years ago, without having a specific reason or accusation, he was arrested on 20 September 2022 at his home in Mrauk-U and the soldiers ransacked the house. 
After one year, four months, and eleven days, he was shot to death along with six other political prisoners in Rakhine State.

To Members of the United Nations Security Council
CC: UN Human Rights Council Members
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar

Re: Security Council must act now as Myanmar military junta’s forced conscription endangers peace, stability, and human security in Myanmar and the region 

Your Excellencies,

We, 397 civil society organizations, call on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to take immediate action to ensure peace and stability in the region following the Myanmar military junta’s illegal enforcement of the conscription law. In particular, we call on Japan, as the President of the UNSC in March 2024, to convene an emergency meeting to put forward a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to impose targeted economic sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against the junta, and refer the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or create an ad hoc tribunal. In addition, the UNSC must provide substantial support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as declared in Resolution 2669, and assist Myanmar’s neighboring countries to promptly guarantee legal protection for people fleeing the junta’s forced conscription and mass atrocity crimes.

On 10 February 2024, the military junta announced the enforcement of the People’s Military Service Law, which the past military regime passed in 2010. Men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 will be at risk of forced conscription, and the age further extends to 45 and 35, respectively, for those with expert professions. Up to 14 million people across Myanmar are deemed eligible for this forced conscription, which requires serving up to five years during a state of emergency as is currently in place by the junta’s illegal declaration. Individuals face prison sentences of up to five years, hefty fines, or both, for failing to report for duty. The junta also reserves its arbitrary power to recall those who have already finished their military service.

The junta’s forced conscription efforts exacerbate the already unprecedented violence caused by its countrywide terror campaign. As it rapidly loses ground to democratic resistance forces, the junta has resorted to forced conscription as psychological warfare to terrorize the population into submission, force people to kill each other against their conscience, and inflame inter-ethnic and inter-religious tension. This ruthless measure underlines the junta’s calculated move to escalate atrocities, exploiting new conscripts as expendable human shields, porters, and frontline fighters—evident in the Myanmar military’s sordid history, particularly its forced recruitment of children in violation of international law. The forced conscription thus explicitly goes against the UNSC’s demand for an immediate end to all forms of violence in Resolution 2669.

This scheme to forcibly recruit 60,000 men in the first round will compound the severe instability and human insecurity that the junta has already unleashed on Southeast Asia. Young men have been kidnapped or otherwise compelled to join military service, according to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Hundreds of Rohingya in internment camps in Rakhine State are being arrested and recruited into service, or persuaded to enlist in exchange for freedom of movement. Other reports indicate people in Bago Region and Yangon City are being forced to serve, leaving them no other choice but to bribe junta personnel or face outright extortion to evade conscription. Individuals in disenfranchised and impoverished sectors, such as garment workers, lack such options as the junta’s workforce data collection is underway.

Read more: Eng | MM

Shin Dawe, a freelance filmmaker, was arrested in North Okkalapa, Yangon, on 15 October 2023 while she was collecting her filming drone from an online pre-order. 

After the arbitrary arrest and brutal persecution in the military interrogation centre for a week, she was sentenced to life imprisonment under the combination of two lawsuits of section 50(j) and section 54(d) of the Counter Terrorism Law in Insein prison on 10 January 2024. She is the first female journalist and filmmaker to be convicted of life imprisonment at the beginning of 2024. 

The first life imprisonment of a journalist was toward a freelance journalist, Kyaw Aung Aka Min Min, who was charged under section 54 of the Counter Terrorism Act on December 28, 2022.

Htet Aung, a journalist from Development Media Group (DMG), was prosecuted under a new lawsuit, section 52(a) of the Counter Terrorism Act in Sittwe, Rakhine State, on 5 January 2024. 

Htet Aung was arrested at an almsgiving event of the Thadingyut Festival in Sittwe, Rakhine State, by the junta security forces.  

After he was arrested, the Junta’s security forces pressured him to disclose the location of the DMG’s office, where he was working, and the office was confiscated on 29 October 2023.

On 31 January 2024, the military group released an announcement that required the renewal of the license on the printing, publishing, and news media enterprise after 60 days of expiry with the payment of 10,000 MMKs. According to the announcement, legal actions will be taken against any news media agencies holding expired licenses and punished according to the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law.

The license of two publishing houses, Toemyit (တိုးမြစ်) and Lapyae Lin (လပြည့်လင်း) Publishing, were revoked by the military junta’s ministry of information on 27 January 2024. 
The junta accused these publishing houses violated section 8(b) of the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law, which punishes “show things which can harass national security, rules of law, public order or the rights of every citizen such as equality, freedom and balance of law”.

Nationwide incident Since the Attamped Coup (Arrest Based On Region)
Monitoring media repression in Myanmar

In January 2024, at least three individuals were arrested, allegedly accused, and sued under various infamous laws, according to our daily monitoring records. It is learned that the junta regime has been consistently targeting the freedom of speech in Myanmar to muzzle the voices and exercise of expressing daily tragedies, basic needs, and criticism of the junta.

A total of three male individuals were arrested in January 2024. All these arrested victims are ordinary citizens for criticism and defamation of the junta, sharing and posting the People Defense Forces (PDF) online.

Aung Khant Moe, a 20-year-old citizen, was arrested in Thanbuzayat township, Mon State in January 2024. According to Eleven Media’s report, he was filed with section 52(a) of the Counter Terrorism Act to allegedly be accused of supporting the PDF by posting and sharing the news.

Maung Maung, a 70-year-old citizen, was arrested in Hinthada township, Ayeyarwaddy Region, on 2 January 2024 because of sharing the news of the media on his Facebook social media platform. He was prosecuted under 505A of the Penal Code with the junta’s accusation of spreading false news to cause fear among the citizens and defamation of the junta. A local media outlet, Ayeyarwaddy Times, reported that he was a former party member of NLD and had been closely watched by a military informant on his movement and activities.

“A group of military soldiers, estimated around 50, came and arrested him. He wasn’t in good health condition… he shared news and articles (published by news outlets whose license had been revoked by the junta) on his timeline to read later. An informer reported to him,”

said a local person

On 28 January 2024, an ordinary citizen, Kyaw Soe Aung, was arrested and charged with sections 52(a) and (b) of the Counter Terrorism Act in Shwe Nyaung township, Southern Shan State, for the accusation of defamation and supporting rations to the PDFs. He was first arrested and interrogated by the military soldiers, then transferred to security policies.

Local people who have known him told a news outlet, DVB, that he was arrested due to being reported by the members of USDP and members of the ultra-nationalist MaBaTha (The Patriotic Association of Myanmar). He was a truck driver transporting goods and commodities across the country whose job had nothing to do with the PDFs. After checking his belongings and mobile phone devices, the security forces reported the findings of supporting documents related to PDFs.

Two of the victims were charged with section 52(a) of the Counter Terrorism Act and the other one with section 505A of the Penal Code. These lawsuits were unjustly utilised to oppress people’s expression. These oppressive manners of the military regime show egregious FOE violations as these laws are not supposedly used for prosecutions.

Hla Myat Thway, a former minister of social affairs, was released with amnesty on Independence Day from Pathein Prison on 4 January 2024 after two years of imprisonment with section 505(b) of the Penal Code on 30 January 2023. She was detained under house arrest for releasing a statement announcing public holidays till the formation of the new government with the 2020-elected candidates in Pathein, Ayeyarwaddy, on 10 January 2021.

Dr. Ye Lwin, a former mayor of Mandalay City, was released with amnesty of Independence Day from Obo-Prison along with other political prisoners on 4 January 2024 after two years imprisonment with section 409 of the Penal Code on 3 February 2023. The regime’s controlled count added an additional charge with section 505(b) of the Penal Code to serve two more years of imprisonment to the former mayor, Dr. Ye Lwin, just before his prison term was almost completed.

Su May Aung, a chemistry student, died in Magway prison on 22 January 2024 because her access to health care was denied by the prison authorities even though the family and other political prisoners requested medical care in the prison hospital. She was arrested and sentenced to 15 years under section 50(j) of the Counter Terrorism Act in Magway in early 2022. On the other hand, the disciplinary department of the junta is trying not to leak any information about prison deaths by any means outside to cut off the information flow.

To read “Reporting from the Darkness: Journalism and Media in Myanmar” Report: >> https://tinyurl.com/4a8n6sf5?fbclid=IwAR0O8DJWXPmjj-wcRjOrObMauH7IONv_Eu_qeHQQ-JpiuPMKNybhlhYpjwU

သင်တန်လျှောက်မည့်သူများသည် လွတ်လပ်စွာ ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ကို အထူးစိတ်ပါဝင်စား၍ တက်ရောက်မည့်သူများ ဖြစ်ရမည်။ အသံအဖွဲ့မှ သင်တန်းတက်ရောက်ပြီးစီးသူများကို တဆင့်ပြန်လည် အသိပညာပေးမျှဝေနိုင်ရန်နှင့် စည်းရုံးလှုံဆော်မှု စသည့် လှုပ်ရှားမှုများ ဖော်ဆောင်သွားနိုင်ရန် ကူညီထောက်ပံ့ပေးသွားမည်။

၁) လူထု၏ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ကို မြှင့်တင်ရန်။

၂)  ပြောနိုင်ဆိုနိုင်၊ ပြောရဲဆိုရဲဖြစ်လာနိုင်ရန် အကျိုးဆောင်ပေးနိုင်ရန်။

၃) စဥ်းစားနိုင်ရန်၊ ပြောဆိုနိုင်ရန်၊ တွေးခေါ်နိုင်ရန် အတွက် မျိုးစေ့ချပေးနိုင်ရန်။

၁) နိုင်ငံရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှုနယ်ပယ်တွင် လူ့ရပိုင်ခွင့်ကို သိရှိပြီး လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ကို လိုက်နာကာ အပြုသဘောဆောင်သော ဝေဖန်မှုများ နားလည်သဘောပေါက်ပြီး အများပြည်သူ၏ ဝေဖန်သုံးသပ်ချက်များ ကိုလည်း နားထောင်နိုင်ရန်။

၂) နိုင်ငံရေးဦးဆောင်သူများနှင့် တော်လှန်ရေးဦးဆောင်အဖွဲ့ များကို နိုင်ငံရေးနည်းကျ ဝေဖန်သုံးသပ်နိုင်ရန်။၃) CDM အစုအဝင်များသည် အနာဂတ်နိုင်ငံတော်သစ်တွင် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အခြေခံသဘောတရားများကို နားလည်သဘောပေါက်၍ ကျင်သုံးနိုင်ရန်။

သင်တန်းကို အွန်လိုင်း (ZOOM) မှတဆင့်တက်ရောက်ရမည်ဖြစ်ပြီး အချိန် စုစုပေါင်း ၁၀ နာရီသာ လိုအပ်သည်။ တရက်လျှင် ပျမ်းမျှ (၂)နာရီခွဲ၊ (၄)ရက် တက်ရောက်ရမည်။

သင်တန်းတခုတွင် အများဆုံး လူဦးရေ (၂၅) ဦး အထိသာ လက်ခံသွားမည်။ သင်တန်းလျှောက်လွှာကို ၂၀၂၄ ခုနှစ်၊ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ပထမအပတ်အထိ ဖွင့်ထားမည်ဖြစ်ပြီး မိမိအချိန်ပေးတက်ရောက်လိုသော ကာလကို သင်တန်းလျှောက်လွှာ (Google Application Form) တွင် အချိန်စာရင်းကြည့်၍ စာရင်းပေး လျှောက်ထားနိုင်ပါသည်။

ဖောင်ဖြည့်ရန် >> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdiN0_0iYuyM6k2IE9tc2uiUxc0zH_XlG1N6xDNeoJ9RRe0zw/viewform?usp=share_link

Shin Dawe, a freelance filmmaker, was arrested in North Okkalapa, Yangon, on 15 October 2023 while she was collecting her filming drone from an online pre-order.

After the arbitrary arrest and brutal persecution in the military interrogation centre for a week, she was sentenced to life imprisonment under the combination of two lawsuits of section 50(j) and section 54(d) of the Counter Terrorism Law in Insein prison on 10 January 2024. She is the first female journalist and filmmaker to be convicted of life imprisonment at the beginning of 2024.

The first life imprisonment of a journalist was toward a freelance journalist, Kyaw Aung Aka Min Min, who was charged under section 54 of the Counter Terrorism Act on December 28, 2022.

Htet Aung, a journalist from Development Media Group (DMG), was prosecuted under a new lawsuit, section 52(a) of the Counter Terrorism Act in Sittwe, Rakhine State, on 5 January 2024.

Htet Aung was arrested at an almsgiving event of the Thadingyut Festival in Sittwe, Rakhine State, by the junta security forces.

After he was arrested, the Junta’s security forces pressured him to disclose the location of the DMG’s office, where he was working, and the office was confiscated on 29 October 2023.

On 31 January 2024, the military group released an announcement that required the renewal of the license on the printing, publishing and news media enterprise after 60 days of expiry with the payment of 10,000 MMKs. According to the announcement, legal actions will be taken against any news media agencies holding expired licenses and punished according to the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law.

The license of two publishing houses, Toemyit (တိုးမြစ်) and Lapyae Lin (လပြည့်လင်း) Publishing, were revoked by the military junta’s ministry of information on 27 January 2024.

The junta accused these publishing houses violated section 8(b) of the Printing and Publishing Enterprise Law, which punishes “show things which can harass national security, rules of law, public order or the rights of every citizen such as equality, freedom and balance of law”.

Nationwide incident Since the Attamped Coup (Arrest Based On Region)
Monitoring media repression in Myanmar

လွတ်လပ်စွာ ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် သင်တန်းများ

အသံအဖွဲ့သည်  လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ကို လိုက်နာကျင့်သုံးရန် ရည်ရွယ်၍ ပြည်သူလူထုကို အသိပညာမြှင့်တင်ခြင်း နှင့်  ရပ်တည်ကာကွယ်ခြင်း ဦးတည်ချက်တို့ ဖြင့် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အခြေခံသင်တန်းများကို ၂၀၁၈ ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ကာ မြန်မာတနိုင်ငံလုံးအနှံ့ ပို့ချခဲ့သည်။ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး နှင့် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ကို သိရှိနားလည်ကာ မိမိ၏ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင်တွင် အသိပညာများကို ပြန်လည်ဝေမျှ နိုင်သော ရပ်ဝန်းတခု ဖြစ်ပေါ် လာစေရန် ရည်ရွယ်သည်။

မြေပြင်သင်တန်းများ

အသံအဖွဲ့၏ ရည်မှန်းချက်နှင့် ဦးတည်ချက်များ အတိုင်း ၂၀၁၈ ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ကာ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အသိပညာပေး သင်တန်းများကို ပြည်နယ်နှင့် တိုင်းအသီးသီးတွင် ပို့ချခဲ့သည်။ မန္တလေးတိုင်း၊ မကွေးတိုင်း၊ စစ်ကိုင်းတိုင်း၊ ပဲခူးတိုင်း၊ ရန်ကုန်တိုင်း၊ ဧရာဝတီတိုင်း၊ တနင်္သာရီတိုင်း၊ ကချင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ချင်းပြည်နယ်၊ ရှမ်းပြည်နယ်၊ ကရင်နီပြည်နယ်၊ ကရင်ပြည်နယ်နှင့်  မွန်ပြည်နယ် တို့တွင် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အခြေခံ သင်တန်းများ ဖွင့်လှစ်ခဲ့သည်။ သင်တန်းများတွင် တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ နိုင်ငံရေးသမားများနှင့် အရပ်ဘက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများတွင် အလုပ်လုပ်ကိုင်နေသူများ တက်ရောက်ခဲ့ကြသည်။

သင်တန်းတွင် ပို့ချသော သင်ခန်းစာများ

၁။ အခြေခံလူ့အခွင့်အရေး အယူအဆ

၁.၁။ လူ့ဂုဏ်နှင့် လူ့ရပိုင်ခွင့်

၁.၂။ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး နောက်ခံသမိုင်း

၁.၃။ အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးကြေညာစာတမ်း

၁.၄။ နိုင်ငံတကာစာချုပ်များ

၂။ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အယူအဆ

၂.၁။ ဥပဒေမူဘောင်များအကြောင်းအရာနှင့်ပုံစံ

၂.၂။ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် ဘာကြောင့်အရေးကြီးရသလဲ။

၂.၃။ တာဝန်ယူမှု တာဝန်ခံမှု

၃။ ငြိမ်းချမ်းစွာစုဝေးခွင့်

၃.၁။ စုဝေးမှု

၃.၂။ ဥပဒေမူဘောင်များ

၃.၃။ သွင်ပြင်လက္ခဏာများ

၃.၄။ ရှောင်တခင်စုဝေးမှုများ

၃.၅။ တန်ပြန်ဆန္ဒပြပွဲတစ်ပြိုင်တည်းလုပ်ခြင်း

၃.၆။ အစိုးရ၏တာဝန်

၄။ တရားဝင်ကန့်သတ်ခြင်း

၄.၁။ ဥပဒေမူဘောင်များ

၄.၂။ တားမြစ်ကန့်သတ်ရန် အဆင့်သုံးဆင့်

၅။ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်နှင့် အငြင်းပွားဖွယ်ရာကိစ္စများ

၅.၁။ အသရေဖျက်ခြင်း

၅.၂။ တိုင်းတာသောအချက်များ

၅.၃။ ကာကွယ်ခုခံပိုင်ခွင့်

၅.၄။ အသရေဖျက်မှုအတွက် အပြစ်ဒဏ်

၅.၅။ ခြွင်းချက်များ

၅.၆။ အထွေထွေမှတ်ချက် ၃၄

၅.၇။ ဘာသာရေးဝေဖန်စော်ကားမှု

၅.၈။ စကားရပ်များကို အဓိပ္ပာယ်ဖွင့်ခြင်း

၅.၉။ ဂျိုဟန်နက်စဘတ်မူဝါဒများ

၅.၁၀။ ရှဝိန်းမူဝါဒများ

၆။ အမုန်းစကား

၆.၁။ ဥပဒေပြဌာန်းချက်များ

၆.၂။ ပြင်းထန်မှုအဆင့်(၄)ဆင့်

၆.၃။ မတူကွဲပြားမှုများ

၆.၄။ တိုင်းတာရမည့်အချက်(၆)ချက်

၆.၅။ အန္တရာယ်ရှိသောစကားတိုင်းတာသည့် အင်္ဂါ(၅)ရပ်

၆.၆။ “အမုန်းစကား”ကို ဘယ်လိုတုံ့ပြန်မလဲ။

အွန်လိုင်းသင်တန်းများ

အသံအဖွဲ့အနေဖြင့် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အခြေခံသင်တန်းများကို အွန်လိုင်း (Zoom Platform) ဖြင့် ၂၀၂၃ ခုနှစ်မှ စတင်ကာ ပို့ချခဲ့သည်။ သင်တန်းပေါင်း (၁၂) တန်း ပို့ချခဲ့ပြီး စုစုပေါင်း လူဦးရေ (၂၃၂) ယောက် တက်ရောက်ခဲ့သည်။ သင်တန်းများတွင် အကြမ်းမဖက် အာဏာဖီဖန်လှုပ်ရှားမှုတွင် ပါဝင်သူများ (Civil-Disobedience Movement) ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်သူများ၊ နှင့် တက်ကြွလူငယ်များ ပါဝင်တက်ရောက်ကြသည်။

မိတ်ဖက်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများနှင့် တွဲဖက်ဖွင့်လှစ်သော သင်တန်းများ

Burma Academy ပညာရေးအဖွဲ့အစည်း နှင့်ပူးပေါင်း၍ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်ဆိုင်ရာ ဗီဒီယိုသင်ခန်းစာများကို Burma Academy သင်ကြားရေး platform တွင် ပို့ချခဲ့သည်။ သင်ခန်းစာများကို Burma Academy Website တွင် သွားရောက်လေ့လာနိုင်သည်။

အဆင့်မြင့် မွမ်းမံသင်တန်းနှင့် ဆရာဖြစ်သင်တန်းများ

အသံအဖွဲ့အနေဖြင့် ၂၀၂၀ခုနှစ်တွင် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အခြေခံသင်တန်း တက်ရောက်ခဲ့သူများထဲမှ တက်ကြွစွာပါဝင်ခဲ့သူများ၊ မိမိတို့၏ ပတ်ဝန်းကျင်တွင် လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့်နှင့်ပတ်သတ်၍ ပြန်လည်မျှဝေနေသူများအတွက် ရည်ရွယ်ကာ လွတ်လပ်စွာထုတ်ဖော်ပြောဆိုခွင့် အဆင့်မြင့်မွမ်းမံသင်တန်း (၁) တန်းကို ဖွင့်လှစ်ခဲ့သည်။ 

To Members of the United Nations Security Council

1 February 2024

Re: Urgent call for swift action against the military junta to end its war of terror and protect civilians in Myanmar

Your Excellencies,

As we mark the third anniversary of the Myanmar military junta’s coup attempt on 1 February 2021, we, 462 civil society organizations, express in the strongest terms our utmost disappointment in the ineffectiveness and inaction of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in response to the military junta’s war of terror against the people of Myanmar. We urgently call on the UNSC to act in accordance with its mandate for peace and security and take concrete actions against the Myanmar military junta. These actions must reflect the gravity of the mass atrocity crimes committed by the junta for which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called on the UNSC to, among other measures, refer the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court.

We find that the UNSC’s adoption of Resolution 2669, which passed its one-year mark in December 2023, not only came too little and far too late – after decades of atrocities by the Myanmar military – but also produced no concrete progress towards halting the military’s genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, which have only intensified since the adoption of the resolution.

Since its adoption, the military junta has launched at least 909 airstrikes,[1] killing more than 364 civilians including scores of children, and torched nearly 80,000 houses. Over the last year, it is undeniable that the military junta’s violence has become more targeted against civilian populations with blatant attacks on villages, towns, internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps, religious sites where IDPs were seeking refuge, schools, and hospitals. Since the coup attempt, the military junta has killed at least 4,450 people and arrested more than 25,900 people, with more than 19,900 individuals still detained, including President U Win Myint and State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Inhuman conditions, ill treatment, torture, sexual and gender-based violence, and extrajudicial killings remain ubiquitous in junta-controlled prisons and detention centers.

Furthermore, the military junta has insisted on a pilot repatriation project for the Rohingya, despite the UNSC expressing concern that the situation in Myanmar poses challenges for a safe, voluntary, sustainable, and dignified return. Resolution 2669 does not recognize the Myanmar military as a government or a de facto authority to carry out such a repatriation project. A sustainable, safe, and dignified return of Rohingya is impossible while the illegitimate Myanmar military junta continues to conduct a nationwide campaign of terror, including in Rakhine State where many more Rohingya are being forced to flee overland and by sea – with 2023 being the deadliest year for Rohingya’s sea crossings since 2014.

Read more Eng | MM

This annual report for 2023 covers some of the main developments, trends, and highlights relating to the safety of Myanmar journalists, as well as the news environment under the military regime. The first part of the report summarises events and issues in the fourth quarter of 2023.

As the coup of 1 February 2021 reaches its third anniversary, Myanmar’s military junta called the State Administration Council (SAC), and its security apparatus continue to repress independent media and other forms of open public discussion. Journalists inside Myanmar, including citizen journalists, operate in an environment where independent news work has become a difficult, dangerous, and life-threatening profession.

Over the last three years, the SAC has set up a system of restrictions on media, speech, and expression, including through judicial persecution through the use of the “law”, closure of media outlets and other publishing outlets, various forms of harassment (including online) by its proxies and supporters. At the same time, it allows pro-junta media outfits to operate in the country.

On 14 October 2023, Khin Maung Oo, a journalist who used to be with Eternally Peace News Network, was arrested and later reported by local media to be have been killed by members of an unknown armed organization in Mohnyin township, northern Kachin state.

Eternally Peace News Network is owned by the New Democratic Army – Kachin, an armed group that agreed to a ceasefire with the military junta back in 2009. Khin Maung Oo’s death was confirmed by local sources, but it remains unclear who or which group was responsible for his death.

In its report on the incident, the Kachin-based regional media outlet 74 Media quoted the editor
of Eternally Peace news as saying that Khin Maung Oo was no longer a staffer there at the time
of his death.

Read more Eng | MM