SUMMARY
The one-sided violence carried out by the Government of Myanmar (Burma) has primarily taken place in two different settings; either to repress popular protests against the one-party rule or as a strategy linked to the numerous intrastate conflicts in the country.
Myanmar (officially named Burma until 1988) has been led by a military junta since the coup detat of Ne Win in 1962. The military have since then violently suppressed any signs of opposition. When public protests have been organized, the government has not hesitated to use one-sided violence as a means of dispersing the crowd. Several such instances were observed already in the 1950s but the practice continued under military rule. Troops were sent twice in 1962 to the Rangoon University campus to stop protests against the military takeover. The government again opened fire on demonstrators in 1967, in 1974, in 1988, and 2007.
The government has also employed one-sided violence as a deliberate strategy in the ongoing intrastate conflicts in the country. Since the mid-1960s, the armed forces have followed a counterinsurgency strategy called Pya Ley Pya (Four cuts) designed to cut the four main links (food, funds, intelligence and recruits) between insurgents, their families and local villagers. The strategy was influenced by the successful British new village tactics in Malaysia and the US strategic hamlet program in Vietnam but remained steeped in the nationalist ideology of the government. The strategy was implemented in one or a few localities at the time, with the ambition to "secure" each sub region before heading to the next territory. The first step was to isolate a small area and then forcibly relocate the population into villages under military control. Any villager who remained would be considered an insurgent and shot on sight. In order to provide incentives for the villagers to move, the troops often looted food and belongings and killed some people in the lead up to the set deadline for relocation.
The four cuts strategy has been accompanied by further one-sided violence and other types of human rights violations. Civilians have been forced to act as human minesweepers or forced porters, have been raped and tortured, etc. Furthermore, as the rebel forces increasingly have started relying on guerrilla tactics, it has become routine for the Myanmar armed forces to report "offensive battles" when in fact they have mortared and sprayed gunfire on villages. An additional form of one-sided violence has developed as a consequence of the impunity with which the army have attacked civilians in these offensives. There have been reports of killings, rape, and torture of civilians by the police, by border guards, and by local militias also in areas of the country with no conflict activity as there rarely have been any repercussions for such behaviour.
The first use of one-sided violence by the Government of Myanmar (Burma) occurred before the time period covered by the UCDP datasets. However, even though some incidents was reported already in 1989, it was not until 1992 that the one-sided violence activity of the government could be confirmed. In February 1992, government forces targeted members of the Muslim minority in the Arakan region near the Bangladesh border. As locals protested against the atrocities, troops targeted civilians in 17 different townships and villages during the last days of February. On 28 February, at least 13 people were killed in Aminabazar and reports estimate that betwen 34 and 200 people were killed the following day.
Violence in the Arakan region (renamed Rakhine State by the military government) continued in 2012 when the government’s police and paramilitaries forces carried out attacks on civilians starting in June. On 12 June 2012 alone, at least 57 people were killed in the state’s capital city, Sittwe, by police and Lon Thein government-backed paramilitary forces. In 2012 one-sided violence by the government also occurred in the country’s Kachin state.
During 2013, one-side violence continued in Kachin state, in the context of ongoing armed conflict between the government and the KIO. One-sided violence also took place in Rakhine state, as violence between Buddhists and Muslims continued. The majority of victims of one-sided violence in Rakhine state were Rohingya Muslims.
During 2014, the Government of Myanmar (Burma) were involved in one-sided violence in Rakhine state. In one event in January, 40 Rohingya Muslims were killed as police took part in an attack together with Buddhists as part of the ongoing violence and tension between Buddhists and Muslims in Myanmar.
In 2016, the majority of the one-sided violence used by the government targeted Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State following the attacks by the ARSA on multiple border guard posts in northern Rakhine State, 9 October 2016. The government was also responsible for one-sided violence in the country’s Kachin and Shan states.
In 2017, the government used large scale one-sided violence targeting Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state. The brutal violence by government security forces followed the ARSA’s [attacks on some 30 police posts, 25 August 2017, which killed at least a dozen members of the Myanmar security forces (see Myanmar (Burma): Arakan). The military responded with a “clearance operation” which, according to the government, aimed at taking out the militants who attacked the police posts. But, witnesses who have fled northern Rakhine state say government troops and militant Buddhists conducted a brutal campaign to drive out Rohingyas from the area. The campaign is reported to have included beatings and killings of civilians, widespread and systematic sexual violence of women and children as well as systematic burnings of homes and villages. At the start of 2017, the Rohingya numbered around one million in Myanmar, at the end of the year, some 650 000 Rohingyas had fled to Bangladesh.
Due to sparse reporting, it is very difficult to establish how many civilians were killed in one-sided violence following the police post attacks, 25 August 2017. For these reasons, the UCDP is likely to underreport the number of civilian fatalities during this period.
The Government of Myanmar (Burma) first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1992, when the one-sided violence resulted in at least 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in mid-September that year when government forces beat 20 civilians to death. However, it should be noted that the first use of one-sided violence by the Government of Myanmar (Burma) occurred before 1989, which is the first year covered by the UCDP datasets and can hence not be accounted for here.
