Massacres and Scorched-Earth Tactics: A Myanmar in Turmoil
By Joshua Li - Jan 2022
People are missing after military troops burned the Kinma
village the night before. Photo credits to AP Photo and caption credits to NBC News
On Dec. 24, 2021, the Myanmar
government shot and burned the bodies of over 30 villagers - including women and children.
This has not been an isolated incident. Since the first genocide from October 2016 to January 2017, the Rohingya
people have faced ongoing persection. The introduction of a military government (after overthrowing Aung San Suu
Kyi) has only brought further turmoil to the country. Now, not only are ethnic minorities such as the Muslim
Rohingya or the Christian-Buddhist Karenni targetted, but the Buddhist Bamar ethnic majority has been subject to
massacres as well.
For one, due to the area’s support for the opposition to the government, more than 80 Bamar people were killed
in the Sagaing region. The massacre in Done Taw, accounted within that number, saw “smoldering corpses in a
circle in a burned-out hut” with a particular victim burned alive. CTV News came to describe this razing of
villages as “massacres and scorched-earth tactics”, employed on civilians and opposition alike.
NBC News counts the number of civilian deaths to be at least 35 by government soldiers. Martin Griffiths, a U.N.
undersecretary general, said “I am horrified by reports of an attack against civilians [...] I condemn this
grievous incident and all attacks against civilians throughout the country, which are prohibited under
international humanitarian law.” The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also advised stopping the flow of
weapons to the Myanmar military in order to prevent the “recurrence of atrocities.”
Since Dec. 16, 5,000 villagers from Myanmar have fled across a border river to the safety of Thai territory.
Although we may not be able to address the complicated ethnic and political history of Myanmar, I hope that the
international community can offer support for these refugees and assist civilians within high-risk regions
during this difficult time.