UN Human Rights Chief, Volker Türk on Friday, December 2, 2022 expressed shock that more than 130 people have now been sentenced to death by military courts behind closed-doors in Myanmar since the military launched a coup last year, following fresh convictions this week.
Myanmar’s military-installed government has sentenced more of its critics to death, bringing the total to 139, and it’s using capital punishment as a tool to crush opposition.
High Commissioner Volker Türk disclosed that at least seven university students were sentenced to death behind closed doors on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 and there are reports that as many as four more youth activists were sentenced the next day.
“The military continues to hold proceedings in secretive courts in violation of basic principles of fair trial and contrary to core judicial guarantees of independence and impartiality. Military courts have consistently failed to uphold any degree of transparency contrary to the most basic due process or fair trial guarantees.”
High Commissioner Volker Türk
The military seized power in February last year, overthrowing the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The army’s action was met with widespread peaceful protests that were quelled with lethal force, triggering armed resistance that some U.N. experts have characterized as civil war.
Türk revealed that the military-installed government has arrested nearly 16,500 people for opposing the army takeover, including about 1,700 who have been convicted in secret courts without access to lawyers.
The Students’ Union of Dagon University in Yangon, the country’s largest city, announced on its Facebook page that seven university students between the ages of 18 and 24 who were arrested on April 21, 2022 had been sentenced to death on Wednesday, November 30, 2022 by a military court in Yangon’s Insein Prison.
An executive member of the Dagon University Students’ Union divulged that the seven students were accused of links to an urban guerrilla group that opposes the military rule and convicted of murder for allegedly taking part in shooting a bank branch manager in April.
The government hanged four political activists in late July, in the country’s first executions in at least three decades.
Cruel Violations Of Human Rights
In July, UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet condemned in the strongest terms the execution of the four democracy activists by Myanmar’s military despite repeated calls by the United Nations and the wider international community to not carry out death sentences.
“These executions; the first in Myanmar in decades, are cruel violations of the rights to life, liberty and security of a person, and fair trial guarantees. For the military to widen its killing will only deepen its entanglement in the crisis it has itself created.”
UN human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet
The UN human rights chief even called for the immediate release of all political prisoners and others arbitrarily detained, and urged the country to reinstate its de-facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as a step towards eventual abolition.
The hangings prompted condemnations from Western nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which has sought to defuse the crisis with a five-point plan that the military government has failed to implement.
“By resorting to use death sentences as a political tool to crush opposition, the military confirms its disdain for the efforts by ASEAN and the international community at large to end violence and create the conditions for a political dialogue to lead Myanmar out of a human rights crisis created by the military.”
High Commissioner Volker Türk
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