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GENEVA: The UN on Tuesday (March 16) condemned the rise in deaths in Myanmar since the February 1 coup, warning that detained protesters were facing torture and hundreds had disappeared.
“The death toll has skyrocketed over the past week in Myanmar, where security forces have been using lethal force increasingly aggressively against peaceful protesters,” a spokeswoman for the human rights office of Myanmar told reporters. the UN, Ravina Shamdasani.
In total, he said, the office had corroborated that a total of 149 people had died in the crackdown on the protests since February 1, but emphasized that the actual number was surely much higher.
According to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP), more than 180 people have been killed, including 74 on Sunday alone.
In addition to the killings, Shamdasani warned that security forces continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain people across the country, and that there are currently at least 2,084 people in detention.
“Deeply distressing reports of torture in custody have also emerged,” he said.
The office had determined that “at least five deaths in custody have occurred in recent weeks,” he said, adding that “at least the bodies of two victims have shown signs of severe physical abuse indicating that they were tortured.”
“FORCED DISAPPEARENCES”
Furthermore, “hundreds of illegally detained people remain missing and have not been recognized by the military authorities.
This, Shamdasani said, “amounts to enforced disappearances.”
His comment came after security forces intensified the use of lethal force against anti-coup protesters, despite international calls for restraint.
Much of the country has been in an uproar since the army toppled civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi last month, and hundreds of thousands took to the streets to demand a return to democracy.
READ: Yangon residents flee martial law area as Myanmar death toll rises
Shamdasani expressed concern that the UN rights office was facing increasing difficulties in confirming information on the ground, pointing to the imposition of martial law in a variety of municipalities in and around Yangon and Mandalay.
In addition, many of the working-class neighborhoods where people had been murdered had been cut off due to state-imposed power outages.
A drastic crackdown on media outlets in the country was also making it difficult to obtain information, he said, noting that at least 37 journalists had been arrested, while five major Myanmar media outlets had had their licenses withdrawn.
READ: Explainer: How is Myanmar’s armed forces cracking down on journalists covering the protests?
The UN human rights office said the death toll had risen dramatically in recent days, with 11 deaths on Monday, 39 on Sunday and 18 on Saturday.
Shamdasani said the figures, surely an understatement, included people killed in Yangon Hlaing Tharyar Township “during a violent crackdown … by security forces after unknown actors set fire to factories operated or invested by China. “.
