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Wednesday March 3 was the bloodiest day so far since the military coup in Myanmar. According to the UN, 38 protesters were killed by the police and the army. In the last week, the security forces have increasingly used force against popular protests. Several of those killed by police on Wednesday are said to have been shot in the head.
A video posted by Radio Free Asia shows how police in the northern Okkalapa district of northern Yangon stop an ambulance, point their guns at the ambulance paramedics and force them to kneel. Then the beating begins: the police kick the paramedics in the head and hit them with rifles.
This is the same police force in which the EU has invested more than SEK 400 million in human rights training and crowd management. This week, the Facebook page of the EU representation in Myanmar has been filled with angry comments questioning cooperation. “What a waste of money,” writes one person. “What a shame for the EU!” roars another.
READ MORE: Military offensive in Myanmar: entire villages have been emptied of people
More than 4,500 police officers have been trained
After the military coup, the EU announced that cooperation, called “MyPol”, would be suspended. According to the European Commission, which financed the project with the EU aid budget, more than 4,500 police officers have been trained since 2016 in, among other things, human rights.
Aung Myo Min, leader of the human rights organization Equality Myanmar, tells GP that the police violence we are seeing shows that the EU has failed to change the police.
– It’s a huge failure. The EU has had a very positive opinion of the Myanmar police, which has now been proven completely wrong. It behaves as in previous popular uprisings, hitting and killing the protesters.
There have been critical voices in the EU’s cooperation with the police in the past. The Myanmar police report to the Ministry of the Interior, which according to the 2008 constitution is controlled by the army, regardless of who has power in government. Even during the last term, when Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD party led the civilian government, the police were controlled by the military.
READ MORE: Analysis: Stop the violence in Myanmar
He is accused of genocide
During the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people in 2017, the police, together with the military, engaged in a violent campaign of killings and systematic rapes, which the UN described as “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Myanmar is now charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Mark Farmaner of the British organization Burma Campaign UK says that European cooperation with the police should have ended there.
– It is inconceivable that the EU did not interrupt cooperation even then. How can genocide be in line with your human rights demands?
A large part of the MyPol project has focused on training the police to deal with crowds. This training has been given by the Spanish police, who became known for their brutality during the 2017 referendum in Catalonia. Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have documented how the Spanish police used violence when they closed polling stations and attacked protesters.
READ MORE: New protests in Myanmar after bloody Wednesday
The EU condemns the violence
A spokesperson for the European Commission wrote in an email to GP that the training in Myanmar only contained “preventive and peaceful methods of dealing with crowds with strict respect for human rights and international law.”
It is further said that the EU has not handed over any police equipment to Myanmar and that the EU strongly condemns the violent methods that the police have now used against protesters. “Their behavior goes completely against what the EU project was trying to achieve. […] and we demand that those responsible for these serious abuses be held accountable, ”the spokesperson wrote.
On Thursday, the International Commission on Legal Affairs (ICJ) said it should be investigated whether the actions of the police and the army constitute a crime against humanity.
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