Last month we emailed you about a frightening build-up of Burmese Army soldiers in North-Western Burma, including Chin State.
Attacks have already been taking place against civilians, with whole towns of people fleeing bombing and artillery fire.
The situation has echoes of what took place in Rakhine State in 2017 before the military offensive against the Rohingya.
We called on the British government to urgently convene a meeting of the UN Security Council, with the aim of the Security Council issuing a clear warning to the military that there would be severe consequences if they went ahead with the offensive.
This week the Security Council did meet, and after days of negotiations finally issued a statement.
But it made no mention of the situation in North-Western Burma. Russia and China have consistently blocked action, and even strong statements by the UN Security Council.
As our Executive Director, Anna Roberts put it: “If the UN Security Council was fulfilling its mandate, it would already have imposed an arms embargo, referred the situation to the International Criminal Court, imposed targeted economic sanctions and sanctioned the supply of aviation fuel. What was needed was a clear warning to the military that a new offensive in North-Western Burma would not be tolerated. What we got what was a statement that didn’t even directly refer to the situation.”
We want to thank everyone who emailed the British government about this. We didn’t get the result we hoped for, but we can’t give up. The danger is too great. We now need to see the British government, EU, USA and others do more to limit the money and arms reaching the military, and we’ll be in touch next week with a new action you can take on this.
