UN condemns bloody attack on village attributed to military junta

What happened in Pazi Gyi? The United Nations condemned, Tuesday, April 11, an air attack attributed to the Burmese junta against this village in an area held by rebels, which would have killed dozens. Explicitly aiming “the armed forces of Burma”UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres “demands that those responsible be held accountable for their actions”according to his spokesperson.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Turk, said “horrified” after this attack. “It appears that children who were dancing, along with other civilians, during the opening ceremony of a center in Pazi Gyi village, Kanbalu district, were among the victims”, he said. The UN official described how “a combat helicopter would then have fired on those who fled the room”.

A hundred dead, according to witnesses

Volker Turk reported reports that around 100 villagers were killed in the strikes, which occurred early Tuesday morning in the region of Sagaing, an opposition stronghold in the center of the country. Witnesses contacted by AFP also reported around a hundred deaths. Videos circulating on social networks (the authenticity of which AFP could not confirm) show bodies scattered in the ruins of houses.

The UN official accused the Burmese army of ignoring “clear legal obligations (…) to protect civilians in the conduct of hostilities” and to have demonstrated a “blatant disregard for the rules of international law relating thereto”. The Government of National Unity, a body founded by former deputies of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, many of them in exile, denounced a “another example of the indiscriminate use of extreme force against innocent civilians”.

Burma has been in chaos since the military seized power in a coup two years ago. The Sagaing region, near Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, is fiercely resisting the junta, and intense fighting has been going on there for months.