The Myanmar military must reform policies and practices that threaten the country’s civilians, the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School said in a report released on March 24.
"The Myanmar military needs to publicly renounce and reverse the longstanding policies that have resulted in attacks on civilians and violations of international humanitarian law,” said the clinic’s Matthew Bugher, a specialist on the Myanmar military at the law school, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States.
“Until problematic militarypolicies and practices are fundamentally reformed, civilians will remain at risk wherever and whenever military force is deployed,” Mr Bugher said.
The report is based on an investigation by the clinic into the conduct of army units during counter-insurgency operations in eastern Myanmar between 2005 and 2008.
During 11 field missions to the region, the clinic compiled more than 10,000 pages of witness statements from the survivors of military attacks and from former soldiers, the report said.
In its campaigns against armed ethnic groups, the military designates areas “depending on the degree of security” as black, brown and white, it said.
The report expressed particular concern about the orders given to soldiers in areas defined as “black”.
In these regions, soldiers are instructed that all individuals are “the enemy” and are therefore legitimate targets of attacks, the report said.
It called on the military to immediately renounce all counter-insurgency policies and practices that result in the targeting of civilians.
“However, this action alone will be insufficient,” it said, adding that protecting civilians in Myanmar would require a concerted effort to overturn behaviour entrenched in longstanding military practices.
"The Myanmar military should act immediately to end unlawful attacks in black areas and conflict zones,” it said, saying that a failure to address the underlying institutional cause of targeting civilians would endanger communities, threaten the peace process and undermine reform efforts.
A human rights programme established at Harvard Law School in 1984 was later expanded to include the International Human Rights Clinic. The clinic is dedicated to preventing human rights violations in communities around the world and research by law students.
