Reuters
Myanmar’s navy junta is withholding vital humanitarian assist for earthquake victims in areas the place it perceives opposition to its rule, the United Nations human rights workplace stated.
The U.N. additionally stated it’s investigating dozens of reported assaults by the ruling junta towards its opponents for the reason that earthquake struck in late March 2025. These embrace airstrikes, 16 of which got here after an early April ceasefire declaration.
The humanitarian state of affairs, particularly in areas past the junta’s management, is catastrophic, U.N. rights workplace spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani stated. The 7.7 magnitude quake, one of many strongest to hit Myanmar in a century, jolted properties of 28 million folks, toppling buildings, flattening communities, and leaving many residents with out meals and water.
Every week after the catastrophe, the reported demise toll exceeded 3,000.
“Airstrikes are alarming, stunning and must cease immediately — the main target must be on humanitarian restoration,” Shamdasani stated.
Nations rushed to help the Southeast Asian nation, offering vital provides and rescue and restoration operations.
The junta declared a ceasefire days after the earthquake, as did a minimum of one of many ethnic armed teams battling the navy regime within the nation’s four-year civil warfare, The Irrawaddy reported. Nonetheless, clashes have continued in areas hit onerous by the earthquake, the place regime airstrikes have focused civilians and resistance teams, in response to the Myanmar-based newspaper.
“Limitations of assist is a part of a method to stop assist attending to the populations it [the junta] sees as not supporting its seizure of energy again in 2021,” stated James Rodehaver, head of the U.N. human rights workplace’s Myanmar crew.
Hundreds of thousands of individuals have been affected by the widening civil warfare, which was triggered by the junta’s February 2021 coup that ousted the democratically elected authorities. The nation’s primarily agrarian economic system has been decimated, greater than 3.5 million folks have been pushed from their properties, and well being care and different vital companies are devastated.
