Civilians in military-ruled Myanmar are facing increasing violence, according to a United Nations commission of inquiry.
"Tragically, we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian locations like schools, hospitals and churches over the course of the year," human rights expert Nicholas Koumjian said on Friday.
"Armed attacks that target civilians or indiscriminate attacks that affect civilians are prohibited by international laws of war and can be punished as war crimes or crimes against humanity," said Koumjian, who heads the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM).
The IIMM, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, also recalled on Friday the massacre on December 24, 2021, in which 30 people were killed and then burned to death in the eastern state of Kayah.
The military took power in Myanmar in February 2021. Since then, critics of the regime have been brutally persecuted.
In many parts of the south-east Asian country, local armed units have formed to resist the junta. Even before that, hundreds of thousands of members of the Rohingya Muslim minority had fled repression and persecution in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar.
