Myanmar ‘s junta used Japan-funded passenger ships donated for civilian use for military purposes in September 2022, Human Rights Watch said today.
Letters from Myanmar officials, analyzed by Human Rights Watch, stated that two of three vessels delivered by Japan between 2017 and 2019 were used to transport more than 100 soldiers and material to the town of Buthidaung on the Mayu River in Rakhine State, where the military is fighting the Arakan Army ethnic armed group. The Japanese government should suspend non-humanitarian aid to Myanmar and sanction junta officials implicated in serious human rights violations.
“The Myanmar junta’s misuse of Japanese development aid for military purposes effectively makes Japan a backer of the junta’s military operations,” said Teppei Kasai, Asia program officer at Human Rights Watch. “The Japanese government needs to urgently reassess its obviously failing approach to curtailing the junta’s abuses.”
On September 13, 2022, the Rakhine State government’s transport minister ordered the Rakhine Department of the Inland Water Transport (IWT) to “ready” the Japan-provided “Kisapanadi I” and “Kisapanadi III” vessels for “Sittwe-Buthidaung-Sittwe voyages,” said a letter labeled confidential from the national IWT to the Ministry of Transport and Communications, on September 21. The letter stated that, on September 14, the two ships transported “over a hundred Tatmadaw [Myanmar] troops, as well as their supplies and materials” to Buthidaung.
The transport minister “instructed that the voyages were top secret and that their destination was also classified and no report [to a third party] should be made,” the letter said. Evidently recognizing that this was problematic, IWT noted that it “already had a discussion” with the Rakhine transport minister and “the vessels are no longer used for [military] purposes.”
On September 23, the Rakhine State chief of police and the transport minister, on behalf of Rakhine State’s chief minister, wrote to the national transport and communications minister and specifically confirmed that the two vessels had been used for “military purposes.” In the letter, the Rakhine authorities sought to justify this use of ships, citing provision no. 250 of Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution, which states that “the Region or State Government shall have the responsibility to assist the Union Government in the preservation of the stability of the Union, community peace and tranquility and prevalence of law and order.”
An informal ceasefire between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, in place since November 2020, has broken down in recent months. In August, the military reinforced its troops in northern Rakhine State, where fighting has since escalated in intensity and scope, including airstrikes, heavy artillery shelling, and landmine use, with growing civilian casualties.
Since mid-August, the military has isolated and terrorized civilians in Rakhine and southern Chin States to weaken the Arakan Army, using abusive means embodied in the military’s longstanding “Four Cuts” policy. The junta has imposed broad new travel restrictions on humanitarian workers, blocked access to roads and waterways, and arbitrarily arrested aid workers, in violation of international humanitarian law.
On September 15, the junta issued a directive banning United Nations agencies and international nongovernmental organizations from six Rakhine State townships – Maungdaw, Buthidaung, Rathedaung, Mrauk-U, Minbya, and Myebon – and shut down boat lines and public transportation. The fighting has displaced more than 18,000 people since August, joining over 70,000 others who are internally displaced, many of whom are facing shortages of food and medicine exacerbated by the junta’s restrictions.