Fortify Rights releases report regarding Myanmar junta airstrikes prior to election

Mizzima

On 19 November, Fortify Rights released a new report detailing how Myanmar’s military junta is carrying out deadly and unlawful airstrikes on civilians in Karenni State and along the Karenni-Shan State border. The strikes have destroyed schools, churches, medical clinics, and displacement camps ahead of the junta’s planned “sham elections.” 

The statement is as follows.

The U.N. Security Council and individual U.N. member states should immediately impose comprehensive arms and aviation fuel embargoes on the Myanmar military junta and refuse recognition of its planned “elections,” being conducted amid the ongoing persecution, imprisonment, and killings of political opponents.

“The Myanmar military junta’s strategy for political and military gain is to kill more civilians and target key infrastructure, such as hospitals and schools, ahead of its sham elections,” said Sai Arkar, a human rights defender at Fortify Rights. “The world is watching these atrocities unfold in silence, when immediate action is required to stop them. Impunity is deadly. The U.N. Security Council and other member states must immediately cut the aviation fuel and weapons flows that enable the junta’s continued reign of terror, and must work to prosecute those responsible for ongoing mass atrocity crimes.”

A new 24-page report by Fortify Rights, “Horrible Sight to Witness,” documents 12 junta airstrikes in Karenni State and on the Karenni-Shan State border between June and September 2025. The attacks killed at least 55 civilians, injured more than 40 others, and destroyed schools, churches, medical facilities, displacement camps, and homes. These airstrikes likely amount to war crimes. The report does not reflect all of the airstrikes in Karenni and Shan states during the designated time period, only those investigated by Fortify Rights.

Fortify Rights interviewed 15 survivors, eyewitnesses, and first responders, and analyzed casualty lists, photographs, and videos from the attacks.

In one example, in a single attack on Sat Chauk Kone Quarter in Hpasawng Township, Karenni State, on August 17, junta fighter jets killed at least 32 civilians, including children, and injured five others.

On September 1, 2025, a junta airstrike struck an internally displaced persons camp in Demoso Township, Karenni State, known as “Number Three Camp.” The bomb landed near a kindergarten, injuring two adults and an 11-year-old Grade 5 student walking to a nearby primary school.

“May,” 36, a teacher at the kindergarten school, described the attack to Fortify Rights:

[The bomb] fell on a bamboo grove very close to the kindergarten. … If it had fallen right on the [school], there would have been nothing left [of the students]. … The children are very scared. They were already studying in fear. … Now, we have temporarily closed the school.

“Daw Lae Lae,” 38, a member of the displacement-camp committee—a body that oversees camp management—told Fortify Rights:

[The wounded fifth-grade student] was hit in the thigh and taken to the hospital. Thankfully, the injuries were not serious. At the time of the attack [8:30 a.m.], some students were still at home, while others had already arrived at school.

Another incident documented in “Horrible Sight to Witness” describes how, on July 14, 2025, three bombs hit a village in Demoso Township, striking a school, a residential area, and a medical clinic. “Michael,” 31, a medical volunteer, told Fortify Rights he believed the junta deliberately targeted the school and clinic: