Zaw Oo & T_nnesson - Counting Myanmar_s Dead Reported Civilian Casualties since the 2021 Military Coup, PRIO Paper

Sixty-seven percent of the reported civilian fatalities were politically motivated murders.2 The four regions— Sagaing, Magway, Mandalay, and Yangon—have seen the highest number of civilian deaths due both to the repression in the first six months after the coup and to politically motivated murders in the subsequent months. [...] In contrast to the aftermath of the 1988 military crackdown against the protestors in Yangon and other places, when the main fighting took place in ethnic minority areas, in the period from 2021–2022, the Burman majority population suffered the most from political violence. [...] 14 By far the most important of the developments after the coup was the emergence of LDFs and PDFs in Burman areas, centered primarily in the Sagaing and Magway regions and in the cities of Mandalay and Yangon. [...] The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) puts forward three cumulative criteria to define direct participation in hostilities: “(1) a threshold regarding the harm likely to result from the act, (2) a relationship of direct causation between the act and the expected harm, and (3) a belligerent nexus between the act and the hostilities conducted between the parties to an armed conflict.”1. [...] The SAC’s number—3,10028—appears to overlap substantially with the 1,530 deaths reported by the USDP up to mid-2022.29 The ISP’s number was calculated by subtracting the USDP’s count from the SAC’s total on the assumption that they overlapped, while assuming that the AAPP’s list did not overlap with those of the SAC and the USDP.