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A United Nations team of investigators on Myanmar is closely monitoring reports that executions in the country could be imminent, its chief said on Monday, warning such a step could constitute a crime against humanity.
The Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, formed in 2018 to analyze evidence of serious violations of international law, said it had received information that several individuals sentenced to death in closed-doors trials last year could soon be executed.
Myanmar's secretive military government has made no announcement of possible executions and has not responded to requests for comment from Reuters.
The organization did not elaborate on the information it had received or provide details on who could be executed.
"Imposing a death sentence, or even a period of detention, on the basis of proceedings that do not satisfy the basic requirements of a fair trial may constitute one or more crimes against humanity or war crimes," Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Geneva-based organization, said in a statement.
"The Mechanism is monitoring and collecting information on the cases against these individuals and others that involve the imposition of the death penalty in circumstances that might violate fundamental fair trial guarantees."
The junta was widely condemned in 2022 when it executed four democracy activists for aiding "terror acts" by a resistance movement, in what were the country's first executions in decades.
The military at the time defended the resumption of executions, calling it "justice for the people" and brushing off international outrage, including from its closest neighbors. It said those executed received due process and were not activists, but killers who deserved their punishment.
Myanmar is locked in a civil war between the military on one side and on the other, resistance forces that have combined with established ethnic minority rebels to pose a major challenge to the army's rule.
The military government has ramped up killings and arrests in an apparent bid to silence opponents and recruit soldiers in an escalating conflict, with tens of thousands detained since its 2021 coup, a U.N. report said last week.
U.N. rights office spokesperson Liz Throssell last week told a press briefing that, according to credible sources, at least 1,853 people have died in custody since the coup, including 88 children.
Radio Free Asia and rights group the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said anti-junta activists were the likely targets for execution. Reuters could not independently verify the information.
Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.