“Crashing Down on Us” Methodology From October 2023 to November 2024, Fortify Rights monitored and investigated the Myanmar junta’s airstrikes and aerial bombardments in Kachin and Karenni states. Fortify Rights interviewed 63 individuals, including survivors and eyewitnesses of junta attacks, internally displaced persons, aid workers, members of ethnic resistance organizations, junta soldiers who were held as prisoners of war by ethnic armed opposition groups, military defectors, and a military expert. Fortify Rights interviewed 22 people from Kachin State and 35 people from Karenni State. Fortify Rights also reviewed and analyzed videos and photographic evidence of junta attacks in Kachin State. In Karenni State, Fortify Rights visited the sites of junta airstrikes and collected testimonies, photographs, and videos. This report also draws on authenticated leaked documents, obtained and analyzed by Fortify Rights, from active-duty Myanmar military sources concerning the military chain-of-command and the location of specific military units, as well as testimony from Myanmar military defectors collected by Fortify Rights in Chin State, Myanmar, and locations in India and Thailand in 2022 and 2023. Fortify Rights conducted interviews primarily in the Burmese language, with some conducted in Burmese-English and others with Kachin-Burmese interpretation. Everyone interviewed for this report gave free, prior, and informed consent to be interviewed and for their testimony to be publicized. No one received compensation for their participation; however, some interviewees were reimbursed for minor travel, mobile, and internet expenses incurred while speaking with Fortify Rights. All interviewees were informed of the purpose of the interview, its voluntary nature, and how the information might be used. The names and any identifying information of civilian eyewitnesses and survivors quoted in this report are withheld for their security, a measure necessary to protect witnesses and their families from retaliation by the Myanmar junta. The initials of people interviewed by Fortify Rights and referenced in footnotes are not the actual initials of those with whom Fortify Rights spoke.

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