A/HRC/39/CRP.2 attacks on their villages found their houses and livelihoods destroyed, compelling them to leave.590 For example, one woman from a village in Namkhan Township, Shan State, narrated how her family tried to stay in her village, but eventually the village was destroyed and they had to leave: In December 2015 and January 2016 there were lots of planes flying overhead, and we could hear shooting and bombing. In January 2016, the Tatmadaw attacked our village. Many of the villagers fled but we decided to stay. But in February, Tatmadaw soldiers entered the village. They arrested some people and then shot at us indiscriminately as we were trying to flee. There was no KIA post in the village – the nearest post is several hours away – they were shooting at civilians. We fled into the forest. The next morning we went back, but our village was entirely destroyed – some of the houses had been burned, others kicked down. The situation had become insufferable and we had to leave.591 281. Another person, who left his village in Namtu Township, Shan State, in 2012, described how the intentional destruction of food supplies made survival difficult, forcing him to move to a camp for internally displaced persons: The Tatmadaw had a huge post in our area and there was lots of fighting. The military would come and look for our rice stocks and destroy them. When aid agencies would distribute provisions, the military would come and destroy those as well. They even killed our pigs. We left because we had nothing to eat – the military was making it impossible to survive in our village.592 282. The context in which the displacements occurred strongly indicates that there were no imperative military or security reasons for such displacements. As explained above, the Tatmadaw intentionally, frequently and systematically directed attacks against the civilian population or individual civilians and terrorized the civilian population, including through killings, torture and sexual violence. These tactics and practices have fuelled large-scale displacements in Kachin and Shan States during the reporting period and constitute a complete failure by the Tatmadaw to observe its obligations under international law, including to prevent displacement caused by its own acts. One person from Muse Township, Shan State, said, “No one lives in my village now - because the Tatmadaw were coming often - no one wanted to live there anymore so they all moved out. It was not safe for men or women and we still do not dare to go back.”593 283. The Mission further notes that the relocation and destruction of entire villages in northern Myanmar was extensively reported in the period prior to 2011. 594 284. The Mission also received credible information on incidents where civilians who wished to leave unsafe areas were prevented from doing so or denied safe passage, including, in at least one case, despite the Tatmadaw itself having explicitly ordered the displacement. 595 In that incident, in Tanai Township, Kachin State on 5 June 2017, the Tatmadaw dropped a leaflet ordering the evacuation by 15 June 2017 of a large area, where an estimated 100,000 civilians resided, because the Tatmadaw would be conducting “area clearance operations” due to unauthorised mining affecting the environment.596 The text of the leaflet included the following: Within Ta’ang township … [list of 10 mines]… are not the nationally legitimized jade mines. Mining, digging and gold extraction not only negatively affect the environment, 590 591 592 593 594 595 596 72 PI-029, PI-080, PI-087, QI-092. PI-087. PI-035. QI-095. E.g. in 2010, the then United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, Tomas Quintana, stated that humanitarian and human rights groups had documented the destruction and forced relocation of over 3,500 villages and hiding sites in eastern Myanmar since 1996. See A/HRC/65/368, para. 49; for similar figures, see A/61/369, para. 44 and A/HRC/4/14, para. 54. K-063.7, K-063.8, PI-049, PI-103, See also this chapter, section A.8: Emblematic incidents (Tanai). Copies on file with the Mission.