The National Unity Government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar warmly welcomes the United States Department of the Treasury’s announcement of further sanctions against individuals and entities connected to the illegal military junta.

Announced on 24 March 2023, the new measures target two individuals and six entities tied to the junta and its deliberate, widespread and systematic atrocities against civilians.

Significantly, they also take aim at the import, storage and distribution of jet fuel to the junta. Frustrated by the scale and resilience of the Myanmar people’s rights-based revolution and by its own failure to seize power, the junta is escalating its airstrikes against villages, schools and hospitals. According to the UN’s Human Rights Office, the junta has increased its aerial attacks against civilian locations by 141 percent over the past year.¹

In recent weeks, senior UN officials have condemned the junta at the Human Rights Council, the UN’s premier human rights forum.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, told the Council that “[t]he disregard and contempt for human life and human rights that are continuously demonstrated by the military constitute an outrage to the conscience of humanity.”²

The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, urged the Council to take action, pressing that the junta “does not offer any viable path to stability or an end to the human rights crisis in Myanmar because it is the very cause of this crisis”, and that the junta “lacks even a shred of constitutional or democratic legitimacy”.³

The latest tranche of United States sanctions joins a growing movement of measures against the junta. In February, the European Union imposed a sixth round of sanctions that targeted the junta’s oil and gas revenues, building on earlier measures aimed at stripping the junta of access to arms, munitions and dual-use items.

The National Unity Government extends its gratitude to the United States for its sustained commitment to the Myanmar people and calls on other members of the international community to take equal action.