Updated at 4:09 p.m. ET, May 18, 2023.
The junta has revoked the business licenses of three private hospitals in Myanmar’s central Mandalay region, it announced this week.
Palace, City and Kant Kaw hospitals had already been told to stop accepting patients because they were using staff belonging to the civil disobedience movement.
An order signed Monday by Dr. Myat Wunna Soe, secretary of the junta-led Private Health Industry Central Group said the licenses were revoked because the hospitals failed to comply with the licensing rules in Section 19 (a) of the Law Relating to Private Health Care Services.
This vague clause stipulates only that “a person who obtains a license for any private health care services shall … comply with the terms and conditions of the license.”
Radio Free Asia’s calls to the junta spokesman for Mandalay region, Thein Htay, seeking comment on the decision to revoke the licenses, went unanswered.
The junta has cracked down on doctors who voice opposition to the military, sacking 557 and revoking their medical licenses for one year.
NUG: Junta still bombing hospitals, clinics
The move against the private hospitals comes as the Ministry of Health of the shadow National Unity Government reported that the junta is continuing to target and attack hospitals.
Junta troops targeted hospitals and clinics at least seven times through land and air attacks in Kachin, Kayah and Shan states and in Sagaing and Magway regions in April and so far in May, NUG said in a statement.
Hospitals, clinics, ambulances, medicine and medical supplies were destroyed. Five civilians, including health workers, were killed and 11 were injured by the junta’s attack during that time period, according to the NUG.
The attacks in Sagaing and Magway took place in regions where anti-junta armed conflict has been near constant in recent months.
“These are acts of war crimes and crimes against humanity,” said NUG's Health Minister, Dr. Zaw Wai Soe. “These places are the medical refuge of the sick and injured. Attacking these places proves that the military junta is completely inhumane and lacks human sympathy.”
On Wednesday, two rural medical facilities, a monastery and six civilian homes were destroyed by an aerial attack on Saw Lon village in Kayah state’s Bawlake township. A 17-year-old girl was killed and four men were injured.
On April 25, a junta airstrike hit a hospital in Hsaung Phway village in southern Shan State where a woman was giving birth. She was killed and four people, including a nurse, were injured.
A local resident told RFA that a fighter jet bombed the hospital at least five times.
‘Attacked indiscriminately’
RFA called Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun, spokesman for the military junta, regarding the attacks on hospitals, but he did not pick up the phone. When asked by RFA on previous occasions, he has denied that the military targets civilians.
Zaw Win, a human rights expert at London-based rights group Fortify Rights, said the international community, including the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, needs to find a way to prevent such attacks from happening again.
“From a human rights standpoint, it is absolutely unacceptable,” he said. “Even the patients in the hospital were attacked indiscriminately by the junta.”
The National Unity Government said in a statement last month that 71 health workers had been killed and 836 arrested in the time period between the February 2021 coup and the end of February 2023.
It said the junta attacked and seized equipment from 188 clinics and hospitals, damaged 59 ambulances and seized 49 more during that two-year period.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Matt Reed.