The United Nations human rights chief has warned that the military rulers of Myanmar are preventing life-saving humanitarian aid from reaching millions of civilians in need, deepening the country’s crisis.

Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the military, which seized power in a February 2021 coup, have put in place a “systematic denial” of aid to those in need of assistance, including access to adequate housing, enough food and water, and employment.

The human rights situation in Myanmar has only worsened since the coup, with nearly 3,800 people killed by the military, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. The UN has also documented repeated incidents of sexual violence, mass killings, extra-judicial executions, beheadings, dismemberments and mutilations.

The military has since agreed a five-point peace plan with its fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), under which it was supposed to end the violence and release political prisoners, but the situation has only deteriorated.

The UN has seen a 33 percent increase in indiscriminate airstrikes in the first six months of 2021 compared with the same period in 2022. Artillery attacks have also increased dramatically, with more than 563 reported so far this year, representing 80 percent of all attacks throughout the whole of 2022.

In May, Cyclone Mocha swept across the western state of Rakhine, obliterating the displacement camps where many of the country’s remaining Rohingya had been living for years amid ethnic violence and successive military crackdowns.

The lack of access to the area since the storm has meant the total number of dead among the mostly Muslim Rohingya, which the military had put at 116, remains unconfirmed. Humanitarian aid missions have also come under fire with a mission involving ASEAN diplomats in northeast Shan State attacked in May.

The convoy was under military escort. It is estimated that as many as 40 humanitarian workers have been killed and more than 200 arrested since the coup. Turk has urged the United Nations Security Council to refer the coup leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and said any political solution must include accountability.

Survivors of military atrocities since the coup and during the 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya have lodged a criminal complaint with the German Office of the Federal Prosecutor, as Germany has universal jurisdiction laws that allow for the prosecution of certain grave crimes no matter where they take place.

The situation in Myanmar has also been referred to the International Court of Justice over the 2017 crackdown, which sent at least 750,000 Rohingya across the border to Bangladesh. In the face of such escalating violence, Turk said the international community must take urgent action to save lives as the country continues its “deadly freefall into even deeper violence and heartbreak.”