Shocking images emerge from Myanmar as military cracks down 02:26
(CNN)For many of Myanmar's ethnic minorities, the bloodshed inflicted across the country's towns and cities this week is a continuation of the oppression they have suffered at the hands of the military for decades.
The Southeast Asian country is home to some of the world's longest civil wars, where myriad ethnic insurgencies have fought the military, central government and each other for greater rights and autonomy. Some of those bloody conflicts have ebbed and flowed in the borderlands for 70 years.
Throughout years of conflict in Myanmar's jungles and mountains, ethnic people have witnessed and been subjected to horrific atrocities including massacres, rape and other forms of sexual violence, torture, forced labor and displacement by the armed forces, as well as state-sanctioned discrimination.