|
|
Myanmar Targeting Civilians, Report Says
By Nick Cumming-Bruce, International Herald Tribune
June 10, 2005
Villagers are running a gantlet of summary executions, forced relocations, rape, arbitrary arrest and forced labor at the hands of an unreformed and unaccountable army, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report released Thursday documenting the plight of ethnic Karens. Forced labor, often involving children, is a standard practice of the army in zones of conflict, said the director of Human Rights Watch Asia, Brad Adams.
The government in Yangon has denied such assertions.
The report, which was compiled over many months of research, did not make clear how many people had been interviewed. Human Rights Watch officials said they had interviewed 46 Karens.
The report is the latest of several on what has been called a human rights crisis in Myanmar, including a 600-page document released recently by Guy Horton, an independent researcher. The Human Rights Watch report asserts the need for the government in Yangon, as well as international organizations, to assist in the rehabilitation of destroyed communities.
The report released Thursday includes the testimony of Karen fugitives from the army's conflict who said they had witnessed troops killing family members, slaughtering livestock and burning houses before fleeing into the forest on often hazardous journeys to the Thai border. The fugitives interviewed were not identified for fear of retribution against them or their families still in Myanmar. One Karen mother was cited as telling interviewers that soldiers had shot her 13-year-old daughter so badly that "her intestines came out. She was in agony and screaming but we couldn't do anything to ease her pain. She died after an hour. All we had in our hands when their troops attacked was our paddy and harvesting tools."
The most recent Human Rights Watch report comes at a point of escalating tension in Myanmar's ethnic minority areas, where the junta has begun what analysts say is a larger-than-usual offensive against rebel factions involving heavy troops and attacks. Negotiations with Karen and other minority leaders on cease-fires appear to have stalled.
"There is a lot of frustration and disappointment among ethnic groups," said Aung Zaw, editor of the dissident Irrawaddy magazine, which is published in Chang Mai, northern Thailand. Since the arrest last year of Myanmar's military intelligence chief, Khin Nyunt, who had led negotiations with minority factions, the ruling military junta has shown "less and less tolerance," Aung Zaw said.
Adams said that the Myanmar government had entered into a "gentleman's agreement" with the dissident Karen National Union in 2003 that called for an end to hostilities. The deal, Adams added, proved "not worth the paper it was written on" and the army had continued attacks in Karen areas.
"The government still allows the Burmese Army to kill and drive people out of their villages with complete impunity," Adams said in a prepared statement.
He added that the international community had rightly condemned the junta's treatment of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent much of the last 15 years under house arrest, but that the world also needed to focus on the army's treatment of Karen and other minorities.
Human Rights Watch says that about 650,000 people have been displaced by conflict in eastern Myanmar. As evidence, it cites estimates in late 2004 compiled by humanitarian agencies working on the Thai border with Myanmar. Other assessments published in recent years have put the number of displaced people at more than double that figure.
As many as 157,000 people may have been displaced in the past three years and at least 240 villages have been destroyed, forcibly relocated or abandoned, according to Human Rights Watch, citing the accounts of villagers, many of whom said they had been forced to move 30 times in the past decade.
Much of the destruction occurred as part of a strategy intended to deny insurgents access to recruits, food, intelligence or finance. "There's often no military objective in targeting civilians but there is an economic objective," Adams said. As a result, many displaced people had nothing to return to after the cessation of fighting, leaving them without access to food, education or health care, Human Rights Watch said.
The report reinforces accounts of the kind of human rights abuses that have jeopardized Myanmar's relations with Western countries and caused growing embarrassment to fellow members of the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations, prompting calls for Myanmar to forego its chairmanship, set to begin in mid-2006.
Myanmar has yet to give its response but has agreed to it would take account of the influential regional group's interests. Asean ministers "took this to mean that Myanmar would voluntarily forego its turn to chair," Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo wrote in The Financial Times.
Adams strongly criticized China, India and Thailand for what he said was the political and material succor they have provided Myanmar's ruling generals, helping them to withstand international calls for respect of human rights and progress on more democratic rule.
Asean turns up pressure
Southeast Asian countries, under pressure from the West, are close to persuading Myanmar to forego its turn at the helm of the region's main political grouping next year, Reuters reported Wednesday quoting Indonesian officials.
The United States and the European Union have threatened to boycott high-level meetings with Asean if Myanmar takes the rotating chairmanship without making progress on human rights.
|
|
