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Group says survey confirms Myanmar rights abuses
Associated Press - January 19, 2011
Grant Peck, Bangkok – A human rights group says a survey it conducted reveals flagrant and widespread abuses by Myanmar's army, and could be used as evidence to prosecute the country's military rulers for crimes against humanity.
Physicians for Human Rights, which shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for campaigning against land mines, says in a report issued Wednesday that it has documented abuses against Myanmar's Chin minority including killings, beatings, forced labor, religious persecution, disappearances, torture, rape and widespread pillaging.
It describes its survey as the first to assess the scale and scope of alleged crimes against humanity in Myanmar, supporting a barrage of earlier published material.
"The data don't lie and this report puts in stark light the horrors that the Chin people are enduring," Physicians for Human Rights chief executive Frank Donaghue said in a statement.
Myanmar's government had no immediate comment. In the past, it has denied allegations of widespread abuses.
The US-based group says its 64-page report – "Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma's Chin State" – provides evidence of at least eight human rights violations that could be taken to the International Criminal Court.
It also urges the United Nations to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate reports of human rights violations in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
"The approach used by the investigators lets us see the widespread and systematic nature of these abuses and the results are devastating," South African religious leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu said in a statement released by the group.
In the past year, pro-democracy and human rights groups have stepped up a campaign urging that the alleged abuses of the junta be heard by the International Criminal Court and that the UN Security Council set up a commission of inquiry.
Their pressure comes as the junta makes a self-proclaimed transition to democracy, with the country's first parliament in more than two decades due to convene this month following November elections. Critics allege that the process is a charade, meant to provide a fig leaf of respectability for continued rule by the military.
Myanmar's ethnic minorities, comprising 30-40 percent of the country's 56 million people and clustered mostly in border regions, have for decades sought autonomy from the central government, often resorting to armed struggle and triggering fierce repression by the army.
While the plights of more populous groups along the Thai border, such as the Karen and the Shan, are fairly well publicized, the Chin – Christians living in the remote mountains of northwestern Myanmar – are often neglected.
For the new report, 621 randomly selected households throughout Chin State's nine townships responded to an 87-question survey in January to March 2010 about their life during the previous 12 months.
Nearly 92 percent of the respondents reported at least one episode of forced labor, such as hauling military supplies or building roads. Government authorities, primarily soldiers, committed more than 98 percent of the overall abuses, including killings, rapes, torture and abductions, according to the responses. Fifteen percent of the households reported members being tortured or beaten by soldiers.
Physicians for Human Rights says its findings constitute evidence of activities that are regarded under international law as crimes against humanity.
It also says the case against the junta qualifies to be brought before the International Criminal Court because the abuses were carried out after the court began operating in 2002 and were committed by government authorities as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
The International Criminal Court, headquartered in the Netherlands, is the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal. Under the Rome treaty that established the tribunal, the court can step in only when countries are unwilling or unable to dispense justice themselves for genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.
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