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UN envoy: Myanmar does little to stop rights abuse

Associated Press - May 23, 2011

Human Rights in Myanmar - Amnesty International Report. May 2011
Human rights situation in Burma - Network for Human Rights Documentation-Burma - May 18, 2011
World Report Burma 2011 - Human Rights Watch. February 2011

Todd Pitman, Bangkok – The United Nations' human rights envoy to Myanmar said Monday that the country's nascent civilian government has done little to address widespread abuses, including forced labor and extrajudicial killings, since replacing the ruling junta in March.

Elections last year for a new parliament and the installation of civilian leaders this spring were supposed to be the final steps of what Myanmar's military leaders had hailed as their "roadmap to democracy." But UN envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana told reporters in Bangkok that "democracy requires much more."

Myanmar's government is currently refusing to allow Quintana to visit the Southeast Asian nation. The envoy spoke after a weeklong trip to Thailand to talk with refugees from Myanmar. Thailand is home to more than 100,000 people who have fled the neighboring country.

Quintana said violence continues along Myanmar's eastern border region, and ethnic minority groups there are victims of "land confiscation, forced labor, internal displacement, extrajudicial killings and sexual violence."

These abuses "are widespread, they continue today, and they remain essentially unaddressed by the authorities," Quintana said.

In Myanmar's eastern Kayah state, for example, both men and women have fled out of fear of being conscripted into the military, he said. There is such a deficit of schools there that some parents send their children to refugee camps in Thailand for basic education, he added.

Ethnic groups living in the eastern and northern border areas have sought more autonomy since Myanmar's independence in 1948, and the government maintains uneasy cease-fires with them. Human rights organizations have long accused the military of forcing civilians into forced labor, particularly as porters.

The military has ruled Myanmar with an iron hand since 1962, and critics charge the new government is merely the latest iteration of the repressive regime.

Last week, Washington's deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Joseph Yun, also expressed concern about the new government's human rights policies.

The Myanmar Times, meanwhile, quoted Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin as urging Yun to refer to the country as Myanmar rather than Burma.

The former junta changed the country's name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, but many regime opponents and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi still call the country by its former name.

The paper quoted the minister as telling Yun: "You might think this is a small matter, but the use of 'Myanmar' is a matter of national integrity.... Using the correct name of the country shows equality and mutual respect."

The US Embassy in Myanmar declined to comment on the report.