Impunity for Military Abuses Has to End

On 7 November, the International Human Rights Clinic (the Clinic) at Harvard Law School published a Legal Memorandum which establishes that certain Burma Army commanders are guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes under international criminal law. The Legal Memorandum submits its findings on the basis of a three-year investigation (the Investigation) into human rights abuses associated with a Burma Army offensive in Karen State, which was launched in late 2005 and continued into 2008 (the Offensive). The Clinic chose this offensive “because it was one of the largest in recent memory and was widely condemned by the international community.” The Investigation focused specifically on the conduct of two military units – Southern Regional Military Command (SRMC) and Light Infantry Division 66 (LID 66) – in Thandaung Township, Karen State.

Articles 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) set out the legal requirements for an action to qualify as a “crime against humanity” or a “war crime,” respectively. The essence of a “crime against humanity” is that the act in question should be “part of a widespread and systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack.” Similarly, Article 8 stipulates that a “war crime” must be committed “as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes,” and must constitute a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions 1949, which regulate the conduct of armed conflict […]

Protection and Security Concerns in South East Burma/ Myanmar

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The peace process in Burma/Myanmar1 is at a critical juncture from which it could evolve into a transformative national dialogue or splinter into a divisive charade. While hopes for substantive and inclusive discussion about structural injustice remain, ongoing militarisation and attacks by the national armed forces2 are undermining the confidence of ethnic stakeholders. This report seeks to highlight the protection and security concerns of conflict-affected communities. […]

New National Land Use Policy Must Reflect the Concerns of those Affected

The Burma Government released its draft land use policy document and opened it up for consultations with the public. Despite this positive sign, the time for consultations is inadequate with no proper mechanism or space created for the meaningful participation of affected communities in order for their concerns to be reflected in the draft. The draft document itself has been heavily criticized for serving to further empower investors over small scale farmers.

Since the beginning of the reform process in 2011, land grabbing, a practice that the previous military regime engaged in regularly, has hit new heights as a flurry of investors seek opportunities in previously untapped markets and the Burma Government liberalizes the economy. A prime example of this is the Dawei Special Economic Zone (SEZ) Project, a joint Thailand–Burma Government initiative that is seeking private investment to create one of the largest industrial zones in Asia. A report released by Dawei Development Association on 21 October 2014 highlights how 20-36 villages will be negatively affected. Concerns iterated by the local communities show that they have “lost farmlands and natural resources that are vital to their livelihoods, without prior information.” Furthermore “there was no meaningful consultation, and a deeply flawed compensation process.”

Land grabbing is often done with protection from the military, or by the military itself, for factories, infrastructure projects, mono-crop plantations, or military bases, and as with the Dawei SEZ case, usually without adequate or indeed, any compensation. It is a nationwide problem, both in ethnic areas, as documented by the Human Rights Foundation of Monland and Karen Human Rights Group, while in central Burma and delta areas, land grabbing is common place. Given that around 70% of the population of Burma is engaged in agriculture, and it is agricultural lands that are most often confiscated, it is one of the most pressing issues for Burma today […]

Justice for the Killing of Journalist by Burma Army Must be Found

News of the murder of a journalist by the Burma Army while being held in custody should send shockwaves across the country and beyond, but sadly it is not much of a surprise for those who are aware of the abusive nature of the most powerful institution in Burma. What will transpire next will be a clear indicator of the Government’s will to pursue justice and end the impunity that the Burma Army has enjoyed for so long. Not many are optimistic.

Aung Kyaw Naing, also known as Ko Par Gyi, was a freelance journalist covering the recent clashes in eastern Burma between the Democratic Karen Benevolent Army (DKBA) and the Burma Army and its’ proxy Border Guard Force (BGF). After visiting Kyaikmayaw, Mon State, the scene of heavy clashes in September 2014, Ko Par Gyi went missing. His wife, Ma Than Dar, began to search for him and held a press conference on 21 October in Rangoon stating that he was being held in custody by the Burma Army and demanded his immediate release. Just a few days later, a statement was issued to the Myanmar Press Council (Interim) by an aide to commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Min Aung Hlaing, that detailed Ko Par Gyi’s death while in custody. The statement claims that Ko Par Gyi was a captain for the Klohtoobaw Karen Organization (KKO), the political wing of the DKBA, and was shot dead while trying to escape. The DKBA has denied that Ko Par Gyi was indeed a member of their organization […]

Statement: Civil Societies’ Review on Myanmar’s Transition Process: Prospects for 2015 and Beyond

We, more than 650 representatives from 257 organizations and networks in Myanmar, came together in Yangon for 3 days from 14-16 October 2014 to exchange opinions, debate and to assess a wide range of issues currently confronting Myanmar in the context of recent political developments and the transition process that started in 2011 […]

Dispatches: A Scathing Verdict on Burma’s Stalled Reforms

A remarkable set of meetings took place this week in Rangoon, with more than 650 representatives from Burmese civil society groups gathering to discuss the status of the country’s reform process […]

Canadian Burma Ethnic Nationalities Organization Founded at the 2nd Burma Ethnic Nationalities Conference Canada

The second Burma Ethnic Nationalities Conference Canada was successfully held on 11-12 October 2014 in Vancouver, Canada. The conference was attended by representatives and members of Burma ethnic communities from across Canada […]

69th Session of the UN General Assembly – Situation of human rights in Myanmar: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar

I. Introduction

I. The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar was established pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1992/58 and recently extended by Human Rights Council resolution 25/26. The present report is submitted pursuant to Council resolution 25/26 and General Assembly resolution 68/242.

II. Background

2. Following the completion of the term of the previous mandate holder, the current mandate holder took up her functions only in June 2014, which resulted in a shorter period than usual to conduct a country visit and review the information gathered. The present report therefore sets out the Special Rapporteur’s preliminary observations, to be supplemented by her oral statement to the General Assembly […]

အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ တည္ေထာင္ျခင္း (၂၆)ႏွစ္ေျမာက္ ႏွစ္ပတ္လည္ေန႔ ေၾကညာခ်က္အမွတ္-၁၀ / ၀၉ / ၂၀၁၄

ညီညြတ္ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ဳိးမ်ား ဖက္ဒရယ္ေကာင္စီ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကိုင္ ေတာ္လွန္ေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီအင္အားစုမ်ား၊ အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ားႏွင့္ လူငယ္အင္အားစုမ်ား ေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ၏ သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္