အမ်ဳိးသမီးမ်ားအေပၚ စစ္တပ္က လိင္မႈဆုိင္ရာ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ ဆန္႔က်င္လႈပ္ရွားမႈအား အာဏာပုိင္မ်ား ႏွိပ္ကြက္ျခင္းကုိ ရပ္တန္႔ေပးေရး ေရဇြာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးအဖြဲ႔၏ သတင္းထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

ဇြန္လ (၁၀) ရက္ေန႔တြင္ အသက္ (၅၄)ႏွစ္ရွိ ေရဇြာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးတစ္ဦးအား ခလရ ၂၆၉ မွ တပ္မေတာ္သား တစ္ဦးက မုဒိမ္းက်င့္ ရန္ႀကိဳးစားရာ မိမိကုိယ္ကုိ ခုခံရာ တြင္ ျပင္းထန္စြာ ဒဏ္ရာရရွိခဲ့ၿပီး ေရဇြာ ျပည္သူ႔ေဆးရုံတြင္ ေဆးရုံတင္ကုသမႈ ခံလွ်က္ရွိပါသည္။ တပ္မေတာ္သားအား ဖမ္းဆီးထားၿပီး ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း ခါတုိင္း ကဲ့သုိ႔ပင္ အေရးယူမႈ တကယ္မလုပ္ပဲ လြတ္သြားမည္ကုိ ေဒသခံမ်ား အေနျဖင့္ စုိးရိမ္ေနၾကပါသည္။ ထုိ႔ေၾကာင့္ ေရဇြာ အမ်ဳိးသမီးအဖြဲ႔သည္ ဇြန္လ (၁၅၊ ၁၆)ရက္ေန႔ တြင္ ေရဇြာ ရဲစခန္းသုိ႔ စခန္းျပခြင့္ ေတာင္းယူခဲ့ၾကရာ အပယ္ခ် ခံခဲ့ရပါသည္ […]

Now is the Time to Act, Sexual Violence Must End in Burma

On 10 June 2014, the Burma government prepared to sign the ‘Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict’ at the end of a three-day global summit, which aimed to “shatter the culture of impunity for sexual violence in conflict.” On the same day, a woman was brutally beaten by a Burma Army soldier during an attempted rape in Rezua, Chin State. The eyewitnesses who spoke to the Chin Human Rights Organization said that the women was held down by the soldier, while he repeatedly beat her. She was rushed to the hospital and is fortunately now in recovery.

However, this brutal event has lead to a series of demonstrations in Rezua and Matupi, Chin State this week, calling for an end to sexual violence. According to The Irrawaddy, protesters held placards that stated: “Stop raping; We are humans, not animals. We are humans, not property.” Though the organizers requested to hold the rally, the local police denied their applications and they have been arrested for staging a peaceful demonstration without permission, ironically under the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law.

This recent case of attempted rape is not a one-off incident of a rogue Burma Army soldier. A report produced by Women’s League of Burma (WLB) ‘Same Patterns, Same Impunity’ demonstrates how the sexual violence inflicted by the Burma Army soldiers are systematic in nature and a part of a wider structural system of politicizing women’s bodies and abusing them as instruments of war and oppression. The data collected by WLB and its members found that since the 2010 elections, over 100 cases of rape has been documented, of which 47 were brutal gang rapes and victims were as young as eight years old. Most of the documented cases were linked to Kachin and Northern Shan State where military offensives have been taking place since 2011, indicating that rape and sexual violence is in fact, used as a weapon in an attempt to demoralize the ethnic communities and to assert dominance over them […]

Myanmar: Comprehensive Solutions Needed for Recent and Long-term IDPs Alike

Executive summary

IDMC estimates that there are up to 642,600 internally displaced people (IDPs) in Myanmar, forced to flee their homes by armed conflict and inter-communal violence. The figure includes up to 400,000 people living in protracted displacement as a result of conflict in the south-east of the country – in southern Shan, Kayah, Kayin and Mon states and Bago and Tanintharyi regions – and 98,000 displaced by conflict in Kachin and northern Shan states since 2011. It also includes around 140,000 people displaced by inter-communal violence in Rakhine state since 2012, and more than 5,000 who fled their homes in Mandalay region in 2013. Disasters brought on by natural hazards and forced evictions linked to land grabs and the exploitation of natural resources have caused further displacement, including in areas where people have already fled conflict and violence.

Landmines and unexploded ordnance constitute a significant obstacle to IDPs’ return in Kachin, northern Shan and the south-east. Internally displaced women and girls in Kachin and northern Shan face the threat of sexual violence. Muslim IDPs in Rakhine are confined to camps, where they have little or no access to health care, education or livelihoods, and shelters are in need of maintenance in Rakhine, Kachin and northern Shan […]

Calls for DFID Burma Census Inquiry Top 1,000

More than a thousand people have written to Justine Greening, Secretary of State for International Development, calling for an inquiry into why the Department for International Development (DFID) spent 10m on Burma’s disastrous census earlier this year. DFID has not yet responded to these calls […]

Burma Campaign UK Wins Appeal against Decision to Keep Burma Army Training Details Secret

Burma Campaign UK has been notified by the British Ministry of Defence that we have won our appeal against a decision not to release course materials used on the course which the Burmese Army is taking part in.

However, the Ministry of Defence has still not provided all materials used on the course, despite admitting that we are entitled to it […]

Trafficking in Persons Report 2014

BURMA

Burma is a source country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, and for women and children subjected to sex trafficking in other countries. Burmese men, women, and children who migrate for work abroad, particularly to Thailand and China, are subjected to conditions of forced labor or sex trafficking in these countries. Poor economic conditions within Burma continue to drive large numbers of Burmese men, women, and children to migrate through both legal and illegal channels for work primarily in East Asia, as well as destinations including the Middle East, South Asia, and the United States. Men are most often subjected to forced labor, often in the fishing, manufacturing, and construction industries abroad. Women and girls are primarily subjected to sex trafficking or domestic servitude. The large numbers of migrants seeking work in Thailand’s fishing and domestic work sectors do so outside formal channels. Some Burmese men in the Thai fishing industry are subjected to debt bondage, passport confiscation, or false employment offers; some are also subjected to physical abuse and are forced to remain aboard vessels in international waters for years […]

Women From Burma Delegation Speaks In British Parliament

A delegation of women from Burma will speak at a meeting in the British Parliament today. They will be speaking about the ongoing use of rape and sexual violence by the Burmese Army, as well as the situation in Kachin State highlighting the ongoing military offensive and humanitarian assistance for IDPs, Karen and Shan State, refugees return, the peace process and new laws restricting freedom of autonomy to choose the religion and women’s rights […]

Three Years of Suffering for the Kachin People, How Much Longer?

As we pass the marking of the third year of the conflict in Kachin and northern Shan State between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the Burma Army, it is difficult not feel pessimistic. A report released by Fortify Rights, a non-profit human rights organization based in Southeast Asia, highlights the continuing torture of Kachin civilians by Burmese security forces, while Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) expressed their concern at the increasing offensives on KIA positions. Peace talks have occurred sporadically in an attempt to resolves the conflict, but still, all we see is the continuing persecution of Kachin communities.

The Fortify Rights report, ‘Myanmar: End Wartime Torture in Kachin State and Northern Shan State’ demonstrates how torture, both physical and mental, has been systemically inflicted upon Kachin civilians thought to be associated with the KIA. Fortify Rights believes that this constitutes war crimes and crimes against humanity. The perpetrators include not just the Burma Army, but also military intelligence and the police force. Beatings during interrogation, cutting off blood circulation, deprivation of food, drink, and sleep, sexual assault, and stabbings among other methods were all documented. Mental torture was also used, such as forcing prisoners to dig graves and telling them it is their own, having to drink from pools of their own blood and being put in execution style positions. This report comes just a few months after the Women’s League of Burma released, ‘Same Patterns, Same Impunity’ that exposes the systematic use of rape and sexual assault as a weapon of war by the Burma Army in ethnic areas […]

Women Delegates at Global Summit Use Social Media Campaign To Raise Awareness

Women delegates from Burma are attending the Global Summit To End Sexual Violence In Conflict. The Summit is being held in London this week, hosted by British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Angelina Jolie.

To coincide with the summit, the Women’s League of Burma has launched a social media campaign to raise awareness of ongoing sexual violence by the Burmese Army […]

Burma: Killing of Mr. San Tun

The Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in Burma […]