Thematic Briefing: Armed conflict in Paletwa, southern Chin State

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) today condemned both the Arakan Army (AA) and the Burma Army for human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, in the context of recent outbreaks of conflict between the two sides in Paletwa, southern Chin State […]

Caught in the Crossfire: Chin Civilians Bear Brunt of Conflict in Paletwa, Chin State

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) today condemned both the Arakan Army (AA) and the Burma Army for human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law, in the context of recent outbreaks of conflict between the two sides in Paletwa, southern Chin State […]

Burma: Stop Christian cross Removal; Drop Trumped-up Charges

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) today urged the authorities in Burma to overturn an order to dismantle and remove a large Christian cross in the State capital Hakha, and to drop trumped-up charges against Tial Cem, a Chin elder involved in planting the cross. […]

ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္၊ ပလက္၀ျမိဳ႕နယ္မွ ခ်င္းတိုင္းရင္းသားမ်ား လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖါက္ခံရျခင္းႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ ပူးတြဲသေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

၁။ ခ်င္းျပည္နယ္၊ ပလက္ဝျမိဳ႕နယ္၊ ကုန္ျပင္ေက်းရြာေန ခ်င္းတိုင္းရင္းသား မ်ားျဖစ္ၾက သည့္ ဦးေက်ာ္ေအာင္၊ ဦးေအးလွ၊ ဦးေမာင္စိန္၊ ဦးေက်ာ္ျမင့္ဦး၊ ဦးေအာင္ေက်ာ္လွႏွင့္ ဦးေအာင္ဆိုတို႔ ၆ ဦးအား အေနာက္ပိုင္းတိုင္း စစ္ဌာနခ်ဳပ္ လက္ေအာက္ခံ၊ အမွတ္ ၃၄၄ ေျခလ်င္တပ္ရင္းမွ ဗုိလ္မွဴးတင္ထြဋ္ဦးပါ ၁၃ ဦးအဖြဲ႔မွ ၂၀၁၄ ခုႏွစ္ ၾသဂုတ္လ ၂၈ မွ စက္တင္ဘာလ ၁ ရက္ေန႔အထိ ခ်င္းအမ်ိဳးသားတပ္ဦး (CNF) ႏွင့္ အဆက္ အသြယ္ ျပဳလုပ္သည္ဟူေသာ စြပ္စြဲခ်က္ျဖင့္ မတရားခ်ဳပ္ေႏွာင္ ရိုက္နက္ခဲ့သည့္ အျပင္ စက္တင္ဘာလ ၄ ရက္ ေန႔တြင္ ဗိုလ္မွဴးတင္ထြဋ္ဦးမွ ၄င္းတို႔အား ၾကိဳတင္ ေရးထား သည့္ ဝန္ခံဂတိျပဳစာရြက္ေပၚတြင္ အတင္းအၾကပ္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထုိး ေစခိုင္းျခင္း မ်ား ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေၾကာင္း သိရိွရသည္။ […]

Burma: Eight Chin Activists Convicted; Fined

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] On Wednesday 23 July eight Chin activists – charged under article 18 of “The Right to Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Act” with protesting without permission – were convicted in Matupi township court under presiding Judge Aung Mya, and ordered to pay fines of 30,000 kyats each the same day […]

Burma: Drop Charges against Chin Activists; End Impunity for Sexual Violence

[Chiang Mai, Thailand] The Chin Human Rights Organization (CHRO) today condemned the Government of Burma for pursuing legal proceedings against 8 Chin activists who demonstrated
against sexual violence perpetrated by Burma Army soldiers, and failing to deliver justice for Chin victims of sexual violence. CHRO urged the Burmese authorities to immediately and unconditionally drop the charges against the activists, and reiterated its long-standing call for an independent and
impartial international mechanism to investigate serious human rights violations in Burma, including sexual violence, in order to deter further violations and help end the culture of impunity […]

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 […]

Four years on, no clear answers on Kaladan Project

[Rangoon, Burma/Myanmar] The Kaladan Movement today urges the governments of Burma and India and Indian company ESSAR Projects Ltd. to publicly answer vital questions about the implementation of the Kaldan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project (Kaladan Project) and address key concerns of affected communities in Arakan and Chin States […]

Women From Burma Delegation Speak In British Parliament

A delegation of women from Burma spoke in the British Parliament today about ongoing human rights abuses, aid, and the political situation in Burma. (Picture attached) The delegation of three women are on a ten day visit to the UK. The delegation consists of Jessica Nhkum from Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, Rosalinn Zahau from Chin […]

Burma: Ethnic Chin in Historic Hearing at the European Parliament

A public hearing on the situation of the ethnic Chin in Burma took place at the European Parliament in Brussels for the first time ever today. The event, “The struggle of ethnic Chins in a changing Burma/Myanmar” – hosted by a member of the European Parliament Working Group on Freedom of Religion or Belief, László Tőkés MEP – examined some of the key challenges facing the predominantly Christian Chin people, including ongoing human rights abuses […]