Myanmar: Take Immediate Steps to Safeguard against Torture

On International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Amnesty International calls on the Myanmar authorities to take swift and concrete steps to safeguard against torture.

As a first step, Amnesty International calls on the Myanmar government to fulfil – as a matter of priority – its public commitment to ratify the UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT). Ratification would be an important step towards eradicating torture and other ill treatment, and ensuring that victims and their families can access justice and other effective remedies for the harm they have suffered […]

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 […]

မဟာသႏၲိသုခ ေက်ာင္းေတာ္ႀကီးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္၍ အစိုးရ၏ အဓမၼေျဖရွင္းမႈအေပၚ သေဘာထား ေၾကညာခ်က္ ထုတ္ျပန္ျခင္း

Myanmar: End Wartime Torture in Kachin State and Northern Shan State

(Yangon)— For the past three years, Myanmar authorities have systematically tortured Kachin civilians perceived to be aligned with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), Fortify Rights said in a new report released today. Fortify Rights believes these abuses constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The government of Myanmar should intervene immediately to end the use of torture in the conduct of the ongoing war in Kachin State and northern Shan State, and it should credibly investigate and prosecute members of the Myanmar Army, Myanmar Police Force, and Military Intelligence who are responsible for the serious crimes described in this report.

The 71-page report, “I Thought They Would Kill Me”: Ending Wartime Torture in Northern Myanmar, describes the systematic use of torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment (“ill treatment”) of more than 60 civilians by Myanmar authorities from June 2011 to April 2014. Members of the Myanmar Army, Myanmar Police Force, and Military Intelligence deliberately caused severe and lasting mental and physical pain to civilians in combat zones, […]

55 Organisations Worldwide Call for Action for Peace on Kachin Anniversary

Three years ago today, the Burma Army broke a 17-year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and unleashed a major new military offensive against the Kachin people. Since 9 June 2011, over 120,000 Kachin people have been displaced, forced to flee their homes. At least 200 villages have been destroyed. A humanitarian emergency unfolded, with a desperate need for shelter, food and medical care. As the Kachin Peace Talk Creation Group has said, “the impact of the war this time has been enormous. Many have lost land, plantations […]

The Pressure is Working

Dear friend

There has just been a success in our campaign to help end rape and sexual violence by the Burmese Army.

The Burmese government has just become the 150th country to sign the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. The declaration contains practical and political commitments to end impunity, promote accountability, and provide justice and safety for victims of sexual violence in conflicts […]

Statement by the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand on the Third Anniversary of the Renewed Conflict in Kachin State

KWAT is very concerned at the recent escalation of attacks by the Burma Army in southern Kachin and northern Shan State, which have caused fresh displacement and suffering. These systematic operations to seize control of key trade routes and economic zones along the China-Burma border throw strong doubt on the government’s sincerity towards the peace process […]

Displaced Villagers File Complaint Regarding Japan’s Investment in Myanmar’s Thilawa Special Economic Zone

Tokyo, Japan – Three residents from the Thilawa Special Economic Zone (SEZ) area near Yangon, Myanmar, delivered an Objection to the Examiner for the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) today in Tokyo. It is the first known formal complaint filed under JICA’s Objection Procedures since the restructuring of JICA in 2008. One of the examiners, Dr. Sachihiko Harashina met the villagers in person to receive the complaint […]

(၁၀)ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသား စည္းလံုးညီၫႊတ္ေရး ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲ၏ သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

(၁၀)ႀကိမ္ေျမာက္ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားစည္းလံုးညီၫႊတ္ေရး ႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲကို ၂၀၁၄ခုႏွစ္၊ ေမလ ၂၈ရက္မွ ၃၁ ရက္ေန႔အထိ ကရင့္ေတာ္လွန္ေရး နယ္ေျမေလး၀ါး(ေခၚ)ေလာ္ခီးလာတြင္ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ က်င္းပခဲ့သည္။ထိုႏွီးေႏွာဖလွယ္ပြဲသို႔ ျပည္တြင္းျပည္ပရွိ ကရင္လူထုအေျချပဳအဖဲြ႔အစည္းမ်ား၊ ကရင္ဘာသာေရးေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ား၊ ကရင္လူငယ္ႏွင့္ ကရင္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ား၊ ကရင့္ႏုိင္ငံေရးပါတီမ်ား၊ ကရင္လက္နက္ကုိင္အဖဲြ႔အစည္းမ်ား စသည့္ကရင္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္း (၆၆)ဖဲြ႔ႏွင့္ တသီးပုဂၢလ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ား၊ ေလ့လာသူမ်ား အပါအ၀င္ စုစုေပါင္း (၂၄၆)ဦး တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ၾကသည္ […]