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 […]

Myanmar: Three Years on, Conflict Continues in Kachin State

Three years after the Myanmar armed forces resumed offensive military operations in Kachin state, Amnesty International joins human rights defenders and civil society organizations to call for an immediate end to violations of international humanitarian law and human rights law. The continued fighting and reports of crimes under international law and human rights violations allegedly committed by the Myanmar Army raise serious questions about commitment to human rights reforms in the country and threaten ongoing efforts to negotiate a nationwide ceasefire […]

ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း နယ္ေျမမ်ားအတြင္း ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္က မဟာဗ်ဴဟာ ထိုးစစ္မ်ား ဆင္ႏြဲေနျခင္းအေပၚ ျပင္းထန္စြာ ကန္႕ကြက္ေၾကာင္း ထုတ္ျပန္ေၾကညာခ်က္

ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္သည္ လြန္ခဲ့ေသာ ဧျပီလဆန္းပိုင္းမွစ၍ ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္ႏွင့္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း နယ္ေျမမ်ားအတြင္း စစ္အင္အား အလံုးအရင္းျဖင့္ KIA တပ္မ်ား၊ TNLA ႏွင့္ SSA (N) တပ္ဖြဲ႕မ်ားအေပၚ ထုိးစစ္ဆင္ တိုက္ခိုက္ေနျခင္းသည္ ၾကီးမားက်ယ္ျပန္႕ေသာ မဟာဗ်ဴစာေျမာက္ စစ္ဆင္ေရးၾကီးအသြင္ ေဆာင္ေန၍ UNFC က ျပင္းထန္စြာ ကန္႕ကြက္လိုက္သည္ […]

Children of Kachin Need Protection and Have a Right to Peace, Says UNICEF

Recent fighting between the Myanmar National Army and the Kachin Independence Army in the vicinity of Man Win Gyi and Momauk areas (Southern Kachin State) has forced thousands of people, including an estimated 1,000 children, to leave their temporary homes. For many of them […]

Kachin National Organization Demand Unconditional Release of All Kachin Political Prisoners

Today, the Kachin National Organization (KNO) expressed concern that the Burmese government is continuing to arrest and sentence fellow Kachins for their political belief at alarmingly high rates in Kachin State despite the Burmese government declared sweeping amnesty on Tuesday 31st December 2013 that it would have “no more political prisoners” by year-end […]

Kachin Group Slams China’s New CSR Report on Irrawaddy Dams

A Kachin group today criticized the new corporate social responsibility report on the controversial Irrawaddy dams, calling for a locally-led development process, not one benefiting only China […]

Brang Yung and Lahpai Gam Prison Sentences Increased

On Thursday 19th December two Kachin civilians, Brang Yung and Lahpai Gam, had their sentences increased from 2 to 7 years in jail. They were already serving 2 year prison sentences after a verdict last month. It is not yet clear why their sentences were increased. Although Thein Sein promised to release all political prisoners by the end of this year, farmers, activists and ethnic civilians are continuing to be arrested, and put on trial […]

Statement No. (4/2013) On the International Human Rights Day

1. On the International Human Rights Day, the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission (MNHRC) joins the international community in celebrating this auspicious day […]

Sentencing of May Sabe Phyu and Maran Jaw Gun Highlights New Tactics of Intimidation

Two Kachin peace activists, May Sabe Phyu and Maran Jaw Gun, were today fined 40,000 Kyat ($40, £24), for violating Section 18 of Burma’s Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law, The case took place at San Chaung Township Court, Rangoon.

They had taken part in a peaceful protest in Rangoon on the International Day of Peace 2012, highlighting how the Burmese government broke a ceasefire in Kachin State, Burma, in 2011 […]

Cooperation Needed to End Violence Against Women of Burma

To mark 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 27 civil society organizations have come together to launch 16 days of action that will end on 10 December, International Human Rights Day. The campaign began with a public ceremony in Rangoon on 24 November that included games, music and other performances. Women’s groups called for cooperation from all people of Burma to help end all forms of violence against women by participating in a “white campaign”, wearing white shirts or accessories during the 16 days to raise awareness about the problem of violence against women.

In a Burmese-language statement, the Women’s League of Burma called for the people of Burma to work together to reduce the role of the military in the governance of the country and achieve sustainable peace. The statement outlined the many different forms of violence that women face on a daily basis: physical, mental, sexual, domestic and community violence, as well as violence carried out by the Burma Army, especially in ethnic nationality areas […]