Invitation for the Report Launch On September 23, 2015

Asia Justice And Rights (AJAR) is pleased to invite you to a press conference for the launch of the report “Opening the box: Women’s Experiences of War, Peace, and Impunity in Myanmar […]”

ကခ်င္အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားအစည္းအရံုးထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ (KWAT) မွကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း ျမန္မာစစ္အစိုးရႏွင့္ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္တို႔ ၏စစ္ျပန္လည္္ျဖစ္ပြားမႈ၄ႏွစ္ျပည့္ႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ျပီးထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

ႏိုင္ငံတကာအဖြ႔ဲအစည္းမ်ားအေနႏွင့္တိုင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳးစုမ်ားႏွင့္စစ္မက္ျဖစ္ပြားေနမႈမ်ားရပ္တန္႕ေပးရန္ ျမန္မာအစိုးရ အေပၚဖိအားေပးသင့္ပါသည္။ […]

Statement by KWAT on the 4th Anniversary of Renewal of war in Kachin Areas

The conflict situation in northern Burma has worsened during 2015. Despite the Burmese government’s claims to be promoting peace, they have continued their military build-up in Kachin and northern Shan State, launching large-scale offensives, including aerial bombings, which are devastating ethnic communities […]

The Burma Government Must Stop Condoning Sexual Violence in Conflict Areas

On 5 June 2015, Burma Campaign UK released a briefing paper that illustrated the Burma Government’s lack of action towards eliminating sexual violence since it signed the Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict (the Declaration) last year. As a signatory to the declaration, Burma agreed to prioritize prevention of sexual violence and to hold all perpetrators accountable to the full extent of the international law, amongst other related commitments.

Unfortunately, not only has Burma ignored its commitments to the Declaration, it is also actively violating it, as cases of rape and sexual assault continue to emerge from conflict areas. According to Burma Campaign UK, “Given the widespread nature of sexual violence by the Burmese Army, the refusal to act, and now the violation of commitments made in the Declaration, it can only be concluded that the use of rape and sexual violence by the Burmese Army is condoned at the highest level of the government and the military.” […]

Ethnic Women Urge Canadian Pressure to End Military Abuses in Burma

OTTAWA, CANADA, March 11, 2015 – Two ethnic women from Burma testified at the Canadian Parliament yesterday, calling for Canadian pressure on the Government of Burma to end systematic human rights abuses, particularly sexual violence, by the Burmese military […]

More Murders, Same Patterns as Burma Army Acts with Impunity

Yet another astonishing act of barbarity was committed by the Burma Army as two young ethnic Kachin teachers were raped and murdered in a village in northern Shan State. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case as this incident once again demonstrates the impunity that protects the perpetrators of such cruel acts.

According to Kachin Women’s Association – Thailand, (KWAT) Burma Army troops had arrived in the village of Kawng Kha Shabuk, near the town of Muse, northern Shan State on the morning of 19 January 2015. They had previously been involved in military operations against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). In the early hours of the morning, villagers heard screaming from the church compound where the two teachers were staying. They went to check but could not ascertain what had happened. The next morning, a neighbor went to the compound to find the two teachers dead with signs of sexual assault and of being viciously beaten. Boot marks were found nearby their living quarters. According to KWAT, “There is strong circumstantial evidence that the rape and killing was carried out by the Burma Army troops which had arrived on January 19. These troops were stationed on guard around the village, and no one else would have dared carry out these crimes with the soldiers present.” […]

Ongoing Sexual Violence Highlights Urgent Need for Burma Army to Stop Offensives and Pull Back Troops from Kachin Areas

(ခ်င္းမိုင္။ ၂၀၁၅ ခုႏွစ္ ဇန္ႏၷ၀ါရီ ၂၂ ရက္) ကခ်င္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္း တနလၤာေန႔က ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦး မုဒိန္းျပဳက်င့္ၿပီး သတ္ျဖတ္ခံရျခင္းသည္ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္ အေနျဖင့္ အရပ္သား ျပည္သူလူထုအား ထိတ္လန္႔ေၾကာက္ရြံ႕ေစရန္ လိင္ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈကို ဆက္လက္ က်င့္သံုးေနဆဲျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အေထာက္အထား တရပ္ပင္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္း အသင္းေတာ္ ေစတနာ့၀န္ထမ္း ဆရာမမ်ားျဖစ္ေသာ အသက္ ၂၀ အရြယ္ မရမ္လုရာႏွင့္ တန္ေဘာလ္ေခါန္နန္စင္ တို႔ ႏွစ္ဦးသည္ ရွမ္းျပည္နယ္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ေကာင္ခါရွဘုတ္ရြာရွိ သူတို႔၏ ဘုရားေက်ာင္း ၀င္း အတြင္းတြင္ အုပ္စုလိုက္ မုဒိန္းျပဳက်င့္ၿပီး သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းကို ခံခဲ့ၾကရသည္။ […]

KWAT Condemns Repeated Burma Army Shelling along Kachin-China Border, Threatening Tens of Thousands of Civilians

The Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) strongly condemns the repeated Burma Army shelling in the Laiza and Maijayang areas during November 19 to 23, 2014, which not only killed 23 cadets, but also endangered the lives of tens of thousands of civilians. KWAT is calling urgently for the Burma Army to end its offensives and begin troop withdrawal. […]

Burma Army Continues to Use the Drugs Trade as a Weapon of War

A new report by Kachin Women’s Association – Thailand (KWAT), “Silent Offensive: How Burma Army Strategies are Fuelling the Kachin Drug Crisis” outlines the severity of the drug problem in northern Burma as well as the complicity of the government in the trade. The report shows how the government is using opium-growing militia forces in its operations against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) as part of a deal in which these militias are given free rein to produce and sell heroin and other narcotics.

Thus, as the report points out, it is members of either Burma Army controlled Border Guard Forces (BGF) such as the New Democratic Army – Kachin (NDAK), a splinter group of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) that became a BGF in 2009, or People’s Militia Forces (PMF) that are heavily involved in offensives against the KIO. Land that is taken by the Burma Army and its proxy forces is then allocated to BGFs/PMFs to utilize however they like. This is often opium cultivation, heroin production and methamphetamine production. To make matters worse these are areas under which the KIO had previously been involved in anti-drug activities but since BGFs or PMFs have taken over, opium cultivation has increased greatly in areas such as Nampaka in northern Shan State and Chipwi in Kachin State […]

Silent Offensive: How Burma Army Strategies are Fuelling the Kachin Drug Crisis

Summary

This report, based on interviews with Kachin drug users, their family members, drug sellers, and community leaders in eight townships of northern Burma, paints a disturbing picture of the drug crisis in Kachin areas. It shows how the renewed conflict against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) since June 2011 is fuelling drug production and worsening existing drug abuse among Kachin communities. […]