Women Activists Facing Harassment by Proponents of Dawei Special Economic Zone

The Tavoyan Women’s Union (TWU) is gravely concerned at increasing harassment and intimidation of women who have been raising concerns about the impacts of the Dawei Special Economic Zone (DSEZ) and related projects […]

Allegations of Ethnically Motivated Rape and Killing in Myanmar of Grave Concern

I am gravely concerned by the killing and the allegations of the rape of two young female teachers from the Kachin Baptist Convention in a village in Northern Shan State in Myanmar on January 20th. I call on the Government of Myanmar to ensure that an impartial and effective investigation into this killing and alleged rape is conducted in order to ensure justice, reparations for the families and accountability for the perpetrators […]

Religions for Peace Myanmar Statement on sexual violence against two Kachin teachers

Religions for Peace – Myanmar shared its deepest condolence with the bereaved family and is extremely saddened by the rape, torture and killing of Kachin Baptist Convention religious volunteer teachers – Maran Lu Ra and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin, age 20 and 21 at Kawng Hka village, Pansan township, Muse District, Northern Shan State, on the night of 19 January, 2015. Religions for Peace – Myanmar strongly condemns such act of armed and sexual violence in the Christian church compound in Kawng Hka village and to any kind of armed violence […]

႐ွမ္းျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း၊ ေကာင္ခါေဘာက္႐ြာတြင္ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္းအသင္းခ်ဳပ္ (KBC) မွ ေစတနာ့ဝန္ထမ္း ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦး အဓမၼျပဳက်င့္ အသတ္ခံရျခင္းအေပၚ ၈၈ မ်ိဳးဆက္( ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္ ပြင့္လင္းလူ႔အဖြဲ႔အစည္း) မွ ေပးပို႔ေသာ ဝမ္းနည္းေၾကာင္း သဝဏ္လႊာ

၁။ ၂ဝ၁၅ ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇန္နဝါရီလ (၁၉)ရက္ေန႔တြင္ ႐ွမ္းျပည္ေျမာက္ပိုင္း ေကာင္ခါေဘာက္ရြာရွိ ကခ်င္ႏွစ္ျခင္း အသင္းခ်ဳပ္ (KBC) မွ ေစတနာ့ဝန္ထမ္း ဆရာမႏွစ္ဦးျဖစ္ေသာ မရန္လုရာႏွင့္ တန္ေဘာင္ေခါန္နန္႔ဒင့္ တို႔ ႏွစ္ဦးမွာ အသင္းေတာ္ ဝင္းအတြင္း၌ပင္ အဓမၼျပဳက်င့္ အသတ္ခံရေၾကာင္း ၾကားသိရသည့္ အတြက္ ကၽြႏု္ပ္တို႔မွ ေၾကကြဲ တုန္လႈပ္မိပါသည္။ […]

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။ […]

Kachin National Organization (KNO) Condemns Rape and Murder of Two Kachin Teachers and Calls for Inqury on Crime against Humanity

KNO strongly condemned the rape and brutal murder of Maran Lu Ra (20 years old) and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin (21 years old), who were volunteer teachers of the Kachin Baptist Convention’s Education Ministry Program. They were gang-raped, severely tortured and murdered in Kawng-Hka village, Nam Tau, Mung Mau district in Northern Shan State by Burma Army soldiers from 503 Light Infantry Regiment, commanded by Major Aung Soe Myin, stationed at the village since 17th January 2015. […]

Myanmar: Investigate Alleged Rape and Killing of Two Kachin Women

The Myanmar authorities must ensure that a prompt, independent, impartial and effective investigation into the killing and alleged rape of two young Kachin women is carried out. Failure to investigate these allegations and hold those responsible to account would deny the victims and their families justice and contribute to an ongoing climate of impunity for rape and other crimes of sexual violence, in particular in conflict-affected and ethnic minority areas. […]

Britain Must Support International Investigation into Rape and Sexual Violence in Burma

On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, more than 2,000 campaign postcards are being delivered to the British Foreign Office calling on Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond to support the establishment of an international investigation into rape and sexual violence committed by the Burmese Army. The postcards were signed by supporters of Burma Campaign UK. […]

‘If they had hope, they would speak’: The Ongoing Use of State-Sponsored Sexual Violence in Burma’s Ethnic Communities

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In January 2014, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) published a report which demonstrated the systematic use of rape by the Burma Army as a strategy to subjugate communities across the country. We documented over a hundred cases of sexual violence in the years since President Thein Sein took office – a number which we believe grossly underestimates the true scale of the problem. Drawing on evidence gathered by our member organisations across Burma, we argued that there are clear links between militarisation, investment and human rights abuses. We also proposed a number of steps to uproot the culture of impunity which surrounds sexual violence, and prevents survivors from obtaining justice. Whilst recent months have seen positive action taken in several areas, the pillars which provide impunity for perpetrators of human rights abuses remain in place. In January, we called for constitutional reform to place the military under civilian control; the establishment of effective judicial and non-judicial mechanisms to investigate human rights abuses, particularly those relating to sexual violence, and; greater participation of women in the peace process dialogue. […]

‘If they had hope, they would speak’: The Ongoing Use of State Sponsored Sexual Violence in Burma’s Ethnic Communities

(Yangon, November 24, 2014) – Burma Army soldiers continue to engage in acts of sexual violence on a widespread scale, and women and human rights defenders in ethnic communities face harassment and persecution, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) said in a new report published today to coincide with International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. […]