Op-Ed On Burma By Ben Rodgers

December 18, 2009
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Where Impunity Reigns

By BENEDICT ROGERS

The world needs to be reminded, again and again, that the military regime in Burma (Myanmar) continues to perpetrate every conceivable human rights violation.

Any Burmese showing any dissent is brutally suppressed, as the world witnessed two years ago when peaceful Buddhist monks demonstrated. Many monks were killed or have disappeared; several hundred remain in prison.

Beyond that, more than 2,000 political activists are in Burmese prisons today, subjected to torture, denial of medical treatment and ludicrous sentences.

Student leader Bo Min Yu Ko is serving a 104-year prison term; Shan ethnic leader Hkun Htun Oo has been imprisoned for 93 years; democracy activist Min Ko Naing for 65 years. The most famous human rights activist, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been under house arrest for almost 14 years, and the term was extended for a further 18 months after a sham trial.

Many of these activists are in prisons thousands of miles from their families, and several are critically ill.

One category of victims of the military dictatorship that gets far less attention is Burma’s ethnic minorities.

In eastern Burma, the regime has been conducting a brutal military campaign against people of the Karen, Karenni and Shan groups. Since 1996, more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed and more than a million people internally displaced. A Karenni friend of mine has described it as “Pol Pot in slow motion.”

The catalogue of terror includes the widespread, systematic use of rape as a weapon, forced labor, the use of human minesweepers and the forcible conscription of child soldiers.

In northern and western Burma, the predominantly Christian Chin and Kachin peoples also face systematic religious persecution.

The Muslim Rohingyas, targeted for their faith and ethnicity, are denied citizenship, despite living in Burma for generations. Thousands have escaped to miserable conditions in Bangladesh.

I have travelled more than 30 times to Burma and its borderlands. I have met former child soldiers, women who have been gang-raped, and many people who have been forced to flee from their burned villages.

Earlier this year, I met a man who had lost both his legs following an attack on his village.

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