AIPMC urges ASEAN to review Burma issue cautiously

By Zin Linn

The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus (AIPMC) released a press statement yesterday on Current Military Offensive and Rights Abuse by the Myanmar or Burma Army in Ethnic Areas -Monitor recent rape cases, reject Myanmar’s bid to chair ASEAN and cut financial lifelines for despots, AIPMC urges ASEAN.

The AIPMC highlighted about atrocities against civilians during Burma Army offensives against ethnic armed groups in Shan State and Kachin State. It also denounced Burmese soldiers’ sexual violence against women and girls, including gang-rape by order of high level officials.

The statement continues revealing warfare in North and Eastern Burma which has been worsening since last year’s election. Almost two-decade long ceasefire with the Shan State Army-North (SSA-N) and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) have already been broken by the Burma Army.

According to Shan community based organizations, the statement says, 65 battles have taken place in Shan State over the last three weeks and now thousands people are displaced inside northern Shan State.

In Kachin State, more than 16,000 refugees fled to China from escalating fighting across ten townships since early June, according to the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT). In both areas, Burmese soldiers committed systematic sexual violence against women and girls, quoting local sources AIPMC said.

AIPMC also underlined the main cause of the combating in those ethnic areas. The ongoing battles are closely linked to the Burmese government’s economic interests in the resource rich ethnic areas, including hydropower dams on the Salween and Irrawaddy Rivers and trans-national oil and gas pipelines across northern Shan State, the statement criticizes.

It needs to clear out resistance forces and seize control of these areas to proceed with these projects. AIPMC pointed out that Burma has had no mechanism prepared to watch the impact of such projects for local people. Instead, they have taken control over ethnic areas and get rid of ethnic armed groups, rather than seeking a solution to essential political problems in the country.

Severe human rights violations have already occurred concerning these projects, including forced labor, land confiscations, torture, murder and rapes, causing an influx of refugees to neighboring countries, AIPMC said.

“Only the military rulers of Myanmar and their business cronies will benefit from these projects, which are built on the lives, blood and tear of ordinary civilians”, said Kraisak Choonhavan, AIPMC Senior Advisor in Thailand.

The current civil war comes on top of an already critical political situation in Burma. There has been no meaningful political progress since the elections. Besides, 2,000 political prisoners continue to languish in notorious prisons of Burma.

“We call on the Myanmar Army to immediately end rights abuses, particularly the systematic use of rape as a weapon to suppress ethnic women and to urgently engage in peace talks with ethnic armed groups”, said Eva Kusuma Sundari, Member of Indonesian Parliament and President of the AIPMC.

“The challenge is on ASEAN to live up to its responsibilities to protect the people of Myanmar. A meeting between the ASEAN Foreign Ministerial Meeting and the UN is needed to stop this human rights crisis and its negative impacts on neighboring countries and regional stability. The international community should press upon ASEAN the urgency of such a meeting”, she emphasizes.

AIPMC calls on the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) to monitor these rape cases closely, and ASEAN and its member states must turn down Burma’s application to be the bloc’s chair in 2014, until and unless the government takes genuine steps towards ending human rights violations in the country.

Hence, AIPMC warns that ASEAN members states need paying attention to the repeated calls by the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Burma (Myanmar), Tomas Ojea Quintana, for the creation of a UN-mandated Commission of Inquiry (CoI) in Burma.

It also reminds that prodemocracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has already supported CoI and altogether sixteen countries have already endorsed the establishment of such a CoI.

Finally, AIPMC calls Thailand and other investors to reassess their investments in Burma and discontinue financial lifelines that keep brutal and self-serving despots in power