UN Security Council Resolution Not Strong Enough, Say Activists
By Wai Moe October 12, 2007
The UN Security Council resolution passed on Thursday offers some hope but should have been much stronger, Burmese dissidents told The Irrawaddy on Friday.
The resolution, also called a presidential statement, was the first official resolution to receive the full support of the 15-member security council, including China and Russia.
A spokesperson for Burma's main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, said it welcomed the council's non-binding resolution and considers it a positive sign, but it did not go far enough.
“The Burmese people only get a non-binding resolution...because China and Russia blocked the attempt for a binding resolution on Burma,” said spokesman Han Thar Myint, referring to the two countries' veto of a tougher Burma resolution before the council that was backed by the US, Britain and France.
On the plus side, the resolution will support the efforts of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and his special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, as they work to improve conditions inside Burma, he said, and the statement signifies the council supports Burma's democracy movement.
“This time the Chinese and Russian governments are participating and finding common ground in the security council because they also realize that the situation in Burma is becoming worse,” he said.
But even as the security council passed the resolution, the junta was arresting, imprisoning and torturing non-violent protestors, said Han Thar Myint.
Aung Htoo of the Burma Lawyers Council, based in Thailand, said the junta has committed crimes against the people with “impunity” and the council should have addressed that issue.
“The UN special envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, did not say anything about state-backed crimes in Burma," he said. “The security council must take more effective actions on Burma if they really want to help the people and resolve the problems.”
Aung Htoo said that in 2003, the junta committed crimes against non-violent protesters, and the international community did not take any effective action against the junta. In September, while the world watched, the junta again committed crimes against civilians, he said.
Soe Tun, a leader of the 88 Generation Students group, said the security council resolution doesn't offer the Burmese people any legal protection against state-backed violence and people are very afraid of the junta.
“Even though the 88 students welcome the international support for Burma’s democracy movement, we are still disappointed with the ineffective actions of the security council,” he said.
“Dissidents, including monks, are brutally tortured at detention centers and even the International Committee of the Red Cross cannot visit them," he said.
The UN Special envoy to Burma is scheduled to return to Asia next week for consultations with key governments. He will meet with officials in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, China and Japan and then return to Burma, according to The Associated Press.
Meanwhile, raids and arrests by security forces continue in Burma. one activist, Naw Ohn Hla, was arrested in Rangoon on Friday morning, according to reports, and the home of another activist, Lin Lin, in Rangoon was raided and searched by soldiers overnight on Thursday.
Rumors are circulating in Rangoon that some female detainees, including nuns, have been raped by soldiers at detention centers.
“We heard there are not enough female guards at detention centers, where women are detained," said Soe Tun. "There is real concern for the situation of these women detainees.”
UN envoy's return to Myanmar may still be in Nov.
Fri Oct 12, 2007 3:45pm EDT
Burma's Junta of Beating, Killing Detainees,
Norway-based Radio Says
By The Associated Press October 12, 2007
Guards at detention centers in Burma beat, kicked and slashed protesters rounded up during the crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations, sometimes leaving their victims to die of their injuries, a dissident group said.
Burma's repressive military junta has said 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested in last month's demonstrations, with 700 later released. Diplomats and dissidents say the death toll is likely much higher and up to 6,000 people were seized, including thousands of monks who led the rallies.
At least a dozen freed prisoners described brutal treatment at detention centers, including one who said "dozens" of detainees were killed, the Democratic Voice of Burma, a Norway-based short-wave radio station and Web site run by dissident journalists, said in a report Thursday.
"They beat everyone, including women and girls," the dissident group quoted an unidentified female detainee as saying. "I was beaten myself. Monks were targeted and they were not only beaten but also verbally abused by security officers."
"I heard people shouting and crying from the interrogation room and then, I saw an army medical surgeon carrying people away," the woman said. The group said she was held at the Government Technical Institute detention center in Rangoon for five days following the crackdown.
DVB, which has supplied reliable information in the past, also reported that a 48-year-old detainee, Than Aung, died September 30 at a detention center in Yangon. He was arrested on September 27, beaten in custody which left him with severe internal injuries, and died when he was not given immediate medical attention, the group said, citing sources close to the institute.
There was no way to independently confirm the reports attributed to freed prisoners.
In an interview with The Associated Press, another released prisoner, Zaw Myint, 45, said he was arrested September 26 on a Rangoon street after a soldier bashed his face with the butt of his gun, leaving a bloody gash across his cheek.
Zaw Myint said he was denied treatment for three days and then stitched up by a doctor at Rangoon's notorious Insein prison, after the physician had treated several wounded prisoners.
"He used the same needle to treat all patients. And I saw him give injections to wounded people using the same syringe," said Zaw Myint, who was released after a week in custody. He said was "extremely worried" about having contracted HIV as a result of the treatment. Rights groups say that Burma's prisons have soaring rates of HIV/AIDS.
DVB also released video of an unidentified man who said "dozens" of detainees died. Another man was quoted as saying he saw two people die from severe beatings at Rangoon City Hall. Authorities failed to give a boy medical treatment for a gunshot wound and even refused to let him drink water from a toilet before he died, the man was quoted as saying.
Human rights groups have long accused the military government of abuse and torture of prisoners. The Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, comprised of around 100 former inmates, has put out a report describing homosexual rape, electric shocks to the genitals, near drowning, burning with hot wax and other abuse.
Tourism Slumps in Crackdown Aftermath
By Shah Paung October 12, 2007
The bloody crackdown on demonstrations in Burma has taken a heavy toll on tourism, with travel operators reporting a complete collapse in foreign business and hotels struggling to fill empty rooms.
The staff of Rangoon’s Asia Dragon Travels and Diamond View Travels & Tours told The Irrawaddy on Friday: “We have no foreign tourists and only a few local visitors.”
A source within Htoo Trading, a conglomerate run by tycoon Tay Za, said many of the company’s hotels were virtually empty and staff had been sent on unpaid leave. At one typical Htoo Trading hotel, only two of the 72 rooms were occupied.
The interruption of phone and Internet connections to the outside world during the crackdown had alarmed many travelers, sources within the hotel industry said.
The slump in tourism has also hit airlines operating within Burma. One source at Air Bagan said planes were flying with as few as 15 passengers.
Some governments (notably the US, Britain and New Zealand) and international tour operators are warning against visiting Burma. One company, Orient-Express Hotels Trains and Cruises, have recommended their customers to defer trips until at least the end of October.
Up until August this year, nearly 190,000 tourists visited Burma. The number of foreign tourists last year totaled 263,500.
More Pressure Needed
[Editorial]By The Irrawaddy October 12, 2007
Two weeks after the bloody crackdown by Burma's junta against peaceful demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, the world’s authoritative body, the UN Security Council has finally issued its presidential statement on Burma.
Despite representing a significant step for the 15-nation council, which had previously been blocked from weighing in on Burma’s political crisis by China and Russia, the statement was soft compared with the expressions of international outrage that followed the Burmese government’s deadly crackdown on protesters.
The Security Council did issue a unanimous statement on Thursday saying that it “strongly deplores” the regime's violence. However, the arrests and intimidation have continued regardless. Eyewitnesses have described the brutal treatment at detention centers; one monk told The Irrawaddy that dozens of detainees were killed. No one knows exactly how many monks and other civilians have been killed and how many have been detained.
It is encouraging to hear that the Security Council has addressed, for the first time ever, these crucial human rights abuses in Burma and has welcomed a resolution recently adopted by the UN Human Rights Council.
In the meantime, the head of the 47-nation Human Rights Council, Romanian Ambassador Doru-Romulus Costea, announced that Paulo Sergio Pinheiro—originally appointed as the UN's independent expert on human rights in Burma seven years ago, but barred from entering the country since 2003—wants to return to Burma as soon as possible to assess the human rights situation.
Tensions in Burma seem to have eased when viewed in the light of daytime, but people are still living in dreadful fear with a curfew providing cover for nightly raids in Rangoon.
The fate of detainees at the interrogation centers amounts to a campaign of state terror. Sources in Rangoon have confirmed that members of the 88 Generation Students group—who seized the initiative during the peaceful demonstrations—and other detainees who were arrested by the authorities are now being tortured in the notorious Insein Prison and at other detention facilities. Family members are extremely worried about their disappeared sons and daughters; but they also live in fear of being arrested in exchange for their incarcerated loved ones. To compound matters, the military government has denied the International Committee of the Red Cross access to detention centers, accusing the committee of supporting the opposition and the insurgents.
So far, Burma's military government is still ignoring the “concrete actions and tangible results toward national reconciliation” that the international community has called for, and that the Burmese people demand.
That is why the UN Security Council needs to keep putting pressure on the Burmese regime to allow the UN's independent expert on human rights to enter the country and investigate the claims of abuse, and to open the doors of the prisons for the ICRC to treat political prisoners and other detainees.
This could help to protect those arrested from brutal treatment, reducing the tragedies behind bars, at least as a first step toward ensuring that the junta has heard the Security Council's call to “take all necessary measures to address the political, economic, humanitarian, and human rights issues that are the concern of its people,” as well as finally acknowledging that “the future of Myanmar lies in the hands of all of its people.”
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