Skip to main content

More of the same in Burma

Although there have been suggestions of there being an amelioration of the oppressive regime in Burma, it would seem not all that much.  

"Burma will continue to be a major source of refugees until the needs of people with no choice but to flee their homeland are addressed. This would require some serious changes in Burma.

Ongoing military attacks targeting civilians, in violation of international law, must stop. Since March over 50,000 men, women and children have fled their homes because of military attacks in Kachin and Shan States in northern Burma. They join half a million displaced persons in eastern Burma who are hiding in the jungle for extended periods of time in appalling conditions because it is not safe for them to return home.

The systematic and widespread violation of human rights by the Burmese army and authorities also must stop. These include, but are not limited to: the rape of ethnic women and girls; the use of villagers as slave labour; the destruction or confiscation of land and property; forced evictions; beatings; torture; and extra-judicial killings.

Improvements in Burma’s human rights crisis are unlikely to come while those in power continue to deny that such abuses are occurring. Nor will they come while perpetrators of such crimes have impunity. Article 445 of Burma’s 2008 Constitution states that:

"’No proceeding shall be instituted against the said Councils (SLORC/SPDC) or any member thereof or any member of the Government, in respect of any act done in the execution of their respective duties".

This means that any person who has been an official of the regime since 1988 cannot be held legally accountable for any actions they take including the gross and systematic violation of human rights abuses.

Another push factor is the lack of democracy. There have been some changes in Burma over the past year, such as the elections last November, the formation of the new parliament and the transfer of power to a nominally civilian Government, but real democratic reform is still lacking.

The most visible demonstration of the lack of will for real reform is the continued imprisonment of 2000 political prisoners in Burma. Their unconditional release would send a strong signal that there is a real commitment to reform on behalf of the Burmese authorities. However, rather than release political prisoners, the authorities deny that any such individuals exist in Burma." 




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Pentagon's eye-popping spending....and waste!

Only a gigantic bureaucracy could get away with spending of such dimensions - and the amazing waste involved in part of that ginormous spend.   Think US Pentagon..... "From spending $150 million on private villas for a handful of personnel in Afghanistan to blowing $2.7 billion on an air surveillance balloon that doesn’t work, the latest revelations of waste at the Pentagon are just the most recent howlers in a long line of similar stories stretching back at least five decades.  Other hot-off-the-presses examples would include the Army’s purchase of helicopter gears worth $500 each for $8,000 each and the accumulation of billions of dollars' worth of weapons components that will never be used. And then there’s the one that would have to be everyone’s favorite Pentagon waste story: the spending of $50,000 to investigate the bomb-detecting capabilities of African elephants. (And here’s a shock: they didn’t turn out to be that great!) The elephant research, of course, represe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Video: Israel demolishing a Bedouin village

From Mondoweiss - Israel's supposed "most moral army in the world", the IDF, engaged in immoral, and according to international law, illegal action.... "Israeli forces have demolished every home in the Bedouin village of Khirbet Taha in the northern West Bank district of Nablus during three separate demolitions since the start of the year. Unlike most Bedouin villages, the residents in Khirbet Taha own their own land. However that land falls in Area C, territory in the occupied West Bank under full Israeli control. The village’s only school was also destroyed, leaving children to study in a dilapidated 100-year-old mosque — the only structure left standing in the village. According the United Nations, Israel has demolished half as many Palestinian buildings in the first few months of 2016, as they had in all of 2015. In February alone, the UN found that more Palestinians homes were destroyed than any other month since 2009, when the organization began its docum...
Post a Comment
Read more

What does a no-fly zone actually mean?

As some countries consider imposing a no-fly zone in relation to Libya, the pertinent question must be what does that mean and entail? FP provides the answers: "It depends on the circumstances. There are two primary types of no-fly zones imposed by air forces. The first is imposed by one military over another, while the two sides are at war. In practice, this type of no-fly zone amounts to a warning from one side that it will engage the other's aircraft if they are spotted in a given territory. The second type, more applicable to the situation in Libya, is when an outside power possessing overwhelming air superiority restricts flights over a given country in order to discourage an internal conflict or humanitarian crisis. This is a relatively recent tactic, which was used most famously in Bosnia and Iraq during the 1990s. No-fly zones are often a compromise in situations where the international community is demanding a response to ongoing violence, but full military interven...
6 comments
Read more