A week ago, the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) issued an urgent appeal on the 27 March 2008 night time assault on a Rangoon street of 57-year-old human rights defender U Myint Aye, who had to receive stitches for an injury to his head caused by being hit from behind. So far there have been no known police inquiries into that incident.
Since then, two other activists in Burma have been assaulted in facsimile attacks.
On March 31, an again unidentified man hit U Myint Hlaing, chairperson of the political party the National League for Democracy in Hlaingthayar Township, on Rangoons outskirts. The 72-year-old Myint Hlaing was also admitted to hospital to have the wound sutured. As in the former incident, the assault occurred in darkness, this time around 7pm nearby the victims house, when the electricity supply was off. Again, there was no attempt at robbery or other actions that would suggest this as an ordinary criminal act. And again although the police were notified they have so far not called anyone for inquiries.
Now the AHRC has received information from the Yoma-3 news group (Thailand) that a third person has been identically assaulted, also in Hlaingthayar. This time the victim, U Tin Yu, suffered injuries to his forehead and below his right eye for which he had to receive 20 stitches at the general hospital.
Fifty-year-old Tin Yu is not a member of any party or political grouping but of his own accord visits prisons to take food and give assistance to detainees who are in special need. Last year he had been detained and also warned by local authorities about his activities.
The assault occurred in the early morning on April 4 at the Tatarhpyu bus stop in ward 7 of the township, while the victim and his daughter were waiting for a vehicle to go to the fish market. According to Tin Yus daughter, the attacker looked at her father carefully before launching his blows, and that he was not from the area. She says that when she ran yelling robber, robber a policeman came on a motorcycle and said that it was not a robber, before riding off. She has also alleged that two days before the attack, the township ward 8 security officer, Min Aung came and looked around then waited nearby her familys house with some four other persons.
The nature of these attacks is seemingly random and yet highly systematic, sporadic yet recurrent. It indicates the sort of atmosphere that Burmas military regime seeks to create in the lead-up to the referendum on its as yet undistributed constitution in May. The message that these assaults send is that if you are not already inside — one of those rights defenders or social activists detained since last Septembers nationwide uprising — then you are not safe. The psychological effects are also clearly intended to go beyond the specific targets and generate a wider psychosis of fear among the general public as the polls approach.
The military regime will be keen to keep the armed forces in the barracks and use plain clothes police and local officials, members of its mass organisation, the Union Solidarity and Development Association, and growing numbers of thugs, through the fascistic Swan-arshin gangs to do its dirty work throughout this coming period. Its attempts to manage the protests of last August and September also were marked in the early stages by the use of these groups and others, including the fire brigade and Myanmar Red Cross; however, once the scale of the rallies reached a certain level it proved impossible for the regime to do anything other than employ the army. This time around, the generals will be aiming to prevent any public denouncements of their rule from reaching that point, and these assaults suggest the early efforts of township councils, who are held responsible if things go wrong in their area, to make sure that local troublemakers are kept under control.
It need not be said that the attacks on U Myint Aye, U Myint Hlaing and U Tin Yu, which follow many similar such incidents during last year, are cowardly and contemptible. Although there can be no expectations of redress from the government of Burma, the Asian Human Rights Commission is drawing special attention to these assaults both for the purpose of igniting international outcry against such actsand more are sure to follow in the coming weeks — and for the purpose of spotlighting the sort of conditions under which the people of Burma will be called to vote on a new constitution next month. In a country of political psychosis and legal dementia what sort of ballot can possibly be held? And as the country supposedly moves closer to semi-civilian rule, if organised thuggery and violence in the dark are used to fill the gaps left by overt military control then in what way can it be said that the people of Burma can possibly be any better off?
