The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is writing to you today further to your press release of 25 April 2007, issued together with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, concerning the attack on a group of Burmese human rights defenders in Hinthada (Henzada) of April 18.
We thank you for your interest and concern in this case, which the AHRC has been following closely, in which one person suffered serious head injuries. However, the AHRC is concerned that a much is needed to draw attention to a pattern of both extra-legal and legal attacks on human rights defenders in Myanmar during recent times.
The Henzada case speaks to this pattern. Whereas in your press release you called for the government and relevant authorities “to take all the necessary steps to protect human rights defenders” and also “to conduct an independent and thorough investigation into this event” in fact what has happened instead is that the victim of the attack, Ko Myint Naing, and another five persons, all local farmers, were themselves charged and on July 24 sentenced to eight and four years in prison respectively for allegedly upsetting public tranquillity and thereby provoking the assault. As to who was really responsible, according to the victims, it was organised by the head of the local chapter of the government-backed Union Solidarity and Development Association, together with members of the local council and police. However, the complaint by Myint Naing in the township court has proceeded only on a single charge against three minor officials and three civilians; not one of the senior council officials or police has even been called to appear in the court as a witness.
Meanwhile, a colleague of the Henzada group in the lower Burma town of Pyay was on July 10 himself accused of conducting illegal tuition after holding a discussion on human rights at his house, from which around a hundred copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were reportedly removed. On July 30 he too was convicted and sentenced to three years in jail. His case is reminiscent of the arrest and jailing of U Aung Pe, who on 25 August 2005 was sentenced to three years on the same charge, due to his hanging a t-shirt bearing an image of Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on his classroom wall.
It should be noted that the activities of the human rights defenders in Henzada and Pyay could hardly be considered provocative or political. They had been distributing and discussing the contents of the UDHR, which Myanmar joined at its inception (then as Burma), as well as the international Convention on the Rights of the Child and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which it joined in turn in 1991 and 1997. They had been examining the practical implications of these instruments for their own country, and had been discussing and taking up some local cases with the assistance of a few lawyers. Indeed, the attack in Henzada seems to have been provoked in part over allegations of theft of a duck: a far cry from anything that might seriously threaten public tranquillity.
These incidents, it must be added, come at a time of growing numbers of attacks and threats against persons throughout the country, including those who have engaged in a prayer campaign for the release of political prisoners, as well as persons caught up in ordinary criminal cases. The AHRC has obtained documents that reveal the hand of the township councils in organising and deploying gangs of thugs as an alternative to the conventional security forces, and is concerned that this presages special risks to human rights defenders in the near future, including the possibility of further large-scale attacks, like that at Depayin in 2003.
We thus call upon you to show some leadership at this very important and dangerous time for human rights defenders in Myanmar and seek concerted international action to see that those that have been imprisoned are released, and that no further attacks occur.
However, in order to do this effectively it is also necessary for you to understand fully the real issues. Generic demands, such as that there be “independent and thorough” investigations, mean nothing in Myanmar. Who or what will conduct an independent and thorough investigation there? Neither the means nor relevant authorities exist for such investigations to take place. Nor is there any point in pretending that they do.
It is therefore essential that the heavy institutional and systemic obstacles to the defence of human rights in Myanmar–in the criminal justice system especially–obtain your serious attention through detailed research into individual cases and related problems. There are many persons, both in Myanmar and abroad, who will be more than willing to assist you in this respect, including our organisation and its associates, if you will be prepared to go beyond the superficial characteristics of abuse to more substantive work.
The only interventions that are of any good effect are informed interventions, and this is especially the case for work in the defence of human rights in Myanmar. Hence, we kindly urge you to obtain and study all of the available information on the structural problems there in order to be able to contribute to a more meaningful discussion about what needs to be done and how it might be done.
Yours sincerely
Basil Fernando
Executive Director
Asian Human Rights Commission, Hong Kong
Cc: Professor Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar
