In recent weeks the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received many detailed and worrying reports about the in Burma. Gangs of thugs, apparently most under the direction of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a mass-organising body, have been used to attack human rights defenders going about their business and persons holding prayer vigils for the release of political prisoners. In some cases police officers and other state security personnel are also known to have been among those carrying out or organising the attacks. After a disturbance is created, the police and local authorities step in and accuse the victims of being responsible for stirring up trouble. The courts may then be used to add insult to injury through the laying of charges against the targets of the violence.
The case of the Human Rights Defenders and Promoters group in Henzada, west of Rangoon, is indicative. The AHRC has already issued a number of appeals following the assault on members of the group in April, two of whom were hospitalised with serious injuries. Subsequently, six of the human rights defenders were themselves charged with offences related to a series of incidents that the authorities claim provoked the violence. The six have been kept in detention. Their relatives are suffering hardship due to their absences, and fear that worse is yet to come: they are farming families and now is the time for planting, as the monsoon sweeps into Burma from the Bay of Bengal. Attempts by their lawyers to have them released on bail have been unsuccessful. By contrast, six persons accused of assaulting them have all been granted bail. Another six whom they accused of being behind the violence, including local USDA officials, police and the village council chairman, have all escaped investigation. The court did not even call those officials for inquiries about the complaint that was made against them.
That it is easy for authorities in Burma to organise a gang to harass, assault and abduct anyone of their choosing speaks to the complicity of the state in systematic abuse there. And just how easy is it? According to a participant in the illegal arrest of rights defenders gathering at a pagoda in Rangoon’s northern suburbs during May, thugs can be hired for the cost of a cup of tea. In an interview with Democratic Voice of Burma shortwave radio, he said that his gang was not even paid for the job but just taken to a teashop for a snack afterwards. Among those they illegally detained was John Humphrey Freedom Award laureate Ma Su Su Nwe, who was released in June, in poor health but good spirits; others arrested with her remain in illegal detention. Students in Rangoon have lodged a complaint that one of their peers who was among the campaigners has disappeared. And when devotees at another pagoda were pelted with slingshots and went to complain to the police, they were reportedly warned that next time they might get killed.
The threat of death is not idle. It is just over four years since the infamous Depayin Massacre, when a convoy carrying democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters was set upon by a murderous crowd armed with makeshift weapons, estimated to have numbered in thousands. To this day it is not known how many died, but some who fled to Thailand testified to having seen their comrades being beaten and stabbed unceasingly. Since that time, the government and its agents responsible for the killings and injuries have continued to organise, train and prepare for more to come. With the campaigns for peaceful political and social change becoming increasingly visible and attracting more and more supporters in recent months, it seems that for the army that time is now.
Although the military regime in Burma promotes itself as a defender of law and order, its agencies and agents are in fact the greatest threats to these principles, not to mention the rule of law and human rights. As it again prepares its thugs to do battle with its own people, in the coming days and weeks further arrests and violence can be expected, and the security of all people in Burma thereby further threatened.
The Asian Human Rights Commission expresses strong support for all human rights defenders in Burma, be they farmers or lawyers, villagers or townspeople, struggling at this very difficult time to pull their country forward from the morass in which it has been stuck for far too long. It calls upon the international community to acknowledge this struggle and pay heed to its features and implications through detailed study of specific cases and urgent interventions, rather than merely making superficial remarks that contribute little towards the prospects of genuine change there.
Finally, the AHRC makes a special call to the judges of Burma: although you are working in a deficient and corrupted institution that is entirely under the control of other parts of government, still you have may choose to uphold your own integrity through proper application of the law. This would in itself go a long way towards an improvement in the prospects for human rights in Burma. There are means available under domestic laws to hear and consider cases against state officers accused of wrongdoing; use them. Similarly, there are well-articulated and reasoned legal defences being made by the human rights defenders being brought before you; hear them. Give some cause for hope that all is not lost, that there remains within Burma’s judiciary some element of legal thinking, not merely the crass expression of military power.
