Burma Issues
Presuming an historic role for itself as sole defender of national integrity, the army in Burma (Myanmar) has assumed the mantle of state by consistently perpetrating violence against its own people through a pervasive authoritarian culture imposing military values, discipline and punishment on the entire civilian population. Systemic abuse, torture and inhuman treatment have become mundane; overt and subvert violence is justified in the name of national prestige and unity. The army attacks the population on all fronts: legal, social, economic, cultural and political.
In some Asian states, overcoming widespread use of torture and inhuman treatment is now a matter of building the will to enforce existing statutes for protection of people’s rights, or the will to introduce legal mechanisms through political process; in Burma “rule of law” exists, at best, only to the extent it is dictated. The government has not ratified any international covenants that would offer protection against torture and inhuman treatment, nor has it domestic laws to do likewise: the absence of a constitution and civil codes outlining the rights of citizens guarantee nothing but that individual rights are subsumed by those of the State, and are confused with those of the State – such as through media exhortations that the “people’s desire” is to “crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy”.
While reports from Burma indicate massive human rights abuse, the government policy of blanket denial makes the depth and breadth of violations difficult to gauge. Whereas in many countries NGOs and other agencies are challenging authoritarianism and human rights violations from within their societies, prohibitions on independent civic organisations in Burma mean that the government is able to pursue its objectives entirely without checks and balances. Nonetheless, ample evidence of widespread torture and inhuman treatment exists particularly in:
1. Military intelligence detention centres and prisons, where physical and psychological abuse and torture are routine during both initial interrogation and throughout periods of confinement.
2. Areas of the country subject to counter-insurgency operations, where civilians are systematically tortured and abused by troops when detained, when conscripted into forced relocation and labour programmes, and when entire populations are perceived as obstacles to military objectives.
The apparent lack of international concern for this grinding tragedy may be due in part to the dim prospects for immediate change; the army’s control is both formidable and uncompromising. While it has permitted the International Committee of the Red Cross to resume a limited role in monitoring of prisons, those parts of the country where human life is most readily debased are entirely outside the scope of efforts for monitoring from inside. A recent initiative by the Australian Government to encourage establishment of a national human rights commission has been condemned by outside agencies as nothing more than a public relations exercise for the image-conscious military.
Cessation of torture and inhuman treatment necessitates prior recognition of basic freedoms: when fundamental rights — to life, to food, to work, to freedom of association – are diminished before the State then attempts at reform are crippled. A shift in governance may be an integral step towards change in Burma’s culture of chronic abuse, but not an end in itself. Only when violence is no longer accepted as the inherent sanction of authority will torture and inhuman treatment finally subside.
