by Kwat Myushayi on Monday, October 10, 2011 at 8:21pm
Executive Summary
“We fled our village to a hiding site before the fighting began. I went back to my home to feed the animals and get some food for my family. The soldiers were in my house and when I tried to enter they yelled at me to get out. I told them ‘this is my house’ but one soldier pointed a gun at me and asked me ‘do you want to die?’ I was frightened and ran away. All our crops and livestock have already been taken by the soldiers. We are worried that when we are able to go back to our village there will be nothing left. How will we survive?”
- Roi Nan, 56 year old grandmother from Mansi township
At the same time as Thein Sein’s government is engaging in public relations maneuvers designed to make it appear that reform is taking place, its army is perpetrating atrocities against the Kachin people on a widespread and systematic basis. Seven months after the November 2010 elections and four months after the convening of parliament which, in the words of the ruling generals, “completed the country’s transition to a multiparty democracy,” the regime launched a new war in Kachin State and Northern Shan State. After a seventeen year ceasefire, the renewed conflict has brought rampant human rights abuses by the Burma Army including, rape, torture, the use of human minesweepers and the forced displacement of entire villages.
Human rights abuses in Burma are prevalent because of the culture of impunity put in place at the highest levels of government. The Burmese regime continuously fails to investigate human rights abuses committed by its military and instead categorically denies the possibility that abuses are taking place. Attempts to seek justice for the crimes committed against the Kachin people have resulted in responses ranging from “we do not take responsibility for any landmine injuries” to “the higher authorities will not listen to your complaint”.
These human rights violations have led villagers to flee approaching troops, creating tens of thousands of internally displaced persons. The Burmese regime has refused to allow aid groups working inside the country to provide relief to the majority of these displaced people and international groups have failed to provide sufficient cross-border aid, creating a growing humanitarian crisis.
While the international community “waits and sees” whether the Burmese regime will implement genuine democratic reforms, the Kachin people are suffering. The time for waiting and seeing is over: now is the time for the world to act. We call on the international community to:
- Demand that the Burmese regime put an end to the atrocities against the Kachin people.
- Provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees fleeing the conflict to avert a humanitarian catastrophe.
- Support the establishment by the United Nations of a Commission of Inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.
Introduction
The Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) has been engaged in documenting human rights abuses against the Kachin people in Kachin State and Northern Shan State since 2003. Rather than seeing an improvement in the human rights situation since the November 2010 election as many had hoped, human rights violations against Kachin people in Burma have actually increased. Specifically, there has been a surge in abuses such as rape, killing, forced displacement, forced labor and torture since the Burma Army launched its new war against the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) on 9 June 2011. These abuses have led many families to leave their homes, creating at least 25,000 internally displaced persons who are sheltering in makeshift refugee camps, in larger towns, or hiding in the jungle.
As the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Professor Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, wrote in 2006: “[A]mong the most tragic features of the military campaign in ethnic areas is the disproportionate effect on civilian populations… the killing, terrorizing or displacement of civilians is often part of a deliberate strategy.”
It is very clear that Thein Sein’s government is again relying on this strategy in its military campaign against the KIA, with the Burma Army automatically assuming that all Kachin people are supporters of the KIA and thus legitimate targets. Over the course of the past four months army troops and government officials have been perpetrating war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Kachin people with complete impunity. This report examines the crimes perpetrated against Kachin civilians between June and September 2011 and provides policy recommendations aimed at improving the human rights situation in Kachin State and Northern Shan State.
Background
The Kachin people, comprising a number of different ethnic sub-groups, live mainly in north-eastern Burma as well as parts of China and India. The Kachin in Burma are estimated to number between 1 to 1.5 million and are traditionally hill dwellers subsisting on rotational cultivation of hill rice. During British rule of Burma (from 1886-1948), most Kachin territory was specially administered as a frontier region. Christianity spread among the Kachin people at this time. When Burma gained independence in 1948, the northern mountainous extremity of Burma was designated as Kachin State. There is also a sizeable population of Kachin people in northern Shan State.
After independence many Kachin grew increasingly dissatisfied with the discriminatory policies of the central Burmese government. This led to the launch in 1961 of a Kachin armed resistance movement, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), and its armed wing, the KIA, which grew into one of the largest ethnic resistance forces in the country. Several decades of armed conflict ensued, causing displacement of many of the highland Kachin population down to the lowland areas of Kachin State. Today, over 80% of the state’s population lives in the plains.
In 1994 the KIO signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese military regime and was granted the right to maintain its own administrative and military infrastructure in certain areas of Kachin and Shan states. The ceasefire agreement unfortunately did not lead to a resolution of the Kachin people’s political grievances that had led to the conflict. Kachin State, like the rest of Burma, remained under a military dictatorship, its people denied the democratic right to choose their government. The regime took advantage of the ceasefire agreement to increase its presence in Kachin State.
In 2009 the Burmese regime issued a demand that all ethnic ceasefire groups, including the KIA, transform themselves into Border Guard Forces under the control of the Burma Army. On 9 June 2011, spurred on by the KIA’s refusal to accept the regime’s demand that they transform into a Border Guard Force, as well as the KIA’s strategic control of areas with lucrative Chinese hydropower projects, the Burma Army launched a full-scale attack on the KIA, breaking the decades long ceasefire. The resulting war between the KIA and the Burma Army has continued for more than four months and shows no sign of ending in the near future. The conflict has led to an increase in human rights abuses against the Kachin people and has resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of civilians, most of whom are now living in makeshift refugee camps along the China border. In contempt of humanitarian principles, the regime has blocked aid to these IDPs, forbidding NGOs and international organizations to provide humanitarian assistance to these vulnerable people.
Methodology
This report is based on the testimony of local people who experienced or observed human rights abuses first hand and who shared their stories with KWAT’s network of documenters. The majority of the data and case studies used in this report were gathered by these documenters through interviews in the following districts and townships: Myitkyina, Waimaw, Bhamo, Laiza, Hpakant, and Kamai in Kachin State and Muse, Nam Hkam, Kuthkai, and Manje in Northern Shan State. All incidents described in the report occurred from June-September 2011.
The researchers who collected the data were trained by KWAT in human rights principles and standards for documentation and reporting. These documenters spent significant time interacting with local communities to gain the trust of villagers in order to make the victims of, and witnesses to, human rights abuses feel secure enough to share their experiences. Names have been changed to protect the identities of the men, women and children involved.
Because the situation in Kachin State and Northern Shan State is insecure and many areas are not accessible due to the fighting, documenters were likely only able to capture a fraction of the abuses taking place. It is probable that additional human rights violations are occurring in places that documenters were unable to reach or in situations where victims did not feel comfortable telling their stories publically. Therefore, a lack of information on a particular type of human rights violation should not be seen as evidence that such violations are not occurring. Similarly, a lack of cases from a particular area of Kachin State or Northern Shan State does not indicate that such areas are not experiencing human rights abuses.
Human Rights Abuses
For decades the Burmese regime and its armed forces have been committing human rights abuses against civilians throughout the country. These abuses have been particularly egregious in areas where the Burma army was engaged in armed conflict with ethnic resistance forces. Since June 2011, when the regime began its offensive against the KIA, the Kachin people have suffered greatly at the hands of the Burma army. As the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, stated after a visit to Burma this past August: “of concern are the ongoing tensions in ethnic border areas and armed conflict with some armed ethnic groups, which continue to engender serious human rights violations, including attacks against civilian populations, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, arbitrary arrest and detention, internal displacement, land confiscations, the recruitment of child soldiers, as well as forced labour and portering.” These atrocities are being perpetrated against Kachin communities on a regular basis throughout the conflict area in Kachin State and Northern Shan State and have led tens of thousands of people to flee their villages, creating a humanitarian crisis.
Sexual Violence
Rape and other forms of sexual violence have long been a part of the Burma Army’s military campaigns against ethnic resistance groups. In November of 2008 the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women expressed “deep concern at the high prevalence of sexual and other forms of violence, including rape, perpetrated by members of the armed forces against rural ethnic women.” The current conflict in Kachin State and Northern Shan State has seen a continuation of this pattern with KWAT’s documenters having collected evidence of eighteen separate incidents in 11 different townships in which thirty four women and girls were raped by Burma Army soldiers or others associated with the Burma regime. Those raped range in age from only nine years old to fifty years old and many of the victims were raped repeatedly by multiple men. At least fifteen of the victims were subsequently killed.
In several of the cases community members have reported that family members were forced to watch the rape, and in some cases subsequent murder, of their loved one. In one incident Burma Army soldiers intercepted a family from Loi Je Township fleeing to the China border and raped and killed fourteen year old Kaw Kaw in front of her parents.
The widespread nature of the rape cases, committed by more than thirteen different battalions, along with the flagrant brutality of these incidents of sexual violence, in full view of other troops, demonstrates that the Burma Army views rape as a legitimate tactic in its military campaign. In fact, Kai Nu, from a small village near Loi Je Township, stated that “In Mansi there are many Burmese soldiers; they say that they have been ordered to rape women. When the soldiers meet women they just rape them. That is what we are most afraid of.”
On the evening of 9 August soldiers from Burma Army Battalion 37 entered the home of a family living on the edge of Bum Tawng village near where their battalion was stationed. The troops gang raped and then killed Ma Kaw, a 39 year old woman from the Kachin ethnic group along with Ma Lu, her 17 year old daughter. In the same incident the soldiers also tortured and then shot and killed Ma Lu’s father.
Killing
Since the military began its offensive against the KIA in June 2011 the army has failed to respect the principle of distinction, which requires that armed forces direct attacks only against combatants, and instead has been directly attacking the Kachin people resulting in the killing of more than fifty civilians. KWAT has received numerous reports of Burma Army soldiers shooting at unarmed civilians, including children and the elderly. The Burma Army has also used heavy artillery indiscriminately, firing on homes and other non-military targets.
Villagers who flee approaching troops are often subjected to a hail of indiscriminate gunfire. In one case Burmese soldiers captured a suspected KIA soldier and brought him handcuffed into Kahtan Yang village. The villagers saw the soldiers coming and tried to run away but the soldiers opened fire on the fleeing civilians, killing one fifteen year old boy. In a separate incident, on 20 September at approximately 8 pm Burma Army soldiers from battalion 74, stationed near the KIO-controlled U Village in Manje Township, randomly fired into the town with heavy ammunition. One mortar shell fell on the home of a school teacher while she was tutoring several elementary school students. One of the students, a six year old girl, was killed in the attack and the teacher and the other three students were injured, requiring hospitalization.
Torture
In its fight against the KIA the Burma Army has been ruthless in attempting to root out KIA spies and sympathizers. This has resulted in the arbitrary detention and torture of innocent men and women who are suspected of providing information or support to the KIA. In many cases civilians found by the Burma Army outside of their village, for any reason, are automatically assumed to be part of the KIA and subjected to torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance or extra-judicial killing. This has hindered the ability of farmers to access their fields and resulted in de facto restrictions on movement for the Kachin people. Torture, and the threat of torture, has also been used to silence villagers to prevent details about rapes, murders or other human rights abuses from reaching the media and the international community.
In one incident of torture followed by murder, Burma Army soldiers accused four men from Manje in Northern Shan Sate of being KIA spies. The soldiers abducted the men, threw them into an empty rice sack, and beat, kicked and stabbed the men. When the men screamed from the torture, the soldiers threw them into the N’mau River. The men are believed to have drowned.
Forced Labor: Villagers used as human minesweepers
Forced labor is rampant in Burma with the regime and its armed forces frequently requiring civilians to provide labor for a variety of government projects. As the International Labour Organization noted in 1998, forced labor is demanded
On 16 September at 5:00 pm, 12 villagers from Nam Hpak Hka village were arbitrarily arrested and tortured by soldiers from the Burma Army, Light Infantry Battalion 387. These villagers had fled Nam Hpak Hka due to the fighting between the army and the KIA and were working on banana and fish farms near Nmawk Township. The Burma Army soldiers arrested them, stripped them naked, and tied them up saying “you are KIA spies, you come working here to spy and give information to KIA”. The villagers defended themselves stating that “we are not spies, we are just villagers” but rather than releasing them the soldiers proceeded to beat the villagers with wooden bars. The villagers reported that they were continuously beaten by the soldiers and salt and chilies were rubbed into their wounds. They were released after two days, by which time many were seriously injured and required hospitalization.
with “utter disregard by the authorities for the safety and health as well as the basic needs of the people performing forced or compulsory labour.” One of the most common forms of forced labor currently taking place in Kachin State and Northern Shan State is forced portering in which villagers are required to carry heavy loads of supplies for army units. Civilians are often forced to provide portering services under threat of violence, sometimes for days at a time. Additionally, soldiers often force them to walk at the front of moving army units in order to set off any landmines that may have been laid down in the area. This is merely the continuing of a practice that Mr. Quintana decried more than two years ago when he wrote “[p]articularly worrying is the reported practice of human minesweepers, whereby civilians are forced by the military to clear brush in suspected mined areas or to serve as porters for the military in areas where there is a mine hazard.”
In one documented incident in Hang Htak village, the Burma Army battalion 105 entered the village and began rounding men up to serve as porters for the army unit. Ma Naw, the village headman saw the men being collected and begged the soldiers to let the men go saying “if you need to take someone, take me. These men are innocent people.” The soldiers refused Ma Naw’s pleas for mercy and took eight of the village’s men away. The soldiers also threatened the wives and families of the men they grabbed saying “you must tell us if you hear information about KIA activities. If you don’t we will kill your husbands.” Ma Tu, one of those forced to serve as a porter reported that he was required to walk all day carrying ammunition for the troops and was also made to search for and clear landmines. In describing his time as a forced porter Ma Tu said “The porters felt hungry because they had to walk the whole day. The soldiers did not feed the porters and ate all the food themselves. On the way the porters had to keep walking without any food. Moreover they had to walk in the rain all day and did not have plastic coverings to keep the rain off them. Some became ill because of this.”
Other Human Rights Abuses
In 2010 the Burmese regime was reported to be the only country in the world still laying antipersonnel landmines. The regime has continued to lay such mines in Kachin state and Northern Shan State with disastrous consequences for the Kachin people. In one case landmines were laid around cultivated fields in Danai Village without any signs or warning to the farmers. Unsurprisingly, a farmer working his land stepped onto a mine buried next to his field, setting off an explosion that resulted in the loss of his leg. After his injury, troops stationed nearby refused to take responsibility and instead instructed the farmers to take their families and leave the village if they wanted to avoid further maimings.
Forced relocation and destruction of villages is another one of the Burma Army’s most common tactics and, over the course of the past several decades, has created hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons and refugees. The conflict in Kachin areas has seen a continuation of this practice and, in addition to those families fleeing their villages in fear, there are reports of Burma Army soldiers ordering villagers to leave their communities. In one case, in the village of Na Lung, Burma Army soldiers stationed nearby informed the community that more troops were on the way from Naypyidaw and the villagers needed to find a new place to live. In other cases, such as in Sang Gang village, Burma Army troops have occupied homes from which villagers voluntarily fled, and then forbade the families from returning.
As part of the campaign against the KIA the Burma Army has also engaged in the use of Kachin women and children as human shields. Reports from Manje village indicate that between the 20th and 27th of September Burma Army troops deliberately stationed heavy artillery in a church compound, using the artillery to shell KIA positions in an effort to prevent the KIA from returning fire.
Analysis of Human Rights Violations
War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity
The human rights violations documented and described in this report are not isolated incidents but are instead part of a deliberate policy by the Burmese regime. As many impartial observers have noted, over the course of past several decades the regime has systematically engaged in repeated human rights abuses against ethnic communities wherever the army is engaged in conflict with ethnic resistance groups. The abuses currently being perpetrated against the Kachin people are a continuation of this pattern and likely amount to grave violations of international law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Burma is a party to three of the Geneva conventions, all of which contain Common Article 3 which sets forth the basic obligations of parties to an internal conflict of the type currently taking place in Kachin State and Northern Shan State. Common Article 3 provides, in part, that “[p]ersons taking no active part in the hostilities… shall in all circumstances be treated humanely… the following acts are and shall remain prohibited… violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture … outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment”. As described above, there is ample evidence that the Burma army is perpetrating violence against civilians taking no active part in the conflict including murder, torture, and cruel and degrading treatment such as rape.
Crimes against humanity are generally defined as any of a number of types of acts that are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack”. The acts classified as potential crimes against humanity that are regularly perpetrated against civilians in Kachin State and Northern Shan State include murder, enslavement, forcible transfer of populations, torture and rape. Given the large number of incidents documented in the Kachin areas, as well as similar reports provided by documentation groups in other ethnic areas, it is clear that these attacks are widespread. These attacks are also clearly not simply the actions of a few rogue soldiers but rather are part of government and army policies of systematically targeting civilians.
Impunity
The Human Rights Council in April of this year expressed its “serious concern that previous calls to end impunity have not been heeded”. Six months later nothing has changed and the regime has failed to investigate or even acknowledge the human rights abuses being perpetrated against the Kachin people. Military troops and government officials enjoy complete freedom to perpetrate all manner of abuses against the Kachin people, and other ethnic communities, without repercussions. The new constitution grants members of the regime and its armed forces immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while carrying out their duties. The rule of law is completely absent in Burma and, as Mr. Quintana noted at the end of his August visit, an impartial and independent judiciary is nonexistent. This not only denies victims the opportunity for justice, but also perpetuates a culture of impunity in which human rights violations and crimes continue unabated.
On 15 June, Burma Army troops entered the village of Hang Htak and, when villagers tried to flee, shot Ma Lu, an unarmed 52 year old woman and Ma Gam, her four year old grandson in the head, killing both instantly. Ma Gam’s mother saw her son bleeding and ran to him, cradling him in her arms and saying “dear son, get up, get up.” The soldiers shouted at her to put him down and told her “this happened to you because of the KIA.” The village headman tried to call the local authorities to report the murders, but the phone had been cut off. When the headman reached the local authorities the next day he was told “the higher authority would not listen to your complaint” and no investigation of the perpetrators took place. Instead, the victims’ family became the subject of scrutiny with local authorities sending detectives to investigate their activities.
The Responsibility to Protect
In 2005 heads of state and government, including representatives of the Burmese regime, meeting at the world summit held on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, agreed to no longer tolerate the commission of mass atrocities against innocent civilians. Specifically, governments accepted a responsibility to protect populations from war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing. In committing to the responsibility to protect the Burmese regime accepted the primary responsibility to prevent the occurrence of these crimes against its population. This responsibility to protect extends to all of the people of Burma, regardless of their ethnicity. Instead of living up to this obligation and acting to protect Kachin communities the Burmese military is perpetrating grave human rights abuses against Kachin men, women and children.
The responsibility to protect also requires that, where a government proves unwilling to protect its population from mass atrocities, UN member states take timely and decisive action to prevent and halt atrocities against civilians. Burma’s ambassador to the UN spoke in favor of this responsibility at the UN General Assembly in 2009 saying that “states may invoke R2P rationale for intervention of international community when prevention fails.” The government of Burma has clearly failed to prevent war crimes and crimes against humanity and has instead deliberately perpetrated these atrocities against its own people. It is thus time for the international community to intervene to protect the Kachin people.
Recommendations
Government of Burma
- To immediately put an end to the human rights abuses being perpetrated against Kachin civilians.
- To cease military offensives against the Kachin people and other ethnic nationalities and to withdraw troops from the conflict areas.
- To enter into dialogue with the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC), an alliance of the ethnic resistance groups, towards the creation of a nationwide ceasefire agreement and a process of genuine political reform.
- To admit and provide humanitarian aid and shelter to refugees fleeing violence in Kachin State and elsewhere in Burma and avoid sending refugees back into areas where they may be at risk of human rights abuses.
- To play a role in mediating the conflict between Thein Sein’s government and the KIO.
- To condemn the Burmese regime’s atrocities against the Kachin people as well as against other ethnic nationalities and to call on the regime to put an end to such human rights violations.
- To deny Burma the chairmanship of ASEAN unless it implements a nationwide ceasefire agreement and puts an end to human rights abuses against ethnic nationalities.
- To condemn the Burmese regime’s atrocities against the Kachin people as well as against other ethnic nationalities and to call on the regime to put an end to such human rights violations.
- To provide urgently needed humanitarian assistance to internally displaced persons and refugees fleeing the conflict.
- To impose an international arms embargo to avoid supplying the Burmese regime with weaponry that can be used against civilians.
- To establish a United Nations led Commission of Inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity and war crimes taking place in Kachin State and throughout Burma and to put an end to impunity.
About KWAT
Background
Owing to the deteriorating political, economic and social situation in Kachin State, many Kachin people, mainly young men and women, have left their homeland and scattered to foreign countries. The number of Kachin people coming to Thailand for various purposes has increased year by year. Problems in the Kachin community in Thailand have also increased accordingly. Recognizing the urgent need for women to organize themselves to solve their own problems, the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT) was formed in Chiang Mai on the 9th September 1999.
Vision
As a non profit organization working on behalf of Kachin women, we have a vision of a Kachin State where all forms of discrimination are eliminated; where all women are empowered to participate in decision making at a local, national and international level; and where all Kachin children have the opportunity to fulfill their potential.
Mission
The empowerment and advancement of Kachin women in order to improve the lives of women and children in Kachin society
Strategic aims
- To promote women's rights, children's rights and gender equality
- To promote women's participation in politics and in peace & reconciliation processes
- To oppose all forms of violence against women including human trafficking
- To provide health education & health services
- To promote women's awareness of how to manage and protect the environment
Additional Kachin Civil Society Groups Endorsing the Report:
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