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Justice Delayed, Justice Denied - Seeking Truth about Sexual Violence and War Crime Case in Burma
Legal Aid Network (LAN) and Kachin Women’s Association in Thailand (KWAT)
pdf (1,55MB-en; 1.5MB-bu)
Alternate URLs:
http://www.kachinwomen.com/
http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs21/KWAT-2016-01-Justice_Delayed_Justice_Denied-bu-red.pdf
Date of entry/update:
19 January 2016
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied တရားမႈ ရွာဖို႔ ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးျခင္းမွာ
Date of publication:
January 2016
Description/subject:
ၿခဳံငုံတင္ျပခ်က္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ ၂၀၁၀ ခုႏွစ္ေနာက္ပုိင္းမွစတင္၍ ျဖစ္ေပၚလွ်က္ရွိေသာ ဒီမုိကေရစီအသြင္ကူး ေျပာင္းမႈဟူ သည့္ေအာက္၌ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအာဏာ၏ အခန္းက႑အားပို၍ အေလးထားလာၾကသည့္ သေဘာရွိသည္။ ဤတြင္ ရႈပ္ေထြးမႈမ်ား ရွိလာသည္။ ဒီမိုကေရစီေရး အင္အားစုမ်ား၊ အခ်ိဳ႕ေသာ တိုင္းရင္းသား လက္နက္ကုိင္ အဖြဲ႔အစည္း မ်ားႏွင့္ (အထူးသျဖင့္ အစုိးရႏွင့္လက္ဝါးရုိက္၍ ဖြဲ႔စည္းထားသည့္) အန္ဂ်ီအုိ အဖြဲ႔အစည္းမ်ားသည္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ ႏုိင္ငံအေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားသည္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအာဏာ ရရွိထားသူမ်ားႏွင့္ ပူးေပါင္း လက္တြဲေရး၊ အနည္းဆုံးအားျဖင့္ ဖက္လွဲတကင္း ဆက္ဆံေပါင္းသင္းေရး မူဝါဒကုိ က်င့္သုံးလာၾကသည္။ အဆုိပါ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအာဏာသည္ ေဒသခံတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားအပါအဝင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳး ေပါင္းစုံ၏ စစ္မွန္ေသာ သေဘာဆႏၵကုိ အေျချပဳ၍ ေပၚေပါက္လာျခင္းဟုတ္မဟုတ္ စစ္ေၾကာျခင္း မျပဳၾကေတာ့။ သုိ႔ျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအာဏာ ကို ဆည္းကပ္ကိုးကြယ္မႈျပဳ၊ ပုိ၍ပုိ၍ အေလးထားလာျခင္းမွာ ရႈတ္ေထြးမႈမ်ား ပုိမုိေပၚေပါက္လာသည့္ အေၾကာင္းခံ ျဖစ္လာသည္။ ယင္းမွ မေကာင္းသည့္ အက်ဳိးသက္ေရာက္မႈအေနျဖင့္ လူ႔ဂုဏ္သိကၡာ၊ လူ႔တန္ဖိုး၊ အထူးသျဖင့္ လူ႔အခြင့္ အေရးဟူေသာ ေဝါဟာရမ်ားမွာ အသံသာရွိၿပီး အဆန္မရွိသည့္ သႀကၤန္အေျမာက္သဖြယ္ ျဖစ္လာသည္။ တာဝန္ခံမႈ ဟူသည္မွာ ၂၀၁၁ ခုႏွစ္၌ ျပည္ေထာင္စုႀကံ့ခို္င္ေရးႏွင့္ ဖြံ႔ၿဖိဳးေရးပါတီဥကၠဌ ဦးသိန္းစိန္ သမၼတအျဖစ္ စတင္တာဝန္ ထမ္းေဆာင္ခဲ့စဥ္က လွည့္ျဖားေျပာဆုိခ့ဲသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးေၾကြးေၾကာ္သံ သက္သက္ျဖင့္သာ တည္ရွိလာခဲ့သည္။ လက္ေတြ႔အားျဖင့္ မည္သည့္အစိုးရဌာနဆုိင္ရာ တခုတေလတြင္မွ် တာဝန္ခံမႈကုိ ႀကီးၾကပ္ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ ႏုိင္ခဲ့ျခင္း မရွိပါ။ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ၿပီးေနာက္ လြတ္ၿငိမ္းခြင့္ရေနေသာ အေျခအေနသည္ ဆံုးသြမ္းသံတရာအေနႏွင့္ ဆက္လက္ တည္ရွိေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။ မ်က္ေမွာက္အခ်ိန္တြင္ တရားမွ်တမႈ ရွာေဖြေရးဟူသည္မွာ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ား အဝန္း အဝို္င္းအတြင္းတြင္သာ ေရရြတ္ျမည္တမ္းရမည့္ အဆင့္ရွိသည္။ လူထုႀကီးတရပ္လံုးအၾကားတြင္ ေရပန္းမစားလွ ေတာ့ပါ။ ယင္းသုိ႔ေသာ ေနာက္ခံအေျခအေနမ်ားေအာက္တြင္ ၂၀၁၅ ခုႏွစ္ ဇန္နဝါရီလ ၁၉ ရက္ေန႔၌ ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္မွ စစ္သားမ်ားက က်ဴးလြန္သည္ဟု စြပ္စြဲခံရေသာ ႀကီးမားလွသည့္ျပစ္မႈႀကီး ျဖစ္ပြားခ့ဲျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ က်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူ မ်ားမွာ ငယ္ရြယ္ႏုပ်ိဳသည့္ ကခ်င္အမ်ိဳးသမီး လုပ္အားေပးဆရာမႏွစ္ဦး ျဖစ္သည္။ ျပစ္မႈျဖစ္ပြားသည့္ေန႔မွ စတင္ေရ တြက္လွ်င္ ၁၀ လ နည္းပါးမွ်ၾကာခ့ဲၿပီ ျဖစ္ေသာ္လည္း က်ဴးလြန္ခ့ဲသူမ်ားမွာ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။ တရားခံအ စစ္မ်ားအား ရဲမ်ားကထုတ္ေဖာ္ႏုိင္ ျခင္းမရွိ။ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားကုိ အဓိကထား၍ အမႈကုိကုိင္တြယ္ေဆာင္ရြက္ ရမည့္အစား ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္သူမ်ား အက်ိဳးျဖစ္ေစမည့္ တစ္ဖက္သတ္စုံစမ္း စစ္ေဆးမႈမ်ားကုိသာ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက ေဆာင္ရြက္လ်က္ရွိသည္။ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္သူကုိ အျပစ္ေပးေရးႏွင့္ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ား ကုစားခြင့္အပါအဝင္ တရားမွ်တမႈရေစေရးတုိ႔မွာ စိတ္ကူးယဥ္သဖြယ္ျဖစ္ေနဆဲပင္။ တရားမွ်တမႈရွာေဖြေရးမွာ သိသာစြာ ေႏွာင့္ေႏွးၾကန္႔ ၾကာေနျခင္းေၾကာင့္ တရားမွ်တမႈ ျငင္းပယ္ခံရသည့္ အေျခအေနမွာ မလြဲသာမေရွာင္သာ ေပၚေပါက္လ်က္ရွိသည္။ ယင္းမွာ အတိတ္နမိတ္မေကာင္းလွေသာ ၿငိမ္သက္မႈႀကီး ျဖစ္ေနျခင္းပင္။ သုိ႔ျဖစ္၍ မေဝးလွေသာ အနာဂတ္ ၌ ပုိ၍ႀကီးမားဆုိးဝါးေသာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈ ႀကီးမ်ား စဥ္တုိက္ဆက္တုိက္ ျဖစ္ပြားလာေတာ့မည့္ အ ေၾကာင္းခံ ျဖစ္လာလ်က္ရွိသည္။ အတိတ္ကာလက ျဖစ္ပြားခ့ဲေသာ လိင္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈမ်ားကုိ အဓိက ထားလ်က္ အလားတူ စစ္ရာဇဝတ္မႈမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္ကာ ဤေကာင္းခါး ျပစ္မႈႀကီးႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ တစ္စုံတစ္ခုေသာ အတုိင္းအတာအထိ အမွန္တရားကုိ ေဖာ္ထုတ္ႏုိင္ရန္ ဤအစီရင္ခံစာက ႀကိဳးစားထားပါသည္။ ဤမွ် ျပင္းထန္ဆုိးဝါး ေသာျပစ္မႈႀကီးမ်ား မျဖစ္ပြားေစရန္ ကာကြယ္မေပးႏုိင္ျခင္း၊ တုိင္းျပည္၏ ပ်က္ကြက္မႈေၾကာင့္ ျပစ္မႈႀကီးမ်ားကုိ မတားဆီးႏုိင္သည့္အျပင္ က်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားအား ထိုက္သင့္သည့္ ကုစားမႈႏွင့္ေလ်ာ္ေၾကး ေပးအပ္မႈ မျပဳျခင္း၊ တုိ္႔ႏွင့္စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ ႏုိင္ငံေတာ္တြင္ တာဝန္ရွိမရွိ ဤအစီရင္ခံစာတြင္ ဆန္းစစ္ထားသည္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္ အစုိးရအေနျဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံတကာဥပေဒႏွင့္ ျပည္တြင္းဥပေဒတုိ႔ေအာက္တြင္ မည္က့ဲသုိ႔ တာဝန္မ်ားရွိေၾကာင္းကုိလည္း ေထာက္ျပထား သည္။ မုဒိမ္းမႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားမွာ အမ်ားဆုံးအားျဖင့္ ျမန္မာအမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားမဟုတ္ၾကပါ။ ရွမ္း၊ ကခ်င္၊ ကရင္၊ ကရင္နီ၊ ပေလာင္ အစရွိသည့္ တုိင္းရင္းသူအမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားျဖစ္ၾက သည္။ သုိ႔ျဖစ္၍ ယင္းအမႈမ်ားအား တုိင္းရင္းသားသဘာဝ ရွိသည့္ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္မႈရႈေ ထာင့္မွ အမ်ိဳးအစား ခြဲႏုိင္သည္။ အတိတ္ကာလက မုဒိမ္းမႈုၾကီးမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့ေသာ္လည္း ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူအမ်ားစု ႀကီးမွာ အသက္ရွင္လ်က္ရွိ ေနဆဲျဖစ္သည္။ အခ်ိဳ႕ေသာ မုဒိမ္းမႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားမွာ သတ္ျဖတ္ခံ ရသည့္အဆင့္သုိ႔ ေရာက္သြားေသာ္လည္း ႏွိ ပ္စက္ညွဥ္းပန္းခံၾကရျခင္းေတာ့မရွိပါ။ သုိ႔ရာတြင္ ေကာင္းခါးရာဇဝတ္မႈ ႀကီးအေနျဖင့္ ဤပဏာမအစီရင္ခံစာတြင္ ဦးစားေပးေဖာ္ျပထားသည့္ မႈခင္းႀကီးမွာ လြန္စြာကြဲျပားျခား နားလ်က္ရွိေၾကာင္း ေတြ႕ရသည္။ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားမွာ မုဒိမ္းက်င့္ခံရရုံသာမက သတ္ျဖတ္ျခင္းလည္းခံ ၾကရသည္။ ပုိ၍ဆုိးသည္မွာ ရုိးရုိးမုဒိမ္းမႈမဟုတ္။ အုပ္စုဖြဲ႕၍ျပဳက်င့္ျခင္းခံရသည့္ မုဒိမ္းမႈျဖစ္သည္။ ထုိ႔အျပင္ ၎တုိ႔အား မသတ္ျဖတ္မွီတြင္ ႏွိပ္စက္ျခင္းလည္းခံခ့ဲၾကရသည္။ သာမန္မွ်မဟုတ္ လူမဆန္ရက္စက္ၾကမ္းၾကဳပ္စြာ နွိပ္စက္ ညွဥ္းပန္းခံခဲ့ၾကရျခင္းျဖစ္သည္။ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ားအား မုဒိမ္းမက်င့္မီ ႏွပ္စက္ညွဥ္းပမ္း မႈျပဳသလား၊ မုဒိမ္းက်င့္ၿပီးမွ ႏွိပ္စက္ ညွဥ္းပန္းမႈ ျပဳသလားဟူသည္ကုိ ယေန႔ အခ်ိန္ထိ မည္သူမွ်မသိရွိ ၾကေသးပါ။ သုိ႔ျဖစ္၍ လြန္ခ့ဲသည့္ ဆယ္စုႏွစ္တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕အတြင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတဝွမ္းလုံးတြင္ တုိင္းရင္းသားလူမ်ိဳး အသီးသီး အေနျဖင့္ ခံစားခ့ဲၾကရသည့္ တဦးခ်င္းလူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္ခံခဲ့ရမႈႀကီးမ်ားအနက္ ေကာင္းခါးရာဝတ္မႈႀကီးသည္ အႀကီးမားအျပင္းထန္ဆုံး ျဖစ္သည္။ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံသည္ အမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားအားခြဲ ျခားမႈတုိက္ဖ်က္ေရးဆုိင္ရာ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ သေဘာတူ စာခ်ဳပ္အား လက္မွက္ေရးထုိး အတည္ျပဳထားသည့္ ႏုိင္ငံျဖစ္သည္။ သုိ႔ရာတြင္ ေကာင္းခါးရာဇဝတ္မႈႀကီးႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ လက္ရွိအစိုးရသည္ အဆုိပါသက္ဆုိင္ရာ ေကာ္မတီအား အစီရင္ခံတင္သြင္းျခင္းမျပဳေသးပါ။ လိင္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အၾကမ္းဖက္မႈ မ်ားႏွင့္စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ အထူးျပဳကာကြယ္ ေဆာင္ရြက္သည့္ လြတ္လပ္သည့္အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ကၽြမ္းက်င္ သည့္ ပညာရွင္မ်ားေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ မရွိေသးပါ။ အလားတူပင္ ယင္းမႈခင္းႀကီးမ်ား ျဖစ္ပြားပါက မွန္ကန္စြာထြက္ဆုိမည့္ သက္ေသမ်ားအားထိေရာက္စြာ ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ ႏုိင္ေရးအတြက္ လုိအပ္ေသာဥပေဒမ်ား၊ စီစဥ္ခ်မွတ္ထားမႈမ်ားလည္း မရွိေသးပါ။ ၂၀၀၈ ဖြဲ႕စည္းပုံအေျခခံ ဥပေဒအရ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအာဏာကုိ အဓိက ကုိင္တြယ္က်င့္သုံးသူ မွာ သမၼတမဟုတ္ပါ။ ကာကြယ္ေရးဦးစီးခ်ဳပ္ဦးေဆာင္သ ည့္ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္ ျဖစ္သည္။ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕ႏွင့္ အျခားတုိင္း ျပည္လံုၿခဳံေရးဆုိင္ရာအဖြဲ႔အ စည္းမ်ားသာမက တရားစီရင္ေရးပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာသည္လည္း စစ္တပ္ကုိအဓိကျပဳထားသည့္ အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္ေရးအာဏာပုိင္မ်ားအား ခယဝပ္တြားၾကရသည္။ သုိ႔ျဖစ္၍ ျပစ္မႈႀကီးမ်ားတြင္ တရားခံမ်ားအျဖစ္ သံသယရွိခံရသူမ်ားမွာ စစ္တပ္မွပုဂၢိဳလ္မ်ား၊ အစုိးရအာဏာပုိင္မ်ား ျဖစ္ေသာအခါ အဆုိပါဥပေဒပုိင္းႏွင့္ တုိင္းျပည္ အေဆာက္အအုံ တည္ရွိမႈပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အေနအထားမ်ားသည္ ျပစ္မႈ က်ဴးလြန္ခံရသူမ်ား၊ ၎တို႔၏ မိသားစုမ်ား၊ သက္ဆုိင္ရာ လူ႔အဝန္းအဝုိင္းမ်ား၏ အေျခအေနအား ပုိ၍ဆုိးဝါးလာေစသည္။ လိင္ပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အၾကမ္း ဖက္ခံရမႈႏွင့္ စပ္လ်ဥ္း၍ တုိင္းရင္းသူအမ်ိဳးသမီးမ်ားအတြက္ အဆုိးဝါးဆုံး အေျခအေနမွာ ၎တုိ႔တြင္ လူမႈေရး၊ ပထဝီဝင္၊ ေငြေရးေၾကးေရးႏွင့္ ဥပေဒပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ အကန္႔အသတ္မ်ား ေျမာက္မ်ားစြာ ရွိေနေသာေၾကာင့္ ျပစ္မႈက်ဴးလြန္ခံရေသာ္လည္းတုိင္တန္းႏုိင္သည့္အေျခ အေနမ်ား နည္းပါးလွသည္။ တုိင္တန္းခြင့္ရႏုိင္ဦးေတာ့၊ ေဒသဆုိင္ရာ အာဏာပုိင္မ်ားက (သို႔မဟုတ္) တရားစီရင္ေရးပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာက အမ်ားဆုံးအားျဖင့္ ပယ္ခ်ခ့ဲၾကသည္။ ဤအစီရင္ခံစာအေနျဖင့္ျပည္တြင္းဥပေဒ၊ ႏုိင္ငံတကာလူ႔ အခြင့္အေရး ဥပေဒမ်ား၊ လူသားခ်င္းစာနာ ေထာက္ထားသည့္ ဥပေဒမ်ား၊ ဥပေဒစုိးမုိးေရးအေျခခံမ်ားကုိ ေက်ာေထာက္ေနာက္ခံျပဳလ်က္ တုိင္းျပည္ အေဆာက္အအံုပုိင္းဆုိင္ရာ ခုိင္မာျခင္းႏွင့္ လုပ္ထုံးလုပ္နည္းအရ တရားမွ်တမႈကုိရွာေဖြျခင္း ရႈေထာင့္မ်ားမွေန၍ ခ်ဥ္းကပ္သည္။ ရဲတပ္ဖြဲ႕ ကုိအဓိထားကာ တုိင္းျပည္အေဆာက္ အအုံမ်ား၏ အေနအထားအား တစုံတရာေသာ အတုိင္း အတာထိ သုံးသပ္ထားပါသည္။ ထုိ႔ေနာက္ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ႏွင့္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈ ဆက္စပ္ပံုကုိ ေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း၊ ယင္းတုိ႔အတြက္ သင့္တင့္ေလ်ာက္ပတ္ေသာ ေျဖရွင္းမႈကုိေသာ္လည္းေကာင္း ႀကိဳးပမ္းရွာေဖြ တင္ျပထားသည္။ ေနာက္ဆုံးအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံ၏ အတိတ္ႏွင့္ မ်က္ေမွာက္ ေနာက္ခံအေျခ အေနမ်ားႏွင့္ ဆက္စပ္လ်က္ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအရ တုိးတက္ကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္ႏုိင္ေရး ရႈေထာင့္မွေန၍ ႏုိင္ငံတကာ၏ တာဝန္ရွိမႈႏွင့္ အခန္းက႑ကုိလည္း ေထာက္ျပထားသည္။
Burmese (ျမန္မာဘာသာ), English
Source/publisher:
Kachin Women’s Association in Thailand (KWAT)
Format/size:
pdf (1.7MB-bu; 1.5MB-en)
Date of entry/update:
19 January 2016
BURMA/MYANMAR: Two teachers tortured, sexual assaulted, and murdered by soldiers
Date of publication:
27 January 2015
Description/subject:
"...On the morning of 20 January 2015, two young volunteer school teachers were found dead in their rooms at the Baptist Church in Kaung Kha village, in the Northern Shan State. The two girls, Maran Lu Ra and Tangbau Hkown Nan Tsin, were Ethnic Kachin teachers volunteering for the Kachin Baptist Church and served in Kaung Kha village for two years before they were killed. Their bodies were found by villagers in their room in the dormitory in church compound. The villagers found the bodies bloodied, bearing signs of having been beaten with a blunt instrument, and one of the girls had knife wounds on her face and hands. Both women were found in a state of undress which indicates sexual assault or rape. The room in which they were found was messed up and one of the victims was found with some hair in her hand, suggesting a struggle. A large, bloodstained stick was found near the bodies. Kaung Kha village is located near to the border of the Kachin State and has around 25 houses. The Burmese military columns pass through the village whenever conflict arises between the army and ethnic Kachin militants. A few days before the women were killed, an Army battalion arrived. They were camped 100 metres away from the scene of the crime while the women were attacked and killed. While there is no record of them harming these villagers before, the Burmese Army has been accused of perpetrating sexual violence in conflict area elsewhere. As a result of their reputation and proximity to the crime, many people suspect the perpetrators are Burmese soldiers..."
Source/publisher:
Asia Human Rights Commission
Format/size:
Date of entry/update:
24 April 2015
Pushed to the Brink - Conflict and human trafficking on the Kachin-China border
Date of publication:
05 June 2013
Description/subject:
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: "The Burmese government’s renewed war against the Kachin has exponentially increased the risk of human trafficking along the China-Burma border. New documentation by KWAT indicates that large-scale displacement, lack of refugee protection and shortages of humanitarian aid have become significant new push factors fuelling the trafficking problem. Burma Army offensives against the Kachin Independence Army since June 2011 and widespread human rights abuses have driven over 100,000 villagers from their homes, mainly in eastern Kachin State. The majority of these refugees have fled to crowded IDP camps along the China border, which receive virtually no international aid. Desperate to earn an income, but with little or no legal option to pursue migrant work in China, many cross the border illegally. Their lack of legal status renders them extremely vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers, who use well-trodden routes to transport and sell people into bonded labor or forced marriage as far as eastern provinces of China. Although ongoing attacks and massive social upheaval since the start of the conflict have hampered systematic data collection, KWAT has documented 24 trafficking cases from Kachin border areas since June 2011, mostly involving young women and girls displaced by the war, who have been tricked, drugged, raped, and sold to Chinese men or families as brides or bonded laborers. The sale of women and children is a lucrative source of income for traffickers, who can make as much as 40,000 Yuan (approximately $6,500 USD) per person. While some manage to escape, and may be assisted by Chinese authorities in returning home, others disappear without a trace. Kachin authorities and community-based groups have played a key role in providing help with trafficking cases, and assisting women to be reunited with their families. No trafficked women or their families sought help from Burmese authorities. The Burmese government lists an anti-trafficking border liaison office at Loije on the Kachin-China border, but it is unknown to the community and thought to be non-functional. Far from seeking to provide protection to the internally displaced persons (IDPs) and mitigate trafficking risks, the Burmese government has continued to fuel the war, block humanitarian aid to IDPs in Kachin controlled areas, and even attack and destroy IDP camps, driving refugees into China. It has also closed some of the immigration offices on the Kachin-China border which could provide border passes for refugees to legally seek work in China. It is thus ironic that in 2012, Burma was recognized in the U.S. State Department’s Annual Trafficking in Persons Report as increasing its efforts in combating human trafficking, resulting in a rise from its bottomlevel ranking for the first time in the history of the report, and a corresponding increase in financial support to Burma’s quasi-civilian government. It is urgently needed to address the structural problems that have led to mass migration and trafficking in the past and also spurred the recent conflict. The Burmese military’s gross mismanagement of resource revenues from Kachin State over the past few decades, and ongoing land confiscation, forced relocation, and human rights abuses, have pushed countless Kachin civilians across the Chinese border in search of peace and the fulfillment of basic needs. These problems led to the breakdown of the 17-year ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and the military-dominated government in 2011. Refusing to engage in dialogue to address Kachin demands for equality and equitable development, the government launched attacks to seize total control over the wealth of resources in Kachin State. Resolving the current conflict via genuine political dialogue would not only be a step towards peace, but also a concrete move towards curbing human trafficking from Kachin areas. Launching a range of reforms dealing with the political and economic factors driving people beyond Burma’s borders is critical to addressing trafficking. Therefore, KWAT recommends the following:..."
Source/publisher:
Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (KWAT)
Format/size:
pdf (1.1MB-OBL version; 1.37MB-original...Press release: Chinese, 90K; Burmese, 40K; English, html)
Alternate URLs:
http://www.kachinwomen.com
http://www.kachinwomen.com/images/stories/pressrelease/pushed_chinese.pdf
http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs15/KWAT-pushed_to_the_brink-PR-bu-ocr.pdf
http://www.kachinwomen.com/advocacy/press-release.html
http://www.kachinwomen.com/images/stories/publication/pushed_to_the_brink.pdf
Date of entry/update:
05 June 2013
Eastward Bound
Date of publication:
05 August 2008
Description/subject:
Summary of key findings: The report documents 133 verified and suspected trafficking cases, involving 163 women and girls, which occurred between 2004 and mid-2007 . As political and economic conditions inside Burma continue to deteriorate, more and more Kachin women are migrating to China in search of work, and are ending up as forced brides of Chinese men. . Most of the forced brides were transported across China to marry men in the eastern provinces, particularly Shandong Province. Women described being shown to many men, sometimes in marketplaces, before being chosen. The husbands, predominantly farmers, paid an average of US$1,900 for their brides. . About a quarter of those trafficked were under 18, with girls as young as 14 forced to be brides. Several cases involved traffickers attempting to buy babies. . The continuing high incidence of trafficking indicates that the regime's new anti-trafficking law, passed in September 2005, is failing to have any impact in curbing the problem. Provisions in the regime's new law to protect the rights of trafficking victims are not being adhered to. Women are also being falsely accused of trafficking under the new law. . Women report that Chinese police have been helpful in assisting them to return to Burma, but have sometimes demanded compensation from Burma border officials for repatriating trafficking victims...... Growing numbers of Kachin women trafficked as brides across China Forced by deteriorating political and economic conditions in Burma to migrate to China, ethnic Kachin women are increasingly ending up as forced brides, according to a new report by an indigenous women¹s group. ³Eastward Bound² by the Kachin Women¹s Association Thailand (KWAT), documents the trafficking of 163 women and girls between 2004 and mid-2007, almost all to China. While 40% of the women have simply disappeared, most of the rest were forced to marry men in provinces across eastern China. About a quarter of those trafficked were under 18. Most of these girls, as young as 14, were sold as brides for an average of about USD 2,000, usually to farmers. The report highlights how the Burmese regime¹s new anti-trafficking law, passed in September 2005, is failing not only to curb trafficking, but also to protect the rights of trafficked women. Victims have been refused assistance by the Burmese Embassy in Beijing, denied entry back to Burma, and falsely accused of trafficking themselves. One woman accused of trafficking was raped in detention by a local official. ³Anti-trafficking laws are meaningless under a regime that systematically violates people¹s rights, and whose policies are driving citizens to migrate,² said Gum Khong, a researcher for the report. While international agencies have raised the alert about increased trafficking in Burma following Cyclone Nargis, KWAT cautions against indirectly endorsing the regime¹s heavy-handed attempts to control migration. ³International agencies must look holistically at the trafficking problem, and not be complicit in any efforts by the regime to further abuse people¹s rights under the guise of preventing trafficking² said KWAT spokesperson Shirley Seng. KWAT first exposed the trafficking of Kachin women on the China-Burma border in their 2005 report ³Driven Away.² The new report can be viewed at http://www.womenofburma.org For hard copies of the report, please contact: kwat@loxinfo.co.th For further information contact: Gum Khong +66 84 616 5245 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +66 84 616 5245      end_of_the_skype_highlighting Shirley Seng +66 84 485 7252
Source/publisher:
Kachin Women's Association, Thailand (KWAT)
Format/size:
pdf (1.7MB, 2MB - Alt. URL))
Alternate URLs:
http://www.womenofburma.org/Report/EastwardBound.pdf
Date of entry/update:
04 August 2008
Driven Away: Trafficking of Kachin women on the China-Burma border
Date of publication:
15 May 2005
Description/subject:
"An alarming trend is developing in ethnic Kachin communities of Burma. Growing poverty, caused by failed state policies, is driving increasing numbers of young people to migrate in search of work. As a result, young women and girls are disappearing without trace, being sold as wives in China, and tricked into the Chinese and Burmese sex industries. Local Kachin researchers conducted interviews in Burma from May-August 2004 in order to document this trend. "Driven Away: Trafficking of Kachin women on the China-Burma border", produced by the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT), is based on 63 verified and suspected trafficking cases that occurred primarily during 2000-2004. The cases involve 85 women and girls, mostly between the ages of 14 and 20. Testimony comes primarily from women and girls who escaped after being trafficked, as well as relatives, persons who helped escapees, and others. About two-thirds of the women trafficked were from the townships of Myitkyina and Bhamo in Kachin State. About one third were from villages in northern Shan State. In 36 of the cases, women were specifically offered safe work opportunities and followed recruiters to border towns. Many were seeking part-time work to make enough money for school fees during the annual three-month school holiday. Others simply needed to support their families. Those not offered work were taken while looking for work, tricked, or outright abducted. Women taken to China were most often passed on to traffickers at the border to be transported farther by car, bus and/or train for journeys of up to one week in length. Traffickers used deceit, threats, and drugs to confuse and control women en route..."
Source/publisher:
Kachin Women's Association, Thailand (KWAT)
Format/size:
pdf (3.3MB), 2.2MB
Alternate URLs:
http://www.womenofburma.org/Report/Driven_Away.pdf (original, authoritative)