Discrimination/violence against women: reports of violations in Kachin State

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Sub-title: Traffickers are increasingly preying on the despair of women who feel they have no choice but to seek work across the border.
Description: "Conflict in Myanmar's northern state of Kachin is forcing more people from their homes. A ceasefire between the government and the Kachin Independence Army ended in 2011. Since then, instability has been putting many families at risk, including women who are being trafficked to China..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera" (Qatar)
2019-07-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-10-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: What Future Do We Have?' Caught in the Crossfire of Myanmar's Northern Conflict, Civilians See Little Hope
Source/publisher: Sky News
2018-06-07
Date of entry/update: 2019-07-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Seng Moon’s family fled fighting in Myanmar’s Kachin State in 2011 and wound up struggling to survive in a camp for internally displaced people. In 2014, when Seng Moon was 16 and attending fifth grade, her sister-in-law said she knew of a job as a cook in China’s neighboring Yunnan province. Seng Moon did not want to go, but the promised wage was far more than she could make living in the IDP camp, so her family decided she shouldn’t pass it up. In the car, Seng Moon’s sister-in-law gave her something she said prevented car sickness. Seng Moon fell asleep immediately. “When I woke up my hands were tied behind my back,” she said. “I cried and shouted and asked for help.” By then, Seng Moon was in China, where her sister-in-law left her with a Chinese family. After several months her sister-in-law returned and told her, “Now you have to get married to a Chinese man,” and took her to another house. Said Seng Moon: My sister-in-law left me at the home. …The family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again. …They locked the door—for one or two months.… Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me…After two months, they dragged me out of the room. The father of the Chinese man said, “Here is your husband. Now you are a married couple. Be nice to each other and build a happy family.” My sister-in-law left me at the home. …The family took me to a room. In that room I was tied up again. …They locked the door—for one or two months.… Each time when the Chinese man brought me meals, he raped me…After two months, they dragged me out of the room. The father of the Chinese man said, “Here is your husband. Now you are a married couple. Be nice to each other and build a happy family.”
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch
2019-03-21
Date of entry/update: 2019-06-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: (With a Special Focus on the Kawng Kha Case, in Kachin Land)..... Executive Summary: "Despite the so-called democratic transition taking place since 2010, Burma remains constitutionally under the control of the Armed Forces. However, our national democratic icon, democratic forces, some ethnic armed organizations, many NGOs -- especially GONGOs ? and most of the international community are siding with or exercising a policy of appeasement with the power holders, without scrutinizing whether the source of their power emanates from the genuine will of the various ethnic nationalities and/or indigenous peoples. As a result, terms such as human dignity, human value, and particularly human rights have become empty rhetoric. Accountability is merely a political slogan, used by the incumbent President Thein Sein, the chairperson of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), since coming to office in 2011, but never implemented by any government institution in practice. The vicious circle of impunity continues, and, for the time being, seeking justice is an unpopular concept, voiced only by victims? communities. Against this background, a heinous crime against two young ethnic Kachin female volunteer teachers was committed on January 19, 2015, allegedly by the Myanmar soldiers of the ruling regime. Despite the fact that it has been almost ten months now, the perpetrators are still at large and no suspect has been identified by the police. Investigations carried out by the authorities have not focused on the victims, but have been one-sided, benefitting the perpetrators. The lack of reparative and restorative justice has led to delay and finally a denial of justice. The ominous silence around this case will become a catalyst for recurrence of gross human rights violations in the future. This preliminary report attempts to uncover the truth about this case, relating it to similar past incidents of war crimes, particularly sexual violence. It is also examined as to whether the state is held accountable for failure to provide protection for such heinous crimes and reparations to the victims, due to official state passivity. The government is also reminded of its obligations under domestic and international law. The victims of rape have commonly been non-Burman ethnic females, such as Shan, Karen, Kachin, Karenni, Palaung, etc. As such, the crimes can be categorized as having an ethnic nature. In many previous cases, even though victims were raped, they were not murdered. And even if they were murdered, they were not tortured. However, the Kawng Kha war crime case highlighted in this preliminary report is quite distinct. The victims were not only raped but also murdered. Worse, it was not an ordinary rape but a gang-rape. In addition, the victims were inhumanely and brutally tortured before they were murdered. As of now, nobody knows whether the victims were tortured by the perpetrators before or after being raped. As such, among the gross human rights violations inflicted on the various ethnic nationalities over the past decades, the Kawng Kha case constitutes one of the most heinous crime ever committed. Unfortunately, the ruling regime, albeit having the responsibility as the government, has not yet submitted any report specifically on this case to the Committee against Torture and to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), which Burma has already acceded to. There are no independent institutions or professionals working with victims of sexual violence nor does there exist any effective law for protection of witnesses in Burma. In accordance with the 2008 Constitution of Burma, the Myanmar Armed Forces, led by the Commander-in-Chief ? not the State President ? primarily exercise executive power. In addition to the Police and other security institutions, the Judiciary is also subservient to the executive. This legal and institutional framework has exacerbated the situation of the victims, their families and their communities, whenever the culprits or suspects are army personnel or government authorities. In regard to sexual violence, a serious problem is that ethnic women victims, given social, geographical, financial and legal constraints, are unable even to file complaints; and, even if a complaint is filed, it is commonly rejected by the Judiciary or the local authorities. This paper explores the status of State Institutions, focusing on the Police Institution, from the aspect of institutional integrity as well as procedural justice, as underpinned by not only national laws, international human rights laws and humanitarian law, but also the Rule of Law. This paper also establishes the nexus between civil war and human rights violations and attempts to find a reasonable solution. Last, but not least, the role and responsibility of the international community is scrutinized from the perspective of promotion and protection of human rights in connection with the previous and current background scenario of Burma."
Source/publisher: Legal Aid Network (LAN) and Kachin Women?s Association in Thailand (KWAT)
2016-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English, Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ)
Format : pdf pdf
Size: 1.53 MB 1.74 MB
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Description: ခြုံငုံတင်ပြချက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် ၂၀၁၀ ခုနှစ်နောက်ပိုင်းမှစတင်၍ ဖြစ်ပေါ်လျှက်ရှိသော ဒီမိုကရေစီအသွင်ကူး ပြောင်းမှုဟူ သည့်အောက်၌ နိုင်ငံရေးအာဏာ၏ အခန်းကဏ္ဍအားပို၍ အလေးထားလာကြသည့် သဘောရှိသည်။ ဤတွင် ရှုပ်ထွေးမှုများ ရှိလာသည်။ ဒီမိုကရေစီရေး အင်အားစုများ၊ အချို့သော တိုင်းရင်းသား လက်နက်ကိုင် အဖွဲ့အစည်း များနှင့် (အထူးသဖြင့် အစိုးရနှင့်လက်ဝါးရိုက်၍ ဖွဲ့စည်းထားသည့်) အန်ဂျီအို အဖွဲ့အစည်းများသည်လည်းကောင်း၊ ဒီမိုကရေစီခေါင်းဆောင်နှင့် နိုင်ငံတကာ နိုင်ငံအတော်များများသည်လည်းကောင်း၊ နိုင်ငံရေးအာဏာ ရရှိထားသူများနှင့် ပူးပေါင်း လက်တွဲရေး၊ အနည်းဆုံးအားဖြင့် ဖက်လှဲတကင်း ဆက်ဆံပေါင်းသင်းရေး မူဝါဒကို ကျင့်သုံးလာကြသည်။ အဆိုပါ နိုင်ငံရေးအာဏာသည် ဒေသခံတိုင်းရင်းသားများအပါအဝင် တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုး ပေါင်းစုံ၏ စစ်မှန်သော သဘောဆန္ဒကို အခြေပြု၍ ပေါ်ပေါက်လာခြင်းဟုတ်မဟုတ် စစ်ကြောခြင်း မပြုကြတော့။ သို့ဖြင့် နိုင်ငံရေးအာဏာ ကို ဆည်းကပ်ကိုးကွယ်မှုပြု၊ ပို၍ပို၍ အလေးထားလာခြင်းမှာ ရှုတ်ထွေးမှုများ ပိုမိုပေါ်ပေါက်လာသည့် အကြောင်းခံ ဖြစ်လာသည်။ ယင်းမှ မကောင်းသည့် အကျိုးသက်ရောက်မှုအနေဖြင့် လူ့ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာ၊ လူ့တန်ဖိုး၊ အထူးသဖြင့် လူ့အခွင့် အရေးဟူသော ဝေါဟာရများမှာ အသံသာရှိပြီး အဆန်မရှိသည့် သြင်္ကန်အမြောက်သဖွယ် ဖြစ်လာသည်။ တာဝန်ခံမှု ဟူသည်မှာ ၂၀၁၁ ခုနှစ်၌ ပြည်ထောင်စုကြံ့ခိုင်ရေးနှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးရေးပါတီဥက္ကဌ ဦးသိန်းစိန် သမ္မတအဖြစ် စတင်တာဝန် ထမ်းဆောင်ခဲ့စဉ်က လှည့်ဖြားပြောဆိုခဲ့သည့် နိုင်ငံရေးကြွေးကြော်သံ သက်သက်ဖြင့်သာ တည်ရှိလာခဲ့သည်။ လက်တွေ့အားဖြင့် မည်သည့်အစိုးရဌာနဆိုင်ရာ တခုတလေတွင်မျှ တာဝန်ခံမှုကို ကြီးကြပ်ဖော်ဆောင် နိုင်ခဲ့ခြင်း မရှိပါ။ ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်ပြီးနောက် လွတ်ငြိမ်းခွင့်ရနေသော အခြေအနေသည် ဆုံးသွမ်းသံတရာအနေနှင့် ဆက်လက် တည်ရှိနေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ မျက်မှောက်အချိန်တွင် တရားမျှတမှု ရှာဖွေရေးဟူသည်မှာ ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်ခံရသူများ အဝန်း အဝိုင်းအတွင်းတွင်သာ ရေရွတ်မြည်တမ်းရမည့် အဆင့်ရှိသည်။ လူထုကြီးတရပ်လုံးအကြားတွင် ရေပန်းမစားလှ တော့ပါ။ ယင်းသို့သော နောက်ခံအခြေအနေများအောက်တွင် ၂၀၁၅ ခုနှစ် ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၁၉ ရက်နေ့၌ မြန်မာစစ်တပ်မှ စစ်သားများက ကျူးလွန်သည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲခံရသော ကြီးမားလှသည့်ပြစ်မှုကြီး ဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ ကျူးလွန်ခံရသူ များမှာ ငယ်ရွယ်နုပျိုသည့် ကချင်အမျိုးသမီး လုပ်အားပေးဆရာမနှစ်ဦး ဖြစ်သည်။ ပြစ်မှုဖြစ်ပွားသည့်နေ့မှ စတင်ရေ တွက်လျှင် ၁၀ လ နည်းပါးမျှကြာခဲ့ပြီ ဖြစ်သော်လည်း ကျူးလွန်ခဲ့သူများမှာ လွတ်မြောက်နေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ တရားခံအ စစ်များအား ရဲများကထုတ်ဖော်နိုင် ခြင်းမရှိ။ ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်ခံရသူများကို အဓိကထား၍ အမှုကိုကိုင်တွယ်ဆောင်ရွက် ရမည့်အစား ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်သူများ အကျိုးဖြစ်စေမည့် တစ်ဖက်သတ်စုံစမ်း စစ်ဆေးမှုများကိုသာ အာဏာပိုင်များက ဆောင်ရွက်လျက်ရှိသည်။ ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်သူကို အပြစ်ပေးရေးနှင့် ပြစ်မှုကျူးလွန်ခံရသူများ ကုစားခွင့်အပါအဝင် တရားမျှတမှုရစေရေးတို့မှာ စိတ်ကူးယဉ်သဖွယ်ဖြစ်နေဆဲပင်။ တရားမျှတမှုရှာဖွေရေးမှာ သိသာစွာ နှောင့်နှေးကြန့် ကြာနေခြင်းကြောင့် တရားမျှတမှု ငြင်းပယ်ခံရသည့် အခြေအနေမှာ မလွဲသာမရှောင်သာ ပေါ်ပေါက်လျက်ရှိသည်။ ယင်းမှာ အတိတ်နမိတ်မကောင်းလှသော ငြိမ်သက်မှုကြီး ဖြစ်နေခြင်းပင်။ သို့ဖြစ်၍ မဝေးလှသော အနာဂတ် ၌ ပို၍ကြီးမားဆိုးဝါးသော လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်မှု ကြီးများ စဉ်တိုက်ဆက်တိုက် ဖြစ်ပွားလာတော့မည့် အ ကြောင်းခံ ဖြစ်လာလျက်ရှိသည
Source/publisher: Kachin Women?s Association in Thailand (KWAT)
2016-01-00
Date of entry/update: 2016-01-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Burmese (မြန်မာဘာသာ), English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.74 MB
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Description: "...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
2015-01-27
Date of entry/update: 2015-04-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: 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)
2013-06-05
Date of entry/update: 2013-06-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf pdf
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Description: 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 women ?s group. ?Eastward Bound ? by the Kachin Women ?s 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 regime ?s 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. ?Anti-trafficking laws are meaningless under a regime that systematically violates people ?s rights, and whose policies are driving citizens to migrate, ? 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 regime ?s heavy-handed attempts to control migration. ?International agencies must look holistically at the trafficking problem, and not be complicit in any efforts by the regime to further abuse people ?s rights under the guise of preventing trafficking ? said KWAT spokesperson Shirley Seng. KWAT first exposed the trafficking of Kachin women on the China-Burma border in their 2005 report ?Driven Away. ? The new report can be viewed at http://www.womenofburma.org For hard copies of the report, please contact: [email protected] 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)
2008-08-05
Date of entry/update: 2008-08-04
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 1.74 MB
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Description: "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)
2005-05-15
Date of entry/update: 2005-05-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 2.18 MB
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