Childrens's rights in Karen State - reports of violations

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Description: "Burma military airstrikes continue, and schools and homes are being destroyed as Burma soldiers shoot villagers in northern Karen State, with over 25,000 people in hiding. One villager, Saw Paw Chit, 40 yrs, was shot to death on 29 April by Burma Army soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 407, Military Operations Command (MOC) 8, commanded by Maung Kyaw Sein Lin, in Ku Chi Village, south of Papun. Deadly airstrikes using rockets, bombs and strafing cannon began in Karen State on 27 March 2021 and continued to 1 April and then started again on 27 April to now, 3 May 2021. We walked to the hiding places of the villagers who fled the first strike and met Naw Mu Wah Paw carrying her son in the jungle. He had been wounded by shrapnel to his face and neck on 27 March as he sat on his father’s lap when the first rockets and bombs came. His father was killed and his mother carried him to our medics, who treated him and removed most of the shrapnel. His mother told the story: “The airstrikes came in at night. There were rockets and bombs. I was outside the house and my son was sitting on my husband’s lap inside the house. There was a huge explosion and I ran to the house as bombs fell. My husband was covered in blood and staggered down the stairs holding our son. He handed our son to me and then fell down and died. Now I am hiding in the jungle here with his father, mother and sister. I miss my husband so much and the airstrikes keep coming to now,” said Naw Mu Wah Paw. We prayed with her husband’s parents as his sister wept silently under a tarp. Map includes some Burma Army airstrikes, artillery strikes and troop movements from 27 March to 3 May..."
Source/publisher: Free Burma Rangers
2021-05-03
Date of entry/update: 2021-05-06
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: A fifteen-year-old girl, Naw M---, was raped by her brother-in-law Saw H---.The incident took place on Monday, 12 March 2018 at 11 PM in Poe Yay village tract, Kyainseikgyi Township. This incident happened at night, when everyone was sleeping. Saw H--- approached his sister-in-law and took off all of her clothes while she was sleeping. She woke up with a jolt and realized that she had no more clothes on her and that there was a person on top of her. When she started shouting, Saw H--- put his hands over her mouth. She could not shout or even move because her brother-in-law was much stronger than her. The perpetrator is over 30 years old. He was drunk when he raped Naw M---. He had a reputation for having a bad character and acting inappropriately towards his wife and his sister-in-law. Naw M---’s sister did not hear or witness the rape. She was sleeping at the time. The next morning, Naw M--- told her sister that she was raped. Her sister confronted her Saw H--- about this, but he denied any wrongdoing. Instead, he threw a shot glass at her.
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
1970-01-01
Date of entry/update: 2019-01-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 667.11 KB
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Description: "One 15-year-old student is dead and two other students are injured after an 81 mm mortar fired into an IDP hiding site in Lu Thaw Township, Papun District, landed in a school set up by the villagers. As of February 21st, the site?s 353 residents remained in hiding and are actively seeking to avoid being shot-onsight by SPDC Army troops that remain in their area."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG #2010-B5)
2010-02-24
Date of entry/update: 2010-10-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
Format : pdf
Size: 336.4 KB
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Description: "In the ongoing offensive against villagers in northern Karen State, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) has been working to develop infrastructure supportive of increased military control. The construction of new bases and vehicle roads serve this objective as they obstruct the efforts of local communities to evade army patrols and sustain their livelihoods in areas beyond the reach of SPDC forces. Increased control, in turn, allows the SPDC to more easily exploit rural communities for labour, food and other supplies in support of military structures. This report examines how military deployment and the construction of new roads and bases further into Papun District have led local villagers to respond by evading encroaching army units despite the increasing difficulty of this tactic, and how the subsequent displacement has affected children?s access to education..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group Field Report (KHRG #2007-F3)
2007-03-26
Date of entry/update: 2009-11-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "This report describes SPDC operations in and around internally displaced person hiding sites in Lu Thaw Township, Papun District. Villagers in this area continue to face constant physical threats and food insecurity caused by SPDC patrols-indeed, residents have been prevented from consistently accessing their farm fields for so long that they now face a dire food crisis. This report also details the rape of a 13-year-old girl by an SPDC soldier in Dweh Loh Township and the local military commander?s attempt to cover up the incident. This report examines cases of SPDC abuse from December 2008 to March 2009..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group Field Reports (KHRG #2009-F8)
2009-04-11
Date of entry/update: 2009-10-31
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "This report includes interviews with two deserters who fled the Burma Army in 2008 and spoke to KHRG about their experiences in February 2009. The interviews cover issues of forced recruitment, child soldiers, corruption and theft within the army, low moral and desertion, and the brutal treatment of both civilians and fellow soldiers by armed forces personnel..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group Field Reports (KHRG #2009-F9)
2009-04-27
Date of entry/update: 2009-10-30
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "As the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military junta currently ruling Burma, works to extend and consolidate its control over all areas of Karen State, local children, their families and communities confront regular, often violent, abuses at the hands of the regime?s officers, soldiers and civilian officials. While the increasing international media attention on the human rights situation in Burma has occasionally addressed the plight of children, such reporting has been almost entirely incident-based, and focused on specific, particularly emotive issues, such as child soldiers. Although incident-based reporting is relevant, it misses the far greater problems of structural violence, caused by the oppressive social, economic and political systems commensurate with militarisation, and the combined effects of a variety of abuses, which negatively affect a far larger number of children in Karen State. Furthermore, focusing on specific, emotive issues sensationalises the abuses committed against children and masks the complexities of the situation. In reports on children and armed conflict in Karen State and elsewhere, individual children?s agency, efforts to resist abuse and capacity to deal with the situations they live in, as well as the efforts made by their families and communities to provide for and protect them, tend to be marginalised and ignored. Drawing on over 160 interviews with local children, their families and communities, this report seeks to provide a forum for these people to explain in their own words the wider context of abuse and their own responses to attempts at denying children their rights. With additional background provided by official SPDC press statements and order documents, international media sources, reports by international aid agencies, as well as academic studies, this report argues that only by listening to local voices regarding the situation of abuse in which they live and taking as a starting point for advocacy and action local conceptions of rights and violations can external actors avoid the further marginalisation of children living in these areas and begin to build on villagers? own strategies for resisting abuse and claiming their rights..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG #2008-01)
2008-04-30
Date of entry/update: 2008-05-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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