HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTATION: SO WHAT? - " 1) Human rights abuse, from institutionalized racial discrimination to summary execution is a systematized, persistent and pervasive reality in Burma today, as it has been for decades 2) The political will to create or enforce meaningful international systems to address individual instances of human rights abuse simply does not exist, and for the time being, seems not to be developing. 3) This ubiquitous abuse oc-curs in a context of political and economic repression, and is in fact yoked irremovably to the political and economic aims of those who hold military power. • 4) The concrete exposition of these aims and strategies should be the primary goal of human rights reporting and activism. Human rights abuse documentation must illustrate in the best detail possible the premeditated and institutionalized structures of abuse. • 5) Exposed, this relationship between individual events and the larger context of repression of fundamental rights and freedoms for political and economic advantage will also reveal the systematic (rather than merely frequent or wide-spread) nature of oppression. It is these systematic elements — laws, policies, programs, economic and political structures, which will be the targets of local, national and international campaigns. Within these campaigns, individual cases of rape, torture or disap-pearance can serve as impor-tant rallying points for moral outrage and solidarity within Burma and among the peoples of Burma and other lands. These five points call for a shift in perspective, but also call for creative and intelligent analysis of the data coming out of Burma. For interna-tional campaign groups which have to wade through mountains of reports to get to the information they need, a new approach modeled on the con-cepts above may streamline corporate and government boycott campaigns. For those hoping for justice inside Burma, building such an approach may help to rectify the ugly reality that whatever legal system may exist in rural Burma does not seem ready, willing, or able to try individual claims of abuse on evidence. Ulti-mately it is only the type of documen-tation described here which will have the capacity to endure the long, long term struggle for peace and justice"...UNOCAL, BURMA, AND CANADA...Ye-Tavoy Railway Revisited...WHERE THE TREES GO...NO PEACE IN CHINLAND...SENDING REFUGEES HOME...NEWS BRIEFS: HUMAN RIGHTS; POLITICS; ECONOMICS