EBO Burma News, 7 May 2003
News Summary:
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1. Temporary relief from a life in hell
2.
3. US condemns
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Temporary relief from a life in
hell
The Australian
By Elisabeth Wynhausen
and Natalie O'Brien
KAM was repeatedly raped in an army camp
in
passed from one group of soldiers to another.
Some threatened to harm her
if she did not serve them.
Kam, the only name by which she is known, was
held captive until
trafficked across the border into
prostitution. She was then 12 or 13.
The now 24-year-old Kam
has been granted a temporary protection visa after
the Refugee Review Tribunal discounted
Immigration Department claims she
was Thai.
Her experiences have left her traumatised,
depressed and fearful. A
psychologist who interviewed her in detention
described her as "timid and
subdued". Yet in three years she will again
have to convince authorities
she is a Shan woman from
Kam's story is only too familiar to
52. Imprisoned in
dictatorship, Wai met many
young women who had been sold into prostitution
after they were sexually abused by soldiers or
police.
"These women have no voice at
all," said Wai, who does what she can to
publicise their plight.
In considering Kam's
case, the Refugee Review Tribunal cited a report that
found the Burmese military allowed its troops
to systematically use rape
to terrorise the people of the Shan state.
The report by the Shan Women's Action
Network (SWAN) describes what
happened to 625 Shan girls and women who were
raped and brutalised by the
Burmese military.
More than half the attacks were gang
rapes. Like Kam, many of the women
were held captive on military bases and raped
repeatedly.
Interviewed while in immigration detention
in
officials that soldiers had often come to her
village in the south of
whatever they wanted, particularly to the girls in
the village."
She was staying with her grandmother on
the night the soldiers abducted
her, and has not seen her family since.
"I was taken to an army camp," she
said through an interpreter. "I was raped
at this camp numerous times.
"One day I was taken with many other
girls across the border to
in a truck."
The soldiers sold her to a trafficker, who
sold her to a brothel. "I was
forced to work as a prostitute. My boss ...told
me I had to pay debts to
the woman who took me from the army
camp."
She was told her boss had given the woman
30,000 baht, which Kam had to
pay back, the same twisted logic imposed on
women trafficked to
who are forced to have sex with hundreds of
men to pay off their so-called
contracts.
"Because I was unlawful in
On one occasion she was deported back to
go or how to get home. Frightened the
Burmese military would take her
prisoner again, she returned to
not long afterwards.
Eventually picked up in a raid on a brothel
in
told officials she feared what would happen to
her and her family if she
were returned to
Kirsty Allen, of the Melbourne-based
International Women's Development
Agency, said it was a common experience.
"The women from
trafficked here are often refugees from the military
dictatorship in
Noting reports of human rights abuses by
the Burmese dictatorship, the
Refugee Review Tribunal found Kam would not be safe "anywhere within
This accords with the view expressed by US
congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, chair of a congressional
committee on human rights, who has
said: "Girls and women of
part of a systematic campaign by the Burmese
army to subjugate its
people."
-----------------------------------
Associated Press
By Nelson Rand
ON THE
bewildering changes in his life during the last half
year - schoolboy one
day, a child soldier the next, and then a
prisoner of the guerrillas he
was forced to fight.
Kyaw, a 9th grade student in the southeastern
walking home from school with friends last
October when a car pulled
alongside him.
Military men jumped out of the car and
grabbed him and four of his
schoolmates. Without a choice and without a chance to
say goodbye to their
families, Kyaw, 16, and
his four friends became the newest recruits of
Human rights groups say such forced
conscription is routine in
military-ruled
under the age of 18.
The allegations are denied by the military
government of
known as
impossible given the authoritarian nature of the
regime.
However, a rare glimpse into the army was
provided by Kyaw who was
interviewed by an Associated Press reporter while in
captivity at a jungle
camp of the ethnic Karen rebels.
Kyaw said he deserted his unit on March 11
while on security duty in the
Tojo mountains a few kilometers (miles) from the Thai border, opposite
Kyaw simply dropped his rifle and equipment
and started to run. A few
hours later he was picked up by Karen
guerrillas.
Kyaw said he had no skills to deal with the
jungle or the war - his camp
had been attacked by the guerrillas in December,
leaving five comrades
dead.
"I knew if I stayed there I would
die," he said, adding that he was given
only one month of military training after
being kidnapped in Thongwa.
At the end of the training, he was sent to
the Tojo mountains where the
army has being trying for more than five
decades to put down an insurgency
by the Karen National Liberation Army.
The Karens, who
are a minority in
Kyaw said many of the soldiers he served with
were under 17 years old - 20
of the 50 soldiers in his section and 70 of
the 150 in his battalion,
Infantry Battalion
343.
The youngest was only 11.
He was punished by the officer in charge
of his section when he could not
carry heavy loads, Kyaw
said. "He beat me, slapped me, kicked me and
whipped me with a stick," the youth said,
speaking through a translator.
Now Kyaw spends
his days locked in a small bamboo hut with 15-year-old
Aung Myoo Oo.
They wait for their release, and a chance at a better life.
Like Kyaw, Myoo Oo was forced into a car on his way home from school
one
afternoon a year ago outside the capital
month's military training before being sent to
fight the Karen rebels.
He escaped from Tojo
in March with another child soldier aged 14, whose
name he didn't want to reveal.
In a report in October, the New York-based
Human Rights Watch said the
"
the worst in the world," wrote Jo
Becker, advocacy director of the
children's rights division at Humans Rights Watch.
"To be a boy in
up off the street, forced to commit
atrocities against villagers, and
never seeing your family again," Becker
wrote.
A half year ago, Kyaw
could never have guessed the turn of events in his
life that would take away the last of his
childhood.
"I just want to go home and see my
mother and father," he said.
------------------------------
US condemns Myanmar junta, praises
Aung San Suu Kyi
military rulers of a catalogue of repression and reinforced
its firm support
for democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, as it
marked the anniversary of her
release from house arrest.
The State Department said it was
"past time" for
the benefits of economic and political reform
and accused the junta of not
negotiating in "good faith" in a struggling
UN-brokered bid to start a
dialogue with the opposition.
"Exactly one year ago,
leader of the National League for Democracy, was
released from her second
lengthy period of house arrest," said
departmental spokesman Richard Boucher.
"Unfortunately, the regime has made
little progress toward national
reconciliation since then."
"The rulers of
Suu Kyi on her travels and limited her
party's activities.
"The regime has been unwilling to
begin substantive dialogue with the
democratic opposition toward national
reconciliation," Boucher said.
"The regime continues to monitor
prisoners released from unjust
imprisonment, to restrict their freedoms and to
discriminate against their
families."
"It is the policy of the
Democracy as it tries to restore democracy
to
Suu Kyi's
unwavering determination," he said.
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