Commission on Human Rights, 57^th Session
Geneva, April 12,2001
(Agenda Item 14 b)

Rights of Minorities: Burma

Thank you, Mr. Chairman,

The creation of a subsidiary body to the UN Commission on Human Rights: the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities itself was a clear recognition of the international community on the issues concerning minorities and groups around the world.

Customary international law enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations also reflects the rights of minorities: "All peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development." ... Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) also recognizes certain rights in respect of persons belonging to "ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities." The 1948 Genocide Convention protects "national, ethnical, racial, or religious" groups from campaigns to destroy them, in whole or in part.

The protection of minorities requires the implementation of the rights to citizenship, language, education, culture,

In this context, I would like to draw your attention to the situation of minorities in Burma (Myanmar), specifically the Karen. Burma (Myanmar) is a country comprised of different groups of minorities - "[groups] numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a State, in a non-dominant position, whose members – being nationals of the State – possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population and show, if only implicitly, a sense of solidarity, directed toward preserving their culture, traditions, religion or language".

Successive Burmese regimes have refused to recognize the rights of minorities in Burma. Intolerance grew to a point where the country found itself in Civil War from which we have been suffering for more than fifty years. This same internal armed conflict between the Burmese government and the Karen people has created more than 120, 000 (a hundred and twenty thousand) Karen refugees along the Thai-Burma border. The estimate of internally displaced Karen people living in the Burmese jungle is now between 200, 000 and 300,000. At this point, we are unable to give an estimate of numbers of Karen (illegal) migrant workers in Thailand.

Nevertheless, these threatening numbers should already tell the Commission about the situation of the Karen people in Burma, where the rights of minorities to citizenship, language, education and other guaranteed rights of minorities are far from reality for the Karen people or for other minority groups in similar situations.

For a Karen woman who left her husband's dead body in a field as she fled from the Burmese troops, traditional burial was a wish that would never come true. For a people most of whose lives are spent running to escape military persecution, minority rights such as the right to education are far from reality. A Karen internally displaced person cried out to a relief worker: "We had been walking for 5 days, we had lost our homes, and we could not go back. What is our future? Where will we go? What will happen to us?"

Not to neglect the situation of our fellow minorities such as the Mon people in Burma, I would like to bring to your attention that these people are also undergoing the same situation under the repressive Burmese regime. The most recent and notable suppression of their rights is the prohibition against the teaching and learning of Mon literature organized by the Mon Literacy and Culture Committee (MLCC). The prohibition was ordered and enforced by Unit No. 5 of the Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence (DDSI) of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) through the Mon State Peace and Development Council (General Secretary Col. Aung Maw Maw). Details of this incident can be obtained from The Mon Forum Newsletter, Issue No. 6/2000.

These are just some of the accounts we wish to bring to your attention. We have submitted all these information to the Special Rapporteur for his report on the situation of human rights in Burma.

The international community recognises that minorities that are treated properly by their governments, as individuals, will probably be less likely to join separatist movements. In that sense, the long and ongoing minorities' movements for freedom in Burma should very clearly tell the Commission of their situation.