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Myanmar rights report says minority group killed, raped
[Straits Times] THE Myanmar junta has been committing abuses in a remote state that need a crimes against humanity investigation, an international rights group said on Wednesday.The Physicians for Human Rights group trained volunteers to survey hundreds of families in Chin state, many of whom said relatives had been killed, raped or forced into slave labour. Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu, the anti-apartheid campaigner, and former International Criminal Court prosecutor Richard Goldstone called the results of the survey 'devastating' as they joined a call made in the report for an international inquiry into alleged crimes of humanity across Myanmar. Physicians for Human Rights issued its report ahead of a review of Myanmar's record by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next week. Demands for an international commission of inquiry have eased since Myanmar's election in November, which was dominated by pro-junta parties, and the later release of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi. But the US-based group, which shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in the international campaign to ban landmines, said the election had not 'addressed the suffering' of the Myanmar people. Its 'Life Under The Junta' report said that Myanmar's 'authoritarian system, with all the harm it has generated remains intact' and ethnic minorities like the Chin have faced 'particularly brutal treatment under military rule'. The survey, carried out between October 2009 and November 2010, interviewed 621 families across Chin state, which is on the border with India. Physicians for Human Rights said it was the first detailed study of its kind. Crimes committed in Chin state 'include murder, rape, torture, group persecution and other inhumane acts,' said the report. Posted by: Fred 2011-01-20 |
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