Kunhing Outshines in Killings and Rapes

Kunhing Outshines in Killings and Rapes

Shan human rights reporter:

A Shan human rights reporter told S.H.A.N. today that junta units in Kunhing, a southern Shan town, are surpassing their fellow battalions in the rest of the country with regard to killings and rapes.

“A random look at our monthly reports will find that, during the past six months, they have already killed 99 people and raped 14 women, of whom 8 were also murdered,” said Kham Harnfah, Secretary of Chiangmai-based Shan Human Rights Foundation, which has been providing monthly reports of human rights situation in the Shan State since January 1997. (Altogether 130 killings and 34 rapes were reported during the post six-month period in 12 townships. Shan State has 52 townships.)

There are 2 battalions stationed in Kunhing LIB 524 and IB 246. “IB 246 is more feared for its barbarity,” he said.

He also corrected S.H.A.N.’s reports about the massacres. “We have already reported 3 massacres during the year: the first one in Kunhing, on 30 January, when they shot down 19 men and women; the second on 27 March (celebrated as the Armed Forces Day by the junta) in Mongkerng where 13 people were shot; and the third again in Kunhing in May, when 64 people were killed in one spot alone.”

“It is difficult to imagine how the people can be happy in this kind of terror-ridden state,” he said referring to newspaper reports about the remarks of U Win Aung, Rangoon’s foreign minister currently attending Asean 33 in Bangkok.

U Win Aung was reported to have told his counterparts on Monday, 24 July: “ Peace prevails throughout the length and breadth of the country like never before... What we have is a happy people.”

“In addition to the killings and rapes, there are exorbitant rice procurements, confiscations of the people’s lands where their erstwhile owners have to work for free for the military, continued forced relocations as well as all other varieties of abuses you can think of,” he said. “People who believe democracy will be returned by the military must be living in a different planet.”