Junta committing genocide

Junta committing genocide, charges Shan woman

According to documents that recently reached S.H.A.N., a Shan woman representative, participating in a meeting organized by the British House of Commons on 30 October, had accused the military authorities in Rangoon as committing genocide against non-Burmans. 

Submitting a document, generally believed to be issued by the present junta after the 1988 uprisings, offering monetary reward to each Burmese soldier who marries a Shan woman "in order to assimilate and destroy the Shan race" and citing several examples of atrocities, she said, "If the case of Genocide committed against the Shan and other ethnic nationals by the Burmese junta, compared to the cases of Rwanda and Kosovo, appears small in number, (it is) only because the Burmese are very devious. They commit all the atrocious crimes behind closed doors and there are no foreign journalists to observe and broadcast their atrocities ... the Burmese junta is very sensitive to international opinions." 

Madame Dai, as she prefers to be known, also related to her audience that consisted of interested MPs and members of the public of the massive forced relocation program launched by Rangoon in 11 townships in 1996-1998 when over 300,000 people were forcibly displaced during their campaign against Shan rebels led by Yawdserk. "Almost every time they have a clash with the Shan soldiers, the Burmese junta take it out on the Shan civilians, whether or not they are involved in the conflict." 

Two other non-Burmans, both Karens, were also present to submit their cases at the hearing chaired by Edward Leigh, an MP and solicitor. 

The representatives urged the British government to use its permanent seat at the UN Security Council to lobby for the setting up of an International Criminal Tribunal on Burma and try the regime for Crime against Humanity, War Crimes and Genocide, among others. 

Mr Leigh, who had initiated a debate on the persecution of Karen, Karenni and Shan in the House of Commons in April, six months after Lord Alton of Liverpool began the discussion in the House of Lords, said, "What the Burmese military regime is doing to the Karen, Shan and Karenni ethnic groups clearly fits within the international legal definition of genocide." 

"(G)enocide need not be an attempt to destroy the entire ethnic group. Just attempting to destroy PART of an ethnic group suffices. What is happening to the Karen, Karenni and Shan nationals in Burma falls within the scenarios given in (Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide)... Only ONE of the five acts described in Article 2's definition should apply to the situation in question in order for it to be considered genocide but in the case of Burma at least three of the scenarios apply." 

They are, as he point out, 
1. Killing members of a group; 
2. Causing serious bodily harm or mental harm to members of a group; 
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part. (Others are 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." 

The two main opposition parties, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, had declared their support. 

Burma is a signatory to the Convention. 

Follow-up

The same day that this report went out on the net, the following unconfirmed information was received: 

A business woman from Namzang, on her visit to the border, claimed a Dr. Saw Naing Oo, head of the Sao Sarm Htun Hospital in Taunggyi, issued a directive on 1 November to all medical officers in the Eastern Region Command that every married Shan country woman, except those in pregnancy, be administered with a certain injection. It applied also to women one-month after they had given birth. Each administration costs K. 300. Those who fail face a ten-year imprisonment. 

The reason given to the women were that the injections would make them immune to toxic elements. But many believed it was to sterilize them. 

The fourth genocidal act described in Article 2 of the Convention articulates: Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.