PRESS RELEASE
AHRC-PL-87-2005

BURMA: Burma sinking deeper into un-rule of law, AHRC warns

(Hong Kong, December 7, 2005) The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) on Wednesday condemned flagrant judicial misrule and denials of basic economic and social rights in Burma on the occasion of Human Rights Day.

The Hong Kong-based rights group called on the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, to suspend Burma from the Commission on Human Rights and any subsequent Human Rights Council until its government is prepared to take seriously its obligations under international human rights law.

"The presence of the Government of [Burma] at the Commission is nothing more than a cruel joke on the global community, and most of all, on its own people," the AHRC said in a letter to the High Commissioner.

"It is easy to reduce the problems there to simplistic rhetoric about dictatorship versus democracy, slavery versus freedom," the AHRC said in a report on Burmese human rights.

"However, the far more insidious symptoms of the country's persistent decline are in the corrosion of institutions for the rule of law and social administration, and organizations through which parts of civil society might find some opportunity for expression."

The group cited the October jailing of Ma Su Su Nwe, a labour activist, as a new low point in the country's "un-rule of law." With the support of the International Labour Organisation, she had won a case against local government officials for forced labour, but was later sentenced to imprisonment under spurious charges and denied medicine for her chronic heart condition.

While the role of the court has been to intimidate and silence rather than deliver justice, thuggery and coercion by local authorities and police are part of life for people throughout Burma, whether inside prisons or out.

The AHRC outlined anecdotal evidence suggesting that torture is a routine part of investigation and imprisonment in Burma. There are also numerous reports of state agents raping, beating, and sometimes murdering women and young girls.

Since 1998 the AHRC has pointed to the connections between the un-rule of law in Burma and the hunger, sickness and growing deprivation suffered by its people. After a visit to Burma in August, the executive director of the World Food Programme directly related its food shortages and malnutrition to the policies and practices of its government.

"The strongest hope for Burma is that there do appear to be many more like [Ma Su Su Nwe], in every part of the country and in every walk of life, and if their actions coalesce today's faint hope for change may yet become a real possibility," the AHRC said.

The report on Burma is part of a series by the AHRC on 10 Asian countries, released on the occasion of Human Rights Day.

Link to AHRC's 2005 International Human Rights Day page: http://www.ahrchk.net/hrday/2005/

Link to AHRC's Human Rights Day Message: http://www.ahrchk.net/hrday/2005/05message.htm

Link to the Burma report: http://www.ahrchk.net/hrday/2005/pdf/HRDay-Burma.pdf

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About AHRC The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-government organisation monitoring and lobbying for human rights in Asia. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.