Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Sayed Albar, to see for himself the situation inside the country amid international concern over human rights violations of Christians and other groups in Burma.
The Bangkok Post newspaper said Tuesday, December 13, that the agreement with Albar, who is also Malaysia’s foreign minister, came after ASEAN leaders spent one full hour during the 11th ASEAN summit on Sunday, December 11, discussing the perceived lack of progress in the democratisation process of Burma.
Southeast Asian lawmakers have threatened to expel Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, from the ASEAN regional grouping of 10 nations unless it frees democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners within a year, Malaysia’s state run media reported.
Southeast Asian lawmakers have threatened to expel Burma, which is also known as Myanmar, from the ASEAN regional grouping of 10 nations unless it frees democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners within a year, Malaysia’s state run media reported.
Minister Albar was quoted as saying that Burma is "causing problems in the region." The developments came as advocacy group Amnesty International (AI) warned that the human rights situation in Burma has "deteriorated" during 2005, with authorities "increasingly using the justice system as a tool to stifle peaceful dissent."
THOUSANDS OF PETITIONS
AI said it is sending Burmese authorities "thousands of petitions from across the world urging them to stop punishing peaceful dissent and to release all prisoners of conscience". It was also "urging ASEAN and other governments to use their influence" to effect "real change" as their had been "no significant improvement for seventeen years."
AI reported that "people are being prosecuted for reporting human rights violations and talking to journalists. Lengthy prison sentences are handed down to political figures for engaging in political discussion. Torture continues, and people are dying in suspicious circumstances in prisons."
The group said that the sentencing "of peaceful government critics and opposition supporters" increased while "laws excessively restrict basic rights, and trials are not fair." AI claimed, "the harassment of political party members at the local level has become more pervasive" and noted that "local opposition supporters are also being sentenced under trumped-up criminal charges."
Even "professional licences for private tutors have been withdrawn on political grounds," AI added. In addition "Rohingyas — Muslims from western Myanmar — are being imprisoned for travelling without official permission. Censorship has tightened, and teachers, doctors and others are imprisoned for talking about or possessing books about historical political figures," AI noted.
CHRISTIANS SUFFERING
AI’s observations came after several Christian investigators reported religious rights violations of especially predominantly Christian ethnic communities. Christian Freedom International (CFI) said it had learned that "starvation" was rampant among for instance the Karen people, forcing many to flee for government backed forces.
"The people are starving in Burma. I see so many children starving to death. There are so many children dying; they have nothing to eat," 34-year old Pastor Saw Stephen, an ethnic Karen, was quoted as saying.
A BosNewsLife team established earlier in Burma that Karen families have often difficulties planting rice as their jungle villages are attacked by troops of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), a group of generals who have ruled the country despite multiparty elections in 1990 that resulted in the main opposition party – the National League for Democracy (NLD) – winning a landslide victory,
In remarks published by CFI, Stephen claimed his first church, the Shadow Baptist Church with over 250 members, was destroyed by the military government in 1999 and alleged that troops "burned down the houses of the people and came with axes and sticks and destroyed the church."
HOUSE ARREST
He received house arrest for four months, but eventually began another church in Karenni State, which the pastor said was attended by over 120 families, about 600 villagers. The church was destroyed in November of 2003 by soldiers who also forced the villagers to leave the area, Pastor Stephen added.
He has since become part of the estimated 1.5 million internally displaced people of Burma. Stephen and human rights watchers say the Burmese authorities see the spread of Christianity as a threat to their power base and ideology. However the SPDC has denied any wrongdoing and described reports of human rights abuses as a Western campaign and part of US efforts to increase its influence in Southeast Asia.
AI disagrees. "The justice system should guarantee rights, instead it is consistently being used to deny and undermine them. The Myanmar authorities must reform judicial procedures and laws," said Purna Sen, Asia-Pacific Director at AI as she launched a report on Myanmar at the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur.
"It is the responsibility of all governments to ensure that flagrant violations do not continue in Myanmar. ASEAN has a particular responsibility to address grave human rights violations in one of its member states, " AI added. (With BosNewsLife reports from Burma and Bangkok).
