the "growing humanitarian crisis in Burma," where predominantly Christian minorities are on the run for Burmese government forces, BosNewsLife learned Saturday, November 12.
The appeal came from Simon Coveney, an Irish Member of the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee and Baroness Caroline Cox, a Deputy Speaker of the British House of Lords, who traveled to the Thai-Burmese border area, where a BosNewsLife team investigated the plight of Karen and Karenni refugees in August, this year.
"This was my first visit to the Thai-Burmese border areas, and what I heard and saw confirms everything I had read in reports previously," Coveney said in remarks obtained by BosNewsLife.
"Gross violations of human rights continue to be perpetrated by the Burmese junta. I met people who had fled their villages because they faced constant forced labor, torture, rape and abuse at the hands of the Burma Army. This has gone on for too long and the world has turned a blind eye. It is time now for the international community to act."
BURMESE REFUGEES
Coveney and Cox were part of two fact-finding visits organized by UK-based advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) within a week of each other, to meet refugees in Thailand and internally displaced people across the border in Burma amid reports of new attacks on Karen villages.
Up to 1.5 million people, many of them Christian Karens, are on the run within Burma after they were forced to flee their villages, human rights watchers said.
"Baroness Cox raised the issue in the House of Lords and urged the British Government to support initiatives to put the issue of Burma on the UN Security Council agenda, as proposed in a new report, Threat to the Peace, commissioned by former Czech President Vaclav Havel and Nobel Laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu," said CSW in a statement.
PEOPLE SUFFERING
"I can confirm from first-hand evidence that the suffering of the people of Burma caused by human rights violations by the [Burmese regime] is as grave as ever, and certainly as grave as that outlined in the compelling report [Threat to the Peace]," she reportedly told the House of Lords.
In September CSW reported that forces of the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) launched at least "three new attacks" against members of the Karen community in the Karen State region, most of them refugees from previously attacked villages.
The SPDC is a group of generals which has ruled Burma, which it calls Myanmar, without a constitution or legislature since 1988 after suppressing nationwide anti-military protests. Christian Freedom International (CFI), another Christian human rights and aid group active in Burma, has said there is increasing evidence that the SPDC views the spread of Christianity in Burma as a threat to its ideology and powerbase.
ASIAN POLITICIANS
In addition to visiting refugees, Coveney and Cox met Thai politicians, including the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Kraisak Choonhavan, and members of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus, CSW said. The Caucus was established earlier this year and brings together Parliamentarians from South-East Asia to promote democracy and human rights in Burma.
CSW’s report of the visit, which was released Friday, November 11, details evidence of continuing human rights violations in Burma. It quotes a Karen refugee as saying "the situation is getting worse day by day. If people stay in Burma, how can they get rice?"
BosNewsLife reporters who accompanied a team of CFI in August discovered that Karen people are having difficulties to feed their families as they can not reach rice fields because of attacks by the military. (With BosNewsLife’s Stefan J. Bos who recently visited Burma and Thailand).
