26.11.2006
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The abuse of Karen women under militarization
_ reported by Karen Human Rights Group
(a Karen girl raped and killed by SPDC regime's soldiers)
In any areas where armed groups are active, soldiers and officers exploit civilians in order to support themselves and the military structures on which they depend. Owing to massive military expansion, since the late 1990s the SPDC has been operating under a policy whereby soldiers in Karen and other areas must ‘live off the land’, which almost invariably entails soldiers extorting and looting from the villagers. The widespread and systematic abuse of villagers is thus central to the maintenance of military control. The gender roles and identities present in both Karen and Burman society shape the manner in which such abuses are perpetrated and how they differently affect men and women. General abuses such as extortion or restrictions on movement, which are seemingly committed without any overt prioritization of men or women, can have greatly differing results because of the roles that men and women are expected to fill in the family and society. Furthermore, the militarization of Karen territory has served to propagate military/civilian and male/female power disparities that shape the patterns of abuse perpetrated against villagers.
One of the major factors leading to differences in the patterns of abuse between women and men is that SPDC and DKBA forces frequently treat male villagers as possible KNU/KNLA members, supporters or sympathizers and target them for physical abuse and extortion. The identification of men as more likely soldiers results in certain vulnerabilities particular to men. Also, gendered perceptions of work roles often attribute a greater significance to male over female involvement in subsistence. For both of these reasons, men frequently flee their villages when SPDC and DKBA forces approach in order to avoid conscription for forced labour or possible detention and torture upon allegations of involvement with the KNU/KNLA.
When male villagers are temporarily absent, women are placed in situations of heightened vulnerability and responsibility. While there is some perception that women will be less likely, or less intensively, abused this is not always the case. By remaining to receive the brunt of abuse, women serve, in some respects, as the protectors of men who are thus able to evade military personnel. SPDC and DKBA troops often accuse women, where male family members are absent, of being the wives or daughters of KNU/KNLA members.
They may be detained and tortured for the purpose of extracting information about the involvement and whereabouts of male family members. Many of these incidents function as opportunities for the soldiers to extort more money from the villagers. In some cases, women who stay behind while other villagers flee are simply shot dead or murdered and left stripped and mutilated as a warning to the village. Alternately, where the military units are there for the primary purpose of acquiring forced labour, women are taken in lieu of men.
Whether or not a given abuse is specifically targeted at women, the effects of various abuses differ as a consequence of gender roles in the family and community.
As men often flee upon arrival of military personnel, women are left to protect children, the elderly and household belongings. When soldiers see single women with children and no men, they accuse them of being the wives or mothers of resistance fighters and detain them. In many of these cases the officers know that the woman has no resistance connections, so they release her upon payment of a ransom. If there is any real suspicion, she is tortured and told she will be killed if her husband/son doesn’t surrender. The torture, murder and mutilation of women serve as exemplary punishment to threaten other villagers. Alternatively, these women may arbitrarily be taken into detention by soldiers who use them as hostages, demanding that their husbands ‘surrender’.
Women taken for forced labour are also subject to increased likelihood of abuse. Women forced to work as messengers, guides, sentries or porters or labour on construction projects are beaten, mistreated, and sometimes raped.
[These are excerpts from Karen Human Rights Group's report Dignity in the Shadow of Oppression.]
Comments:
Habib Siddiqui said _
Recently, some newspapers have covered SPDC's crime against the Karen people of Burma. Such genocidal campaigns again show that the war criminals within the SPDC are unfettered by world pressure calling upon them to change their course. All the conscientious human beings around the globe must condemn this latest atrocious campaign against the Karen people. A petition drive should be attempted so that the UNSC can take actions against the culprit regime.
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