11.03.2007
Victims of Human rights Violations
_ by Sao Noan Oo
Like the Karens and Karennis, the Shans have been the victims of Human rights violations for more than forty years, including genocide.
The Shans are the ethnic majority group in the Shan State, situated on the plateau east of Burma bordered by China, Laos, Thailand, Karenni State, Burma Proper and Kachin State.
The Shan State which was once a quiet and peaceful country is now a land of fear and terror.
The majority of Shans earned their living by farming on the fertile land along the river valleys. They are simple, honest and peace-loving folks: contented just to be able to earn their living for survival.
The Shan State had until 1962, been the home and haven of the Shan people for thousand of years; and then they had the right to own land and property, which were passed down from one generation to the other.
In 1962, when the Burmese military, under Ne Win staged a coup and occupied the Shan State, they committed the first Human rights violations against the Shan people: they took away their freedom and the right of self-determination.
They inactivated the Shan leaders by putting them in prison, and killed some of them because they refused to sign certain documents. The army marched to the House of the ex-President, Sao Shwe Thaike to capture and put him in prison and killed one of his young sons.
The military coup was followed by the obsession of Ne Win to rule over and Burmanise the non-Burman Nationals, by controlling them with arms and force. They adopted the policy of ethnic cleansing by denying the Shans to study their own language and by destroying their cultural heritage. In 1999, when interviewed by a member of the Burma Relief Centre, A Shan Monk spoke out about the effects of Burmese military rule on the Buddhism in the Shan state. He said, as a Shan Monk he was not able to teach Buddhism and the teaching of Shan was prohibited in the whole of the Shan State. The regime was stopping the Shans from practising their culture. Any architectural and cultural heritage that symbolised the existence of Shan and their culture were destroyed and replaced with those of Burmese. They also adopted a reward system to assimilate the Shan within the Burmese Nationals. Time does not permit me to read this translation by Amnesty International of a document setting out the order to assimilate and destroy the Shan race. Therefore, I summit as evidence a copy of the document.
In order for the Burmese military to fulfil the ambition of their leader, Ne Win to destroy other ethnic groups and occupy their homes and lands Burma became the institution of torture. Young men of non-Burmese ethnic nationals rose and resisted the military rule: they were fighting for their survival and freedom. From then on the military junta not only tried to suppress the resistant movements of every non-Burman ethnic group but also subjected the civilians to terror: rape, extrajudicial killing, massacred and genocide, especially in areas of conflict.
The Shan met with the worst devastation of their lives when the Burmese Army began a massive relocation program. From 1996-1998 over 300,000 of 1,500 households from 11 township (counties) were forced at gunpoint into strategic relocation sites. No assistance of any type was provided and the relocated villagers were forbidden to return to their villages. Vast areas of ownership lands have been turned into depopulated zones; and are now fields full of poppy plants, which are used to produce opium and amphetamine to finance Burmese army and failing economy. The villagers in the location sites were used extensively as forced labourers. In the relocation sites the living conditions were poor and unsanitary and many died of mal nourishment.
In 1997 and 1998, the relocation program was intensified, and there was a sharp increase in the number of extrajudicial killing by the junta and repeated massacres of villagers caught outside the relocation sites. This was a deliberate action taken to deny the villagers the means of livelihood; it is an act of genocide.
Being a Shan has become the reasons to be afraid of the Burmese military junta. Almost every time they clash with the Shan soldiers the Burmese junta take it out on the Shan civilians, whether or not they are involved in the conflict.
If I were to give you all the lists of crimes committed by the Burmese military junta against humanity it will take days or even months to read out. Even after the sanction and pressure put on them by the Western Governments the Burmese military is still committing atrocities against the Shan people, and forced labour is still being practised.
Here are some examples of atrocities committed by the junta as reported by the Shan Human Rights Foundation, S.H.A.N, and Mr. Wilfred Wong, from Jubilee Campaign.
In March, 1997 the military regime raped and killed a young girl of 12 on her way to feed her parents’ herds of cattle. Her parents requested permission to bury the body of their daughter, but the regime’s reply was, “She must be kept like this, as an example for the people of the Shan State. If you bury her you will also die with her”.
In 1997 alone 664 people were recorded as having been killed in or near the relocation areas; many also died through illness, mal nutrition and starvation.
Throughout 1997, the SLORC troops killed villagers for just foraging for foods near the location sites and for trying to fish in the stream.
Villagers were also massacred in large groups, including those who were given permission to return to their villages.
In June 1997, two groups of relocated people were given permission to return to their old villages to collect rice. But they had been deceived: This is the story of a young woman who had been spared because she had a baby:
“We were made to stay in a house. The SLORC troops came to the door and called out the people one by one. They called away 16 people first, 12 men and 4 women. Then they came to call a group of 10. Then I heard bursts of machine guns fire. They were killing the 16 people. Then after just a bit I heard a gun fire nearby. In the group of 10 my husband died. In the group of 16, my younger sister and her husband died. I was shaking, shaking! I was sitting and shaking all the time. My blood was hot all over my body. I could not think properly, I would have ran away but they were standing there, guarding me. I think I would be dead if I hadn’t had my son with me. One of the women pleaded, and she squeezed out milk from her breast to show that she had a baby, but the SLORC commander said her baby was probably dead, and killed her (interviewed BY SHRF on August 30th. 1997)
In 1997, (June 16th ) Burmese troops massacred Shan villagers at a village in Kun Hang Township. 29 civilians were tied up and machine gunned, Another 27 Shan were similarly executed in another village.
On July 11 of the same year the SLORC laid out 26 beheaded bodies of Shan villagers beside the road so as to warn other villagers not to stray from the location sites. The next day a further 12 headless corpses were placed by the roadside.
As reported by Amnesty International in 1998 “Atrocities worsen in the Shan State” _
In February 2000, 20 Shan villagers who were conducting religious ceremony rite at an altar at Loi Maak Hin Taang, were massacred by a column of Burmese troops from infantry 246, in Kun Hingn township, and 5 others were also killed on the same day, in a different place by the same troop.
In 2000 February 23rd. Burmese troops from infantry Battalion 246 led by Captain Htun Aung , seized and shot dead 64 internally displaced Shan people, including children 7 and 4 years of age. This massacre occurred at a place between Sai Mong and Kun Hing in Southern Shan State.
In late 2000 in May 6 displaced Shan women were raped and killed by Burmese troops from infantry Battalion 246, led by Captain Aung Htay. The women were first robbed, then Captain Aung Htay encouraged his soldiers to rape the women and did so himself. About 50 or 60 soldiers took turns raping the 6 women and then killed them at the command of the Captain.
In October 2000, 13 displaced farmers were massacred in Murng Kerng- they were surrounded and gunned down without any warning by 80-90 troops of No.5 of LIB 514 under the command of Captain Pan Aung.
In 2001, 5 internally displaced Shan farmers who were building a dam on Nam Kham stream for diverting water to a field to grow rice were forced to stand in a row and shot dead by Burmese troops from Infantry Battalion 246 in Ka Li Village tract, kun Hing township. The troops had accused the farmers of being rebels or providing rice to Shan rebels.
In late May, 2001 14 Shan villagers travelling to Thailand on foot unintentionally slipped into the vicinity of an amphetamine factory 18 miles north of Thailand border. They were intercepted and killed in Hauy Pa Khi, in Mong Tong Township by Burmese soldiers belonging to the Infantry Battalion 225 led by Captain Maung Thaung.
Before their death these villagers were brutally beaten by the Burmese army because they went too near the amphetamine factory set up by Wei Sue Kang and guarded by the Burmese military. Wei is the warlord and leader of the Wa army, who works in partnership with the junta. Wei is wanted by both the Thai Government and the US law enforcement agencies for drug offences.
The Shan run a greater risk of being subjected to a wide variety of human rights violations because they are of a particular group.
From 1996 until to day there are countless of Shans fleeing to Thailand. Unlike refugees of other ethnic groups the Shans have no access to refugee camps, where they could get humanitarian help and education for the children. Instead they have been labelled as illegal immigrants by the Thai Government. Some have been arrested and sent back, and yet they, the Shan continue to flow into Thailand. The Thai and Shans are culturally and linguistically related and as such the Thai Government do not want to appear supporting the Shan; for economic and political reasons the Thai do not want to damage their relationship with the Junta.
The Shan people are like herds of stampeded cattle, running for their lives; no refuge in Thailand nor in their own country of birth. There are hundreds of thousands internally displaced Shans with very little help from the International Communities.
In the four decades of the regime the Burmese military with their fanatical obsession to destroy the non-Burman nationals have forsaken their conscience, principles and religion. They have destroyed thousands and thousands of lives by the most evil methods; they have used all forms of torture, and subjected countless citizens to terror.
What you have read here are just a very few of numerous and continuing atrocities being inflicted on the Karen, Karenni and Shan Nationals.
In 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, only because the Generals are very devious. They commit the atrocious crimes behind closed doors, and there are no foreign journalists to observe and broadcast their atrocities. Some atrocities might not have been witnessed by the villagers, and even if they have been witnessed not all have been documented.
But are these gruesome acts which have been witnessed and documented not crimes against humanity? Are these not genocide too, when the Burmese junta is deliberately inflicting destruction on Shan National as a whole, and trying to exterminate them by massacre, robbing them of their livelihood and making it impossible for them to survive and denying them of citizenship in their own country? Of course, it is genocide.
In spite of all their cruelties the Burmese Junta is very sensitive to international opinions and they will cunningly and blatantly lie their way out.
The above is from my speech given by to the Select Committee at the British House of Commons, UK in October, 2001.
It is now more than 5 years since the above speech was given and the atrocities in Burma have not lessened. The degrees of human rights violations not only against the Shans but all ethnic nationals in Burma vary according to the whims of the Generals and Officers of Military Regime. At present the prime target is aimed against the Karens.
It is the Generals that give orders to the soldier, crouching over his rifle, who knows nothing better than the hunger or the desire to kill as he lives every day of his life by the gun, by the command and by the indoctrination of his masters.
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Comments:
Sao Noan Oo said _
Please visit the web site loisamseep.info under Shan State, subtitle Human rights for pictures of the above article under Human Rights_ also introducing the Federated Shan States through the eyes of a person who had been through the British, Japanese, U Nu and the two military regimes.
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