UN Rapporteur Blocked on Kachin State Visit
By MOE MYINT
10 January 2017
RANGOON — The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in
Burma Yanghee Lee was restricted from visiting areas of conflict-torn Kachin
State on Monday, according to her spokesperson.
“She was not allowed to travel to Laiza and Hpakant,”
spokesperson U Aye Win told The Irrawaddy Tuesday, adding that the rapporteur’s
team visited camps for internally displaced persons run by the Kachin Baptist
Convention outside state capital Myitkyina instead.
Yanghee Lee arrived in Burma on Sunday and will spend 12
days assessing human rights abuses in the country.
A statement released before the visit said she was expected
to visit Myitkyina, Hpakant, and the border town of Laiza—home to the
headquarters of the ethnic armed group the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).
On Monday evening The Voice of America (VOA) reported that
Yanghee Lee said she had experienced “inconvenience” during her visit to Kachin
State.
VOA quoted Yanghee Lee as saying she had received “no
cooperation from both the Union and Kachin State government—I was not allowed
to visit the places which I applied to visit.”
“That really harms my rights and duties,” she reportedly
went on to say. “My responsibility is to look for injustices and human rights
violations, [the government] did not allow me to visit the places where human
rights violations are taking place.”
A representative of the Joint Strategy Team (JST)—a
coalition of nine NGOs in Kachin and Shan states that met with Yanghee Lee on
Monday—told The Irrawaddy that the UN rapporteur appeared dissatisfied with her
tour of Kachin State.
In the one hour meeting representatives of the JST expressed
concern over a burgeoning number of displaced persons following recent clashes
between the Burma Army and armed ethnic groups in Kachin and Shan states,
Myittar Foundation’s Executive Director Sai Samm Kham said.
Representatives told the UN rapporteur that the state
government had prevented the NGOs from delivering aid to Mong Ko town of Muse
Township, Shan State where houses were damaged by government airstrikes,
according to Sai Samm Kham.
Sai Samm Kham said the NGOs also expressed concern over the
whereabouts of two Kachin pastors who disappeared on Christmas Eve in Mong Ko
after being summoned by the army. The two men had helped journalists from
Rangoon report on the situation in Mong Ko.
The restriction of movement by the Burma Army in northern
Shan State demanding identification at military checkpoints was another issue
raised.
He said Yanghee Lee asked participants whether recent
skirmishes would harm the State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi-led peace process
or not.
Participants responded that the conflict between the KIA and
the Burma Army had now reached its fifth year and that pain and hate is now
deeply rooted in some ethnic Kachins.
“Some say they don’t want to hear the word peace anymore,
they want independence,” Sai Samm Kham said.
Yanghee Lee will travel to be troubled northern Arakan State
on January 13 and is scheduled to spend three days in Maungdaw Township,
according to Arakan State government office secretary U Tin Maung Swe.
The exact locations will be finalised based on the security
situation, he said.
Topics: Ethnic
Armed Groups, Human Rights, Kachin State, Shan State, UN, Yanghee Lee