Thursday, February
23, 2017
By Dr.Maung Zarni
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Kachin and Rohingya
activists in diaspora launch an
international opinion tribunal on Myanmar's
atrocity crimes
against their communities at home
|
The Rome-based
Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) will be holding the inaugural session of its
first-ever Tribunal on Myanmar at Queen Mary University of London International
State Crime Initiative on 6 and 7 March. (https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/permanent-peoples-tribunal-myanmar-state-crimes-against-rohingya-and-other-ethnic-minorities-tickets-31967250908
)
The establishment of
this people’s tribunal is in response to the requests made by Myanmar’s
Rohingya and Kachin victims who have made credible allegations that their
respective ethnic communities have suffered international crimes at the hands
of Myanmar government troops, including crimes against humanity, war crimes and
genocide.
Subsequent tribunal
hearings are envisaged in in USA and Malaysia before the jury reach the verdict
later this year.
The PPT includes
renowned genocide scholars such as Daniel Feierstein, past President of the
International Association of Genocide Scholars, Dr Helen Jarvis, former Public
Affairs Officer at the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, Dennis Halliday, former Assistant
Secretary of the UN and winner of Gandhi International Peace Award (2003). The
Tribunal is in the process of selecting members of the Panel of Jury from
amongst a list of public figures whose nominations are based on their
established personal integrity, professional competence and concerns for the
victims.
Among the experts
who will appear before the PPT will be Dr Mandy Sadan, Associate Dean of
Research at School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London &
author of Being & Becoming Kachin: Histories Beyond the State in the Border
worlds of Burma (Oxford University Press, 2013), Professor Penny Green of the
International State Crime Initiative, and Azril Mohammad Amin of the Centre for
Human Rights Research and Advocacy (Centhra), Malaysia.
“The gravity of
Myanmar’s alleged mistreatment of these ethnic communities has been a concern
for us at the PPT for a number of years. My colleagues and I are glad to be
able to respond positively to the victims’ request for a credible moral
tribunal on what appear to be international crimes being committed by the
government of Myanmar,” said Dr Gianni Tognoni, Secretary General of Permanent
Peoples’ Tribunal.
The People’s Tribunal
has a long history as an effective means of transforming communities marred by
state sponsored crimes. It has convened forty-three times to deliver judgments
that have guided societies through such struggles as post-colonialism,
globalization, war, and economic injustice. It is renowned for its rigorous
selection criteria for its jury members.
Hkanhpa Sadan, the
General Secretary of the Kachin National Organization (KNO), representing many
in the Kachin diaspora, said, “Our Kachin people have been crying out for
justice and accountability since Myanmar government unilaterally ended the
17-year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Organization nearly 6 years ago.
While talking up democratic transition in the media, Myanmar government has
been bombing – even using fighter jets and gunship helicopters – our
communities in Northern Myanmar, displacing thousands of our people, including
women, elderly, children and infants from their own homes.” He pointed out that
Myanmar is blocking humanitarian assistance and supplies to Kachin war refugees
while refusing to permit the UN Special Rapporteur Professor Yanghee Lee access
to the area last month to travel to the internally displaced people (IDP) camps
where IDP thousands of families are freezing in make-shift camps in the high
altitude mountainous, with little food or medical supplies.
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| Persecuted Rohingya Refugee |
Tun Khin, President
of Burmese Rohingya Association UK, a participating organization, expresses his
appreciation for the PPT staff for the tribunal. “We Rohingyas are grateful
that this tribunal effort is materializing at this crucial juncture.
Generations of us Rohingya have suffered what we experience as a genocide in
our own ancestral lands.” He continues, “my grandfather was a proud Rohingya
parliamentary secretary in democratic Burma in the 1950’s, and in 2017, my
family and I are refugees in UK now. We are subject to Myanmar’s policy of
extermination because of our religion and ethnicity.”
On the western
frontier region of Rakhine, Myanmar troops have been accused of “very likely”
committing crimes against humanity by the United Nations Human Rights
Commissioner’s team. On 3 February the UN Office of High Commission for Human
Rights (OHCHR) issued a 43-page report of interviews with 200+
persecution-fleeing Rohingya men and women in Bangladesh’s refugee camps, which
detailed harrowing accounts of rape, gang-rape, wanton killings, arson,
helicopter and rocket launcher attacks and other numerous forms of inhumane
atrocities against unarmed, peaceful Rohingyas.
The UN report
states,” “The testimonies gathered by the team – the killing of babies,
toddlers, children, women and elderly; opening fire at people fleeing; burning
of entire villages; massive detention; massive and systematic rape and sexual
violence; deliberate destruction of food and sources of food – speak volumes of
the apparent disregard by Tatmadaw and BGP officers that operate in the
lockdown zone for international human rights law, in particular the total
disdain for the right to life of Rohingyas.”
For decades, the
Muslim Rohingya minority in Burma have suffered state crimes that many human
rights investigators and scholars conclude amount to crimes against humanity
and even a “slow genocide” as stated by Amartya Sen. They have been stripped of
their citizenship and rendered stateless; prohibited from travelling even
between villages; forbidden from obtaining education or gainful employment;
forced into labour; physically brutalized including extrajudicial killings,
rape, and torture; driven from their burning homes and villages; and
dehumanized because of their faith & skin colour.
In addition to
Rohingya and Kachin organizations in diaspora, International State Crime
Initiative at Queen Mary University of London, Burma Task Force USA, JUST and
the Centre for Human Rights
Research and
Advocacy (Centhra) from Malaysia, USA-based Genocide Watch, South Africa’s
Protect the Rohingya and Burmese Muslim Association are supporting the tribunal.
Cambodia Genocide survivor and genocide prevention campaigner Youk Chhang and
Burmese genocide scholar Dr Maung Zarni are also among the tribunal’s
individual supporters.
Within the United
Nations, the Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar,
Yanghee Lee, has reportedly said that she will be recommending a UN-mandated
Commission of Inquiry on Rohingyas in her official Mission report to the UN
Human Rights Council in Geneva, which she is scheduled to present on 13 March.
Myanmar’s hybrid
government of Aung San Suu Kyi and the military has responded to these serious
international crimes allegations first by dismissing them as “fake news” and
later setting up its own “national investigation commission” headed by
ex-general and Vice President Myint Swe. UN Special Adviser on Genocide
Prevention Adama Dieng has officially dismissed Myanmar’s national commission
as “not a credible option” while Ms Yanghee Lee said, “it doesn’t even have the
methodology” to investigate the atrocity crimes. Dr Maung Zarni said “Myanmar’s
own investigation would be like wolves figuring out who ate the chickens.”
There has been a
concerted activist campaign worldwide for UN member states to adopt a
resolution to establish a UN inquiry. UK government has come under strong
criticism from human rights campaign groups for privileging its business
interests in Burma while ignoring serious allegations of crimes against
humanity committed by Myanmar Security troops which the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) says the British Armed Forces are training on human
rights and accountability.
//end text//
Media Contacts:
Dr Gianni Tognoni,
Secretary General of Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, Rome, Italy
Email: giantogn@gmail.com
Tun Khin, President,
Burmese Rohingya Organization UK
Email: tunkhin80@gmail.com
Hkun Htoi Layang,
Deputy Secretary, Kachin National Organization
Email: hkunhtoi@gmail.com