ND Burma
ND-Burma formed in 2004 in order to provide a way for Burma human rights organizations to collaborate on the human rights documentation process. The 13 ND-Burma member organizations seek to collectively use the truth of what communities in Burma have endured to advocate for justice for victims. ND-Burma trains local organizations in human rights documentation; coordinates members’ input into a common database using Martus, a secure open-source software; and engages in joint-advocacy campaigns.
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Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo among 6,520 prisoners freed in presidential pardon
/in NewsBy YE MON | FRONTIER
YANGON — Reuters journalists Ko Wa Lone and Ko Kyaw Soe Oo were among 6,520 inmates freed on Tuesday in the third and final round of a mass presidential pardon to mark the Myanmar New Year.
The two reporters were freed from Yangon’s Insein Prison on Tuesday morning.
Wa Lone told reporters after his release that he would continue working as a journalist and he thanked everyone who supported him and Kyaw Soe Oo and their families while they were in Insein Prison.
“I want to thank everyone who helped us in prison, and everyone around the world who called for our release. I can’t wait to get back to the newsroom now,” he said.
Prison warden U Zaw Zaw told Frontier that actor Ko Moe Aung Yin, who was given a combined sentence of 17 years in prison late last year for the possession and abuse of drugs, would also be freed.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo lost their final appeal at Myanmar’s Supreme Court on April 23 against their seven-year sentences for breaking the Official Secrets Act.
After the verdict, a lawyer for the journalists said that their families would write to President U Win Myint asking him to review their conviction.
“A presidential pardon is the best hope for the release of the two journalists. It wouldn’t need to take long,” U Khin Maung Zaw said.
This is the third round of presidential pardons, after Win Myint freed 9,551 prisoners on April 17 and another 6,948 on April 26, most of whom were serving sentences for drug offences. Just five political prisoners were included in these two pardons, leaving activists frustrated.
President’s Office spokesperson U Zaw Htay hinted on April 26 that political prisoners would be freed in a third round. The government had discussed releasing “prisoners whose sentences were related to political issues”, he said.
It was unclear on Tuesday morning how many political prisoners would be freed.
The Myanmar Prisons Department, which is part of the military-controlled Ministry of Home Affairs, released a statement last month asserting that there were no political prisoners in Myanmar, and that all prison inmates had been sentenced for committing criminal acts.
On Tuesday the United Nations in Myanmar said in a statement that it welcomed the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo from prison.
“The UN in Myanmar considers the release of Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo a step toward improving the freedom of the press and a sign of Government’s commitment to Myanmar’s transition to democracy,” it said.
Reuters editor-in-chief Mr Stephen J Adler said, “We are enormously pleased that Myanmar has released our courageous reporters, Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. Since their arrests 511 days ago, they have become symbols of the importance of press freedom around the world. We welcome their return”.
Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were sentenced in September 2018 by a Yangon district court judge who ruled that they possessed “secret” documents that could have damaged national security.
Defence lawyers appealed on the grounds that the police had set the journalists up, a claim supported by a police witness for the prosecution, who testified that documents were planted on them. Judges at the Yangon Region High Court, and the Supreme Court in Nay Pyi Taw, nevertheless upheld the ruling.
The case was criticized internationally as an attack on media freedom, but domestic support for the journalists was limited, partly because of public anger with the international media over its perceived bias towards the Rohingya in its coverage of Rakhine State.
Mr Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday that Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo should never have been arrested, much less imprisoned, and their release was long overdue.
“But the crisis is not over for the literally dozens of other Burmese journalists and bloggers who are still facing baseless criminal charges for their reporting about the Tatmadaw or NLD [National League for Democracy] government officials,” he said.
“Myanmar’s faltering respect for media freedom is indicates the dire situation facing human rights and democracy as the country moves toward national elections in 2020.”
Frontier
Human Rights Situation in Burma 2018
/in ND-Burma's Reports, Periodic ReportThe reporting period saw approximately 190 armed clashes, with some 32,000 people becoming newly displaced as a result.1 At the time of writing, there is an estimated 106,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in 172
IDP sites in northern Shan and Kachin states, with requests by humanitarian organizations for humanitarian access to IDP camps outside of Burma government-controlled areas for the most part being denied.
ND-Burma’s bi-annual report finds intensification of conflict led to continued deterioration of human rights in Burma
/in Press Releases and StatementsND-Burma’s bi-annual report finds intensification of conflict led to continued deterioration of human rights in Burma
18 April 2018
For immediate press release
Throughout 2018, ND-Burma found that the human rights situation in Burma continued to deteriorate due to the intensification of conflict between the military and ethnic armed organisations (EAOs). This was particularly the case in northern Kachin and Shan states, and the majority of cases documented by ND-Burma’s member organisations originated from these two states.
In Kachin and northern Shan states, the military was responsible for human rights violations against civilians during armed conflict, including: indiscriminate shelling and aerial bombing of civilian areas; torture and inhumane and degrading treatment; extrajudicial killings; arbitrary arrest and detention. In one case, indiscriminate shelling near village areas led to the displacement of an entire village, multiple injuries, and one death.
Ethnic armed organisations were also implicated in human rights violations, such as arbitrary arrest, detention and forced disappearances; forced recruitment and labour; and deaths as a result of fighting between armed groups in civilian areas. A series of forced disappearances of civilians by Restoration Council of Shan State/Shan State Army (RCSS/SSA) soldiers, particularly in Nammatu Township, led one villager to plead, “We appeal to the RCSS/SSA to release all our villagers and not to arrest any more villagers. Our villagers are not involved in the conflict and should not be used as hostages by armed groups.”
The last quarter of 2018 saw renewed armed clashes between the Arakan Army (AA) and the military in Rakhine State’s Buthidaung and Rathedaung townships, and more than 700 villagers were displaced in December after daily clashes erupted in northern Rakhine State.
The escalation in conflict has also resulted in civilians being killed and injured by landmines laid by both government soldiers and EAOs.
A lack of respect for human life and dignity runs throughout all of the cases of human rights violations ND-Burma records. Weak rule of law and a culture of impunity means the vast majority of victims never see justice or receive redress for what they have endured. This is despite the fact that victims of human rights violations often have immediate and significant needs, such as medical care or livelihood assistance. The Burmese government therefore needs to urgently implement a reparations programme to address victims’ needs and build a system that respects human rights.
Key Findings:
Media Contact:
Aung Khaing Min
Advocacy Team
Ph: +95 9 261-009-995
ND-Burma is a network that consists of 12 member organisations who represent a range of ethnic nationalities, women and former political prisoners. ND-Burma member organisations have been documenting human rights abuses and fighting for justice for victims since 2004. The network consists of six Full Members and six Affiliate Members as follows:
Full Members:
Affiliate Members:
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မြန်မာ အစိုးရ တပ် နာမည်ပျက် စာရင်း သွင်းခံရ
/in Newsမြန်မာ နိုင်ငံမှာ အစိုးရ စစ်တပ် ဟာ အဓမ္မ ပြုကျင့် တာတွေ၊ လိင် ပိုင်း ဆိုင်ရာ အကြမ်းဖက် မှုတွေ ကျူးလွန် နေတယ် ဆိုတဲ့ စွပ်စွဲ ချက် နဲ့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ က အတွင်း ရေးမှူးချုပ် အန်တိုနီယို ဂူတားရက်စ် နာမည် ပျက် စာရင်း တင်သွင်း လိုက်ပါတယ်။
အစိုးရ စစ်တပ် အနေနဲ့ ပထမဦးဆုံး အကြိမ် ကုလသမဂ္ဂ မှာ နာမည်ပျက် စာရင်း သွင်း ခံရတာ ဖြစ်ပြီး ဧပြီလ ၁၆ ရက်နေ့မှာ ကျင်းပမယ့် လုံခြုံရေး ကောင်စီ အစည်းအဝေးမှာ ဒီ အကြောင်းကို ဆွေးနွေးကြမှာပါ။
အရင် စစ် အစိုးရ လက်ထက်က စစ်တပ် ခေါင်းဆောင် ပိုင်း ကို ခရီးသွားလာ ခွင့်တွေ ပိတ်တာ၊ စီးပွားရေး အရ ပိတ်ဆို့ အရေးယူ မှုတွေ လုပ်တာ ရှိခဲ့ပေမယ့် ဒီလိုမျိုး နာမည်ပျက် စာရင်းသွင်းတာ မရှိခဲ့ပါဘူး။
ကုလသမဂ္ဂ လူသားချင်း စာနာ ထောက်ထားမှုရေးရာ ညှိနှိုင်းရေးရုံးရဲ့ လက်ထောက် အတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ်လည်းဖြစ် အရေးပေါ် ကယ်ဆယ်ရေးဆိုင်ရာ ဒုတိယ ညှိနှိုင်းရေးမှူးလည်းဖြစ်တဲ့ မစ္စ အာဆူလာ မူလာ က သူ့ရဲ့ မြန်မာ ပြည် ခရီးစဉ် အပြီးမှာ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ မှာ အစီရင် ခံစာ တင်သွင်း ခဲ့ပြီးနောက် အတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ် က အခုလို နာမည်ပျက် စာရင်း တင်သွင်းတာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
မစ္စတာ ဂူတားရက်စ် တင်သွင်း တဲ့ အစီရင် ခံစာ ထဲမှာ မြန်မာ စစ်တပ် အနေနဲ့ ရခိုင် ပြည်နယ် မှာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက်မှုတွေ ကျယ်ကျယ် ပြန့်ပြန် လုပ်ဆောင် ခဲ့ပြီး အမျိုးသမီးတွေကို အဓမ္မ ပြုကျင့်မှုတွေ လုပ်ဆောင် ခဲ့ ကြောင်း ဖော်ပြ ထားပါတယ်။
ကုလသမဂ္ဂ က နာမည်ပျက် စာရင်း သွင်းယုံ နဲ့ အရေးယူ ဆောင်ရွက် နိုင်တာ မျိုး မရှိပေမယ့် လုံခြုံရေး ကောင်စီ အဖွဲ့ဝင် နိုင်ငံတွေရဲ့ သဘောထား မှတ်ချက် က အဓိက ကျ ကြောင်း အာရှ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ကော်မရှင် အဖွဲ့ရဲ့ မြန်မာ နိုင်ငံ ဆိုင်ရာ တာဝန်ခံ ဦးမင်းလွင်ဦး က ဘီဘီစီ ကို ပြောပါတယ်။
ဧပြီလ ၁၆ ရက်နေ့မှာ ဆွေးနွေးမယ့် လုံခြုံရေး ကောင်စီ အစည်းအဝေးမှာ မြန်မာ့ အရေး ကိုလည်း ဆွေးနွေး အဖြေရှာ ဖို့ ရှိပါတယ်။
အမေရိကန် နိုင်ငံ အနေနဲ့ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ချိုးဖောက် မှုတွေ ရှိတယ် ဆိုတဲ့ စွပ်စွဲ ချက် နဲ့ တပ်မတော် ခေါင်းဆောင် အချို့ ကို ပစ်မှတ်ထား ပိတ်ဆို့ အရေးယူမှုတွေ ချမှတ် ထားပါတယ်။
မြန်မာ့ ဒီမိုကရေစီ အသွင် ကူးပြောင်းမှု ဖြစ်စဉ်မှာ တပ်မတော် က အားတက်သရော ပူးပေါင်း ပါဝင်မှု မရှိတဲ့ အခြေအနေ ကို သူတို့က သတိပေး လိုက်တာ ဖြစ်နိုင်ကြောင်း သုံးသပ် မှုတွေလည်း ရှိနေပါတယ်။
BBC News
Justice News (March 2019)
/in Justice NewslettersSeeking Justice in Burma
March 2019
Clashes intensify in Rakhine State displacing thousands; Burma Army continues to violate its declaration of a unilateral ceasefire in Kachin and Shan states; UN Human Rights Council adopts resolution and renews Special Rapporteur’s mandate; and deadline to register ancestral land passes with potentially devastating consequences
Bodies of policemen killed in a militant attack are covered at the Yoetayoke police station in Ponnakyun township, western Myanmar’s Rakhine state, March 10, 2019.
AFP
Clashes between the Arakan Army (AA) and the Burma Army in Rakhine and Chin states continued following the escalation of conflict between the two in the last quarter of 2018. Skirmishes persisted throughout March, including one armed clash in Paletwa Township, Chin State, that killed at least 12 Burma Army soldiers. An AA attack on a police outpost in Ponnagyun Township, Rakhine State, left nine police officers dead and two others injured.
Fighting between the two continued in Ponnagyun Township, with the Burma Army conducting aerial bombardments and artillery attacks, leading to the displacement of a number of nearby villages. In addition, the Burma Army indiscriminately opened fire into the town of Mrauk-U in Rakhine State, injuring seven women and children, followed by the displacement of thousands of villagers who fled after door-to-door searches for AA soldiers and shooting incidents left them fearful for their lives.
Despite the declaration of a four-month unilateral ceasefire by the Burma Army in the north and northeast of the country in December, clashes continued to erupt in Kachin and Shan states. Five-hundred villagers were displaced after Burma Army airstrikes on a Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army (SSPP/SSA) camp, and another 200 were displaced after government forces clashed with SSPP/SSA and Ta’ang National Liberation Army soldiers in Namtu Township.
According to a government spokesperson, eight ethnic armed groups, not party to the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), and the government’s peace team signed a five-point agreement, which included an agreement to meet at least every two months.
The Peace Process Steering Team, which is composed of 10 NCA signatories, met in early March to discuss key issues in the current peace process and a timeframe for the recontinuation of talks after they were suspended in October over disagreements concerning the concepts of “single army” and “non-secession from the Union”, agreeing to meet again in May.
The UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution on the situation of human rights in Burma at its 40th regular session. The Council expressed serious and grave concerns over ongoing reports of gender-based and sexual violence against women and children in Rakhine, Kachin, and Shan states, as well as the ongoing violence and displacement in conflict zones. The Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar’s mandate was extended for another year, and the Burma Government was called upon to resume without delay its cooperation.
The resolution also calls for the rapid implementation of the ongoing independent mechanism to collect and preserve evidence of the most serious crimes and violations of international law committed in Burma since 2011, in order to hold perpetrators accountable for their crimes at national, regional or international courts or tribunals, that have or may have jurisdiction in the future, in accordance with international law.
A military court was established to investigate the Burma Army’s conduct during its crackdown on the Rohingya population in Rakhine State, which displaced more than 700,000 people in late 2017. The court is composed of a major-general and two colonels who will conduct the investigation. The statement by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s office was widely met with criticism and derision online.
In a controversial move, Bangladesh announced its plans to start relocating thousands of Rohingya refugees to a remote island beginning in April. The island is considered prone to flooding during extreme weather events, and some have warned this could create a “new crisis” for the Rohingya.
The Burma Army released 32 children and young people who had been recruited under the age of 18 to serve in the armed forces, the first such release of child soldiers in 2019. In addition to the Burma Army, a number of Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) in Burma have also been identified by the UN Secretary General as “persistent perpetrators” in the recruitment of children for use as soldiers.
Aye Maung, a prominent Rakhine leader, and author Wai Hin Aung were both sentenced to 20 years in jail for treason, following their arrests in January of 2018. Both had given speeches allegedly criticizing the Bamar-dominated government and its treatment of Rakhine people.
The Supreme Court of the Union heard an appeal submitted by the lawyers of jailed Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo. The 26-page appeal included evidence that the pair had been framed by police, as well as international precedent where sentences in similar cases had been reversed.
The deadline for the registration of ancestral lands under the Vacant, Fallow, and Virgin Land Management Law was passed on March 11th, leading to calls by prominent human rights groups to halt the implementation of the law in view of the potentially devastating negative impact it may have on individuals and communities.
ND-Burma is a network that consists of 12 member organisations who represent a range of ethnic nationalities, women and former political prisoners. ND-Burma member organisations have been documenting human rights abuses and fighting for justice for victims since 2004. The network consists of six Full Members and six Affiliate Members as follows:
Full Members:
Affiliate Members:
Myanmar Supreme Court to hear appeal of jailed Reuters reporters
/in NewsThe Supreme Court of Myanmar will hear an appeal by the lawyers of jailed Reuters news agency reporters Kyaw Soe Oo and Wa Lone on March 26, according to a statement by the Committee to Protect Journalists, quoting Reuters.
The reporters are each serving seven-year sentences under the colonial-era Official Secrets Act for allegedly possessing and disseminating secret information sensitive to national security; they were originally sentenced on September 3, 2018, and have been in jail since December 12, 2017, according to CPJ reporting.
“Myanmar still has a chance to right the wrong committed against jailed Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo,” said Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative.
“We urge the Supreme Court to come down on the right side of justice by reversing their convictions and setting them free.”
In January, Myanmar’s High Court in Yangon rejected an appeal by the reporters and upheld their sentences, paving the way for an appeal at the supreme court.
Mizzma News