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.
Recent Posts
- Myanmar junta bombs Rohingya Muslim village killing 41, rescuers say
- Myanmar’s junta cuts filmmaker’s life sentence to 15 years as part of wider amnesty
- Close The Sky
- International condemnation of the escalating humanitarian crisis and rights violations in Myanmar
- Women in Karenni State face increasing levels of violence
Political prisoner dies due to lack of adequate medical care in Myanmar’s Dawei Prison
/in NewsThe Political Prisoners Network of Dawei District has reported the death of a political prisoner, U Ye Aung (aka) Ko Chin, due to insufficient medical treatment while incarcerated in Dawei Prison, Tanintharyi Region.
U Ye Aung, aged 62, suffered a stroke while detained and was transferred to Dawei Hospital on 27 September after his condition worsened. Despite receiving treatment, he passed away on 17 October, according to a statement from the Political Prisoners Network.
A resident of Ohnpin Kwin village in Yebyu Township, Dawei District, U Ye Aung was serving a 10-year sentence under Sections 50 (j) and 52 (a) of the Anti-Terrorism Act.
According to Ko Thaik Tun Oo, a member of the Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar (PPNM), the lack of adequate healthcare facilities in district prisons has been a longstanding issue.
He highlighted that only central prisons are equipped with hospitals, while district prisons, like Dawei, have only small clinics with insufficient medical personnel to handle emergency cases.
“The healthcare system in prisons is in a dire state. Even central prisons do not have enough skilled doctors to provide proper care, and district prisons face even greater shortages. All prisoners should have access to the same level of medical care, but that’s not the reality,” he said.
The inadequate medical care in prisons has resulted in the deaths of 15 political prisoners in 2024 alone, including Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, the former Chief Minister of Mandalay Region, according to data compiled by PPNM. The previous year, 17 political prisoners died due to similar reasons.
Since the military coup, a total of 27,563 people has been arrested on political charges as of 22 October, 2024, with 21,020 still in detention. Of those, 9,473 have been sentenced to prison, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
Mizzima
Patterns of Military Oppression In 2023-2024
/in ND-Burma Members' Reports, NewsSince its coup in February 2021, the military have perpetrated a more than three-year long terror campaign, resulting in widespread and systematic human rights violations committed against the civilian population. The military has failed to consolidate power and territorial control in the aftermath of its February 2021 coup and has reacted to calls for democracy and rule of law with violent tactics that recall Burma’s decades-long history of military-perpetrated violence and repression. According to observations by our organization, the so-called armed forces both disregard the existence of human rights norms, and relish in dehumanizing a civilian population.
The scope and scale of the atrocities committed by the military junta make their documentation a challenging one, but consequentially, all the more necessary. In this report, AAPP looks to examines the range of military tools and tactics inflicted between January 1, 2023 to July 29, 2024, that has resulted in patterns of military oppression, violence and human rights violations perpetrated across the country in a widespread and systematic manner. Whilst these tools and tactics have been used by the military throughout its history, in this reporting period, these patterns of violence have been re-applied in a distinct and increasingly brutal ways, in a desperate attempt to exert control over a country in which, the military are increasingly losing control.
The report comes at a critical moment in the long arc of resistance against the military junta, which as a result of such resistance efforts, has been considerably weakened. The past year and a half has seen a fundamental undermining of the junta’s strength, due in part to the concerted offensives launched by armed resistance groups, namely Operation 1027 in October 2023 and the consequential successes across the country throughout the first seven months of 2024. Ethnic groups have joined forces in achieving a shared common goal – ending the military junta’s rule and with it an end to the human rights violations and likely war crimes and crimes against humanity it has and continues to commit throughout its history.
Assistance Association for Political Prisoners AAPP
Sexual abuse and violence worsens in Myanmar factories: activists
/in NewsWomen in the garment sector are increasingly vulnerable to pressure and exploitation as the economy deteriorates.
Myanmar garment factory worker Win Lae was shocked when she heard that colleagues at the Chinese-owned factory where she used to work were being offered money in exchange for sex with Chinese technicians and buyers.
“Some workers are really poor and the news was spreading – when they offered 300,000 kyat (US$143) for a night, it’s a huge amount for female workers. It’s still happening,” said the former worker, who asked to be identified as Win Lae, of her time at the factory owned by the Dongxin Garment Co. Ltd.
A company official denied that any such exploitation was going on at the factory in Myanmar’s main city of Yangon but labor activists say such abuse is far from rare in Myanmar’s manufacturing sector as a deteriorating economy leaves women more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, abuse and violence.
International labor group the Business and Human Rights Resource Center said in a report this month that women in Myanmar’s garment sector face “dire and repressive working conditions”.
The group documented 155 cases of abuse in Myanmar factories, linked to 87 international companies, between Dec. 1, 2023, and June 30, with 37% of them gender-based incidents including “verbal, physical and sexual abuse and harassment, often for not meeting unreasonable production targets.”
An economy in freefall since the military ousted an elected government in February 2021 has exacerbated the problem of exploitation for many in Myanmar as factory owners and supervisors know that employees are increasingly desperate for cash as inflation erodes living standards, a labor activist told Radio Free Asia.
“It’s easy to take advantage of the garment workers. They use poverty,” said the activist who declined to be identified in fear of reprisals.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Center also reported evidence of sexual harassment and assault at the Dongxin factory.
Workers in another factory complained that the manager was “matchmaking” female workers with men back in China, raising fears of human trafficking when she began taking them with her on visits to China, the labor group documented from worker reports.
Other cases the group documented included male supervisors groping women and expressing sexual or romantic interest and angry supervisors mistreating workers.
But Dongxin’s human resources manager, Tin Ni Lar Htun, denied that such behavior was taking place at the factory.
“We don’t have any problems like that,” he said. “If we did have those problems, we would fire the workers who committed them according to the labor law.”
‘No leverage’
Win Lae described various pressures put on workers that made them vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse, including being forced to work through the night, ostensibly to fill orders.
“There are no arrangements or sleeping areas for the operating workers. If they take a rest, they can only rest in the technicians’ room and they then have the opportunity,” Win Lae said, referring to more senior technical staff taking advantage of women workers.
Win Lae also said that peer pressure and pay-offs facilitated sexual exploitation.
“The supervisor gets paid to persuade another operator. She gets pocket money if another operator sleeps with the technician,” said Win Lae, who said she was also laid off after raising an issue of unfair pay with her coworkers.
There were few options in Myanmar’s factories for women to complain, said the labor activist, especially given an influx of smaller brands and a departure of well-known companies vulnerable to public pressure.
“For many Japanese and Chinese brand companies, we don’t have any leverage and we can’t reach them,” the activist said. “The only way is the legal process, and you know, the legal process here in Myanmar, it’s terrible.”
Since the 2021 military takeover, 16 major labor unions have been banned, and workers have reported both factory management and junta authorities suppressing dissent more aggressively.
The International Labor Organization’s Commission of Inquiry for Myanmar late last year found “far-reaching restrictions on the exercise of basic civil liberties and trade union rights.”
Many women victims of sexual exploitation, abuse and violence see no choice but to suffer in silence.
“They pretend nothing happened at work because they don’t want to lose their jobs, even if they’re feeling stressed or traumatized,” the labor activist said.
“The companies should take that kind of problem seriously and respond. The brands and companies have full responsibility for that.”
RFA News
Open letter from Myanmar civil society organizations to ASEAN to move beyond the Five-Point Consensus and support Myanmar people’s efforts to build federal democracy
/in Member statements, Press Releases and StatementsTo: ASEAN Leaders
H.E. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah Mu’izzaddin Waddaulah, Prime Minister of Brunei Darussalam
H.E. Hun Manet, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia
H.E. Joko Widodo, President of the Republic of Indonesia
H.E. Sonexay Siphandone, Prime Minister of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic
H.E. Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim, Prime Minister of Malaysia
H.E. Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos, Jr., President of the Republic of the Philippines
H.E. Lawrence Wong, Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore
H.E. Paetongtarn Shinawatra, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Thailand
H.E. Phạm Minh Chính, Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
CC: H.E. Duwa Lashi La, Acting President of Myanmar
7 October 2024
Subject: Open letter from Myanmar civil society organizations to ASEAN to move beyond the Five-Point Consensus and support Myanmar people’s efforts to build federal democracy
Your Excellencies,
Last week, the military junta in Myanmar unleashed a barrage of lethal, indiscriminate airstrikes across Shan, Karen, and Karenni States and Sagaing Region. Of extreme concern, in Lashio, northern Shan State, the junta conducted four consecutive days of airstrikes, which killed at least six civilians. Last month, from 1 to 7 September, the junta launched airstrikes targeting civilians in Chin, Shan, and Karenni States and Magwe, Sagaing, and Mandalay Regions—killing at least 40 people, including a dozen children.
The utter silence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in response to these ongoing atrocity crimes by the illegal military junta against the people of Myanmar, once again, highlights its continued failure to address the dire human rights and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. It is imperative that ASEAN change course immediately.
We, the undersigned 240 Myanmar civil society organizations, call on ASEAN to show its political leadership, commitment, and genuine will to support the well-being of the Myanmar people by implementing the following recommendations at the 44th and 45th ASEAN Summits in Vientiane under Laos’ chairship. These recommendations were put forth during the ASEAN Civil Society Conference/ASEAN People’s Forum (ACSC/APF) by the Myanmar National Organizing Committee for ACSC/APF, comprising 15 civil society organizations, and partner organizations. We further call on the international community, particularly the United Nations and ASEAN’s dialogue partners, to assist ASEAN with effectively implementing these recommendations:
Since the Myanmar military’s illegal coup attempt in February 2021, Myanmar has stood at a pivotal juncture in its history. Over the past three and a half years, the military junta has perpetrated a multitude of grave human rights violations and mass atrocity crimes across the nation, including massacres, torching and pillaging of entire towns, and lethal airstrikes against civilian communities and places where they take refuge. There have been over 2,400 airstrikes by the military since February 2021. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the military’s violence has displaced more than 3 million people—likely a gross underestimation of the true magnitude of displacement.
Despite the military junta’s extreme violence, the people’s revolution has persistently worked towards establishing a federal democracy. Over three and a half years, the people’s revolution has advanced and is now winning on the ground. Today, the Myanmar military junta does not have effective control of the country. Townships covering 86% of the country’s territory and including 67% of the national population are not under stable junta control.
Your Excellencies,
Myanmar is moving forward. Now is the time for ASEAN to seize this most critical opportunity and take immediate and decisive action to support the Myanmar people’s revolution for federal democracy and durable peace in Myanmar, as well as for peace and stability in the region.
As clearly recognized in the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Statement on the Escalation of Conflicts in Myanmar on 18 April 2024, the political, human rights, and humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is not merely an internal affair, but one that requires a resolution for “peace, security, and stability in the region,” which ASEAN has vowed to protect. Without swift action, Myanmar’s neighboring countries and ASEAN Member States will continue to face an influx of refugees, loss of commercial interests, and irreparable reputational damage. We believe that ASEAN has a clear obligation to act to prevent the junta from continuing its campaign of violence and from destabilizing the entire region.
We reiterate our calls and remain at your disposal to provide further information, as well as to assist and collaborate with you for effective implementation of the stated recommendations.
For more information, please contact:
Signed by 240 organizations including 45 organizations who have chosen to not disclose their name:
Download PDF file.
Justice
/in Cartoon Animation, News, Video Newsအတိတ်မှ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး အကြီးအကျယ် ကျူးလွန်ချိုးဖောက်မှုများအတွက် ကိုင်တွယ်ဖြေရှင်းရန် အသွင်ကူးပြောင်းရေး ဆိုင်ရာ တရားမျှတမှု (TJ) လုပ်ငန်းစဥ်တခုမှာ “တရားမျှတမှု” (Justice) ဖြစ် သည်။
လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်ခံရသူများအတွက် တရားမျှတမှုနှင့် လူ့အခွင့်အရေးချိုးဖောက်သူများ တာဝန်ယူ၊ တာဝန်ခံစေရန်အတွက် ဆောင်ရွက်သည့် လုပ်ငန်းစဥ်ဖြစ်သည်။
တရားမျှတမှု (Justice) လုပ်ငန်းကို “တရားစီရင်ရေး နည်းလမ်း” (Judicial) နှင့် “တရားစီရင်ရေး မဟုတ်သည့် အခြားနည်း”များ (Non-Judicial) ဖြင့် ဆောင်ရွက်ကြသည် (ဥပမာ- နစ်နာသူများအ တွက် ပြန်လည်ကုစားပေးလျော်မှု (Reparation) လုပ်ငန်းစဥ်)။
UN expert on Myanmar to visit Australia
/in NewsThe Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, will conduct an official country visit to Australia from 1–10 October 2024.
Andrews will discuss Australia’s perspective on the crisis in Myanmar and the ways in which the Government of Australia can stand for the human rights of the people of Myanmar.
The Special Rapporteur will visit Canberra to meet representatives of the Government of Australia. He will also travel to Sydney and Melbourne where he will engage with experts, humanitarian and refugee organisations supporting those who have fled Myanmar, and Australian civil society organisations with a focus on Myanmar and ASEAN.
He will also hold consultations with diverse groups from the Myanmar diaspora, including refugees from Myanmar who have been resettled in Australia since the military coup of February 2021.
The Special Rapporteur will hold a press briefing on 10 October 2024 at 11:30 a.m. local time at the United Nations Information Centre, Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, 18 King George Terrace, Parkes ACT 2600. Access will be strictly limited to journalists.
Mr. Thomas Andrews (United States of America) is the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. A former member of the US Congress from Maine, Andrews is a Robina Senior Human Rights Fellow at Yale Law School and an Associate of Harvard University’s Asia Center. He has worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and parliamentarians, NGOs and political parties in Cambodia, Indonesia, Algeria, Croatia, Serbia, Ukraine and Yemen. He has been a consultant for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma and the Euro-Burma Network and has run advocacy NGOs including Win Without War and United to End Genocide.
For additional information and media requests please contact Julia Dean dean@un.org.
For media enquiries regarding other UN independent experts, please contact Dharisha Indraguptha (dharisha.indraguptha@un.org) or John Newland (john.newland@un.org)