Opinion: Burma's minorities must not be overlooked

Rohingya children from Myanmar (formerly Burma) in a refugee camp in Cox's Bazaar, Aug. 17, 2009. Rohingyas, not recognized as an ethnic minority by Myanmar, allege human rights abuse by its authorities, saying they deprive Rohingya of free movement, education and rightful employment. (Andrew Biraj/Reuters)

COX 'S BAZAAR, Bangladesh and CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Twenty years after the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, a repressive barricade is being quietly raised in the jungles of Burma.

The Burmese military junta has begun erecting a concrete and barbed-wire fence along its western border with Bangladesh, allegedly to prevent smuggling, but more probably to prohibit the return from Bangladesh of some 200,000 Rohingya migrants — a persecuted Burmese Muslim minority group who are now stateless.

Burma’s new barrier symbolizes the past five decades of military rule and isolation from the free world. It should also remind the West of the brutal repression of ethnic minorities who abide mass atrocities behind Burma’s barricade.

As principal investigator for Physicians for Human Rights, I returned last week from a three-week trip to Burma and its neighboring countries — Bangladesh, India and Thailand — where I met with Burmese civil society and victims of human rights violations. Our investigation revealed ongoing crimes against humanity in this country where murder, forced displacement, slave labor, conscription of child soldiers, torture and rape comprise the military’s arsenal of rights abuses inflicted against ethnic minorities.

In Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, I interviewed a 72-year-old Buddhist monk whom Burmese military imprisoned and tortured for the past two years after he had led the peaceful demonstration that sparked the Saffron Revolution — the name of which stems from the monks’ colorful monastic robes.

In Aizawl, India a group of Christian women who fled Chin State in Burma this year reported to me unspeakable sexual violence they suffered at the hands of the Tatmadaw, or Burmese military, during its roundup of forced laborers.

In the Thai border town of Mae Sot, I met a 14-year-old landmine survivor whose left leg was blown off just days earlier while tending his family’s four water buffalo just across the border in Karen State, Burma.

Such egregious breaches of human dignity are not isolated incidents. They highlight the military’s widespread and systematic campaign to crush dissent by imprisonment, torture, enslavement and the silencing of ethnic minorities such as the Chin, Karen, Kokang, Rakhine, Rohingya and Shan. No group is spared.

Burma’s de facto president, the reclusive Senior General Than Shwe, seized power 20 years ago while promising free and fair elections in 1990. The opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) trounced the military-backed State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) garnering 59 percent of the vote and 80 percent of the seats in the People’s Assembly. SLORC dismissed the results, and subsequently detained NLD’s Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/worldview/091125/opinion-burma-minorities