Yanghee Lee and Georgia Drake :
Three women were at their farm when they were taken by 80 soldiers belonging to Myanmar military, and were repeatedly gang-raped by the troops before eventually being released four days later. This tragically now familiar sounding story of a crime in Myanmar did not occur during the “clearance operations” following August 2017 in Myanmar’s northern Rakhine State, but in July 2000 on the other side of the country in Shan State. This case was documented in a 2002 report Licence to Rape, along with 172 other cases of sexual violence perpetrated in Shan State between 1991 and 2001. Far too many such crimes have been committed with scant consequences faced by the culprits. On ensuring accountability for gross violations of human rights in Myanmar, so far the international community has failed.
Evidence of the crimes abounds, with local and international human rights groups and the UN documenting and reporting serious violations and abuses for decades. The culprits are overwhelmingly members of Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, which has long enjoyed impunity for its crimes. Myanmar has faced civil war since shortly after independence in 1948, and there are countless instances of its peoples facing serious violations at the hands of the Tatmadaw, including killings, torture and rape. Ethnic armed organisations, who fight against the Tatmadaw, are also responsible for human rights violations, including torture, use of child soldiers and forced labour, for which they have neither been held accountable.
With much of the violence taking place on the borderlands of the country, members of ethnic minority populations living in those areas have been particularly targeted by a disturbingly similar pattern of violence.
In the 1990s, the Tatmadaw waged a brutal campaign in Kayin State in the east of Myanmar that tens of thousands of people fleeing for their lives to Thailand, many of whom still remain there, just across the border today. From 1996-1998, villagers in central Shan State, to the north of the country, faced savagery at the hands of the Tatmadaw and over 300,000 people were driven from their homes.
Following the breakdown of a 17-year ceasefire with the Kachin Independence Army, around 100,000 people were forced from villages in Kachin and northern Shan States in 2011. They languish in camps for which international humanitarian assistance has largely been blocked for years.
In the west of Myanmar, the Rohingya Muslim minority group in Rakhine State have suffered systematic human rights violations at the hands of security forces since the 1970s. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have repeatedly being driven out to Bangladesh as a result of brutality inflicted on them. This culminated in over 700,000, the vast majority of the Rohingya population, being forcibly displaced to Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh in an exodus that is continuing.
At least 6,700 people were allegedly killed, many women raped and hundreds of villages burned down following “clearance operations” carried out by security forces beginning in August 2017 in which severe violence was perpetrated against the population that bears the hallmarks of genocide. An unknown number of Rohingya remain in northern Rakhine State, living without access to basic rights including freedom of movement, while over 120,000 live in camps in Sittwe, central Rakhine State, where they have been since 2012.
One would think that such an atrocious situation would lead to righteous outrage around the world that spurs action to achieve justice for victims. However, nearly 10 months on, despite laudable condemnations and statements of serious concern by the international community, there has been an outright failure to put an end to atrocities by holding perpetrators accountable.
Continued failure to act by the international community will only result in the commission of yet more violations. The international community’s pause has given the Tatmadaw the green light to continue its campaign of violence, aggression and domination of Myanmar’s ethnic peoples across the country. The lack of consequences faced by the Tatmadaw has led to its being emboldened to wage escalated offensives in Kachin, Shan and Kayin States this year, resulting in civilian deaths and injuries, and thousands of civilians escaping violence in their villages in the last few months. Indeed, reportedly the very same battalions that carried out the “clearance operations” in Rakhine State are now waging war in Kachin State.
The international community’s inertia while Myanmar’s military wages its vicious campaigns against the people of Myanmar must not continue. Accountability is the only way to end the violence, achieve justice and redress for victims, enforce the rule of law, and deter future perpetration of crimes. Doing so will assist the transition to real democracy, and pave the way for reconciliation.
To end its complacence, the international community should establish a structure under the auspices of the United Nations to monitor, document and report violations and abuses in Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine, Kachin and Shan States.
The structure would consolidate the investigations undertaken by others and build cases that can be used by future prosecutorial and judicial mechanisms. The structure would have investigators and experts based in Cox’s Bazar, with legal and judicial experts building up cases, examining participation and responsibility of individual perpetrators. These people would engage with victims and other stakeholders located elsewhere in the region. The structure would also develop a framework for victim support, reconciliation and reintegration.
The international community should seize upon the tragic opportunity it is presented with; there are around a million Rohingya in camps near Cox’s Bazar, with stories to tell that need to be heard. Preparing information about violations and abuses so that it is ready to be deployed at the appropriate time is a constructive, practical and meaningful effort that can be done in a timely, relatively low cost manner.
It is essential that the international community act now, and not let this be yet another wasted opportunity to work towards achieving justice, and ending impunity, for all the people of Myanmar.
(Yanghee Lee is the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar and Georgia Drake is a research assistant to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar).
