Burmese Language
Burma to submit rights report to UN
The Burmese government has finished the first draft of a human rights report destined for the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) early next year, domestic media has reported.
The Universal Periodic Review is being compiled by the Myanmar Human Rights Committee, led by home affairs minister Maung Oo. The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper said on Sunday that a meeting was held in Naypyidaw to review the second draft.
“If it is complete, the second draft will be submitted to the Myanmar Human Right Report Compilation Work,” the newspaper said.
Members of the council are required to submit periodical reviews of their rights records. While Burma is not technically a member, it has been given ‘Special Procedure’ status by the UNHRC to address human rights violations in the country.
As part of the Special Procedure, Burma was assigned a UN special rapporteur, Tomas Ojea Quintana, to investigate rights abuses in the country. He filed a high-profile report to the Security Council last month calling for a UN investigation into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Burma.
But during an attempted visit to the country earlier this month, Quintana was denied a visa. His assistant, Hannnah Wu, the UN’s human rights officer in Bangkok, told DVB today that “the [Burmese] government was busy at the time he requested. It’s not good to speculate – they had their reasons”.
She added that visiting Burma was “something [Quintana] considers very important to conduct his mandate”.
Once submitted, the Review becomes of three reports – including a stakeholders’ report and a summary of UN information – analysed by a UNHRC session known as the Working Group.
“They have three hours in the Working Group to look at the situation on the basis of these [reports], and of course delegates will do their job to talk to whoever they think necessary, including those with the information and those who can advise,” Wu said.
“But it’s totally their responsibility to understand what is said in the report and what is the reality, so it’s really in the hands of the UNHRC members.”
Quintana’s visit would have come three months before controversial elections in Burma, slated for 7 November. It also comes at a time when key players in the international community, including the US, have backed the UN commission of inquiry suggested by Quintana to investigate whether Burmese junta chief Than Shwe should be tried at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Washington only became a member of the UNHRC last year, having cited membership of so-called ‘rogue states’ and apparent disproportionate criticism of Israel as reasons not to join.
Gross rights abuses perpetrated by the Burmese junta and its army are believed to include forced labour and rape as a weapon of war, while some 2,150 activists, politicians, journalists and aid workers are behind bars. Some believe the government is also carrying out gradual ethnic cleansing of Burma’s volatile border regions, some of which have hosted 60-year civil wars.
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… Why? There are human rights in Burma? be yet another travesty of dictators to allow China to defend them from the “alleged” commission of inquiry to Mr. Quintana…
The juntra has the right to defend itself for its “innocence”, as everybody else does. It also has the duty to answer to the people for all their actions. The way I understand a military in any country is to abide by all civil laws and codes, and the military rules that include the Gebeva convention in addition to civilian legal acts and laws. They are meant to serve and protect the people of the country in times of war and emergencies. Never meant to use civilians as slaves or human shields. As I rember it vaguely as a child, the British government at the end of the WW II held on military administration of the country for only a few months. They knew what could happen if the miligtary, any military, is left to their whims and fancies. Do the junta members have any inkling of this principle? But of course you cannot teach a tiger not to eat meat, can you?
In Budsdhism, dealing in arms and weapons as well as drugs and intoxicants is unwholesome or a wrongful livelihood. Such people are called “merchants of death”.
Soldiering, to a large percentage, in Burma has been anything but good, extorting or else collecting and amassing personal properties by hook or by crook. It is known that gas earnings are stowed away in personal accounts in Singapore, using very little, if any, for public utilities, health, education and other welfare programmes.
Answer me this question. Where does the USDA (USDP) get their massive funds, and how? I ask this because the association or the party, whatever, has never served the interest of the people and the country. It has been doing the most horrendous things in the history of Burma, being a stooge to the junta, bullying, beating, extorting, and killing included.
It is a known fact that every citizen is duty-bound to serve the whims and fancies of the local lords, not them us. And no one has the right to voice one’s legitimate complaints or political demands.
The people are treated as nuts and nonenity, having no right to proper livelihood unless that wouldn’t touch the military rights in the name of the State, a blatantly corrupt use of a vocabulary. And there are many others, “Dhamma” and “Mingalar” included.
The Senr Genereal is a servant of the people, not the master. The local govt officials and employees, including the police, are all servants of the law-abiding citizen in the street. Law-abiding does not mean a mere liking of the govt employees or the military. It is non-criminality, not personal or group likes or dislikes.
The junta can be given a right of self defense as the international and national laws allow. But they cannot hide behind the pretext of “Non-intyerference in Internal Affairs” and “National Sovereignty”.
These two terms are not applicable in the cases like Burma and the junta. For the junta is not a legal entity. It is illegal as a gov ernment. They haven’t served and shown any responsibility to the People of Burma or the international community. They understand no law or civiloity. But give them the full right to self-defence and see how well they come out and prove us (or, me) to be in the wrong.
Burmese military who perpetrate the worst kind of human right abuse mankind ever seen in such a long duration of more than half a century is compiling human right abuse reports? You must be joking. The dead leaders of 1962, 1974 and 8888 revolutions might dies several times again if they could hear this
joke. What is happening to traitors who decided to participate hopelessly in this election? These guys are insulting the fallen leaders and people of Burma. This junta will be tried in criminal court for genocide and crime against humanity. Mandatory death sentence is compulsory for such crime.
An international criminal court does not pass a death sentence. You do not fight crime with crime! But the Court recognizes the victims as such.
This is probably one of the biggest farces in the 21st century. Burmese people have being badly abused for most of their lives. Minorities have face all sort of lethal treatments from the junta. When will this misconduct and violation of basic human right come to an end? What give them the right to file a human right report or even mention about human right?