Burmese Language
Future of UN probe into Burma in doubt
The future of a UN inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese regime has been thrown into doubt after a number of one-time supporters of a probe, including Britain and the US, appear to have retreated in the wake of reforms made by the new government.
Altogether 16 governments threw their weight behind a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) first mooted by UN Special Rapporteur to Burma Tomas Ojea Quintana. But the US was the first to publicly drop its support, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suggesting during her December 2011 visit that Washington now favours a wait-and-see approach.
She told reporters following the visit that “it’s important to try to give the new government and the opposition a chance to demonstrate they have their own approach toward achieving [accountability for past state crimes]”.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon announced yesterday that he will visitBurma“in the near future” and confirmed the appointment of his chief of staff, Vijay Nambiar, as special envoy to the country.
It is as yet unclear how prominently the discussion of human rights will feature on the secretary general’s agenda when he visits, with the trip more likely to focus on positive engagement. Ban has previously been criticised for failing to vocally back a CoI on Burma, which would investigate abuses committed by the army and sanctioned by the regime.
A number of governments who supported the now CoI now feel they should gauge the outcome of Burma’s reform programme before pressing ahead with an inquiry, but the about-face has drawn criticism.
“It’s unfortunate that the 16 countries who stated their support for a CoI are now temporarily retreating from that support in the hope that the government pursues some mechanism for accountability for past abuses and, crucially, takes steps to end impunity and ongoing violations,” David Mathieson, Burma researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.
The international community has broadly welcomed the positive changes seen to be happening in Burma, including the release of political prisoners, easing of media restrictions and ceasefire discussions with rebel factions. Earlier this week the EU agreed to begin easing sanctions against Burma and the US is set to review theirs immediately after the 1 April by-elections.
Some critics have said however that the response is premature and done with disproportionate enthusiasm. Even if the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, wins every available seat in the April vote, it will struggle to challenge the parliamentary supremacy of the military-backed government.
Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, said however that a CoI can remain on the table and “be revived very quickly at any time”.
“If there are genuine domestic efforts to achieve justice and accountability, and they have the support of society in Burma, including ethnic people, then the UK is likely to support that process,” he said.
The hurdles a UN inquiry into Burma would face are daunting, not least because the current constitution provides blanket immunity to all former and serving military generals.
Aung San Suu Kyi has voiced support for the creation of a Truth Commission, but even that may be a distant prospect as the international community looks keener to encourage Burma’s ongoing reforms rather than punish it for the crimes of the past.
Tags: burma, commission of inquiry, eu, myanmar, UN, US, war crimes
Comments
Other News, Politics Stories
- After losing members, party looks to restructure
- NLD members arrested in protest’s wake
- Fourth estate to be censor-free by June
- US eases sanctions, calls for prisoners release
- Massive protest shines a light on power cuts
- Military joins peace process with armed groups
- China prepares for influx of Kachin refugees
DVB TV
MPs returned to Parliament in Burma’s capital Naypyidaw
MOST READ STORIES
You need to log in to vote
The blog owner requires users to be logged in to be able to vote for this post.
Alternatively, if you do not have an account yet you can create one here.
Powered by Vote It Up
CoI should be continued against culprits.
Than Shwe, the Trembling Dictator
By AUNG LINNHTUT
Why did Snr-Gen Than Shwe insert a
self-amnesty clause into Burma’s 2008 Constitution that was never discussed by the regime-sponsored National Convention, the body that drafted the charter? Why did he compel retired director-general Thaung Nyunt, his legal adviser, to write this section alone in his office without consulting others?
According to my sources in Naypyidaw, Thaung Nyunt, a devout religious person, felt ashamed of his involvement in Than Shwe’s dirty work.
Chapter 14, Section 445 of the Constitution, entitled “Transitory Provisions,” states: “All policy guidelines, laws, rules, regulations, notifications, and declarations of the State Law and Order Restoration Council and the State Peace and Development Council or actions, rights and responsibilities of the State Law and Order Restoration Council and the State Peace and Development Council shall devolve on the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. No proceeding shall be instituted against the said Councils or any member thereof or any member of the Government, in respect of any act done in the execution of their respective duties.”
I can recall one occasion when I was serving at the Burmese Embassy in Washington, D.C. A new staff member who had been transferred to the embassy in 2001 told me that he had brought urgent orders to carry out an inquiry into an important matter.
The orders were to find out if the US government had any intention of bringing the Burmese generals before an international criminal tribunal. We were to report our findings as soon as possible.
I smiled to myself at the thought of Than Shwe, who was always so merciless towards others, expressing such cowardly concern about his own fate.
“Eliminate them! Don’t even leave an infant alive! They are just kala [a degrading term for people of Indian descent], not humans! Sentence them to the maximum imprisonment!” That was…
That was the Than Shwe I knew.
Slobodan Miloševic of Yugoslavia, Charles Taylor of Liberia, Pol Pot of Cambodia and Omar al-Bashir of Sudan were all facing justice in different internationally sponsored tribunals at that time. So I could easily understand the cause of Than Shwe’s concern.
I reported back to them perfunctorily, informing them that the US government was busy with its own business—this was soon after the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001—and had no time think about Burma.
Than Shwe was delighted by the Sept. 11 attacks. He didn’t even send a state condolence letter to the US government like most other heads of state until the Burma Desk of the US State Department asked us about it.
The reason he stuck the self-amnesty clause into the Constitution is simple: He doesn’t have the courage to take responsibility for what he has done to his own people.
Here are some examples of actions for which he is directly or indirectly accountable:
In April 1993, Than Shwe, who is also the commander in chief of the Burmese army, ordered Gen Win Myint, the commander of the Western Regional Command (and later the regime’s Secretary 3 and adjutant general) to kill over 400 ethnic Rohingyas in Arakan State’s Buthidaung Maungdaw Township in retaliation for attacks by Rohingya rebels who detonated 18 mines in one day in an assault on the Burmese army. The army rounded up more than 400 people, including civilians, and as soon as they received their orders from the GHQ office, they killed them all.
In 1996, when the National League for Democracy (NLD) decided to walk out of the National Convention, Than Shwe was furious and ordered the intelligence apparatus to intimidate members of the party and their families by any means necessary.
In the same year, Than Shwe ordered his commanders in Shan State, Karrenni State, Pegu Division, Karen State, Mon State and Tenasserim Division to relocate villages and kill entire families, including infants, of anyone who defied the orders.
I have personally witnessed the Christie Island massacre, in which Than Shwe ordered Gen Kyi Min (the former navy commander), Gen Myint Swe (the former air force commander), Gen Thura Myint Aung (the former adjutant general) and Col Zaw Min (the minister of electricity 1) to kill 81 civilians who were found on the island.
Than Shwe also ordered Gen Soe Win (the former prime minister) and Aung Thaung (minister of industry 1) to assassinate NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi. I can safely say that there are many former intelligence officers, former army officers and police officers who can verify this account. There are also many other events and incidents that I am not aware of.
The regime’s killing of monks during the September 2007 protests is just one incident that the international community is aware of. The regime is afraid that it may one day face an international tribunal because of its misdeeds.
(Page 2 of 2)
(Page 2 of 2)
If the Commission of Inquiry proposed by Tomás Ojea Quintana, the special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, were allowed to work inside the country, more stories would surely come out.
That’s why Snr-General Than Shwe quietly included the self-amnesty law in the 2008 Constitution to secure his future.
However, I want to warn Than Shwe that as the leader of the army, he will be held accountable for violations that the army has perpetrated.
Looking at other authoritarian regimes around the world, we can compare Than Shwe to the utterly despicable Muammar Al-Gaddafi of Libya. The Burmese army should not take orders from such a person, but rather follow the example of the Egyptian army, which refused to fire on unarmed civilians.
It is time for Burmese army personnel to side with the people and strive together to bring Than Shwe and his family to justice. Under no circumstances should they be pardoned under an amnesty.
Aung Linn Htut is a former intelligence officer who served as a senior diplomat at the Burmese Embassy in Washington, DC. He took political asylum in the United States in 2005.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=20882&page=1
The future of a UN inquiry into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Burmese regime has NOT been thrown into doubt .
To pardon the war criminals are not the duties of any political parties including NLD .The concerned families who lost their near and dear ones knows the pains.
The war criminals must punished!!
The 16 countries – 12 EU, US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – which publicly expressed support for the idea of a UN-led Commission of Enquiry were not alone in their view. My own enquiries strongly suggest that the remaining 15 members of the EU felt exactly as their colleagues did, but recognised that there was virtually no prospect that any UN-institution would take up Quintana’s suggestion. They felt that there was no point in pursuing a course which was doomed to failure from the start.
Quintana, after all, was appointed by the Human Rights Council and it is to them that he reports. The fact that during a HRC session he made his suggestion, but did not direct it at the HRC itself which is what he should have done according to his mandate, no doubt primarily reflected his awareness that the HRC itself would not take up his call. I can understand his frustration, as he knew that some 80 members of the UN General Assembly in fact strongly supported his concerns, but only 16 of them yielded to domestic pressures and said anything publicly, though without any conviction that anything would ever happen. “The UK…….has not ruled out a Commission of Inquiry” was how Foreign Secretary William Hague put it in a letter dated 24 August 2010 to the Burma Campaign UK. Hardly a declaration of intent to do much about it all.
Those experienced in UN practices and precedents knew that the UN Security Council was a non-starter because of Chinese and Russian opposition. The General Assembly itself has never set up any such Commission of Inquiry and has no budget to do so. The Human Rights Council was the obvious body, but Quintana himself did not try to take that route. That left a General Assembly Resolution calling on the UN Secretary-General to set up an Inquiry, but such a Resolution would need a two-thirds majority which might be hard to secure. In the end, no one attempted the impossible.
Just of US and Britain retreated, UN should not stop probing war crimes against the regimes because UN is separate entity which should follow it own prerogative vested by united nations rather than taking order from US and Britain.
The problem is even Thein Sein himself will not be free from speck of crime against humanity in Burma. Than Shwe, Mang Aye and Thein Nyunt must stand war crime trial. If all these for generals are exempts from all charges against humanity, Burma is not a free nation or law abiding country. Justice have only one eye which sees only justice.
I hope everyone understand the current situation as it is not yet ripe to talk about court-martial but it will come out unstoppably through the value of democracy.
Let Than Shwe not die yet before Burmese and the world see justice finally reach him and his oligarchs. Even if Than Shwe and his oligarchs die before justice reach them alive, law must still pierce them out from under the ground and burn them out entirely out of global face. Than Shwe, Maung Aye, Khin Nyunt and some generals do not even deserve to sleep under Burmese soil where they inhumanely murdered thousands of innocent civilians in the past 20 years. Their remains should be destroyed and vanish underneath the sea.
Justice must prevail !
Whether it will stop or continue it’s probe on the military regimes for their crimes against all our other ethnic groups is irrelevant as we had given up hope on the UN intervening in our affairs a long time ago. But these crimes have become history and is embedded in the minds of many people within and outside the country and if and when the time should come for the people, there are other bodies and organizations to turn to such as the International Court and the War Crimes Tribunal to see that all these murderous barbarians are punished and justice is done.