Informal Note On A Press Conference By Rajsoomer Lallah, Special Rapporteur On The Situation Of Human Rights In Myanmar

Geneva, April 17 1998



In his introductory remarks, Mr. Lallah said his report to the Commission covered some new ground as a result of the Commission's request that he should take account of the gender implications of the situation. The current report was just the beginning, as Myanmar had since acceded to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and was due to report to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women during 1998.

Commenting on the overall human rights situation in Myanmar, he said there had been some new developments regarding the release of prisoners. One of the first actions of the reconstituted regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), which had assumed office in December 1997, had been to issue an order to commute the death penalty in certain cases and to shorten the term of imprisonment for a number of prisoners. Since he had not been received in Myanmar, however, he was not in a position to know the extent to which the order was being applied. He also did not know whether those who benefited from the order included political prisoners. That aside, he had not found any change in the political or human rights situation. Having analysed all the facts since assuming his mandate two years earlier, he had determined that the root cause of all the human rights violations in Myanmar was the denial of the exercise of political rights and all that it meant, particularly the right to freedom of association. If one could not belong to a political party, one's right to freedom of association was being denied, and trade unions were also adversely affected.

As a result of the failure to transfer power to the persons elected in the general elections of 1990, and the insistence of the military authorities on exercising power outside any constitutional restraints and, in effect, on exercising legislative, executive and military power without any accountability to anyone, some kind of political dialogue might lead towards the establishment of democratic governance, as both the Commission and the General Assembly had called on the Government to do. So far, however, there had been only exploratory meetings to that end. According to available information, the military regime did not currently wish to engage in a political dialogue unless the National League for Democracy (NLD) ceased its political activities. On the last occasion when NLD representatives had met with representatives of the military regime, they had simply been admonished and asked not to continue their political activities, following which talks could be held.

In the meantime, the situation of human rights remained the same. In particular, he mentioned the grave situation in the border areas, where excessive violence was used by the military as a result of a policy of relocation of villages, both for portering purposes and development projects. He did not know what those projects were, except perhaps the building of roads and railway tracks and possibly tourism facilities. When people were forced to work on those projects, they obviously had to leave their homes, with the result that they were unable to look after their fields or to earn enough to live on. There were complaints that they were not given access to sufficient food or health facilities. In the circumstances, family life was broken up, and it was the children who suffered. There were also many complaints of the use of child labour as forced labour; existing laws actually legitimized forced labour.

Asked about his reference in the report to bombardments by the military against the civilians along the border, he said he had received information that a number of the camps for displaced persons or refugees along the Thai border had been bombarded. When he had visited the border areas in December 1996, many refugees had expressed the fear of bombardment. The authorities in Myanmar had suggested that the bombardments had been carried out by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), the Karen splinter group, but he had no indications as to the truthfulness of that statement, nor as to the extent to which the bombardments were in fact a government-controlled operation. The Government had said it did conduct counter-insurgency operations in the border areas, although not in Thailand, not only in the process of relocation, but also to fight against the split that had occurred in the Karen community in Shan and Karen states. In counter-insurgency operations, of course, a number of innocent people who were either suspected of giving shelter to, or who had been forced to give food to, the insurgents got caught in the fire, and there had been a number of killings.

Was the forced portering really due to a denial of democracy, or was it just a deliberate policy by a military regime with tunnel vision that needed portering? a correspondent asked. He replied that the very existence of a military regime meant the denial of political rights. He had been told that democracy was a political matter and that he should not be dealing with political rights; but the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized political rights, as did the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as part and parcel of fundamental human rights. The practice of forced portering had previously been legitimized by law, which was why the International Labour Organization (ILO) had appointed a commission of inquiry, which was due to report in 1999.

A correspondent asked whether it was not in fact a waste of time to try to hold a dialogue with a military regime, if indeed its very existence meant the denial of political rights. The very institution of the Special Rapporteur served a number of purposes, he said: it was the voice of the international community, and people who were fighting for their rights needed that, most of all, from the international community. Secondly, he was an optimist in such situations: it might be a military regime now, but they were not completely master of the whole country. People existed, people thought, and people fought for their rights in a number of ways. There had been an explosion in 1988 in which thousands of people had been killed, and it was the military regime which had decided to hold elections in 1990. The elections had been held, but the regime still clung to power. Given past experience, however, it was not out of the question that the military might change its mind. Looking at the recent developments in Northern Ireland, he was not so sure that being an optimist was a bad thing. He hoped something would happen in Myanmar; the Secretary-General was taking a personal interest in the matter and had shown in his reports that he was not wasting any efforts in that direction. Other possible developments -- not only pressure from the international community, but also pressure from inside the country -- might arise in the near future.

Was the relocation of communities a facet of religious or ethnic persecution, or was it part of economic planning to concentrate labour forces where they were most needed? he was asked. He replied that there had been complaints of religious persecution, or of the persecution of minorities. In his November 1997 report to the General Assembly, he had indicated that such treatment of ethnic minorities would tend to take the country away from nation-building and encourage secessionist tendencies. If people did not feel they belonged to a country, or were made to feel they did not belong, obviously they would seek a different identity.

Asked what the refugees who had crossed the border had told him about the development projects, he said mostly they had discussed the treatment meted out to them personally. When refugees left their country in such large numbers, they did so for a reason -- in order to save their lives or to be protected from ill-treatment, or because their property was taken away or their fields burned. Those people were ordinary people, who could not see things in the global perspective. One could only draw conclusions from the numbers of people involved, and what non-governmental or intergovernmental organizations might add. It was a situation in which one began to raise questions about what was behind the relocations. There was some insurgency; did the relocations all relate to that, or did they have other causes?

A correspondent said that Myanmar had been admitted to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which included one or two other unsavoury regimes, but which was by and large a reasonably democratic connection. Would he hope to see any influence brought to bear by other ASEAN countries on the hard-line regime in Myanmar? He was hopeful that any help that could be provided in the present circumstances should be used. It was in everyone's interest to reach a solution in which basic human rights were not only protected but promoted.

What impact would Myanmar's entry into ASEAN have on its previous position as an isolated country? Had there been any signs of improvement since its accession to ASEAN? He did not know of anything concrete, but presumably the leaders discussed matters other than trade; they probably also gave great thought to the image being presented to the international community.

In the period under review, did he have any idea of the number of casualties caused by the bombardments at the border areas? He could not provide figures, but clearly the bombardments must have been targeted at the various camps. According to information received, the bombardments had not been only across the border, but also in a number of villages. There had been many complaints that the villages were being bombarded from the surrounding areas in order to facilitate the entry of the soldiers and dispersal of the population. Determining the numbers would require substantiation on the ground, because the bombardments led to people running away, and they would be in a position to say the number of persons killed, but those figures might be incorrect.

Asked whether the United Nations, including the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), had had problems of access along the borders in recent months, he said that was true, although UNHCR now worked only on the Thai side of the border. Insofar as the border with Bangladesh was concerned, there had been more than 200,000 refugees involved; some kind of agreement had been reached with the involvement of UNHCR, however, and a great number of them had gone back, but many of them then fled again, presumably because conditions in Myanmar were not such that they were encouraged to stay.