Win Tin presses Canada to support UN inquiry

Wednesday, 18 August 2010 16:52 Thomas Maung Shwe

Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Win Tin, co-founder of Burma’s National League for Democracy, in an interview last week called on the government of Canada and other nations to support the appeal for a UN commission of inquiry into human rights abuses committed by the Burmese regime.

Australia, Britain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and yesterday the United States, have pledged their support for such an investigation.

Win Tin told Mizzima: “In Burma human rights violations are very severe and this why we need such an investigation to document what has happened.” The close ally of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent a total of 19 years in detention for his defiance of Burma’s rulers, said the military regime’s violence had also “taken a sharp toll on the country’s ethnic people”.

Noting that 63 elected Canadian members of Parliament and 12 Senators had signed a petition urging the Canadian government to push the UN for such an inquiry, Win Tin said: “I hope Canada takes this opportunity to advocate for a UN commission of inquiry because this is what Burma needs.”

In March, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, Tomas Ojea Quintana, issued a report to the UN Human Rights Council, which stated that in Burma there existed a pattern of “gross and systematic” human rights abuses that suggested the abuses were a state policy that involved authorities at all levels of the executive, military and judiciary. It also stated that the “possibility exists that some of these human rights violations may entail categories of crimes against humanity or war crimes under the terms of the Statute of the International Criminal Court”.

Quintana urged the UN to further look into rights abuses committed by the Burmese regime and consider launching a “commission of inquiry with a specific fact-finding mandate to address the question of international crimes”.

Tin Maung Htoo Executive director of the Canadian Friends of Burma (CFOB) told Mizzima that: “Quintana’s thorough report strongly suggests that the UN further investigate the systematic human rights violations in Burma. His report shouldn’t just be ignored; member states of the UN including Canada must push the UN to follow through on Quintana’s recommendations and further investigate the human rights violations which have occurred.”

Last week, the CFOB issued a joint statement with colleagues at the Burma Campaign UK to publicly ask Canadian foreign minister Lawrence Cannon to come out in favour of such an inquiry. The government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, usually a strong advocate for Burma’s opposition, has yet to respond to Quintana’s recommendations.

Burma Campaign director Mark Farmaner was quoted in the statement as saying: “It is very surprising Canada has not publicly stated that it supports the recommendation of the special rapporteur for a commission of inquiry. We need as many countries as possible on the record with their support. Canada’s silence will encourage the dictatorship that they can continue to get away with their crimes.”

Laura Markle, a spokeswoman for Canada’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, had indicated to Mizzima that Canada was going to release a statement regarding the issues raised by Win Tin, but no such statement has to date been forthcoming.

Win Tin also urges Canada to investigate Ivanhoe Mines

Win Tin also called on the Canadian government to investigate whether Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines had committed human rights abuses in Burma and violated Canada’s targeted sanctions against the regime led by Senior General Than Shwe.

Mizzima reported in June that the secretive trust established to oversee Ivanhoe’s Burmese holdings sold the firm’s 50 per cent stake in the Myanmar Ivanhoe Copper Company Limited (MICCL), the joint venture that operated Burma’s Monywa copper mine, to cronies of the Burmese regime acting as middle men for Chinese state-run weapon’s firm Nornico and mining giant Chinalco.

Win Tin, said he was deeply concerned by reports that Ivanhoe used businessmen closely connected to Burma’s despotic leader Than Shwe to sell its stake in Monywa in a manner that had violated Canadian sanctions. “While we don’t know the details, we know that Ivanhoe sold their share to the Chinese and Canada should look into this” he said.

The internationally recognised former political prisoner said he agreed with calls from rights groups that Ivanhoe’s senior executives should appear before the Canadian Parliament to answer questions about the firm’s Burmese operations and its apparent departure from the country.

Last month, NLD MP-elect Khun Myint Tun wrote formally to foreign minister Cannon and asked the Canadian government to investigate the circumstances surrounding the arrest and subsequent jailing of Ivanhoe’s Burmese driver Thet Lwin. He was detained after his boss Andrew Mitchell, a senior Ivanhoe geologist in Burma, demanded to be driven to the home of NLD general secretary Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest.

After driving to the lakeside residence both Thet Lwin and Mitchell were detained by the soldiers who act as her jailers. Mitchell, a British national was quickly released, but Thet Lwin, according to his family, was sentenced to seven years in prison for doing what his superior had foolishly ordered him to do.

Rights activists such as Khun Myint Tun fear that Thet Lwin died in Insein Prison and want the Canadian government to force Ivanhoe to disclose all it knows about the incident that led to his arrest.

In his letter to the Canadian government, Khun Myint Tun condemned Ivanhoe and the firm’s chairman, Robert Friedland, for taking more than five years to publicly acknowledge that they were familiar with the case. Khun Myint Tun, himself a political prisoner from 1996 to 2003, told Mizzima that “had Ivanhoe been more forthcoming with what happened to Ko Thet Lwin immediately following his arrest, it is very likely he and his family could have been spared great suffering, the way Ivanhoe has dealt with this case is criminal”.