Tuesday, 11 October 2011 15:26 Thea Forbes
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Three Chinese women were gang-raped last week by Burmese government troops in northern Kachin State, the Kachin News Group (KNG) reported on Monday.
According to witnesses, the women were raped on October 7 by about 10 Burmese soldiers in Shadan Pa, located between the Namsan Hka River and Munglai Hka River, west of the Myitkyina-Manmaw (Bhamo) Road.
One of the three women was unconscious for hours at a public hospital in Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization, hospital sources told the KNG.
The gang-rape was committed by Burmese troops under the Mogaung (Mugang)-based Military Operation Command-3 (MOC-3) led by Brig-Gen Myat Kyaw under the Northern Regional Command (NRC) based in Myitkyina, local residents and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) officials said.
There are more than 30,000 acres of banana fields in Shadan Pa on land that has been rented from the KIO by a Chinese businessman, Lau Ying, since 2008, the KNG reported. Burmese troops have been deployed to the banana plantation since September, in a move to seize Kachin Independence Army (KIA) strongholds near the China border.
There are more than 20,000 Chinese and Burmese workers on the plantations. Sources said the KIA had told all workers to return to their homes several times since renewed fighting started on June 9 this year, when the Burmese government broke a cease-fire with the KIA, according to the KNG.
The KIA’s last warning to plantation workers was issued on September 15. However, some workers remained in the area, KIA officials told KNG.
Sources said the latest rape of the three Chinese women is part of a history of Burmese troops using rape as a systematic weapon of war. Women in ethnic states in Burma, particularly in areas of conflict, are subject to extreme brutality and sexual violence at the hands of the Tatmadaw, according to reports issued by human rights groups and NGOs.
In a report released on October 7 by the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (Kwat), the NGO reported that in the first two months since war broke out in Kachin and northern Shan states this year, 37 women and girls have been raped, and 13 were killed.
“Our documentation team was deeply shocked at the details of these crimes. Some women were gang-raped in front of their families. In one case, soldiers slaughtered a woman’s grandchild in front of her before raping and killing her also,” Shirley Seng, a Kwat spokesperson, said in a press release.
The report also contained details of disappearances of women and men. In one case, it reported that on July 12, 20 women from Mung Yin village in Namatu Township in northern Shan State were taken by Burmese army soldiers from Battalion 324. No one currently knows their whereabouts.
The culture of impunity that shrouds the military in Burma protects the perpetrators of human rights abuses from facing justice, say observers. The Burmese army repeatedly denies any instances of rape by its soldiers. According to Kwat, attempts to report cases of rape and other human rights abuses, such as forced labour and serving as porters, receives no attention from government authorities.
Women who have survived rape attacks have said that Burmese soldiers told them that they had been ordered to carry out the rapes.
Sources said that under MOC-3, 10 battalions are combined in the command: Mogaung-based Infantry Battalion No. 74, Namti-based Light Infantry Battalions No. 381, 382 and 390, Kawa Yang (Mogaung)-based LIB No. 383 and 384, Nammar-based LIB 385 and 386 and Mali Zup (Hopin)-based LIB No. 388 and 389.
Rape: a weapon of mass destruction in slow-motion
Rape as a weapon of war has been a growing subject of concern. Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams said in an International Gender Justice Dialogue held by the Nobel Women’s Initiative in April 2010: “We also talked about landmines as being a weapon of mass destruction in slow-motion; I would think about rape that way now. It is destroying far many more lives I think than landmines have done, and it’s going to be a damn sight harder to ban that weapon of war than it has to ban landmines, but I think it’s something we have to try to do.”
“It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict,” said Major-General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo has. Tens of thousands of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo suffer sexual violence in conflict every year.
Kwat has urged United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to condemn the atrocities being committed by the Burmese army in northern Burma in the ongoing conflict there. Many human rights groups deem Thein Sein’s government’s ‘token gestures’ to human rights and democracy as public relations rhetoric designed to deflect the abuses committed by the army.
Kwat spokesperson Hkawng Seng Pan told Mizzima recently, “You can see clearly how the Burmese government is working; the Army is fighting and killing ethnic people while Thein Sein is speaking about human rights to a Parliament full of generals and former military officers.”
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Three Chinese women were gang-raped last week by Burmese government troops in northern Kachin State, the Kachin News Group (KNG) reported on Monday.
According to witnesses, the women were raped on October 7 by about 10 Burmese soldiers in Shadan Pa, located between the Namsan Hka River and Munglai Hka River, west of the Myitkyina-Manmaw (Bhamo) Road.
One of the three women was unconscious for hours at a public hospital in Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Organization, hospital sources told the KNG.
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| Burmese army troops. Photo: Mizzima |
The gang-rape was committed by Burmese troops under the Mogaung (Mugang)-based Military Operation Command-3 (MOC-3) led by Brig-Gen Myat Kyaw under the Northern Regional Command (NRC) based in Myitkyina, local residents and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) officials said.
There are more than 30,000 acres of banana fields in Shadan Pa on land that has been rented from the KIO by a Chinese businessman, Lau Ying, since 2008, the KNG reported. Burmese troops have been deployed to the banana plantation since September, in a move to seize Kachin Independence Army (KIA) strongholds near the China border.
There are more than 20,000 Chinese and Burmese workers on the plantations. Sources said the KIA had told all workers to return to their homes several times since renewed fighting started on June 9 this year, when the Burmese government broke a cease-fire with the KIA, according to the KNG.
The KIA’s last warning to plantation workers was issued on September 15. However, some workers remained in the area, KIA officials told KNG.
Sources said the latest rape of the three Chinese women is part of a history of Burmese troops using rape as a systematic weapon of war. Women in ethnic states in Burma, particularly in areas of conflict, are subject to extreme brutality and sexual violence at the hands of the Tatmadaw, according to reports issued by human rights groups and NGOs.
In a report released on October 7 by the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand (Kwat), the NGO reported that in the first two months since war broke out in Kachin and northern Shan states this year, 37 women and girls have been raped, and 13 were killed.
“Our documentation team was deeply shocked at the details of these crimes. Some women were gang-raped in front of their families. In one case, soldiers slaughtered a woman’s grandchild in front of her before raping and killing her also,” Shirley Seng, a Kwat spokesperson, said in a press release.
The report also contained details of disappearances of women and men. In one case, it reported that on July 12, 20 women from Mung Yin village in Namatu Township in northern Shan State were taken by Burmese army soldiers from Battalion 324. No one currently knows their whereabouts.
The culture of impunity that shrouds the military in Burma protects the perpetrators of human rights abuses from facing justice, say observers. The Burmese army repeatedly denies any instances of rape by its soldiers. According to Kwat, attempts to report cases of rape and other human rights abuses, such as forced labour and serving as porters, receives no attention from government authorities.
Women who have survived rape attacks have said that Burmese soldiers told them that they had been ordered to carry out the rapes.
Sources said that under MOC-3, 10 battalions are combined in the command: Mogaung-based Infantry Battalion No. 74, Namti-based Light Infantry Battalions No. 381, 382 and 390, Kawa Yang (Mogaung)-based LIB No. 383 and 384, Nammar-based LIB 385 and 386 and Mali Zup (Hopin)-based LIB No. 388 and 389.
Rape: a weapon of mass destruction in slow-motion
Rape as a weapon of war has been a growing subject of concern. Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams said in an International Gender Justice Dialogue held by the Nobel Women’s Initiative in April 2010: “We also talked about landmines as being a weapon of mass destruction in slow-motion; I would think about rape that way now. It is destroying far many more lives I think than landmines have done, and it’s going to be a damn sight harder to ban that weapon of war than it has to ban landmines, but I think it’s something we have to try to do.”
“It has probably become more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier in armed conflict,” said Major-General Patrick Cammaert, former commander of UN peacekeeping forces in the eastern Congo has. Tens of thousands of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo suffer sexual violence in conflict every year.
Kwat has urged United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to condemn the atrocities being committed by the Burmese army in northern Burma in the ongoing conflict there. Many human rights groups deem Thein Sein’s government’s ‘token gestures’ to human rights and democracy as public relations rhetoric designed to deflect the abuses committed by the army.
Kwat spokesperson Hkawng Seng Pan told Mizzima recently, “You can see clearly how the Burmese government is working; the Army is fighting and killing ethnic people while Thein Sein is speaking about human rights to a Parliament full of generals and former military officers.”
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