Pandering to Burma while the killing goes on The Sunday Times - Review May 08, 2005 Pandering to Burma while the killing goes on A genocidal junta is gaining acceptance from an uncaring world community, writes Baroness Cox Fifteen years ago this month the Burmese people elected the National League for Democracy by an 80% majority. It was doomed to political annihilation when the present regime, the Orwellian-sounding State Peace and Development Council, seized power by force. Even though Aung San Suu Kyi, the league’s leader, is under house arrest, her eloquent voice is still heard. Less so are the voices of the country’s ethnic national groups, who are dying in their thousands under the military dictatorship’s policy of cultural and physical genocide. Genocide is a word I have felt obliged to use in the House of Lords after seeing village after village bombed and the systematic violation of human rights during the dozen visits I have made. Last week’s television interviews with Karenni survivors of a recent alleged chemical weapons attack were compelling evidence of the regime’s brutality. These reinforced an investigation by my colleague, Dr Martin Panter, an Australian, who examined patients who had vomited blood and experienced blistering skin and pulmonary problems. The catalogue of human rights abuses includes the shelling of civilians and using villagers as forced labour. Even elderly people have been forced to carry heavy loads of rice and ammunition from dawn until dusk. If they fall by the wayside they are beaten, kicked and sometimes left for dead. Civilians are used as human minesweepers, forced to walk ahead of soldiers. Since 1996 more than 2,500 villages in eastern Burma have been destroyed and more than 1m people displaced. They have either been sent to relocation camps where conditions are little better than death camps, forced to hide in the jungle and scavenge for their existence, or have fled to camps on the Thai-Burma border. On many occasions I have crossed the border from Thailand to witness the conditions these internally displaced people are having to endure. The memory that epitomises the tragedy for me was hearing children describing how they had seen brothers and sisters ground to death in a log-weighted rice pounder. People lack the basic necessities of food and medicine. On one visit we came to a village in which a school teacher ran to us, saying that his food supplies were exhausted and he had nothing to give the children. On my last visit I met a mother whose five children had just died from malaria. Conditions at night are harsh, with fugitives unable to light fires for fear of the smoke being seen by soldiers. Discovery would mean probable torture and death. I have spoken to people who have been subjected to forced labour and others whose legs have been blown off when they were forced to act as human mine detectors. Our charity, the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust, or Hart, is helping to support two orphanages for Karen and Karenni children in the Thai-Burma borderlands. The children showed me their graphic paintings of Burmese soldiers attacking their families. The evidence is overwhelming and horrific. The “crime” of the ethnic groups (Karen, Karenni, Shan, Mon, Chin, Kachin and Arakan) is their desire to preserve their own identity. The junta is intent on pursuing a policy of “Burmanisation” through systematic discrimination, including theft and exploitation of land. There is also religious persecution of Christians and Muslims. The indigenous groups, many of which once hoped to secure their own independent states, are now willing to consider a federal solution that would permit them to live freely on their land. Reports of chemical weapon attacks emerged last month, following a month-long artillery barrage against a border post held by Karenni soldiers at Nya My, near the Thai town of Mae Hong Son. Witnesses said it culminated with a shell that released a cloud of pungent yellow smoke. This is not the first accusation of its kind. In the mid-1990s I brought back evidence of biological weaponry being used against civilians. In that case it was one of a number of devices designed for detecting monsoons at high atmospheric levels. However, instead of being used for that purpose it was dropped by low-flying aircraft as a means of distributing virulent pathogens along water courses. Those in areas where they landed experienced extreme gastrointestinal infections. According to press reports, between 10 and 20 Burmese specialists attended an East German chemical weapons establishment for training before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The situation is all the more pressing in view of the fact that Burma is due to assume the chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) next year. It would be outrageous if the regime were to be given the respectability such a post confers. The conciliatory gestures made by the junta have been a sham. It is clear the only language the regime understands is pressure. Britain has adjusted its robust stance on Burma since modifying its independent foreign policy to conform with the European Union’s stance. The EU operates a visa ban and an asset freeze on senior members of the junta, in addition to an arms embargo, although these do not inconvenience the regime unduly. We would like the EU to bring in targeted economic sanctions and use the leverage of the international community to demand the opening up of Burma to human rights organisations. The genesis for Hart came during the 1980s, when I did a lot of work behind the Iron Curtain. My primary focus was Poland when it was under martial law. I had agreed to be patron of another charity on condition that I could travel with the aid to make sure it got through. One night our lorry broke down in a forest in northern Poland and the driver went for help. It was freezing and pitch dark in the middle of winter. As I sat meditating I saw how important it was to bring some light to people living in darkness. That became the mission and the mandate of Hart. There are few darker places in the world right now than Burma. Baroness Cox was talking to Stuart. ~