Burma Army Attacks Displace Thousands of Civilians

August 14, 2009

(New York) - Burmese army attacks against ethnic Shan civilians in northeastern Burma have displaced more than 10,000 people in the past three weeks, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on Burma's military government to immediately end attacks against civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law.

Following democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's sentence this week to return to house arrest on August 11, Human Rights Watch reiterated its call to the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Burma and to create a commission of inquiry to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by all parties to the fighting in Burma's ethnic minority areas.

"While the world has been focused on the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese troops have been battering civilians as part of the military government's longstanding campaign against ethnic minorities," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "These attacks in Shan state should remind the international community that in addition to the persecution of the Burmese political opposition, Burma's ethnic minorities are systematically marginalized and brutalized by the Burmese government and army."

According to credible reports by Shan human rights groups, the Burmese army, or Tatmadaw, has deployed seven army battalions to clear civilians from large areas of Laikha township and parts of Mong Kerng township in central Shan state between July 27 and August 1. Troops have reportedly burned down more than 500 houses as they attacked 39 villages in the area. Human Rights Watch believes this recently scaled-up forced relocation operation is part of an intensified counterinsurgency campaign, as Tatmadaw units attack the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), an insurgent armed group that operates in the area. The SSA-S has been conducting deadly ambushes regularly for years and on July 15, SSA-S forces attacked the 515th Light Infantry Battalion in Laikha, killing 11 Tatmadaw soldiers. There are reports that many of the displaced civilians are moving toward the Thailand-Burma border.

The Thailand-Burma Border Consortium annual internal displacement survey reports that more than 13,000 civilians were displaced in 2008 in Laikha and surrounding townships because of increased Tatmadaw operations against the SSA-S. This follows years of similar operations. Between 1996 and 1998, the Tatmadaw effectively cleared central Shan state of its civilian population. Burmese army forces have been responsible for deliberate attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, torture, destruction and forced relocation of villages, and use of child soldiers and forced labor. More than 350,000 civilians were forcibly displaced during that campaign, many of them becoming refugees in neighboring Thailand.

"While the Burmese Army flouts the laws of war, Shan civilians pay the price," said Adams. "The ongoing Burmese army attacks in Shan state demonstrate the vicious modus operandi of the Tatmadaw and its disdain for the lives and well-being of civilians."

Recent attacks by the Tatmadaw and their proxy forces, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, forced some 5,000 ethnic Karen across the border into Thailand in June. The civilians, mostly women and children, were fleeing fighting, forced labor, and the widespread sowing of landmines.

According to the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium's annual survey, nearly half a million people are internally displaced in eastern Burma, either in government relocation sites, within non-state armed groups ceasefire zones, or in so-called free-fire areas highly vulnerable to Tatmadaw patrols that maintain an unlawful "shoot on sight" policy against civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented abuses against civilians in ethnic areas of Karen state in eastern Burma and in Chin state in western Burma. Abuses such as extrajudicial killings, torture and beatings, and confiscation of land and property continue with impunity.

There are more than 140,000 Burmese refugees along the Thailand border in nine temporary refugee camps. Although 50,000 refugees have been resettled to third countries like the United States, Norway, and Canada, more refugees continue to arrive, fleeing the armed conflict in eastern Burma.

Thailand does not recognize people from Shan state as refugees, and refuses to permit the establishment of refugee camps for ethnic Shan, fearing a larger influx of civilians fleeing repression from northeastern Burma. Instead, those Shan who reach Thailand eke out an existence as migrant workers, often without legal status. Human Rights Watch called on the government of Thailand to offer sanctuary to refugees fleeing abuses in Shan state in accordance with international law. Although Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it is bound by the customary international law prohibition against returning people to countries where they face persecution.

Human Rights Watch reiterated its calls to the United Nations Security Council to establish a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma and to pursue a comprehensive arms embargo against Burma. Human Rights Watch said that Burma should become a regular topic for discussion on the Security Council agenda, to pressure the Burmese government to respect basic freedoms of its citizens and continue to inform Security Council members of its progress. Security Council Resolution 1674 on the protection of civilians in armed conflict states that "peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations and the foundations for collective security."

A May 2009 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, "Crimes in Burma", reviewed United Nations human rights reports for several years and concluded that human rights abuses are widespread, systematic, and part of state policy. The report, endorsed by five eminent international jurists, cited cases of forced relocation, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, and torture. It similarly called for a commission of inquiry to be established by the Security Council to investigate potential crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.

Human Rights Watch said an arms embargo could stop the supply of weapons, military assistance, and technology that enable continued attacks against civilians in ethnic conflict areas. China and Russia, both of whom supply weapons to Burma, are the military government's main diplomatic supporters and continue to block stronger international action against the ruling junta.

On August 13, the UN Security Council issued a weak press statement on Burma that both "reiterate[s] the importance of the release of all political prisoners," but also affirms Security Council members' "commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Burma.

"The UN Security Council should end its inaction and authorize a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses and enforce an arms embargo," said Adams. "This will not happen unless China and Russia stop protecting Burma's generals."

Soldiers in Philippines Attack Militant Group, Abu Sayyaf

MANILA (AP) — Hundreds of soldiers began an assault on Wednesday in the southern Philippines on two jungle encampments of militants linked to Al Qaeda, killing at least 20 gunmen and seizing bombs that had been set to explode, military officials said.

The simultaneous predawn attacks on the militant group, Abu Sayyaf, on Basilan Island, set off fierce fighting that continued late in the day. Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino, the regional military commander, said 23 soldiers had been killed.

Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen on Basilan and nearby Jolo Island and the Zamboanga Peninsula, is on a United States list of terrorist organizations because of its involvement in bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings of hostages. The group is suspected of having received money and training from Al Qaeda.

Abu Sayyaf has been weakened by American-backed offensives for the past several years, and has turned to kidnappings for ransom in recent months.

Filipino security officials fear that the ransom payments could revive the group on Basilan and Jolo, two predominantly Muslim regions that are among the country’s poorest areas.

Clinton Addresses War Crimes in Congo

By SARAH CHILDRESS

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stopped in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Monday, making a two-day visit to highlight sexual violence, a weapon wielded in the long-running conflict by rebel groups as well as the Congolese army.

The conflict has raged for about 15 years in this vast nation. It began when Tutsi forces pursued Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide over the Congolese border, but has since devolved into clashes among several armed groups over the valuable minerals in the region. The Congolese people are caught in the middle. Tens of thousands of women and girls, and some men, have been raped.

"I will be pressing very hard for not just assistance -- to help those who are being abused and mistreated, in particular the women who are turned into weapons of war through the rape they experience -- but also looking for ways to try to end this conflict," Mrs. Clinton said in remarks after she arrived on the fourth stop of her seven-nation Africa tour.

The Congolese army is the largest force in the region, and the biggest perpetrator of sexual violence, according to Human Rights Watch, an independent watchdog group based in New York, in a July report on rape in the Congo.

The problem is compounded by impunity. No senior military officials have been prosecuted for any such offenses. Last year 27 soldiers were convicted of crimes of sexual violence in eastern Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. The U.N. logged 7,703 new cases, committed by army soldiers and other armed groups, in the same region.

Mrs. Clinton was expected to encourage the government and the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country, known as Monuc, to take a stronger stand on such crimes. In Goma, a major city in eastern Congo, she plans to meet with rape survivors to hear their stories.

Mrs. Clinton said she had spoken earlier in the day with Angolan President Jose Edouardo dos Santos during her visit with him about bringing an end to the mineral trade that fuels the conflict. Mr. dos Santos, she said, believes it will take a coordinated effort from the U.S., Britain, France and Rwanda "to prevent the mining from basically funding a lot of these militias that are keeping the fighting going."

Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to meet with Congolese President Joseph Kabila while in Goma, and she said she would press Mr. Kabila to work on creating "broader political legitimacy and credibility by his government" and to work on professionalizing the military. She also is scheduled to visit a hospital founded by former NBA star Dikembe Mutombo, a native of Congo, while in the capital, Kinshasa, and to hold a town-hall meeting.

The secretary's visit comes as the Congolese government has developed strong ties with China, which last year offered the impoverished country a multimillion-dollar deal to swap resources for infrastructure. The International Monetary Fund has tried to block the deal, threatening to cancel its debt-forgiveness with the Congo. The IMF believes the agreement would plunge the Congo deeper into debt.

On Monday, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said the Chinese concerns had agreed to adjust the terms of the deal, and that if they did, the IMF would maintain its debt-forgiveness plan, according to Reuters.

East Timor: Security Sector Relapse?

Simon Roughneen | 31 Jul 2009

DILI, Timor-Leste -- Security sector reform (SSR) is a vital part of state-building, especially in Timor-Leste, a country that came close to civil war in 2006. Significantly, though, few Timorese political leaders interviewed about the issue wanted to speak about one of the highest priorities for the U.N. Mission in Timor-Leste: completing -- and, by extension, to some degree implementing -- a comprehensive security sector review.

Neither the review nor the overall role of the U.N. in SSR was raised in any of World Politics Review's meetings with politicians in Timor-Leste. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a Dili-based foreign diplomat told WPR, "The Timorese will do SSR the Timorese way."

President Jose Ramos-Horta deflected the issue in a recent interview, focusing instead on the future of the army and police, in light of the imminent departure of resistance-era leaders due to retirement in the coming 2-3 years. Former Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri told WPR that SSR proposals to date "are not really a reform," as what is proposed does not "have Timorese ownership."

All of the politicians interviewed spoke about the "resumption" of policing responsibilities by the Timorese police (PNTL) from the U.N. Mission. This is a vital part of SSR, given the police force's implosion in the 2006 violence. Moreover, the police has historically been subordinate to the army, known as the F-FDTL. That disparity was accentuated by the temporary Joint Command for national security set up after assassination attempts on President Ramos-Horta and Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao in February 2008.

The domestic security situation improved in the months thereafter, but the police remained subordinate to the army, which still involves itself in internal security. According to eyewitnesses, U.N. police attempts to intervene in a public order incident in Maliana in June 2009, near the Indonesian border, resulted in F-FDTL guns being pointed at the multinational forces.

Some police, meanwhile, are involved in smuggling and extortion, and double up as members of the country's martial arts gangs and clandestine societies. Participants in the 2006 violence are mostly still employed on the force, without any accountability for their actions.

It is estimated that over 100,000 Timorese may be gang members, itself a difficult security challenge. James Scambary, of the Timor-Leste Armed Violence Assessment (TLAVA), a research project that looks at ways to implement community security initiatives, reminded WPR that "in 2006-7, over 1,300 U.N. police and later the [Australian-led] International Stabilisation Force could not prevent gang fighting," which was an expression of both non-political and political violence.

Draft security laws recently submitted to the Timorese parliament include a civil protection component, featuring a proposed Authority for Civil Protection "to coordinate the civil protection agents at national, district and suco level." This could have the effect of legitimizing or rewarding gangs and past perpetrators of violence with official status. If carried out in tandem with focused community security work, on the other hand, the measure could yield positive results.

It remains a point of discussion whether the influence of international peacekeepers has itself been entirely positive. Shona Hawkes of the NGO monitoring group La'o Hamutuk says that giving the multinational forces immunity from prosecution sets a negative example for local counterparts. There are almost weekly skirmishes between the Portuguese National Republican Guard (GNR) and Timorese security forces, with the most recent one allegedly involving a GNR assault on the prime minister's personal security.

But SSR, in Timor-Leste and elsewhere, means more than fixing the police and army. It
is a wide-ranging concept, often difficult to implement in practice. By most definitions, it means addressing all of the "hard" -- and a good chunk of the "soft" -- parts of state power.
In Timor-Leste, according to a recent paper (.pdf) published by the Center for International Cooperation, that means addressing "important justice and rule-of-law issues, including poor judicial capacity, a long legacy of impunity, a decrepit detention system, parliamentary and civil society oversight of security institutions."

Police reform is just a part of the process and will not work if the wide range of SSR needs are not dealt with. Timor-Leste, for instance, has a backlog of more than 4,000 legal cases, and there are multiple examples of impunity at the highest political levels.

Without the following priority list, by no means exhaustive, SSR will remain elusive in the country:

- Reform of the legal system and an end to impunity;
- Adequate economic growth and development that provides jobs and education for idle youth who proliferate in the gangs;
- Transparent implementation of the proposed Land Law, which aims to clarify land ownership issues that were muddied by cycles of displacement and contradictory legal systems inherited from various occupying powers.

To put the explosive land issue in context, perhaps 50 percent of Dili's houses were "illegally" occupied after 1999. As James Scambary told WPR, "Much of the fighting and displacement in 2006 was over disputed land," with over 100,000 Timorese driven from their homes at the time.

But perhaps the key to SSR is negotiating the political interests that have yet to be untangled, accommodated, or overcome. This is unsurprising, as SSR usually comes after conflict, when politics is either atrophied or compromised by links to armed factions, whether official or otherwise.

The U.N. views SSR as both a post-conflict and a conflict-prevention issue. But as the OECD-DAC handbook on Security System Reform and Governance says, it can be "difficult to find local ownership for SSR, especially where it is most needed, for example where security forces are part of the problem or where SSR may have the potential to change current power relationships."

The U.N. inquiry into the events of 2006 highlighted fragile state institutions, weak rule of law, minimal parliamentary oversight, and deficiencies in the army and the police as contributing factors to the violence. In Timor-Leste, the security sector is characterized by personal relationships, political and regional affiliations, and old-boy networks of comradeships and rivalries built up over decades of resistance to violent foreign occupation.

It seems that whatever the government does, security forces will have considerable autonomy. The draft security laws task the heads of the military and police with proposing each force's rules of engagement, with subsequent approval in both cases by the president and the council of ministers.

Former Prime Minister Alkatiri says SSR is "not only a technical issue, and we have to depoliticize the institutions." His Fretilin government failed to do so, contributing to the 2006 meltdown. Whether its successor, led by an icon of the resistance doubling as both prime minister and defense minister, has the will to address SSR remains to be seen.

Simon Roughneen is a journalist currently in southeast Asia. His chapter on Security Sector Reform in Sudan was published in "Beyond Settlement" (Associated University Press, 2008).

http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articlePrint.aspx?ID=4147

Nigerian Islamist Attacks Spread

Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.

A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.

Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.

Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.

ANALYSIS
By Caroline Duffield, BBC News, Nigeria

Tensions are never far from the surface in northern Nigeria. Poverty and competition for scarce resources, along with ethnic, cultural and religious differences have all fuelled sudden violence.

But the latest violence is not between communities, it involves young men from religious groups, arming themselves and attacking local police.

Fringe religious groups in Nigeria have claimed links to the Taliban before - individuals have also been accused of links to al-Qaeda. But Nigeria is very different to countries like Mali or Algeria, where groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb operate.

The idea of radical Islamist militants gaining a serious foothold in Nigeria is usually dismissed, because of the strength of local identities and traditions.

The preacher, Mohammed Yusuf, says Western education is against Islamic teaching.

There has also been an attack in Wudil, some 20km (12 miles) from Kano, the largest city in northern Nigeria.

A curfew is in force in Bauchi, the scene of Sunday's violence.

Sharia law is in place across northern Nigeria, but there is no history of al-Qaeda-linked violence in the country.

Nigeria's 150 million people are split almost equally between Muslims and Christians and the two groups generally live peacefully side by side, despite occasional outbreaks of communal violence.

Militants chanting "God is great" attacked the Potiskum police station at about 0215 local time (0115 GMT) - the same time as the raid was launched in Maiduguri.

The police station and neighbouring buildings in Potiskum have been razed to the ground, eyewitnesses say.

Two people have been confirmed dead and the police have made 23 arrests.

Fringe group

The corpses of civilians are scattered around the streets of Maiduguri, after being pulled from their cars and shot, eyewitnesses say.

The police and army are patrolling, firing into the air, apparently trying to clear civilians from the area.

There are unconfirmed reports of a jailbreak in the town.

In Wudil, three people have been killed and more than 33 arrested. The senior police officer in Wudil has been wounded.

Security is said to have been beefed up in Plateau State, to the south of Bauchi, where hundreds were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians last year.

Mr Yusuf's followers in Bauchi are known as Boko Haram, which means "Education is prohibited".

They attacked a police station on Sunday after some of their leaders were arrested.

Correspondents say the group is seen locally as a fringe group and has aroused suspicion for its recruitment of young men, and its belief that Western education, Western culture and science are sinful.