wfn.org | New Report on Displaced Burmese Increases Pressure on Burma to Reform

["Lesley Crosson" <lcrosson@churchworldservice.org>]

New Report on Displaced Burmese Increases Pressure on Burma to Reform

NEW YORK - December 22, 2005 * Global humanitarian agency Church World
Service is praising a major new report by the Thailand Burma Border
Consortium that offers new details about the suffering of Burma’s
citizens * and about what they are doing to survive.
The report, “Internal Displacement and Protection in Eastern Burma,
was prepared by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an alliance
of non-governmental organizations working with displaced Burmese in
Thailand and along the Thailand-Burma border.
Church World Service (CWS) is a co-founder and major funder of the
consortium, which found that oppressed Burmese minorities are hiding food
supplies, devising hiding places and employing other extreme coping
strategies in anticipation of regular attacks and forced relocation by a
ruling military regime that has uprooted, tortured, jailed and killed
millions and continues to destroy and rout entire villages.

The report calls for inclusion of humanitarian protection issues in
discussions with the regime, as pressure from international bodies for
reform in the conflict-ridden country mounts.
“Aggression against the people of eastern Burma has been well documented, but until now, there has been very little information on humanitarian
efforts to prevent abuse and to mitigate its consequences when it does
occur,” said Erol Kekic, Associate Director of the Church World Service
Immigration and Refugee Program.
“That the Thailand Burma Border Consortium ’s detailed and comprehensive field research gives attention to humanitarian protection issues puts
this report on the cutting edge,” he said.
Burma’s military regime is unrelenting in its suppression of political
and ethnic opposition. The result, according to the 2005 World Survey, is
that some 550,000 to 800,000 of the country’s 55 million citizens now
are displaced within Burma (also called Myanmar). Another 691,800 have
fled to neighboring countries where they live as refugees and millions
more have fled Burma but have not been able to register as refugees.

According to the report, people living in the conflict region have devised
coping strategies, including hiding food supplies; preparing alternative
hiding sites in case they must evacuate to avoid counter-insurgency
patrols, and warning others about approaching troops.

The regime maintains control through the destruction and forced relocation
of entire villages, arrest, detention, torture, rape, extrajudicial
killings, forced labor, trafficking of women as sex workers, and the
confiscation of people’s land, crops, and other possessions.

Over the past decade, humanitarian agencies based in the capital city of
Rangoon have gained greater access to eastern Burma and to fuller
engagement of government authorities in policy-level dialogue. However,
U.N. agencies report that since the purge of the former Prime Minister and
his allies in October 2004, humanitarian agencies in Burma have either
been disregarded or viewed with suspicion by the government.

”Unless the government is willing to engage in policy-level dialogue
about protection concerns, it is recognized that the humanitarian space
will contract further,” the Thailand Burma Border Consortium report
said.

The report also says that humanitarian agencies face the challenge of
offering programs that protect people in the conflict area while at the
same time assessing their impact to answer concerns from “donors who are
worried that foreign aid may be prolonging the rule of an illegitimate
government.”

The Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program  works with
displaced Burmese to meet their survival needs and provides food, shelter,
blankets, and mosquito nets for the more than 140,000 refugees in the
border camps. In October, Church World Service joined with the Brookings
Institution and the National Endowment for Democracy to co-sponsor a
day-long conference in Washington, D.C., to consider the Burma crisis and
international policy responses.

The release of the Thailand Burma Border Consortium report coincides with
unprecedented steps over the past several weeks by the United Nations
Security Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). 
On Dec. 12, leaders of Association of Southeast Asian Nations delivered
their strongest ever rebuke to member state Burma, urging the country’s
military regime to devise a firm timetable for democratization, and
securing Burma’s agreement to allow an Association of Southeast Asian
Nations delegation to monitor political developments inside the country. 
An estimated 1,100 political prisoners, including 1991 Nobel Peace Prize
Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, are being held by the government. Suu Kyi --
leader of the National League for Democracy, which swept Burma’s 1990
Parliamentary elections but has not been allowed to take power -- is under
house arrest.

The Association of  Southeast Asian Nation’s chairman, Malaysian Foreign
Minister Syed Hamid Albar, is to travel to Rangoon in the next few weeks
to press for political reform and the release of Suu Kyi.

On Dec. 2, the 15-member U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed to
conduct its first ever study of the situation in Burma. The decision came
just over two months after the release of a report and recommendations by
former Czech President Vaclav Havel and South Africa’s 1984 Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who made the case for U.N.
Security Council intervention in Burma.

By publishing its research, gathered through questionnaires and interviews, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium  “seeks to inform the development
of humanitarian protection strategies by internally displaced persons and
other civilians whose lives and livelihoods are threatened by war, abuse
and violence.”

Founded in 1946, Church World Service is a cooperative global relief,
development and refugee assistance agency supported in part by Protestant,
Orthodox and Anglican denominations in the United States. For most of
those years, Church World Service has been engaged in humanitarian
assistance and advocacy for the people of Asia, including Burma (more than
20 years), Cambodia (more than 25 years), and Vietnam (more than 50
years).
Media Contacts
Lesley Crosson, (212) 870-2676, lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
Jan Dragin - 24/7 - (781) 925-1526, jdragin@gis.net