wfn.org | CWS - Report on Displaced Increases Pressure on Burma to Reform

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.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

Lesley Crosson
Media Relations Officer
Church World Service
(212) 870-2676