RE: Open letter to the members of the Security Council on the situation of Burma-Myanmar

Excellencies,

On Monday June 19, 2006, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the democratically elected party National League for Democracy (NLD) who has spent, more than 10 of the past eighteen years in detention, will be celebrating her 61^st birthday under house arrest in Burma-Myanmar. She is the living illustration of the repressive and dictatorial nature of the Burmese government, led by the military junta known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

For this symbolic day, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) stresses the reasons why action by the Security Council on the situation in Burma-Myanmar is essential and urgent. In response to the concerns expressed by some members of the Security Council that a resolution on Burma does not fall within the Councils mandate FIDH sets out the reasons why it does so. FIDH, along with numerous other international human rights organizations and movements, strongly believe that it is vital for the Security Council to acknowledge that the current situation in Burma poses a threat to international peace and security, and to adopt a binding, non-punitive resolution.

The increasingly dire humanitarian crisis and the strengthening of a military dictatorship

Since December 2005, the military junta has significantly intensified its attacks on civilians, mostly on the Karen minority in East Burma. The burning down of hundreds of villages, killings, acts of torture and systematic rape, has forced more that 16,000 men, women and children to flee their homes and take refuge in the jungle, enduring extremely precarious living conditions. Thousands have sought refuge in neighboring Thailand, adding to the million that had already been forced to flee their own country as a result of the militarys systematic assaults on them and their families. (See The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees news reports on Burma-Myanmar at: http://www.unhcr.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/news/opendoc.htm?tbl=NEWS&id=4472ded14).

This has resulted in an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis, worsened by the fact that the Burmese regime has imposed stricter conditions, or denied access entirely, to humanitarian organizations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres and other international Non-Governmental Organizations, so that they are unable to reach the displaced facing the greatest needs. 

In addition, the SPDC has increased political repression, especially towards the NLD party members, threatening them with being further outlawed and forbidding them from assembling or giving press conferences. The Burmese junta has detained 1156 political prisoners over the past eighteen years, including 392 representatives of the NLD party. 10 political prisoners have died in custody within the last year. While the regime was supposed to release Aung San Suu Kyi less than a month ago, it decided, again arbitrarily, to postpone her release to another year in spite of the hopes triggered by the visit of U.N. Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Mr. Ibrahim Gambari last month, who was allowed to briefly meet with her.  

These blatant violations of human rights contravene the very universally-accepted cornerstones of international treaties and customary international law which the United Nations endeavors to defend and implement, yet nothing today can make us believe that these crimes will ever stop, unless international action is taken.

International pressure from the Security Council is not only justified, but crucial

In spite of the more than 29 resolutions which have been adopted by the U.N. General Assembly and Commission on Human Rights, calling for national reconciliation and democratization, the SPDCs unlawful methods of political and ethnical repression have been intensified and consolidated, with complete impunity and indifference from the outside world.

Only international pressure from the highest body of the United Nations can now provide hope for peaceful and transitional change in Burma. While some Security Council members have expressed their concern that a resolution on Burma does not fall within the Councils mandate there are at least 3 ways to demonstrate that it does so.

1) The situation in Burma poses a threat to international peace and security

The fact that thousands of people are currently fleeing the country mostly into Thailand is a cause of instability in the region. Indeed, Thai border controls have been struggling to cope with a growing exodus of refugees. There are currently more than 140,000 refugees living at the border in fenced camps, where Burmese civilians are denied the permission to work and can only survive with humanitarian aid. In view of the widespread and growing nature of the juntas attacks, the whole region is threatened by insecurity and a larger humanitarian crisis.

Recent academic studies have demonstrated that the humanitarian crisis caused by the junta is not restricted to within Burma, but has ever-increasing spillover effects reaching the entire region.  One consequence of this is that deadly and new diseases are rapidly spreading amongst neighboring populations of at least 6 countries. In a report issued in March 2006 by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, researchers concluded that for both malaria and TB, multi-drug resistance generated by Burmas weak programs for drug control are increasing drug resistance in Thailand and India and threatening to undermine the only effective regimens for drug resistantPlasmodium falciparum in South and Southeast Asia. (?) Resurgent drug resistant malaria and TB have the potential to threaten enormous populations. HIV spread related to Burmese heroin exports has already done so and affects India, China, Thailand, Vietnam, and, most recently Bangladesh.[1]

Burma is also one of the worlds leading producers of heroin and amphetamine-type stimulants. To claim that this drug production and trafficking does not pose an international threat is simply false. Among the wide range of violations in Burma, this element is only one more reason to justify Security Council action.

Finally, the Burmese regimes assaults on ethnic minorities and its intensification of political repression in Rangoon and elsewhere represent a growing risk of an outburst of civil war which would undeniably cause even greater instability in the region, and further human exodus to neighboring countries.

2) Security Councils thematic resolutions have placed a clearer and stronger duty on its members

On April 28, 2006, when voting Resolution 1674 on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflicts, the members of the Security Council agreed on the importance of taking measures aimed at conflict prevention and resolution, without limiting this objective to international conflicts alone. Most importantly, this resolution highlighted the fact that the deliberate targeting of civilians and other protected persons, and the commission of systematic, flagrant and widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in situations of armed conflict, may constitute a threat to international peace and security, and, reaffirm[ed] in this regard [the Security Councils] readiness to consider such situations and, where necessary, to adopt appropriate steps. (Emphasis added)

The situation in Burma, which falls directly under the categories mentioned in Resolution 1674, should be analyzed in the light of the Security Council members commitment to consider such situations and adopt appropriate steps.

Furthermore, the adoption in October 2000 of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security specifically addresses the role and experience of women in the context of armed conflicts and calls for an end to impunity for gender-based abuses during and after conflicts. It calls for action to be taken by a wide range of actors, including governments, the UN Secretary-General, and parties to armed conflict.  It also called upon the UN Security Council itself to take measures to implement this resolution. Provisions of Resolution 1325 have since been implemented in diverse conflict or post-conflict situations, including in Afghanistan, Colombia, Timor-Leste or Democratic Republic of Congo.

Because women and the girl child suffer the most from the military junta, who use rape as a weapon of war against ethnic women, and from the forced displacement, this resolution gives further justification to the Security Council to take action on Burma. And here again, Aung San Suu Kyi is the living example of how women, even Nobel Peace Prize winners, are treated and oppressed by the Burma regime.

Finally, numerous Resolutions on Children and Armed Conflict have been adopted by the Council (1612, 1539, 1460, 1379, 1314, 1261), calling upon all members to move from expressions of concern to action in specific situations. Resolution 1539 from April 2004 states that the Security Council stress[es] its determination to ensure respect for its resolutions and other international norms and standards for the protection of children affected by armed conflict.

The fact that the Burma military junta forces more children to become soldiers than any other country in the world, should in itself be sufficient for the Security Council to address the issue, and to take all necessary steps to save Burmese childrens lives.

3) The Security Council has in the past issued resolutions on countries posing non-traditional threats

Some country-oriented resolutions adopted by the Security Council have been justified not because the situation in a country posed a traditional threat to international peace and security, but because it posed other serious threats, of equal concern, for example: the overthrow of democratic governments, refugee outflows, humanitarian and human rights violations or drug trafficking. Resolutions on countries such as Afghanistan, Colombia, Yemen and Haiti were adopted on these grounds, despite the fact that they pose what may traditionally be considered to be internal rather than international threats.

The Security Council has increasingly recognized that internal conflicts do affect the stability and security in a given region.  Furthermore, the only sustainable way to obtain and maintain international peace and security is to ensure that regimes do not systematically violate human and civil fundamental rights against their own populations.

For all these reasons, it is vital that the Security Council takes urgent action to address the situation of an eighteen-year-old intensifying military dictatorship.

On the occasion of Aung San Suu Kyis 61^st birthday, FIDH calls on all Security Council members to publicly condemn her arbitrary detention, request her immediate release and raise public awareness to her tragic situation. Putting the issue of Burma on the Security Councils agenda must be a priority, with the objective of issuing a binding resolution in order to call on the military junta to engage in peaceful national reconciliation and to put an end to the widespread and growing human rights violations.

Sincerely yours,
Sidiki Kaba,
President,

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)

FIDH Press release