‘One Prisoner of Conscience is One Too Many’

December 13th, 2018  •  Author:   Progressive Voice  •  7 minute read
Featured image

In an appalling verdict on Friday, three Kachin human rights defenders – Lum Zawng, Nang Pu and Zau Jat – were sentenced to six months in prison and given a 500,000 Kyat fine each (approximately $320 USD) for publicly calling for the protection of civilians in conflict zones and for comments made about the Myanmar[1] military’s abuses against civilians. Just days after the sentencing of the three Kachin activists, Myanmar and the world commemorated Human Rights Day, a cruel irony given just how little Myanmar has changed since the so-called transition from military rule to democracy that began seven years ago.

The three activists were accused of defaming the Myanmar military by the northern commander, Lt-Col Myo Min Oo, who used Article 500 of the colonial-era Penal Code to file charges, suppressing their right to freedom of speech. Immediately following the verdict, Kachin youth representatives and activists protested the verdict by marching from the courthouse to the historic Manau Park in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State, to demand justice for the three activists. In yet another repressive move, the Myitkyina Township police arrested and charged the three activists who led the most recent demonstration – Sut Seng Htoi, Seng Hkum Awng, and Brang Mai – for allegedly violating the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Processions Law.

“ethnic people will stand united for our rights, for peace, and for our freedom.”

the Karen Peace Support Network

In response, over 550 civil society organizations and 30 individuals from Myanmar have unified in condemning the verdict and have demanded their immediate and unconditional release. Political parties, international human rights groups and embassies, including the EU, Sweden and UK delegations to Myanmar have raised concerns, many calling for their verdict to be immediately quashed. As the Kachin World Congress stated, the Myanmar military “are flaunting their impunity and power over the justice system by exacting unjust sentencing, intimidating anyone daring to speak out against their crimes. Meanwhile, they are continuing their attacks and maligned activities on our Kachin territories, displacing indigenous people, and seizing our lands and natural resources – all during the so-called ‘peace process’.” Solidarity has flooded in from other ethnic communities also condemning the verdict as a ploy to silence any criticism of the military and called on donors of the peace process to launch a comprehensive review of their support to the current peace process. As the Karen Peace Support Network in their unequivocal support and solidarity for the Kachin activists stated, “ethnic people will stand united for our rights, for peace, and for our freedom.”

This miscarriage of justice only highlights how little Myanmar has progressed in terms of its protection and promotion of fundamental freedoms, particularly for those who remain marginalized and vulnerable to persecution for their religious beliefs and identity. As events observing 70 years since the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 70th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide were held on 10 December, 2018 around the world, it is high time to take stock and take concrete actions against the ongoing human rights violations in Myanmar and immediately work to end the genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes perpetrated against ethnic communities.

“The decision of the court shows that our country is not a democratic country although the current government came to power by proclaiming itself a democratic government.”

Nang Pu, the Director of Htoi Gender and Development Foundation

The world must act now to fulfill its duties and obligations to which they committed to 70 years ago. This means: an immediate and comprehensive review of the peace process; targeted sanctions against those who continue to commit grave crimes; a global embargo on arm sales to the Myanmar military; travel bans against perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes; a strong UN Security Council resolution on Myanmar to hold those who have committed atrocity crimes accountable and to ensure that mechanisms set up to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar are adequately funded through the UN General Assembly; and to call for the immediate and unconditional release of the three Kachin activists as well as to drop all charges against those individuals who have exercised their right to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association, and have spoken up for those who continue to face charges for speaking up for the rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in Myanmar. As Nang Pu, the Director of Htoi Gender and Development Foundation and one of the Kachin women human rights defenders who will now be forced to spend the next six months in jail for protecting and advocating for the rights of internally displaced persons stated, “The decision of the court shows that our country is not a democratic country although the current government came to power by proclaiming itself a democratic government.” If the international community’s wish is to support democracy and human rights in Myanmar, they must condemn the sentencing and demand a genuine reform that allows freedom for activists to pursue democracy peacefully without fear of persecution and prosecution.

The now State Councellor, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, once a political prisoner herself said, “one prisoner of conscience is one too many.” She must act now to demonstrate that her words can be trusted and that they are not just empty expressions but are meaningful to change the discourse of the failing transition that is proving to be undemocratic in practice.


Resources from the past week

actions

Statements and Press Releases

သတၱမအၾကိမ္ေျမာက္မီဒီယာဖြံ႕ျဖိဳးေရးညီလာခံတြင္ ျပန္ၾကားေရးဝန္ၾကီးဦးေဖျမင့္၏ မိန္႔ခြန္းပါ ေျပာၾကားခ်က္ မ်ားအေပၚ မီဒီယာအဖြဲ႔ အစည္းမ်ားမွ ကန္႔ကြက္ေၾကာင္း သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

By 20 Myanmar Media Organizations

စစ္ပြဲအတြင္း ပိတ္မိျပည္သူမ်ားကို ကယ္ဆယ္ေပးရန္ ဆႏၵျပေတာင္းဆိုသူမ်ားကို ေထာင္ဒဏ္ ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့ျခင္းအေပၚ အရပ္ဘက္ အဖြဲ႕အစည္းမ်ား၏ သေဘာထား ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

By 559 Civil Society Organizations and 31 Individuals

CSW Condemns Imprisonment of Three Kachin Activists for Peaceful Protest

By Christian Solidarity Worldwide

Quash Conviction of Kachin Activists: Speaking Out for Rights of Civilians Not a Crime

By Human Rights Watch

Report Finds Evidence of Forced Marriage of Myanmar Women to Chinese Men

By Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Kachin Women’s Association Thailand

ကရင္နီေျမ အလုပ္ရံုေဆြးေႏြးပြဲ သေဘာထားထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္

By Karenni Land Seminar

The Kachin National Organisation Condemns the Sentence of Kachin Peaceful Protest Organisers

By Kachin National Organisation

KPSN Condemns Jailing of Kachin Activists

By Karen Peace Support Network

Joint Communique Signed Between the United Nations and the Government of Myanmar to Prevent and Respond to Conflict-related Sexual Violence in Myanmar

By Office of the Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict

Shan Communities and MPs Call for Cancellation of Dams in Conflict-torn Northern and Southern Shan State

By Shan communities and local Members of Parliaments

World Kachin Congress Deplores Unjust Sentencing of Kachin Civil Society Leaders, Calls for Sanctions Against the Real Criminals – the Burma Army

By World Kachin Congress

reports

Reports

Rangers Help Vulnerable Civilians in Kachin State

By Free Burma Rangers

ျပန္လည္အေျခခ်ၿပီးလူမႈဘဝ

By Karenni Refugee Repatriation and Reconstruction Working Group

From Scorched Earth to Parched Earth

By Shan Human Rights Foundation and Shan Sapawa Environmental Organization


Progressive Voice is a participatory, rights-based policy research and advocacy organization that was born out of Burma Partnership. Burma Partnership officially ended its work on October 10, 2016 transitioning to a rights-based policy research and advocacy organization called Progressive Voice. For further information, please see our press release “Burma Partnership Celebrates Continuing Regional Solidarity for Burma and Embraces the Work Ahead for Progressive Voice.