Democratic Burmese Youths

Red Cross slams Burma for rights abuses Yangon/Geneva (dpa) - In an unusually harshly worded statement, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Friday denounced Burma's military regime for ongoing human rights violations and demanded it take urgent action to end its abuses. "I urge the government of Burma to put a stop to all violations of international humanitarian law and to ensure that they do not recur," committee President Jakob Kellenberger said. He also encouraged the international community to put more pressure on Burma's ruling junta to end its systematic abuse of the human rights of prison detainees and of civilians in Burma's war zones. According to Red Cross field investigations, Burma's ruling junta is forcing thousands of prison detainees to act as porters for the armed forces in their campaigns against a separatist insurgency by ethnic Karens in eastern Burma, subjecting them to exhaustion, malnutrition and murder. "The persistent use of detainees as porters for the armed forces is a matter of grave humanitarian concern," Kellenberger said. "The ICRC has repeatedly drawn attention to these abuses, but the authorities have failed to put a stop to them." Burma's junta also continued to abuse the basic human rights of men, women and children living in the conflict areas along the Thai-Burma border in Karen state, where the military has been carrying out an offensive since November 2005 to wipe out the Karen insurgency, which has been fighting for the autonomy of the Karen state for the past six decades. Atrocities in the border area have included large-scale destruction of food supplies and of means of production and preventing the border populations from working in their fields, aggravating an already precarious humanitarian situation, the Red Cross said. The armed forces have also committed numerous acts of violence against people living in these areas, including murder and arbitrary arrest and detention. They have also forced villagers to support military operations and have forced them out of their homes. Burma's junta, the self-styled State Peace and Development Council, has been carrying out a large-scale offensive against the three districts of Toungoo, Nyanung Lay Bin and Muthraw for the past 18 months with no let-up. The offensive has forced more than 27,000 Karens to flee their homes in the three districts with thousands seeking shelter in camps for displaced persons along the Thai border while thousands of others continue to lead a precarious existence in their homeland, according to human rights groups monitoring the conflict on the Thai side of the border. "Despite repeated entreaties by the ICRC, the authorities have consistently refused to enter into a serious discussion of these abuses with a view to putting a stop to them," Kellenberger said. The Red Cross, famed for its pragmatic diplomacy in most conflict areas, has been forced to scale back its field operations in Myanmar because of increasing restrictions imposed on the humanitarian agency over the past two years after a change in the junta's power structure. The downfall of General Khin Nyunt, the former prime minister and head of military intelligence, in late 2005 has led to a souring of relations between the junta and Red Cross, informed sources said. "The continuing deadlock with the authorities has led the ICRC to take the exceptional step of making its concerns public," Kellenberger said.