Monday, July 22, 2013

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

UN faces ‘serious funding shortfall’ for Kachin humanitarian relief

Posted: 22 Jul 2013 03:49 AM PDT

The United Nations humanitarian relief programme geared towards assisting those displaced by the Kachin conflict has so far raised only US$14.6 million of the US$50.9 million UN officials estimate is needed.

“In view of the serious funding shortfall, the Emergency Relief Coordinator earlier this week allocated US$3 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) under the under-funded window," said UN General Secretary Ban Ki Moon’s spokesperson Eri Kaneko in an exchange with DVB last week.

According to Ban’s spokesperson, the CERF funding "is intended to fill critical gaps in humanitarian programme to sustain operations, including needs associated with the current rainy season, while other funding sources continue to be identified".

Officials with the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimate that there are 85,600 internally displaced people (IDP) in Kachin state with 35,000 sheltering in government-controlled camps and an additional 50,600 living in camps located in the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO)'s territory.

The UN says that as of the end of June there were also an additional 4,400 displaced people living in government-controlled camps located along a stretch of Kachin-inhabited parts of northern Shan state mainly Namkham, Namtu, Manton, Muse and Kutkai.

Aid workers report that the actual number of IDPs in government-controlled areas may be significantly higher than the UN estimates because large numbers of Kachin are reluctant to register with camp authorities out of fear that the government would punish them.

Many appear afraid of ending up like Brang Shawng, a displaced Kachin farmer who was living with his family in a camp near Myitkyina until last year when he was arrested last for his alleged connection to a KIO plot – a charge his family strongly denies.

Apart from having difficulty raising funds for Kachin humanitarian relief, the UN and its agencies have struggled to gain access to those IDPs living in camps located in areas controlled by the KIO.

Last month, when a UN aid convoy reached the KIO’s second largest town of Mai Ja Yang, it was the first time that the international body had been given permission to travel to KIO territory by the Burmese government in nearly a year. It remains unclear when further aid convoys will be allowed to travel behind rebel lines.

Figures provided by the UN show that from December 2011 to June 2013, UN teams made a total of 11 cross-line aid missions to KIO territory. The aid that the UN delivered reached about 20 percent (approximately 10,000 people) of the total number of IPDs living in non-government controlled territory.

Because of the serious restrictions preventing aid reaching IDPs in KIO territory, the situation in these camps remains very serious. According to a report released in May by the US aid group Refugees International (RI), the IDPs camps in KIO areas were described as  "a crisis in waiting".

The Washington-based group recommends that the UN and international NGO’s do more to support the Kachin civil society organisations already operating on the ground in KIO territory.

Yet this has largely not happened since their report was published. Instead a serious lack of food and opportunities to earn an income has driven many displaced Kachin to venture into China in search of paid work. This has in turn led to conditions where many Kachin women refugees have been tricked into forced marriages with Chinese men or other forms of human trafficking after crossing into China.

It remains to be seen what the UN will do about the increasingly dire conditions in the Kachin IDP camps. The RI report criticised the global body for failing to hold the government to account for its "broken promises of humanitarian access to parts of Kachin State held by the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)".

While the RI report also urged the UN’s Burma policy team to "change its current, overly cautious approach to its advocacy with the government", aid workers say it remains very unlikely the UN will do so out of fear that their agencies will have their already limited access in Kachin and Arakan states further restricted.

Activists call on govt to free whistleblowers during next amnesty

Posted: 22 Jul 2013 03:17 AM PDT

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is calling on the Burmese government to recognise whistleblowers as political prisoners following a pledge from President Thein Sein last week to free all of Burma's prisoners of conscience by the end of the year.

In a press statement published on Friday, AHRC said military officials and staff from the country's foreign affairs ministry staff, who were incarcerated for leaking information about the former junta's relations with North Korea, should be officially declared as political prisoners before the next presidential amnesty.

The organisation called on the government to the review the cases of five individuals that AHRC claims are whistleblowers, including Win Naing Kyaw who was handed a death sentence for leaking information about top-level Burmese military visits to Russia and North Korea.

Ministry of Home Affairs staff Thura Kyaw and Byan Sein, who were jailed under the 1950 Emergency Provision Act for leaking photos and official documents from the then-military joint-chief of staff Thura Shwe Mann's visit to North Korea in 2009, were also listed in AHRC's statement.

The group also called for Burma to review the case of Muslim community leader Dr Tun Aung, who was accused of inciting religious riots in Arakan state last year after he reported news about the first round of sectarian violence.

Lawyers say they have lobbied the government-backed committee charged with verifying all remaining political prisoners to review the five cases, but without success.

"We learnt that Thura Shwe Mann himself, during a visit with US President Obama and in meetings with EU governments, promised to not continue the nuclear project with North Korea and therefore, we are recommending that the [government] consider individuals like Win Naing Kyaw, sentenced on political grounds, for the next amnesty," said Min Lwin Oo, a Burmese lawyer with AHRC.

Thein Sein made international headlines last week for promising to release all of the country's remaining political prisoners, but activists say the government has yet to hold transparent consultations with the committee charged with freeing political prisoners.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners – Burma, prisoner release lists are compiled in secret by the prison department or president's office and then passed onto the government-backed committee for endorsement.

"For this mechanism to mean something, it has to be open to scrutiny and government officials involved need to recognise that the weight should fall on the state to prove someone should be held rather than on the families to negotiate a legal maze to prove that the prisoner's intent was political," said Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia Division.

"The fact that government and military whistleblowers have been excluded from the political prisoner listings should also be examined very critically."

The news comes amid reports that authorities in northern Burma's Myitkyina arrested ethnic Kachin activist Bawk Ja last week, while Kachin farmer Brang Shawng was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly carrying out a terrorist attack for the Kachin Independence Army.

- David Stout contributed additional reporting 

Explosion at radical monk’s event injures 5: police

Posted: 21 Jul 2013 10:48 PM PDT

A small blast near an event by a radical Burmese monk who stands accused of inflaming Buddhist-Muslim tensions has left five people injured in Mandalay, police said Monday.

“The scene was about 100 yards (90 metres) away from the preaching event,” said an officer from police headquarters in the capital Naypyidaw who asked not to be named.

Police said five people – a Buddhist child novice monk, three women and one man – were slightly injured in the blast, which occurred in a residential area of Burma’s second largest city on Sunday evening.

“We do not know the cause of the blast yet and are still investigating. But we think it could be from a homemade device,” the officer told AFP.

He added that a vehicle where the blast was thought to have originated was slightly damaged.

The cleric Wirathu confirmed the incident and blamed “the minority” linked to an article in Time magazine, which highlighted his anti-Muslim sermons as a key factor in inciting a wave of deadly religious violence this year.

Several episodes of unrest — mainly targeting Muslims — have exposed deep rifts in the Buddhist-majority country and cast a shadow over widely praised political reforms since military rule ended two years ago.

Burma in June banned the controversial Time magazine cover story on Buddhist-Muslim unrest, which featured a picture of Wirathu and the caption ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’.

The article, one of a host of stories by the international media that have caused consternation in Burma, was met with anger on social media sites and its author, Time East Asia Correspondent Hannah Beech, has been singled out for personal criticism.

In an article on his Facebook page entitled “This is the beginning of the cultural acts of the minority loved by Hannah Beech”, Wirathu said the blast had injured audience members.

The monk has been the focus of scrutiny after emerging at the forefront of a nationalistic group calling for the boycott of Muslim businesses by Buddhists. He has recently campaigned for restrictions on marriages between Buddhist women and men from other faiths.

In March, at least 44 people were killed in sectarian strife in central Burma, with thousands of people left homeless after Buddhist mobs set whole Muslim neighbourhoods ablaze. In one area alone, at least 20 pupils and four teachers from a Muslim madrassa were hacked to death.

Communal unrest last year in the western Arakan state left about 200 people dead and up to 140,000 displaced, mainly Rohingya Muslims.

Some robed monks have taken part in the clashes.
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