BURMA: Amnesty Seeks Prisoners’ Release, Exiles Sceptical of Visit

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 10 2003 (IPS) - Amnesty International, which this week ended its first-ever visit to Burma (Myanmar), called on its military government Monday to release all political prisoners as proof that it is serious about improving the country’s human rights climate.

Amnesty International, which this week ended its first-ever visit to Burma (Myanmar), called on its military government Monday to release all political prisoners as proof that it is serious about improving the country’s human rights climate.

In addition, Rangoon’s ruling junta should press ahead with changing the harsh laws – some dating back to the late 19th century – that have contributed to the easy incarceration of political activists, the global rights lobby added.

Amnesty’s appeal came after it concluded a 10-day trip to Burma, from Jan. 30 to Feb. 8, that the London-based body sees as the initial effort to pave a roadmap for future human rights investigations in that South-east Asian country.

”We see our visit as the start of a process. We are not miracle workers,” Demelza Stubbings, Amnesty’s Asia-Pacific programme director, told the media at a press conference here. ”We felt on the basis of our initial visit that there is merit in our return.”

This visit also enabled Stubbings and a colleague, Donna Guest, the rights lobby’s researcher on Burma, to affirm that Rangoon’s rulers have shown some heart towards improving prison conditions in recent years.

”Since 1999, the authorities in Myanmar have made significant improvements in conditions of detention in many facilities throughout the country,” said Stubbings, using the name that the Burma’s military regime choose to call their country.

That, she confirmed, was based on the interviews the Amnesty team conducted with select political prisoners from the nearly 1,300 people incarcerated in Burmese jails and detention centres for their political beliefs.

But a former Burmese political prisoner disagrees with Amnesty’s reading. ”I have a problem with Amnesty’s assessment that prison conditions have improved since 1999,” says Zin Linn, who spent eight years in solitary confinement in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison from 1991 to 1997.

”Last year, four political prisoners died in jail because they did not get medical treatment in time,” adds Linn, who escaped to Thailand in 2001 to avoid being arrested for political activities by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the military government is officially known.

”But I cannot blame Amnesty for going. They have a mandate and I understand their position,” he adds. ”If they can get beyond the upper level of the SPDC system, penetrate deeper, they will understand the atrocities being committed.”

By focusing on the plight of the political prisoners during this ground-breaking visit, Amnesty underscored a key concern of theirs: the judicial system and political culture that prevails in Burma.

The visit confirmed that ”policing, trial procedures and conditions of detention fall short of international law and standards,” said Stubbings, adding that ”many of the laws and directives – which have the status of law – criminalise the exercise of certain fundamental human rights, including freedom of expression, association and assembly”.

Typical of such laws that violate international standards is a section in Burma’s 1975 state protection law. Under this section, the law grants those holding executive authority to detain persons and also denies the detained person legal aid to challenge the detention.

The political environment that surrounds Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s opposition leader, also offers another pointer about rights violations.

The Amnesty team expressed concern about the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s ”inability to move around” and the intimidating environment that visitors to Suu Kyi – they are photographed by the authorities – find themselves in when they go to see her.

For Amnesty, the laws that have contributed to such an environment – criminalising the freedom of assembly – are out of step with international human rights standards as are some of the other laws, such as the emergency provision act and the official secrets act.

Of late, the Burmese junta has been under pressure following reports last year that the armed forces had raped close to 625 women and girls in the country’s eastern Shan state, where government troops are fighting a Shan rebel group.

In addition, Rangoon has also been accused of child conscription, with one study revealing that Burma had 70,000 child soldiers, the highest number in the world.

On top of that is the SPDC’s notorious record on freedom of expression, its harsh treatment of human rights defenders – including imprisoning lawyers for taking human rights cases – and forced labour.

According to Guest, the Burma researcher, Amnesty will use the current opening it had in Burma to influence change in a range of human rights violations. ”We would expect to be making regular visits over a longer period of time. We are doing this because we hope that we can make a difference.”

It is a process that will be carefully scrutinised by Burmese in exile like Linn, since they are deeply suspicious of the SPDC’s motives to open its doors to a group that it has regularly ”attacked in the government newspapers”.

”We were amazed when the SPDC approved the Amnesty visit,” he confessed. ”We still think this invitation was to use Amnesty for the sake of mending the SPDC’s bad reputation internationally.”

Burmese exiles maintained a similar view following a visit to their country in October by Paulo Pinheiro, the U. N. human rights envoy to Burma. On that occasion, Pinheiro pressed the junta to enable independent investigations into a host of human rights violations.

To date, Burma has still to see the signs of an independent, impartial and effective investigation along the lines Pinheiro envisaged.