Junta slammed; Beijing offered slight reprieve

Mizzima News
March 12, 2008

The U.S., in a report released yesterday, has confronted Burma's generals with a 20,000 word indictment of human rights violations committed by the junta last year.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday welcomed the arrival of the Department's 2007 study into the situation of human rights around the world, which found Burma to be one of last year's most prolific abusers of people's rights.

"Burma's abysmal human rights record continued to worsen," reads the report.

"Throughout the year, the regime continued to commit extra-judicial killings and was responsible for disappearances, arbitrary and indefinite detentions, rape, and torture."

"Countries in which power was concentrated in the hands of unaccountable rulers remain the most systematic human rights violators. Here we would cite North Korea, Burma, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Eritrea and Sudan," according to Jonathan Farrar, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, speaking at a press release yesterday in Washington D.C.

Describing an atmosphere of impunity for rights abusers, the study's multitude of findings includes disappearances, torture and the lack of freedom for association and press.

"The government continued to use force to prohibit all public speech critical of the regime by all persons, including by persons elected to parliament in 1990 and leaders of political parties," state the authors, a description only reconfirmed by the recently announced Referendum Law which makes publicly speaking on the referendum ahead of May's poll a crime punishable by imprisonment and/or fine.

Refuting the junta's claim that there are no political prisoners in Burma, the State Department refers to eyewitness testimony to the contrary, in which politically active persons were routinely confined and "subjected to beatings and severe mistreatment by common criminals."

Democratic governance, argues the volume, is the best means for securing human rights. And the release lists three components the U.S. believes critical to just and democratic governance: 1) a free and fair electoral processes 2) accountable, representative institutions, and 3) a vibrant, independent civil society.

Unexpectedly, an argument can be made for China being the big winner of this year's annual release.

Despite a lengthy portfolio of violations in China, and the report stating that "China's overall human rights record remained poor in 2007," the Asian giant was controversially removed from the list of the world's most egregious offenders.

Instead, China finds itself in an alternative category "listed under a section dealing with authoritarian countries undergoing economic reform where the democratic political reform has not kept pace," commented Farrar.

"Some authoritarian countries that are undergoing economic reform have experienced rapid social change, but have not undertaken democratic political reform and continue to deny their citizens basic human rights and fundamental freedoms. China remains a case in point," continued the Assistant Secretary.

Also yesterday in Washington, Sean McCormack, spokesperson for the State Department, in response to a question regarding China's continued rights abuses and the 2008 Olympics, responded, "We believe the Olympics are a sporting event, but it is also an important international event at which time it can put its best face forward to the world."

The message, focusing on the athletic aspect of the Olympics, is consistent with the long-held position of the White House that the Games should be understood predominantly as a sporting event.

Burmese activists, however, remain outspoken in urging the United States to boycott the Beijing Games, as China is held to play a crucial role in financing, arming and protecting Burma's generals.

The 2007 human rights study does not link China with abuses in Burma, and even notes on one occasion an effective China-Burma joint operation in combating human trafficking.