Burma : Army abuse in Chin state ‘extraordinary’

[Mid]

Army abuse in Chin state ‘extraordinary’
FRANCIS WADE
19 January 2011


Chin civilians engaged in forced labour
(PHR)

State-sanctioned abuses in Chin state are widespread and in many cases may qualify as crimes against humanity, the authors of a comprehensive survey-based report claim.

The situation in Burma’s remote northwestern ethnic state has to date been left out of much of the debate on whether crimes against humanity and war crimes are occurring in Burma.

The UN is under pressure to launch an investigation into what legal experts claim is a mountain of evidence that suggests such crimes may have been committed by the Burmese military, particularly in the country’s ethnic border regions, such as Karen state.

A new report by the US-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize, adds fuel to that fire, alleging that it found “widespread reports of human rights violations among 621 randomly selected households” in Chin state. At least eight of those types of violations “fall within the purview of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and may constitute crimes against humanity”.

One in seven of these houses reported that at least one family member had been tortured or subjected to “inhumane treatment” by Burmese troops, who committed 98 percent of the recorded abuses, while 570 households were subjected to what qualifies under international law as a crime against humanity.

One third of all forcible conscriptions into the army were of children under the age of 15, which is illegal under both international law and Burmese domestic law. One in eight of the Chin households had at one point been forcibly displaced.

“The data don’t lie and this report puts in stark light the horrors that the Chin people are enduring,” said Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, in a statement released with the report. “No nation has the right to oppress its people, but to the extent that we abandon those people, we allow the crimes to continue.” PHR’s deputy director, Richard Sollom, said that the levels of violence against civilians there was “extraordinary”.

The report includes a forward by former UN Chief Prosecutor Richard J. Goldstone and Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu, who said that “the results are devastating”. Goldstone said that it should give further impetus to the UN to establish a Commission of Inquiry into whether crimes against humanity are being committed.

The survey comprised 87 questions asked by surveyors between February and March last year. Similar findings were recorded in a 2009 report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch, who called on the government in neighbouring Mizoram state in India to extend protection to Chin who have fled across the border.

Chin state has also been struck by a severe famine in recent years that stems from mass infestation of rats in farmland who devour crops and grain.

The rats are attracted to the flowering of the bamboo plant, a phenomenon that occurs only twice a century.

dvb.no

[spliff]

I thought the world didn't really care about Burma.

[Mid]

Ninety-two Percent of Chins Abused by Burmese Military: Report
BA KAUNG
Wednesday, January 19, 2011


Forced laborers clearing rocks after a landslide in Tedim township in Chin State in May, 2008.
(Photo: Chin Human Rights Organization)

The people of Chin State, in the remote northwestern corner of Burma, suffer the highest rate of human rights abuses in the country, with nearly 92 percent of ethnic Chins reporting incidents of forced labor, rape or other serious abuses at the hands of Burmese soldiers, according to a report released today.

The report, issued by the US-based Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) in collaboration with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, describes widespread use of local people as forced porters for the Burmese army or as unpaid laborers on government construction projects, as well as a host of other abuses by the Burmese authorities.


A map of Burmese army camps in Chin State, as of December 2010
(Photo: Chin Human Rights Organization)

According to a survey conducted by the PHR, nearly 92 percent of households in Chin State had experienced at least one serious case of human rights abuses in the past two years. “This number includes Chin family members forced to porter military supplies, sweep for landmines, labor as unpaid servants, build roads and do hard labor,” said the report, adding that other documented violations include hundreds of cases of forced conscription into military service, beatings, torture, intimidation, rape of women, children and men by Burmese soldiers, killings, disappearances and persecution based on religion or ethnicity.

Most ethnic Chins are Christian, and when asked if their religion in the Buddhist majority country was the main cause behind the reported abuses, one of the authors of the report said: “That's what the respondents said. But all the data and testimonies we got showed that the abuses are entirely common and universal.”

The 60-page report, titled “Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma's Chin State,” is based on a survey of 621 randomly selected households across all of the state's nine townships conducted in 2009 and 2010 .

In addition to highlighting abuses in the state, the report also claims that an estimated 75,000 people in Chin State have been displaced into bordering India since 1988, while another 50,000 have fled to Malaysia to escape persecution or economic hardship over the same period.

It also attributed local food insecurity and a recent famine in the state to the Burmese government's decades of neglect and widespread abuses.

“This report reveals extraordinary levels of state and military violence against civilian populations, and many of the violations that we surveyed may constitute crimes against humanity,” said the deputy director of PHR, Richard Sollom, in the organization's press release about the report.

“These findings demand not only attention, but also action by all who are concerned with Burma’s peoples, their well-being and Burma’s future,” he added.

In its press release, the PHR alleges that at least eight of the violations reported in the survey fall within the purview of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and may constitute crimes against humanity.

Based on the findings, the group calls on the United Nations to immediately establish a Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into crimes against humanity not only in Chin State but also across Burma, and urges the country's neighbors, such as India, China, Thailand and Malaysia, to increase pressure on the regime to stop its ruthless repression and lawless violence.

This week, a delegation of Burmese exiles arrived in Geneva ahead of the UN Human Rights Council's Universal Periodic Review, which is set to review Burma's human rights record on Jan. 27.

Although the delegation will not be able to attend the conference on Jan. 27, on Tuesday it briefed diplomats from the European Union and Latin American countries about the human rights situation in Burma.

“We mainly explained to them about the issues of child soldiers, forced labor and torture in Burma's prisons,” said Bo Kyi, one of the members of the delegation and the joint-secretary of the Thailand-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma.irrawaddy.org

[Mid]

Life Under the Junta

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First Widespread Survey of Burma’s Chin State Shows Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity
January 19, 2011

Nearly 92 Percent of Chin Families Subjected to Forced Labor in One Year

Media Contacts: Megan Prock
Senior Press Officer
mprock [at] phrusa [dot] org
Tel: (617) 301-4237

Geneva, Switzerland—January 19, 2010—In advance of the Universal Periodic Review of human rights in Burma, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) today announced findings from the first population-based survey to document human rights violations in all nine townships of Chin State. The report, Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma’s Chin State, provides the first quantitative data of human rights violations against the people of Chin State in Western Burma. The report also reveals that at least eight of the violations surveyed fall within the purview of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and may constitute crimes against humanity.

“It is well known around the world that the people of Burma, especially ethnic nationalities like the people of Chin State, suffer under the junta, but until now the international community has not had any quantitative data from Western Burma to support this claim,” said Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights. “The data don’t lie and this report puts in stark light the horrors that the Chin people are enduring. No nation has the right to oppress its people, but to the extent that we abandon those people, we allow the crimes to continue.”

The research revealed widespread reports of human rights violations among 621 randomly selected households during the 12 months prior to interviews. The abuses included forced labor, religious persecution, beatings, killing, disappearances, torture, rape and widespread pillaging. Key findings include:

• Nearly 92 percent of the households interviewed reported at least one episode of forced labor, such as portering of military supplies or building roads.
• Government authorities, primarily soldiers, committed more than 98 percent of the abuses.
• Overall, 1,768 of the most severe abuses were reported across all nine townships of Chin State.

“The approach used by the investigators lets us see the widespread and systematic nature of these abuses and the results are devastating,” said Desmond M. Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town. “This report embodies the voices of Chin survivors of these atrocities and lets us hear an enslaved and brutalized population asking for assistance in the struggle for justice, for freedom, and for life itself.”

Additionally, the PHR report, which includes a foreword by Justice Richard Goldstone and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, catalogues human rights violations that may constitute crimes against humanity. Although other researchers have posited that a prima facie case exists for crimes against humanity in Burma, the current study provides the first quantitative data on these alleged crimes.

“This report reveals extraordinary levels of state and military violence against civilian populations, and many of the violations that we surveyed may constitute crimes against humanity,” said Richard Sollom, Deputy Director at PHR. “These findings demand not only attention, but action by all who are concerned with Burma’s peoples, their well-being, and Burma’s future.”

For acts to be investigated by the ICC as crimes against humanity, three common elements must be established:

• Prohibited acts took place after July 1, 2002 when the ICC treaty entered into force.
• Such acts were committed by government authorities as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.
• The perpetrator intended or knew that the conduct was part of the attack.

The research demonstrates that the human rights violations surveyed in Chin State meet these necessary elements.

“It is unconscionable that suffering as dire as that of the Chin people under Burma’s dictator[at]ship should be allowed to persist in silence,” said former U.N. Chief Prosecutor Richard J. Goldstone. “We urge the United Nations to immediately establish a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity in Chin State, and in all of Burma.”

Methodology

PHR’s research team consulted with 32 key informants and representatives from Chin civil society to conduct the survey. From February to March 2010, surveyors performed a multi-stage, 90-cluster sample survey of 702 households – 621 of which gave consent to participate – in all nine townships in Chin State. They used an 87-question survey translated into five regional languages and asked heads of household about their life under the junta during the past 12 months.

About the Report

The findings of this report are part of an ongoing project to investigate and document the nature and extent of human rights abuses in Burma by PHR in collaboration with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Additionally, PHR is indebted to five Chin community-based organizations, including the Chin Human Rights Organization, for their collaboration, expertise, and tireless advocacy on behalf of the Chin people, without which this research would not be possible.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) mobilizes the health professions to advance the health and dignity of all people by protecting human rights. As a founding member of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, PHR shared the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize.

physiciansforhumanrights.org

[StrontiumDog]

And ASEAN wants sanctions lifted....

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Equal opportunity abuse in Myanmar
By Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK - When independent researchers fanned out across military-ruled Myanmar's mountainous Chin State to catalogue human-rights abuses, they expected to hear the usual disturbing stories of ethnic minority women being raped by government troops. But the research uncovered an unexpected new trend of abuse: Chin men were also being sexually violated by male soldiers in the country's remote northwestern corner.

"It was not something that we expected to find," said Vit Suwanvanichkij, co-author of a new investigative report released


by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a US-based non-governmental rights lobby. "This abuse - rape of males - has not been reported before and it shows what life is like in militarized [Myanmar]."

The 63-page report, entitled "Life Under the Junta: Evidence of Crimes Against Humanity in Burma's Chin State", says that the male head of five different households were among 17 people who claimed to have been raped by Myanmar troops during a 12-month period spanning 2009 and 2010. Among them was a father of five children who, according to the report, the "[Myanmar] military sexually assaulted and threatened to kill him on July 20, 2009."

The rape of men, as well as women and children, are part of a numbing list of human-rights violations committed by Myanmar troops in their quest to assert control over the remote Chin region situated near the Indian and Bangladeshi border, according to PHR's research. Male victims quoted in the report said that they believed they were targeted by predominantly Buddhist Burman soldiers because of their different religious and ethnic identity as Christian Chins.

Forced labor was documented in 92% of over 600 households surveyed in nine different townships, with tasks ranging from building roads, to portering military supplies, to sweeping for landmines. However, the prevalence of male rape may have been underestimated in the report, due to difficulties in gathering accurate information.

Parveen Parmar, another co-author of the report, says that sexual violations rank among the most difficult rights abuses to chronicle, even when, as was the case during the surveys conducted by PHR's 22-member research team, the interviews were done in private and confidentiality was guaranteed.

Myanmar's abysmal rights record is extensively well documented. Forced conscription, torture, arson and the confiscation of land and food stocks have all been used by the Tatmadaw, as the over 400,000-strong Myanmar military is known, to quash a myriad of ethnic rebel movements that have been active for decades across the country.

The use of rape as a weapon of war was first exposed in "License to Rape", an investigative report published by the Shan Women's Action Network in 2002. The account documented 625 cases, including instances of gang rape, showing how Myanmar's army systematically targeted women and girls from the ethnic Shan minority.

However, there was no hint at that time that Shan males were also targeted, according to SWAN researchers. "We documented what the community revealed happened to them from 1996 till 2001," says Charm Tong, a member of SWAN's advocacy team, during a telephone interview. "Rapes were widespread and committed by high-ranking military offices and soldiers."

In 2005, Charm Tong, 29, had an audience in the White House with then US president George W Bush, lending credibility to her advocacy group's findings. SWAN's reporting on the junta's human-rights abuses helped to harden Washington's position towards Myanmar, including an expansion of the US's sanctions regime.

PHR's revelations come at an awkward moment for the European Union (EU), which maintains its own sanctions against Myanmar for its poor human-rights record, but is now under pressure from some member governments to reconsider this position after last year's military-rigged general elections. The EU is expected to review its "common position", as the regional groupings policy on Myanmar is known, in April.

Meanwhile, the United Nations is under growing pressure to establish a commission of inquiry into the junta's human-rights abuses - a move US President Barack Obama has endorsed. Any such inquiry would now likely need to include investigations into the systematic sexual abuse of men as well as women.

"Sexual violence cases have mainly focused on women. Even human-rights people documenting this abuse have not paid attention that it could possibly happen to men," says Aung Myo Min, director of the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, a non-governmental think-tank run from Thailand's northern city of Chiang Mai.

"It is a kind of intimidation for the victim and they often don't want to talk about it because of the shame," he said. "But the recent revelations should prompt human-rights researchers to investigate this ignored area of abuse. There could be more cases."

Myanmar's military rulers have denied previous allegations of using rape as a war weapon. They deflected SWAN's report as a "fabrication" and have denied the findings of various human-rights groups who have chronicled the regime's abuses. That remained the junta's line last week during the first-ever universal periodic review of Myanmar's rights record, including in ethnic areas, at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Win Min, a Myanmar military expert based in Chiang Mai, claims that in frontline areas of the conflict prisoners of war are seldom treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and many have been summarily executed because officers believe it is too complicated or costly to bring them to justice through court proceedings. That culture of impunity, he suggests, has fostered an environment conducive to sexual violence.

"I have never heard of serious action [taken] by the military following reports of rape cases in ethnic areas," says Win Min. "There has been no mechanism to file such cases in the military."

Marwaan Macan-Markar is a Sri Lankan journalist who covered the South Asian nation's ethnic conflict before becoming a foreign correspondent for the Inter Press Service news agency in 1999. He is based in Thailand where he covers Southeast Asia.

atimes.com

[good2bhappy]

But the research uncovered an unexpected new trend of abuse: Chin men were also being sexually violated by male soldiers in the country's remote northwestern corner.

Gay soldiers

[Mid]

lot more sinister than that

[Mid]

The Delhi Dilemma
ZARNI MANN
Thursday, February 17, 2011


In this photograph taken on June 25, 2009, an ethnic Chin refugee mother and child sit in a corner near a calendar bearing a Cross in their living quarters in New Delhi.
(Photo; Getty Images)

NEW DELHI— When he heard that he was to be forcefully recruited as a porter for the Burmese army for a second time, Awn Khan Pauhe and his family packed a few belonging, said goodbye to their relatives and neighbors, and left their ancestral home of Tedim in Chin State and headed across the border to India and traveled by bus to New Delhi.

Although they had lost their home and their livelihoods, and were now destitute in a cramped city where they could not speak the language, the Chin farming family felt nothing but relief.

"The Burmese soldiers said they lost their equipment and beat me on my face and back with their guns,” said Awn Khan Pauhe. “Later, I sneaked out and ran back to my village. I went into hiding so they wouldn't find me. They went o my house and beat my wife. We decided we had to leave the village. I knew a friend in Delhi and that's why we came here.”

He and his family crossed the Indo-Burmese border and passed through Mizoram. Then they caught a bus to New Delhi.

His wife, Tweal Ngaih Nem, found a job working at sweater-knitting factory. She earns a monthly wage of 3,500 rupees [US $75], not enough to feed her family.

“The rental for our single room is 2,000 rupees per month, so we have 1,500 rupees for electric bills, gas, rice and cooking oil. We don't have for curries, so we have to go through the waste to collect vegetables at the weekend night bazaars after the vendors have gone,” said Awn Khan Pau, holding up some rotten cauliflower leaves. He said that it has been a long time since they had fish or meat.

On the floor of his tiny room under a dim light, a pile of rotten cauliflower leaves sit alongside a pack of stale French beans and potatoes. There is a small gas stove, and an old plastic mat on which their three boys lie fast asleep, covered with old blankets.

The urban areas of New Delhi's Vikaspuri, Janakpuri, Sitapuri and Hastsal's weekly night bazaars are the most dependable scavenging spots for Burmese refugees. But as basic commodities prices are increasing dramatically around India, alongside higher room rentals, many Burmese refugees must collect stale or rotten foodstuffs from the night bazaars to survive.

“Last December, we were recognized as refugees and got some social assistance—20,000 rupees ($440) for a whole family—from the YMCA,” said one. “I'm so worried that one of us gets sick.”

After receiving a certificate as a recognized refugees from the UNHCR, the Burmese refugees in India can collect around 1,000 to 2,000 rupees per person per month from the YMCA, but only for three months.

Most Burmese refugees or migrants work in menial jobs—as cleaners, porters and garment factory workers. For who understand Hindi, English or have some knowledge of computers, there are a few possibilities in offices, in which a Burmese can earn up to 5,000 rupees a month. Indians doing the same job will earn 7,000 to 8,000 rupees, though.

Other difficulties for the Burmese include cultural and language problems. They frequently report problems or grievances with neighbors, colleagues and landlords.

Awn Khan Pau said his family is lucky to have a kind landlord, but complains that Indian workers in his apartment block are not as accepting.

“The neighbors mostly work as security guards,” he said. “They come home drunk, kick the doors, shout and make lots of noise. Some night, we cannot sleep at all. We all have to share one bathroom, but even if we are using it, they barge in and tell us to leave.”

Like Awn Khan Pau's family, there are many Chin people who left their villages and came to New Delhi in 2010. Tawk Theiam and her husband left Mong Than village located near Thantlang Township in June.

“Our friend said if we have difficulties in Burma, we can go to New Delhi where there is a UNHCR office that helps Burmese refugees,” Tawk Theiam said. “My husband is working at a jeans factory. We also collect old vegetables at the night markets because his salary is not enough.”

There are an estimated 50,000 Burmese, Kachin and Chin refugees in India, Chin being the majority. There are a handful of NGOs that provide assistance, but it is limited.

'Since we have to depend on donors, and the number of Chin refugees is increasing, we cannot help everyone in need,” said David, the secretary of the Chin Refugees Committee in New Delhi.

He said that of the 9,000 Chin refugees in 2010, his organization could only provide rice and money to 170 households.

According to a report issued in January by the US-based Physicians for Human Rights, in collaboration with the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, nearly 92 percent of households in Chin State have experienced at least one serious case of human rights abuses in the past two years; and there is widespread use of local people as forced laborers for the Burmese army or as unpaid laborers on government construction projects, as well as a host of other abuses by the Burmese authorities.

“Some of our friends are now in Australia and America. said a Chin woman who asked to remain anonymous. “We hope that our children will have a better future.”

Related Article:
Ninety-two Percent of Chins Abused by Burmese Military: Report

irrawaddy.org

[Mid]

Chin state abuses are the tip of the iceberg
RICHARD SOLLOM
25 February 2011


Men and women to forced to work on construction projects in Chin state (PHR)

Recently a new Burmese legislature convened for the first time in 22 years, but the parliament resembles last year’s electoral exercise – an elaborate show that is a democracy only in name. Yesterday, as DVB reported, Burma snatched power from judges as well.

The 50 million people living in Burma are still under the military regime’s repressive rule, and for them, the human rights abuses that they suffer at the hands of the military junta are a regular way of life.

Burma’s military regime has been a constant roadblock to democracy. The new parliament is under the junta’s strong arm, and 84 percent of all parliamentary seats are reserved for current military officers or held by General Than Shwe’s cronies – the same army soldiers who committed 73 percent of all reported human rights violations last year. The brutal treatment of ethnic nationalities under the military junta is well known to the international community, but the mass atrocities that they suffer have been deliberately hidden from the world by this repressive regime.

Physicians for Human Rights recently went door-to-door in Burma’s remote western Chin state to conduct a random survey of 702 households. Together with our local partners, we documented 2,951 abuses over a 12-month period. We found that government authorities may have killed an estimated 1,000 household members, tortured 3,800 individuals and raped 2,800 adults and children over the course of the 12-month reporting period. And that’s in just one state of 500,000 people who represent one percent of the total population of Burma. Our report, Life Under the Junta, presents strong evidence that Burmese authorities are committing crimes against humanity.

One 18-year-old woman told us how the Burmese military raped her at gunpoint in June 2009 in her rural village in Mindat. The reason they raped her and forced her into servitude is because she is Christian and Chin – a different ethnic nationality than the military, who are mostly Buddhist and Burmese.

The collective voices captured in our survey speak for a brutalized population who will not see the results of Burma’s new “democracy.” As one of its first orders of business, the new parliament should allow a full and independent investigation into these possible crimes. Such an investigation, which the United Nations could establish as a commission of inquiry, is an essential first step to help Burma replace impunity with accountability and bring justice and stability to the people of Burma.

I was in Geneva in the days before Burma’s review of its deplorable human rights record by the United Nations. While there, I had the opportunity to speak with UN delegations of countries that publicly support an investigation of crimes in Burma. The leadership these countries have shown in forging a path to justice is a hopeful sign, but more countries must join their ranks. Currently 14 countries publicly support establishing a UN Commission of Inquiry, most of which are Western democratic governments. Now these 14 countries, including the United States, should build cross-regional unity in the push for accountability in Burma to end these mass atrocities.

We know that Burmese authorities will continue the abuses that it has been committing for decades, and that the government will not investigate the crimes on its own. Under this regime of impunity, the 18-year-old Chin woman who told us her tale of survival will have no recourse to justice. International action is essential for justice, accountability, and a peaceful future. Now is the time for the international community to come together, stand alongside the people of Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi, and demand accountability in a country that has been plagued with injustice.

Richard Sollom is deputy director of the Nobel prize-winning Physicians for Human Rights.

dvb.no

[Mid]

The United Nations Human Rights Council will consider new resolutions on Burma and North Korea next week, in which the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma and the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in North Korea will be reviewed.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) today urged the Human Rights Council to renew the mandates of both rapporteurs “without hesitation” and to support the calls for the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigate crimes against humanity in both countries.

The current Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, noted in his report a year ago “a pattern of gross and systematic violation of human rights” which has been continuing “over a period of many years”.

Renew Rapporteurs

[Mid]

Chin State: the poorest state in Burma
Ko Pauk
Friday, 08 July 2011

New Delhi (Mizzima) – A survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has found that Chin State remains the poorest state among 14 regions and states in Burma with 73.3% per cent of the people below the poverty line.

The UNDP collected data from more than 18,000 households across the country in 2009-10. A similar survey was conducted in 2004-05 and it found 32.1 per cent of the people were below the poverty line. Many states and regions had a decrease in poverty, but in Rakhine, Rangoon, Irrawaddy and Karen states and regions, the poverty figures increased.

‪
Leaders in Chin State say agriculture is an area the government should develop to benefit the people in the poorest state in the country.‬
Photo: Mizzima

The survey was conducted in cooperation with the government Planning and Economic Development Ministry and then joined later by another UN agency, UNICEF, and the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).

The leader of Zomi National Congress (ZNC), Pu Cing Sing Thang, told Mizzima that there were many reasons behind the poverty in Chin State.

“Our state is in a remote and far-flung area, the government neglects our state for development work, the road transport communication is poor and underdeveloped and the worst in Burma. And at the same time we cannot rely on the government for development work,” he said.

Chin National Party (CNP) Chairman Zo Zam said that Chin State has many disadvantages for development and there are very few natural resources in the state.

“Chin State is the only state in country where there is no plain area. We have to use manual labour even for building a football field. All places in our state are 3,000 feet above sea level. Natural resources are scarce in our state too. Some deposits of natural resources are underground but we have no capacity to extract them under the current situation,” he told Mizzima.

The survey, called “Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey II,” and a report were released in June 2011. Data were collected on ownership status, living conditions and millennia development goals of Burma.

According to the data, Kayah State had 11.4 per cent in poverty; Rangoon Region had 16.1 per cent. Rakhine State was the second worst with 43.5 per cent.

“Kayah State has a population of 300,000 and Chin State has 500,000. Kayah State has a production works and many plain areas in the state. They can produce many products and there the per capita income has risen too. They have low population but higher production. So they have less poverty than us. But in our state, the job opportunities are shrinking,” Zo Zam explained.

Pu Cing Sing Thang also pointed out the different historical background. “In the English colonial period, Kayah State was a buffer state between the English colony and Thailand. So they could have access to both Burma and Thailand for resources. The communication was good. It is very close to Thailand. But for Chin State, we have no access to India. We have to rely on Burma,” he said.

The survey included data on households, household utilities, education, literacy, health, nutrition, death rates, occupation, livelihood, spending and savings.

According to the survey, Chin State has the highest number of family members in each household with six people per household. The state is losing its labour force as many young people migrate to foreign countries for employment, Zo Zam said.

“This is one of the main reasons for poverty in the state. No workforce means no production. No production means no income,” he said.

Pu Cing Sing Thang said that another reason the young migrate to foreign countries for employment is the rampant forced labour in the state.

“The army units force them to work in their coffee plantations without paying any wage. The local people have to work on forced labour and leave their own work. So many people migrate to seek greener pastures. But the actual situation is not as they expected. The remittances made by our peoples are not high,” he said.

Tens of thousands of migrant Chin workers are in Malaysia and India. According to the chief of mission of the UNHCR in New Delhi, there are growing numbers of underage children without accompanying parents in New Delhi who have applied for refugee status.

Chin State assembly legislator from Tiddim constituency (2) Zo Zam suggested that the government should promote agriculture and livestock breeding in Chin State and open an education programme.

Most Chin youth attend school only up to Grade 10 in Chin State and they must go to other states and regions for higher studies.

“We are still underdeveloped and ignorant in these fields. If they cannot open an Agriculture University in our state, they should open an agriculture institute here. We need such training in our state. We could work on model farms after better training,” he said.

“Policy makers should see the reality of Chin State as the most underdeveloped area and its dismal condition. If they cannot make Chin State better in next five years, I fear for our state,” he said.

mizzima.com

[The Bold Rodney]

One third of all forcible conscriptions into the army were of children under the age of 15, which is illegal under both international law and Burmese domestic law.

International law useless as has been proved time and time again for many years.

Burmese domestic law, didn't know it even existed!