Crimes in Burma Flourish with Impunity

An impressive collaboration of international legal heavy weights released a report today from the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School calling for the UN Security Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.

Despite the long and well-documented history of egregious human rights abuses committed by Burma's ruling military junta, the report notes that UNSC has yet to give the situation the same level of attention as other crises of comparable nature and scale:

"Over and over again, UN resolutions and Special Rapporteurs have spoken out about the abuses that have been reported to them in Burma. The UN Security Council, however, has not moved the process forward as it should and has in similar situations such as those in the former Yugoslavia and Darfur," the jurists write in the report's preface. "In the cases of Yugoslavia and Darfur, once aware of the severity of the problem, the UN Security Council established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the gravity of the violations further. With Burma, there has been no such action from the UN Security Council despite being similarly aware of the widespread and systematic nature of the violations."

A major part of the answer to the "why?" question is (drum roll, please): China. However, Security Council members have still made measurable progress on Darfur, for example, despite strong Chinese opposition. Granted, Burma is quite literally in China's backyard, but when state-sponsored violence reaches the level of crimes against humanity, it is no longer acceptable to toss a situation aside like a diplomatic hot potato. You aren't tossing a situation aside --- you're potentially tossing out people's lives into a no-mans-land of impunity and abuse.

A daunting but absolutely critical challenge for the activist community is to find a way to transition the momentum created by single-issue advocacy --- namely, Darfur --- into a movement responsive to mass atrocity anywhere, while still deploying effective strategies for change that are sensitive to the dynamics of an individual situation.

Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes --- whatever the proper term is for a situation, the suffering of those on the ground is the same. A life in Darfur is the same as a life in Burma is the same as a life in the United States. They all deserve equal attention, protection, and concern.

For more regular information on the situation in Burma, see GI-Net and STAND. Many thanks to my fellow Changester Mike Jones, who writes the phenomenal Gay Rights blog and works for the Harvard Human Rights Clinic, for passing the report along.

[Photo of protests from 2007.]