Human rights violations in Kachin state will continue unless there is a negotiated ceasefire, said a member of the Myanmar National Human Rights Commission yesterday.

“As the conflict in Kachin state continues … rights violations will exist. [They] may be the result of a lack of knowledge of human rights,” U Tun Aung Chain, who is also a retired professor from Yangon Arts and Sciences University, said.

He added that rights violations have decreased in areas where ceasefires have been negotiated or where negotiations for peace have started.

Lahpai Zaw, 38, said he fled with his family from Kachin state to a refugee camp in China in December last year to escape the fighting.

He said he was forced to leave his wife behind with their newborn son as he fled with their other three children.

“The next morning I found out that my wife had been killed by government troops with the knife that I had left with her. But my son was not killed and now I gave it to my relatives for adoption,” he said.

“I don’t want war, and I can’t express my suffering over my wife’s death.”

Human rights violations have been an increasing concern in Kachin state since violence shattered a 17-year-old ceasefire agreement in June last year and led to the displacement of an estimated 50,000 people, who fled to temporary shelters near the Chinese border.

“The Burmese military continues to violate international humanitarian law through the use of anti-personnel landmines, extrajudicial killings, forced labor, torture, beatings and pillaging of property,” according to a report by AFP last month that cited research by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

In its 2011 country review, HRW also said that sexual violence against women and girls “remains a serious problem,” while the army “continues to actively recruit and use child soldiers.”

Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur for human rights, said recent developments in the country showed some promise of achieving legitimate democratic reform but urged MNHRC officials to find ways to work more effectively to prevent human rights violations.