Myanmar image: Shutterstock
There is a “new climate of openness” in Myanmar, the rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has concluded after a four-week fact finding mission. But it also heard “some of the worst accounts of human rights violations” it has ever encountered.
In a report released on Monday CSW warns against “premature euphoria” over the significant increases in freedom in the country, saying there are “many very grave challenges and concerns, particularly in respect to the protection of human rights, including freedom of religion.”
As well as the capital, Naypyidaw, Yangon and other cities, the CSW team went to Kachin state, where it says at least 100,000 civilians have been displaced by a two-year conflict.
It also visited a Muslim community near the capital just three days after it had been attacked by a Buddhist mob. The British rights campaigner Lord Alton, a Catholic, was with the team on this part of the visit.
The local mosque had been desecrated and the madrassa burnt down.
“We Muslims have lived here for 200 years with no problems,” a local representative told the team. “But now there is absolutely no communication with our Buddhist neighbors.
“We don’t dare greet each other on the street.”
But the most disturbing reports came from Kachin state where one former prisoner described being hung upside down, beaten and knifed. “They put a hand grenade in my mouth and threatened to pull the pin,” he told investigators.
The wife of a man still in detention said she saw her husband after he was tortured, “covered in blood and his nose was broken.”
She added: “He was told that as he was a Christian he should kneel on very sharp stones with his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross.”
The investigators found there have been “some very welcome reforms,” CSW’s advocacy director, Andrew Johnston, said yesterday, but there remains “a culture of impunity” which needs to be addressed.
“There is an urgent need for protection for religious and ethnic minorities, inter-religious dialogue and peace building,” he said, along with aid for the displaced and a “meaningful” political dialogue to end decades of civil war.
“Failure … will result in hopes dashed, and further instability conflict, fear, death and destruction,” he added.