Mar 19, 2024 | DFF, Statements
JAKARTA – ASEAN’s continued and increasing engagement with the Myanmar military junta risks legitimizing the illegal regime and betraying the efforts of pro-democracy forces, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) said today.
“Despite the abundant and irrefutable evidence that the junta has perpetrated grave human rights violations against its own citizens, ASEAN continues to collaborate and engage with them,” APHR Co-Chair and former Malaysian member of parliament Charles Santiago said today. “This is a slap in the face for the Myanmar people and their valiant resistance in the face of the junta’s brutal oppression.”
The ASEAN chairmanship, currently held by Laos, has evidently sought to bring Myanmar back to meetings despite an agreement that barred top-level generals from participating. An official from Myanmar most recently attended the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat held in Luang Prabang, Laos, where representatives called for a “Myanmar-owned and led solution.”
APHR is also concerned by recent remarks from Thai Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin about Thailand’s involvement in the Myanmar crisis. In an interview with Time Magazine, he said that “ASEAN has agreed that Thailand will take the lead” on peace talks with Myanmar. Thailand has a history of trying to bring Myanmar back into the ASEAN fold, despite the junta showing no interest in adhering to the Five Point Consensus or ending its ongoing hostilities against the civilian population.
“There is no clear mandate within ASEAN that makes it acceptable for Thailand to lead on Myanmar, given that it is neither the current Chair nor part of the ASEAN troika. The Thai Prime Minister’s comments undermine the credibility of the bloc and ASEAN centrality,” said Santiago.
Most recently, a junta-affiliated media outlet has praised ASEAN for “seeing the light”. The Myanmar military junta has led a brutal campaign of violence against civilians with impunity since its attempted coup, with the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED) estimating that at least 8,000 civilians have been killed since February 2021. According to the local organization Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), the junta has also arbitrarily arrested 26,244 people, with 20,112 of them still currently in detention. As such, any praise from the junta should be seen as a dire warning sign that ASEAN is going in the wrong direction.
“As countries that claim to uphold democracy and human rights, Indonesia and Malaysia must use their position within the ASEAN troika to end any and all engagement with the junta and take action to hold them accountable for their crimes,” said Santiago. “Anything less will only diminish their credibility and relevance – as well as ASEAN’s – on the global stage.”
Mar 4, 2024 | DFF, Reports
Report, March 2024
Between November 13-16, 2023, APHR and PEF organized a fact-finding mission with a delegation led by Members of Parliament to the border towns of Northern Thailand – Mae Hong Son and Mae Sariang – to assess how the current human rights situation is impacting ethnic communities from the Karen and Karenni States. The mission sought to engage with internally displaced people and refugees about their challenges and hear their calls for policy and protection reforms.
During the four-day fact-finding mission, parliamentarians from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand spoke with local organizations, displaced communities and first responders to hear about their situation and challenges as well as to consult with community-based organizations to listen to what solutions must be immediately advocated for.
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Mar 2, 2024 | DFF, Open Letters
To Members of the United Nations Security Council
CC:
UN Human Rights Council Members
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar
1 March 2024
Re: Security Council must act now as Myanmar military junta’s forced conscription endangers peace, stability, and human security in Myanmar and the region
Your Excellencies,
We, 397 civil society organizations, call on the UN Security Council (UNSC) to take immediate action to ensure peace and stability in the region following the Myanmar military junta’s illegal enforcement of the conscription law. In particular, we call on Japan, as the President of the UNSC in March 2024, to convene an emergency meeting to put forward a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter to impose targeted economic sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against the junta, and refer the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or create an ad hoc tribunal. In addition, the UNSC must provide substantial support to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), as declared in Resolution 2669, and assist Myanmar’s neighboring countries to promptly guarantee legal protection for people fleeing the junta’s forced conscription and mass atrocity crimes.
On 10 February 2024, the military junta announced the enforcement of the People’s Military Service Law, which the past military regime passed in 2010. Men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 will be at risk of forced conscription, and the age further extends to 45 and 35, respectively, for those with expert professions. Up to 14 million people across Myanmar are deemed eligible for this forced conscription, which requires serving up to five years during a state of emergency as is currently in place by the junta’s illegal declaration. Individuals face prison sentences of up to five years, hefty fines, or both, for failing to report for duty. The junta also reserves its arbitrary power to recall those who have already finished their military service.
The junta’s forced conscription efforts exacerbate the already unprecedented violence caused by its countrywide terror campaign. As it rapidly loses ground to democratic resistance forces, the junta has resorted to forced conscription as psychological warfare to terrorize the population into submission, force people to kill each other against their conscience, and inflame inter-ethnic and inter-religious tension. This ruthless measure underlines the junta’s calculated move to escalate atrocities, exploiting new conscripts as expendable human shields, porters, and frontline fighters—evident in the Myanmar military’s sordid history, particularly its forced recruitment of children in violation of international law. The forced conscription thus explicitly goes against the UNSC’s demand for an immediate end to all forms of violence in Resolution 2669.
This scheme to forcibly recruit 60,000 men in the first round will compound the severe instability and human insecurity that the junta has already unleashed on Southeast Asia. Young men have been kidnapped or otherwise compelled to join military service, according to the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar. Hundreds of Rohingya in internment camps in Rakhine State are being arrested and recruited into service, or persuaded to enlist in exchange for freedom of movement. Other reports indicate people in Bago Region and Yangon City are being forced to serve, leaving them no other choice but to bribe junta personnel or face outright extortion to evade conscription. Individuals in disenfranchised and impoverished sectors, such as garment workers, lack such options as the junta’s workforce data collection is underway.
Meanwhile, the junta’s Labor Ministry curtails a route to flee the country by suspending recruitment drives of the Myanmar Overseas Employment Agencies Association. These realities will only lead to a massive influx of refugees and trafficking survivors into neighboring countries with track records of non-compliance with their international obligations, ensuring insufficient aid, no legal protection, and risk of refoulement.
For over three years since the military’s illegal coup attempt, the people of Myanmar nationwide have categorically and unequivocally rejected the Myanmar military’s futile attempts to seize power. The military junta has absolutely no legal authority to enforce any law in Myanmar. In fact, this forced conscription law is nothing more than modern slavery or forced labor under both domestic and international law.
We are alarmed by the sequence of events which led to the junta’s forced conscription: shortly after the ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar’s visit to Naypyitaw in January, and the Thailand-initiated and ASEAN-endorsed humanitarian assistance center in early February. Rather than restoring regional peace and stability and ensuring human security in Southeast Asia, these actions taken by the ASEAN Special Envoy and Thailand have only served to lend false legitimacy to the junta, emboldening it to intensify its terror campaign through forced conscription.
ASEAN’s ineffective actions have enabled the junta to commit more atrocity crimes with total impunity, while only deepening the bloc’s complicity in these crimes. In addition, we are gravely concerned by Thailand’s approach to humanitarian assistance, as it involves the Myanmar Red Cross which is part of the Myanmar military’s security apparatus and cannot be trusted as a partner to provide humanitarian assistance to those subject to the junta’s heinous crimes.
Excellencies, the UNSC can no longer continue to recklessly defer to ASEAN and its harmful approach which have to date jeopardized peace and stability in Myanmar and the region. With human security and civilian protection as its guiding principles, the UNSC must coordinate countries in the region to provide legal protection for Myanmar people fleeing from the junta’s terror campaign, including forced conscription and atrocities.
As a criminal entity, the Myanmar military has also facilitated the expansion of criminally run zones in Myanmar—now hubs for transnational crimes, breeding illegal online scam centers and human trafficking from which it has profited. These organized crimes severely endanger peace and security in the region and beyond. In the face of these nefarious activities, Myanmar’s democratic resistance forces have pledged to join forces with China and Thailand to dismantle the criminal hubs. In this regard, the UNSC must provide political and practical support to these resistance forces to topple the criminal Myanmar military and combat this problem effectively.
As the military junta weaponizes its forced conscription law, it is of utmost urgency that the UNSC act decisively: fulfill its mandate and implement its own resolutions to protect the people of Myanmar and establish peace and stability in Myanmar and the region. Once again, we urgently call on the UNSC to adopt a binding resolution under Chapter VII of the UN Charter that enforces targeted economic sanctions and a comprehensive arms embargo against the junta, and refers the crisis in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or establishes an ad hoc international criminal tribunal. Regional peace and stability will remain elusive unless and until peace and stability is secured in Myanmar, and the Myanmar military, as an illegal and international criminal entity, is held accountable for its decades of mass atrocity crimes, including war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Signed by 397civil society organizations, including 94 organizations that have chosen not to disclose their names because of the junta’s continued violence in Myanmar.
See the full list of signatories here.
Feb 22, 2024 | DFF, Statements
BANGKOK – ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) strongly condemns the decision by the Myanmar military to enforce a national conscription law that would mandate all men aged 18-35 and women aged 18-27 to serve for at least two years in the armed forces.
“We are deeply concerned about the impact the Conscription Law will have on the young people of Myanmar. This is yet another disgraceful attempt by the military junta to rule through fear and sabotage,” APHR Board Member and former Thai foreign minister Kasit Piromya said today.
The People’s Military Service Law was enacted in 2010 but never enforced or repealed under the National League for Democracy, despite calls to do so from civil society organizations. Nearly two decades later, the law is being implemented as the Myanmar junta’s bases and territory are rapidly being lost to the armed resistance forces. It is apparent that the junta is seeking to make up for the casualties it has lost at the cost of the future of Myanmar’s youth.
“This law seeks to undermine the youth-led struggle against the dictatorship and knowingly pits them against the opposition forces so many of them have supported. Its enactment also shows the utter cowardice of the Myanmar junta; they – quite literally – cannot fight their own battles,” Kasit said.
The announcement has caused widespread uncertainty for young people and their families who have no desire to serve under the military’s corrupt and violent dictatorship, which is deeply unpopular throughout the majority of the country. Myanmar’s young people have shown exceptional bravery in the wake of the military’s increasing violence and have done so to ensure their generation does not inherit another era of authoritarian rule. In a brutal and coordinated attempt to silence those efforts, the junta is forcing them to the frontlines.
“We urge ASEAN member states and the wider international community to help provide access, including visas and educational opportunities, to Myanmar youth who seek to flee to other countries ahead of the draft. We also call on the international community to recognize that this is a desperate attempt from a failing regime to cling to power and act decisively to support Myanmar’s pro-democracy forces and bring an end to the junta’s rule,” said Kasit.
Dec 8, 2023 | DFF, Statements
JAKARTA – As we come towards the end of this year’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) calls on the international community to work to ensure the protection of women in Myanmar, particularly as the illegal junta’s military losses continue to mount.
“Sexual and gender-based violence has long been used as a weapon of war by Min Aung Hlaing’s junta, and we are concerned that this will escalate as the junta seeks retaliation for their recent losses,” APHR Chair and member of the Indonesian House of Representatives Mercy Barends said today. “The international community must not allow this to happen.”
As Naw Hser Hser of the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) said in her statement to the United Nations Security Council earlier this year, “using sexual violence to attack civilian populations has long been the military’s modus operandi.” In 2017, Human Rights Watch found that the military had systematically used gang rape and other forms of sexual violence against Rohingya women and girls.
Meanwhile, since the attempted coup in February 2021, the WLB has documented over 100 cases of conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence, though the actual number of cases is likely much higher. A 2022 Amnesty International report also found that women and LGBTI post-coup detainees were subjected to “sexual violence, harassment and humiliation including invasive body searches.” Amnesty recounted that one transwoman detainee, Saw Han Nway Oo, was tortured and mocked for using feminine pronouns. Another woman detainee, Ma Htoo, said that male guards would come into the women’s cells at anytime
“We urge the international community to prioritize making international accountability mechanisms available for the survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Myanmar,” said Barends. “A lack of action only emboldens the junta to continue to commit these violations with impunity.”
As part of this, APHR calls on the UN Security Council to refer the Myanmar junta to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and use universal jurisdiction to prosecute the junta for the systematic sexual violence as well as other crimes of humanity that it has committed.
“ASEAN, particularly the chairmanship ‘troika’, must realize that even as the junta continues to suffer military defeats, the regime is inevitably going to escalate its violence against the civilian population, which will no doubt result in more cases of sexual and gender-based violence,” said Barends.
APHR, therefore calls on ASEAN to pressure the UN Security Council to adopt strong measures to ensure the junta’s compliance to Security Council Resolution 2669, including targeted economic sanctions, a comprehensive arms embargo, as well as the aforementioned referral to the ICC.
“As we approach the third Human Rights Day since the illegal coup, the international community still has not done nearly enough to defend and uphold the human rights of the people of Myanmar. We hope that this shameful pattern ends today,” said Barends.
