ABOUT THE TRIBUNAL - PRESS RELEASE

The Asian Human Rights Commission has released Voice of the Hungry Nation, a 170 page report containing evidence, findings and conclusions of the People's Tribunal on Food Scarcity and Militarization in Burma.

Concerned by reports of widespread hunger due to military rule in Burma (Myanmar), in 1997 AHRC began preparing for The People's Tribunal. Like non-governmental hearings around the world, this Tribunal was created to investigate and expose human rights violations in a nation where legal recourse does not exist. Burma's nationwide political repression is already a matter of public record; the Tribunal's purpose is to highlight militarization's devastating effects on Burma's silent, often forgotten rural population. Sitting on the Tribunal are three prominent members of Asia's human rights movement: Justice H. Suresh (India), Professor Mark Tamthai (Thailand) and Dr. Lao Mong Hay (Cambodia). Throughout 1999 this panel reviewed evidence, took depositions, and deliberated its findings and recommendations, as presented today.

In Voice of the Hungry Nation the Tribunal details how Burma's ongoing civil war and militarized economy are gradually starving not only the nation's rice farmers, but even the urban middle class. Scores of witnesses relate how forty years of military rule have eroded agrarian life and played havoc with the economy, revealing that the 1990s have seen an unprecedented pervasion of military violence, exploitation and authoritarianism on all levels of society.

In the name of counter-insurgency, the Burmese government stands guilty of denying all rights and freedoms, including the most basic human rights to food, work and human security in the conflict zones. The resulting picture is a grim portrayal of human suffering. Displaced peasants whose villages and crops have been burned flee into eastern Burma's rugged jungles, hiding from marauding soldiers in army-declared "free fire" zones. Without food or health care, children die from malnutrition and simple disease, while entire communities trek through the combat zones to take refuge in Thailand. Thousands of villages have been strategically relocated, leaving innumerable persons without land, work or a secure future.

Meanwhile, in central and lower Burma the government's army-first agricultural policies deny rice to the very farmers who grow it. The government enforces an exorbitant paddy quota, collecting rice for the army and civil service regardless of hunger in the rice-producing heartland. Burmese rice procured at gunpoint or under threat of land confiscation is then offered up for sale on the world market, feeding hard currency into a state which spends 40% of its budget on the army. Seeking to bolster its dominance, the military runs development programs which routinely appropriate farmland, use forced civilian labor and otherwise drain the rural economy's land, natural resources and workforce.

By focusing global attention on basic economic rights, the Tribunal hopes to promote the needs and interests of rural Burma in the international discourse on human rights and democratization. This means raising awareness about people's fundamental rights to benefit from their local natural resource base as a source of food, employment social security and cultural identity. It makes recommendations to all parties involved in this debate, including the Burmese government, opposition political and military groups, the UN and non-governmental organizations. These include protecting basic human rights in armed conflict, creating the peace needed for displaced people and refugees to resume agriculture, and rebuilding Burmese economy and politics to respect the rights and importance of farmers.

In Burma, the systemic denial of these rights has resulted in untold death and suffering, and in the Tribunal's eyes constitutes a crime against humanity. The Tribunal urges all State governments, the United Nations and international agencies to reject the militarization of Burmese society, support economic, social and cultural rights, and bring the full force of international law to bear upon the responsible state officials.

Asian Human Rights Commission
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