Dr. Heisoo Shin and Prof. Vitit Muntarbhorn joined Nobel peace winners Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams in urging the UN Security Council to refer Burma to the International Criminal Court. After hearing testimony from 12 women who outlined abuses they suffered at the hands of the Burmese army and military regime, a panel of Nobel peace laureates and international jurists have added to calls for such crimes to be the subject of an international investigation.
One woman's story was particularly harrowing: They raped us all without a second thought, until we finally escaped their drunken grasps. News spread quickly throughout my village. We received international attention when the BBC picked up the story. I was caned by my teacher in front of the entire school before being expelled. Later, I was also expelled from my community for bringing shame upon it. Left without a home, a school, friends or a family, I was arrested by the police for 'defaming' the same soldiers who raped me.
Another woman's story outlined how her role in Generation 88, the student group that manned mass protests against the junta in 1988, led to her arrest, sexual abuse and life-long health complications. She told the tribunal : I was arrested in 1989 because of my membership in Generation 88. I was 5 months pregnant when I was imprisoned and gave birth behind the prison walls. I was given no medical care before or during the birth of my son and because of the complications, I could not have any more children. When I was first detained, they would not give me any food for 12 days. I now have liver disease from the dirty water we were forced to drink.
The calls for international investigation into human rights violations in Burma are not the first. In 2009, a panel of jurists that included a former judge and two former prosecutors for the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, compiled a report. Using existing UN documents, "Crimes in Burma” outlined what it termed epidemic levels of forced labor in the 1990s, the recruitment of tens of thousands of child soldiers, widespread sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and torture, and more than a million displaced persons.