Deep in jungles far from the international spotlight, Burma’s army continues to torture and kill civilians in campaigns to stamp out some of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
With minorities making up some 40 % of Burma’s 56 million people and settled in some of its most resource-rich border regions, resolution of these brutal conflicts is regarded by all sides as crucial. The fighting has uprooted more than 1 million people, now refugees within their country or in neighboring Thailand and Bangladesh.
"This is the most intractable problem facing the state since independence. I would argue it is more important than 'democracy' as an issue," says David Steinberg, a Burma scholar at Washington's Georgetown University. "Most minority groups want some form of federalism, but federalism is anathema to the military as they view it as the first step toward secession," he said.
While hopes are perhaps higher now than in decades, reports and interviews in recent days from inside the embattled areas are uniformly bleak. "Even though there is activity (by the government) there has been no change in the ethnic areas. We continue to have widespread human rights violations and attacks on our villages," said Nan Dah Kler of the Karen Women Organization. The spokesman for the Thailand border-based ethnic group urged that Clinton "keep these facts in the forefront of her mind as she talks to (the government)." A sign that talks on the ethnic conflicts could at least be more forthright than earlier exchanges, is an unprecedented admission that the military may be committing human rights abuses, something blankly denied in the past. "As you know there are no clean hands in conducting all sorts of war. There may be some sort of crimes committed by government troops similar to other armed forces of the rest of the world, including NATO troops in Afghanistan accused of killing innocent civilians," said Ko Ko Hlaing, an adviser to the president.
"There's been no change on the ground since negotiations started, and the prospects for increased violence is high," said Bryan Erikson of Partners Relief and Development, who recently returned from Kachin State where some of the most intense fighting is taking place.
Although claims of atrocities cannot be independently verified, the United Nations, international human rights organizations and others have compiled a library of human rights abuses beginning not long after the military seized power in Burma, also known as Burma, in 1962.
2011.11.29 The Irawaddy -Burma Minorities Suffer Abuses Despite Reforms