New report from Harvard Law School finds that UN documents on
Burma provide grounds for investigation into international crimes; calls for
more concerted UN action on Burma
Cambridge,
MA - Five of the world’s leading international jurists have commissioned
a report from the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School,
calling for the UN Security Council to act on more than fifteen years of
condemnation from other UN bodies on human rights abuses in Burma.
The
Harvard report,
Crimes in Burma, comes in the wake of renewed international attention on
Burma, with the continued persecution of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung
San Suu Kyi. The report concludes with a call for the UN Security Council to
establish a Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war
crimes in Burma.
The
Harvard report is based on an analysis of scores of UN documents
– including UN General Assembly and Commission on Human Rights
resolutions, as well as reports from several different Special
Rapporteurs. These indicate that human rights abuses in Burma are
widespread, systematic, and part of state policy – legal terms that
justify further investigation and strongly suggest Burma’s military
regime may be committing crimes against humanity and war crimes
prosecutable under international law. Major abuses cited by the
United Nations include forced displacement of over 3,000 villages in
eastern Burma, and widespread and systematic sexual violence,
torture, and summary execution of innocent civilians.
Yet, despite such documentation from multiple UN organs, the UN
Security Council has not moved to investigate potential crimes
against humanity or war crimes in Burma, as it has in other areas of
the world, including Darfur and Rwanda.
“Over and over again, UN resolutions and Special Rapporteurs have spoken
out about the abuses that have been reported to them in Burma. The UN
Security Council, however, has not moved the process forward as it should
and has in similar situations such as those in the former Yugoslavia and
Darfur,” the jurists write in the report’s preface. “In the cases of
Yugoslavia and Darfur, once aware of the severity of the problem, the UN
Security Council established a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the
gravity of the violations further. With Burma, there has been no such action
from the UN Security Council despite being similarly aware of the widespread
and systematic nature of the violations.”
The five jurists who commissioned the report, from Africa, Asia, Europe,
and North and South Africa, are Judge Richard Goldstone (South Africa),
Judge Patricia Wald (United States), Judge Pedro Nikken (Venezuela), Judge
Ganzorig Gombosuren (Mongolia), and Sir Geoffrey Nice (United Kingdom).
Among other accomplishments, Judge Goldstone served on South Africa’s
Constitutional Court and was the first prosecutor at both the International
Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. Judge Wald
served as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia and as a judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia.
Judge Nikken served as President of the Inter-American
Court of Human Rights. Judge Gombosuren served as a Supreme Court Justice in
Mongolia, and Sir Nice was the deputy prosecutor of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the principal prosecution
trial attorney in the case against Slobodan Milosevic in the Hague.
Each of the five jurists has dealt directly with severe human rights
abuses in the international system, and all five call for the UN Security
Council to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate and report on
crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.
The
Harvard report specifically examines four international human rights
violations documented by UN bodies over the past fifteen years: sexual
violence, forced displacement, torture, and extrajudicial killings. The
report focuses on UN documents since 2002, to allow examination of the most
up-to-date UN material, although UN reports dating back to 1992 have
consistently condemned a wide-range of violations in Burma.
Tyler Giannini, the Clinical Director of the Human Rights Program at
Harvard Law School and one of the report’s authors, said its findings
clearly demonstrate that a Commission of Inquiry on Burma should proceed.
“The UN Security Council has taken action regarding Yugoslavia, Rwanda,
and Sudan when it identified information strongly suggesting the existence
of crimes against humanity and war crimes,” said Giannini. “As our research
shows, UN documents clearly and authoritatively suggest that the human
rights abuses occurring in Burma are not isolated incidents – they are
potential crimes against humanity and war crimes. Failure by the UN Security
Council to take action and investigate these crimes could mean that
violations of international criminal law will go unchecked.”
To view a copy of Crimes in Burma, click here.
For media interviews in the United States, please contact Michael Jones
at 617-495-9214 or
mijones@law.harvard.edu, or Julianne Stevenson at 617-682-5519 or
jstevenson@llm09.law.harvard.edu.
For media interviews in Thailand,
please contact Tyler Giannini at +66 89 020 6646 or
giannini@law.harvard.edu.
