Women and Politics in Burma/Myanmar

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Description: "The Female Voice of Myanmar: Khin Myo Chit to Aung San Suu Kyi by Nilanjana Sengupta (Cambridge University Press, India) is a scholarly treatise on Myanmar. The book will be released in late September in Singapore. Sengupta is a Visiting Scholar at Asia Research Institute (National University of Singapore).There aren?t many Indian writers who write on Myanmar, so this is an important work of scholarship. The publisher describes the book as a ?commentary on the evolving state of Myanmar and female thought from colonial times to the present, seen through the eyes of four Burmese female activist-writers?..."
Creator/author: Zafar Anjum
Source/publisher: Kitaab
2015-08-31
Date of entry/update: 2016-05-15
Grouping: Websites/Multiple Documents
Language: English
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Description: "The Karen Women’s Organisation condemns the Burmese military continued airstrikes and indiscriminate shelling targeting civilians which has been ongoing this month. These attacks have killed and wounded at least 30 civilians mostly women and children. The recent aggressive airstrikes and mortar shelling have been particularly intensive in Kler Lwee Htu, Mutraw district. As just one example, on September 7th, 2023 at 18:03 pm the Burmese military carried out an airstrike in Htee Gaw Hta village, Na Koh Kee village tract, Dweh Lo township, Mutraw district around the school compound areas and killing a teacher with 3 students and wounding one teacher with 5 students. In Kler Lwee Htu district on Sunday, September 3rd, the Burmese military airstrike on civilians resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy, leaving a 16-year-old girl injured, and causing the destruction of numerous houses and other public buildings..."
Source/publisher: Karen Women's Organisation
2023-09-12
Date of entry/update: 2023-09-12
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "In her dreams at least, Phyu Nyo hoped to see all the colors of the outside world and experience freedom, even though she was in prison. But it never happened. “I thought I could exist only in my dreams,” she said over the phone, recalling her 19 months locked up in two notorious junta prisons. “But I never escaped from the prisons, even in my dreams. [The dreams] were all about prison, about running away and being recaptured. It was like my mind was also jailed,” the now 30-year-old said in a low voice. The number of female political prisoners in Myanmar is at a record high under the military junta led by coup leader Min Aung Hlaing. According to rights group the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), at least 4,883 women were arrested for anti-regime activities between Feb. 1, 2021 and Aug. 23 this year. Another 602 were killed, including 114 girls. Of those arrested, more than 3,770 are still in custody, 15 of whom face the death penalty. The women arrested include political leaders, elected lawmakers, activists, striking civil servants, medics, resistance fighters, students, journalists, businesswomen and those from all walks of life. Before the military staged a coup and overthrew Myanmar’s elected civilian government in February 2021, Phyu Nyo was a fashion designer and trainer from Yangon, living a decent life with her husband, who had a livestock farm and agribusiness. But the pair were forced to become fugitives after participating in anti-coup protests and supporting striking civil servants who took part in the civil disobedience movement (CDM). The two left their house in Yangon and fled to Mandalay to evade arrest, but were detained after being discovered in their hideout in the city in October 2021. The junta also sealed off Phyu Nyo’s fashion shop in Yangon and seized everything inside including clothes, bags and shoes. She and her husband were sent to the junta’s notorious Mandalay Palace interrogation center, where Phyu Nyo was threatened with rape. “They [the junta forces] yelled at me and said ‘We could rape and kill you!’” Phyu Nyo recalled. Since the coup, women in Myanmar have been tortured, sexually harassed and threatened with rape in custody. The National Unity Government’s Ministry of Women, Youth and Children’s Affairs said in March that junta troops have sexually assaulted at least 122 women since the beginning of the coup. Another form of sexual harassment that female political prisoners increasingly face is humiliating mass strip searches by prison staff. Phyu Nyo said she had heard in June from female political inmates still held in Yangon’s Insein Prison that such searches had become worse this year. Female inmates in Insein Prison are being forced to submit to thorough checks of their intimate body parts after court appearances. Told that it is necessary to ensure that the detainees don’t smuggle papers, female political prisoners are required to lift their breasts and expose their vulva. And prison staff wearing gloves touch and rub all of the inmates’ private parts and even use their hand to forcefully penetrate into the vagina during the searches. In addition to the usual strip search humiliations, women who are menstruating are ordered to remove their sanitary pads in order to be strip-searched. Supposedly done in order to search for smuggled “papers”, all such activities are violations not only of the detainees’ human rights but also their dignity, Phyu Nyo said. Phyu Nyo was held in Mandalay’s Obo Prison and Myingyan Prison. During her imprisonment, she didn’t experience the most invasive searches into the vagina but did endure occasional body searches. “Human rights abuses were common and the prison staff would swear at all of us, including women old enough to be their mothers and grandmothers, every day,” Phyu Nyo said, sobbing as she described the encounters. “In prison you can’t do anything the way you wish, from speaking to taking a bath,” she said. For bathing, prisoners are limited to 15 regular cups or 30 small cups of water a day. Phyu Nyo said that while she would prefer not to think about those days in the military interrogation center and the prisons, as the memories are suffocating and painful, she felt a responsibility to speak up for her sisters who continue to languish in jails across the country, and to let others know their stories and what is happening behind bars. “Sometimes, I have even thought of suicide. But the mindset that I will not give up on these guys, and that we will be free if we win, keeps me alive.” Alinn, another former political prisoner who was also jailed in Obo Prison and Myingyan Prison for two years, similarly recalled that the prison authorities, especially in Obo Prison, treated political prisoners with hostility, adding that non-political inmates were encouraged to take part in abuses against political prisoners, and to monitor their activities. A first year student at a nursing training school at the time of the coup, Alinn took part in peaceful protest rallies in Mandalay to demand the return of democracy in the country. During a dawn protest on May 12, 2021 in Mandalay’s Pyigyidagon Township, she was violently arrested together with 30 other protesters. She was beaten on the head, back and arm, and collapsed during the arrest. Almost all of the detained protesters were later sentenced to two years’ imprisonment on incitement charges. Alinn said many political prisoners suffer from health problems inside due to the lack of proper healthcare provisions. “In prison, whatever your illness, they just give you para [paracetamol],” Alinn said. According to accounts from media and rights groups, some political prisoners have died because of inadequate medical treatment and health care, including denial of emergency care at public hospitals. The lack of adequate health care and medical treatment is only compounded by the growing number of female political prisoners that continue to be crammed into Myanmar’s overcrowded prisons across the country. Khin Waddy, a 27-year-old former female political prisoner and student activist from Monywa, Sagaing Region, said she was forced to share a space, including while sleeping, with 100 to 150 inmates in one single dormitory in Monywa Prison. Around 60 percent of the inmates there were political prisoners, she said. Being locked up with more than 100 people makes it difficult for prisoners to even change position from one side to another or turn around while sleeping, and inmates were forced to sleep face to face due to the lack of space. Hygiene is another problem; those positioned near the septic tank were directly exposed to the smell, with liquid leaking from the tank passing near their heads. To avoid being positioned near the septic tank, prisoners must pay the head of the dormitory for a sleeping space farther away, Khin Waddy said. The former student activist and human rights advocate was arrested in May 2021 for providing support to 1,500 striking civil servants who joined the CDM following the military takeover. Khin Waddy recalled that while she was being interrogated in the military interrogation center in Monywa, she was forced to kneel down while holding her hands up for 24 hours, and was beaten if she lowered her hands. She was also denied food and water. After two-and-a-half days of interrogation, she began experiencing stomach pains and vomiting and had to be sent to a military hospital. While there she met Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker for Sagaing Region’s Mingin Township, who was also hospitalized while undergoing military interrogation. The 56-year-old was twice elected a lawmaker for her constituency, in both the 2015 and 2020 elections. The results of the latter were annulled by the military following the coup. Khin Waddy said Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, despite her frail outer appearance, stood firm and served as a mother figure for all of the female detainees in the prison. Later, Khin Waddy and Daw Khin Mawe Lwin were both transferred to Myingyan Prison. In prison, the two engaged in activities together including political talks and discussions during which prisoners could exchange political views, and organizing strikes mirroring those taking place outside, such as silent strikes, Thanakha (traditional cosmetic paste) strikes and flower strikes, and strikes to mark occasions such as Martyrs’ Day, the anniversary of the 1988 uprising, and detained leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday. In prison, staging such activities can have repercussions ranging from the imposition of stricter rules or a reduction in the water allotted for showering, to a beating. There have been many reports of female political prisoners being brutally beaten and seriously injured, or being transferred to a remote prison, simply for asking that their rights be observed. Khin Waddy was released in November last year. But instead of releasing Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, the junta hit the NLD lawmaker with another charge and transferred her to Kalay Prison. Daw Khin Mawe Lwin suffered facial paralysis due to a stroke while in Monywa Prison. Denied timely medical care, she did not fully recover and later suffered another stroke in Kalay Prison, Khin Waddy said. “If people like Amay [mother] Mawe were outside, they could do much more than us,” Khin Waddy said, adding that her wish is for Amay Mawe [Daw Khin Mawe Lwin] and all political prisoners to be released soon. Despite the horrific, traumatizing experiences they have endured, female former political prisoners like Khin Waddy, Alinn and Phyu Nyo are not disheartened, and refuse to abandon their activism. Instead, they have joined other women who are at the forefront of the revolution. Women from all walks of life have bravely participated in Myanmar’s democracy struggle under successive military regimes, including the current junta, to restore democracy in the country. Similarly, women civil servants in the education, health and other sectors have joined the CDM, refusing to work under military rule—to date, their strike continues. This is to say nothing of the many women resistance fighters who are fighting alongside their male comrades in the armed struggle against the junta. Phyu Nyo, who was released together with her husband in May this year, said she has continued to dream of her days of imprisonment over the past three months. “In my dreams, we are both still on the run and being caught, again and again,” she said with frustration. “Only when I wake up without seeing any [prison] bars, and recognize that I am now outside, do I feel relief,” she said. However, Phyu Nyo hasn’t let her traumatizing experiences stop her from resuming her contributions to the political movement. She has joined the Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar, which was founded by her husband and other former detainees to help political prisoners still being detained by the junta. Alinn, the former political prisoner from Mandalay, also joined the network with the same aim as Phyu Nyo. “I couldn’t feel happy on the day of my release. Though I was free, people who had become like family members to me remained behind,” Alinn said. Through the network, both Phyu Nyo and Alinn now help to send parcels containing medicines and cash to female political prisoners. Khin Waddy is also working on raising funds for displaced people in Sagaing Region who were forced to flee their homes amid the junta’s raids and arson attacks. “We want this revolution to end quickly. Only if we win will all the political prisoners be released, and thus we are determined to contribute in all ways we can. The same mindset we had while inside [prison], we now have on the outside,” Khin Waddy said. Phyu Nyo said that some of the female political prisoners still locked up are serving terms as long as 30 to 40 years. “I want all of them to escape quickly and return home. That can only happen if the revolution succeeds at the earliest possible time. And thus I will devote myself to the revolution,” she said. With the exception of Daw Khin Mawe Lwin, the names of the women mentioned in this story were changed to protect their safety..."
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Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
2023-08-30
Date of entry/update: 2023-08-30
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "CHIANG MAI – The Myanmar pro-democracy movement must listen to the calls of women and ethnic people and their vision for federalism, ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights said today. On 29 June, APHR held a closed-door meeting with women human rights defenders and activists from Myanmar civil society groups in Chiang Mai, Thailand as part of a series of discussions that aim to provide a platform for gendered perspectives on the crisis in the country, including topics such as federalism, patriarchy, and ethnic inclusion. As long as there has been a civil war in Myanmar, there has been a struggle for ethnic autonomy, including the rights to their land, language, health care, education and traditions. For women, in addition to the fight for ethnic equality, has also been for gender equality. In the current context of post-coup Myanmar, new challenges have emerged and a new struggle for equality across all genders and ethnicities. “The commitment and dedication of women to Myanmar’s struggle for democracy is evident across the movement,” said APHR Board Member and former Thai foreign minister Kasit Piromya. “Federalism cannot exist in Myanmar without democracy, and certainly not without the contributions of women.” “The history of Burma is rooted in ongoing conflict. When we look at the creators of conflict, it is very clear it is the Myanmar junta. Women have always been involved in revolutionary acts because we believe in genuine peace,” said Moon Nay Li, Joint General Secretary of the Women’s League of Burma . While pro-democracy bodies, including the National Unity Government, the National Unity Consultative Council and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, have called for federalism to defeat the junta, women-led organizations and activists are advocating for a future that is gender-equal as well as federal. “Too often, women are told that their pursuits for gender equality are of lesser importance amidst the shared struggle to defeat the junta. These struggles are interconnected as the commitment to end military rule is rooted in ending patriarchal norms and institutions,” said APHR member and member of the Philippine House of Representatives Arlene Brosas. “Women’s rights defenders are critical actors in the pro-democracy movement, and their voices must be amplified to ensure their needs are met and perspectives are heard.” During the meeting, the women human rights defenders and activists were very clear that more reflection needed to be done on how the ‘pro-democracy’ movement is currently progressing. For many, this includes inner work, primarily from the Bamar majority, on how to ‘unlearn’ certain attitudes and beliefs which stem from Burmanization, Buddhism and the patriarchy. Calls were also made to the international community to engage with pro-democracy stakeholders, and not the terrorist regime. “The international community, including ASEAN, must support women human rights defenders and their calls for a more inclusive vision of federalism in Myanmar. Defeating the junta is imperative, but without the participation of women and ethnic people, a democratic Myanmar cannot be sustainable,” said APHR Chair and member of Indonesian House of Representatives Mercy Barends..."
Source/publisher: ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights
2023-07-03
Date of entry/update: 2023-07-03
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: Sharing a survey study on the post-coup socio-economic impact of the women and working peoples from peri-urban areas
Description: "It is crucial to document all forms of human costs shouldered by different social groups due to the military coup and to recognize and understand all the struggles and resilience strategies deployed and the specific circumstances in which they are being deployed. In this regard, TNI wants to highlight the work of a local partner as they attempt to capture the double burden of ‘post-covid economic stresses’ and ‘military coup’ faced by the urban women laborers and women-headed households living in Hlaintharyar and South Dagon townships of Yangon city. This past February 1 marked the second year since the Myanmar military staged a coup d'état back in 2021. Within this two-year period, the country saw the highest number of mass displacements, deaths, destruction, and torture in every state and region ever – surpassing any point of time in the country’s history. These atrocities committed by the genocidal military can be seen in the numbers.1 However, other human costs, such as the social, emotional, and economic dimensions may be less visible and harder to capture even though they are important parts of the totality. A particularly tragic outcome of such human costs is the number of people (forty-four cases recorded between 1 Feb 2021 to Sept 2022)2 who are reported to have committed suicide since the coup. Nevertheless, despite these hard cruel facts, the military dictator continues to face strong resistance in a majority of the country. At the same time, there are ongoing and unsettling debates around what is the ‘right’ kind of resistance. Looking back at the country’s history of colonial occupation, armed conflict, and political oppression, there have been many forms of resistance, and not all were undertaken by established groups. Often, resistance undertaken by ordinary people have not been very overt or highly visible, but this does not mean they were not organized or meaningful. Fast-forward to today, surely the same holds true. While there are circumstances that have clearly led many people to devote themselves completely to the revolution, many others find themselves in other kinds of circumstances where they must keep on working so that their families can survive. Yet these two different scenarios surely only tell part of the story of what is really happening in the lives of real people in either case. In either case, people found themselves in difficult circumstances not of their own choosing that they must find a way to survive and get through. We must keep in mind that even before the coup, Myanmar had become a country of very high poverty and very deep inequality. People from the rural areas made up an overwhelming majority (87%) of the country’s poor.3 Urban-biased forms of development pursued by the previous governments had pushed waves of rural villagers to the cities in search of work, and more often than not ending up as part of the cheap informal labor force in the growing manufacturing and service industries. Myanmar pays the lowest daily minimum wage in ASEAN since 2018, which is now equivalent to around 2 US$ factoring in current inflation rate, below international poverty line of 2.15 US$ per day.4 Even before the coup, only 2% of the entire workforce is estimated to be employed in the formal sector where workers are eligible to register for social security schemes.5 The rest are effectively overexploited and uncared for. A significant proportion of working people lack access to the most basic public services such as primary health care, reproductive health services, municipal public services, decent housing, and more. For the majority of people whose lives had already been shattered by various events in previous decades, the coup was a new crisis on top of an already existing crisis. In the early days after the coup, we have seen media reports of hundreds of factory workers from Yangon industrial zones on the streets, one hand grasping a humble lunch box while another gripping into a fist to protest against the coup. Here is where the junta’s iron hammer fell first and with unmitigated harshness. Hlaingtharyar and South Dagon township faced a horrifically ruthless crackdown by the military, killing nearly 100 people which Human Rights Watch described as a massacre.6,7Many workers have since left the area and returned to their villages. But many have no choice but to remain, forced to earn a wage under the close military surveillance, as they try to rebuild their lives on the ruins and look for jobs available from whichever factories. There is a popular saying that people often use whenever a crisis hits – ‘we are all in the same boat’. It is utterly wrong. Different people live in different contexts based on their social class, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and geographical locations. That is why it is so crucial to keep on documenting all forms of human costs shouldered by different social groups due to the military coup and to recognize and understand all the struggles and resilience strategies deployed and the specific circumstances in which they are being deployed. In this regard, TNI wants to highlight the work of a local partner as they attempt to capture the double burden of ‘post-covid economic stresses’ and ‘military coup’ faced by the urban women laborers and women-headed households living in Hlaintharyar and South Dagon townships of Yangon city. The report investigated increasing pressures faced by the women in the areas of health, children education, safety and security, food, living situation, debt, and psychological impact. Their experiences and struggles deserve our attention and invite us to walk with them toward a fuller understanding of their lives and the multiple meanings of resistance and resilience..."
Source/publisher: Transnational Institute ( Amsterdam)
2023-03-29
Date of entry/update: 2023-03-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Women have been barred from education in Afghanistan and face mass arrests and summary executions in Myanmar. In Iran, failure to wear a hijab to the satisfaction of the morality police was enough to end in death—after being beaten by police, according to witnesses—for Mahsa Amini six months ago today. Women’s rights are indivisible from national security. That’s the powerful message that came through strongly when four Australian women—one each from Afghanistan, Myanmar and Iran, plus a nationally renowned foreign correspondent and rights advocate—gathered for ASPI’s event for International Women’s Day. Titled ‘Women in conflict and protest: a conversation on protecting human rights and strengthening peace and security’, the discussion focused on women, the grassroots movements they lead, and how they stand at the forefront of protests and movements to defend human rights. The panellists were united in raising the international community’s shortcomings in supporting these women’s efforts in consistent, principled ways. Women have distinct experiences of conflict and oppression and play particular roles in responding. That includes bringing unique strengths to popular acts of resistance and to peace processes. But realities for women across the world show that the importance of their role in peace and security continues to slip through the cracks of the international community’s agenda. The women, peace and security agenda remains on the backburner, despite the fact that we’ve seen a backsliding, if not a complete unravelling, of women’s rights in many countries over the past few years after decades of progress. In her keynote address, Shaharzad Akbar, former chair of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, highlighted that Afghan women started mobilising against Taliban rule as early as 16 August 2021—just one day after the group took control of Kabul. Undeterred by the brutal crackdowns they continue to face, these women have adopted different forms of protest and resistance against the regime, such as establishing underground schools and libraries. Nos Hosseini, an Australian-Iranian lawyer and refugee rights advocate, spoke about anger against the regime in Tehran and the courage of Iranian women who were ‘unafraid of the bullets they’re met with’. ‘It’s not about the headscarf at all,’ she said of the protests that have now lasted six months and claimed at least 500 lives. ‘It’s about dignity.’ The power of social media as a tool for women protesting emerged as a key feature of the discussion. Mon Zin, a founding member of Global Myanmar Spring Revolution, described social media as ‘the life of the revolution’. Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement has its own verified Twitter page where protest ideas are posted and discussed. Zin said women use social media to disseminate anti-coup symbols. These include the three-finger salute, a symbol of resistance and democracy movements in Southeast Asia adopted from The Hunger Games film series; bouquets of flowers, a reference to Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s signature floral hairstyle; and bright-red lips, a reference to the #RedLipsSpeakTruthToPower campaign aimed at raising awareness about sexual violence against women committed by the junta. Similarly, in Afghanistan and Iran, social media helps women overcome barriers to their physical movement and access to public spaces. Akbar observed that Afghan women, unable to take to the streets due to Taliban restrictions, have chosen to record videos at home, producing pieces of music and poetry with their faces covered and releasing them on social media. Hosseini raised the invaluable role social media has played in sharing Iran’s realities with the world, mobilising support not just within Iran but also among the international community. Despite internet blackouts, she said, people have used virtual private networks to disseminate footage and imagery of the protests and the government’s crackdown. She particularly emphasised the role of social media in ensuring that Iran’s story reached the homes and phones of non-Iranians whose support is crucial in amplifying the voices of Iranians and ensuring that their struggle is not forgotten by the international community. Women are also subverting and repurposing symbols of male power and patriarchy. For instance, Mon explained how women activists in Myanmar developed a tactic to keep security forces at bay by stringing up women’s clothing across the streets. In traditional Myanmar culture, walking beneath women’s clothing is considered bad luck and even emasculating for men. Hosseini noted that the current wave of protests in Iran involves all genders, ages, ethnicities and religions. People are standing together in solidarity against ‘the gender apartheid regime that’s engulfed and held the Iranian populace hostage for the last 44 years’, she said. Maryam Zahid established Afghan Women on the Move to address the lack of support available in parts of Australia to Afghan women who are recovering from past traumas and trying to rebuild their lives. The organisation uses community-based approaches to provide social engagement, mental health and settlement support to Afghan and other women from multicultural backgrounds in Australia. In the face of extraordinary stories of courage of women fighting repressive rimes, Sophie McNeill, senior Australia researcher at Human Rights Watch, underlined the international community’s short and selective attention span for women’s rights. While media, governments and the public often show keen support for courageous women protesters early on, they tend to lose interest over the longer term. The other panellists agreed. Zahid, for instance, recalled receiving enthusiastic political and media attention in the days following the Taliban takeover in 2021. But that evaporated soon after as a business-as-usual attitude set in. Looking ahead, Zin encouraged members of the public to participate in online petitions and campaigns supporting the civil-disobedience movement and to let governments know that Australian public opinion stands firmly against the junta and with the people of Myanmar. She also underlined the importance of funding civil-society organisations. McNeill reiterated the importance of long-term investments in the people on the ground, focusing on their protection, education and empowerment. She urged Australians to talk to their local members of parliament about increasing foreign aid. And she called on the international community to be more consistent in calling out human rights abuses wherever they occur in the world. The importance of placing international pressure on repressive regimes and to break expectations of impunity was echoed by Hosseini. Overall, as McNeill also said, governments need to learn from mistakes and realise that conversations on human rights, women’s rights and security must not happen in silos. The discussion brought out the contrast between the incredible resilience of grassroot movements and the international community’s patchy concern. For me, this raised questions about the usefulness of international frameworks such as the UN women, peace and security agenda and the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. Authoritarian regimes such as the Taliban, the Iranian state and the Myanmar junta, as Zin noted, simply don’t care about such frameworks, and the international community seems to lack the political will to take concrete action against the regimes’ violations. What is the use of these frameworks, then, if they are only applied in situations where they are easily accepted and palatable, and are absent where they are needed most? In a recent advocacy video, an Afghan woman called for the world to ‘not forget the women of Afghanistan and help them not to be buried alive’. Her appeal shows what is at stake when the world turns a blind eye to gender-based violence and repression..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Australian Strategic Policy Institute
2023-03-13
Date of entry/update: 2023-03-16
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Description: "Today, International Women's Day is being celebrated worldwide, while in Myanmar, a total of 483 women have been killed by the Terrorist Military Council in the past two years, and a total of 3,125 women including State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are languishing in prison. A total of 11 women have been sentenced to death, and 15 to life imprisonment, with a further 122 women sexually assaulted by the junta's troops. Sexual violence and violence against Myanmar women of various forms now plague the country. On march 8th, 1857 protests in a New York textile factory to increase wages, gain voting rights, and reduce working hours led to a violent crackdown by authorities. Over a hundred years later, in 1975, the United Nations declared International Women's Day, a day designated to promote and protect women's rights. Myanmar also signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) July 22, 1997, and although Myanmar agreed, subsequent terrorist dictators not only ignored the treaty but also failed to implement its provisions for many years. The contract was violated. Over the past 26 years, terrorist dictators have committed a variety of inhumane acts of violence purposefully and systematically violating Myanmar women's rights and preventing any social progress. In the past 26 years even though Myanmar signed the CEDAW, terrorist dictators were absolutely unwilling to comply with it and this is evident by the statement they release on the day before International Women's Day. Terrorist dictators have committed inhumane crimes against Myanmar women and rather than apologising to Myanmar women for the crimes and abuses the terrorist leaders have committed, and taking legal action and delivering justice, the terrorist dictators instead destroying criminal evidence, torching crime scenes and incinerating dead bodies to hide the signs of torture. Along with this, a cruel 4 cuts policy is also being imposed on the people and violence against Myanmar women continues. As of the 8th of March, rather than protecting the rights of Myanmar women in accordance with the CEDAW, to which Myanmar is a signatory, and promoting the intellectual, physical, and emotional fortitude of Myanmar women, the junta have instead murdered a total of 483 Myanmar women who have been acting for women's rights and federal democracy in the past two years. Soon after the coup, on February 9th, 2021, peaceful protester Mya Thwet Thwet Khine (မ မြသွဲ့သွဲ့ခိုင်) was shot in the head. Less than a month later on March 3rd, 19 year-old Angel (ကြယ်စင်) was shot in the head. The military have continued their killing spree, most recently on March 1st, 2023 just before International Women's Day where they sexually violated and murdered three women Ma Pan Nwe (မပန်းနွယ်), Ma Pan Twe ( မပန်းသွယ်), Ma Swe Swe Oo (မဆွေဆွေဦး) in the village of Tatai, Sagaing Region. In addition to the 483 women murdered in the past 24 months, a total of 3,125 Myanmar women, including state counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi have been unjustly detained and junta forces have sexually abused and violated a total of 122 Myanmar women. In the last 24 months, in addition to the unjust executions of Phyo Zayar Taw and Ko Jimmy, a total of 11 Myanmar women have been sentenced to death and a further 15 have been sentenced to life imprisonment. The terrorist dictators use hunger, rape, and arson as weapons, leading to the displacement of 1.6 million people, mostly women and children. More than 50,000 buildings have been set ablaze, and more than 17 million people in Myanmar are affected by famine, again with women and children bearing the brunt of the burden. We will continue working with international governments and relevant organisations to prosecute terrorist dictators through international legal channels until the people of Myanmar get justice, with no crime left unpunished. Together, we will root out the military dictatorship and restore rights and power to the hands of women and people of Myanmar regardless of race, religion, gender, and ethnicity and build a new federal democracy embracing equality for all the people of Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
2023-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2023-03-10
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "HURFOM: Women in Burma today face many threats to their safety and well-being. On this International Women’s Day, the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) calls for an end to military impunity, which has emboldened the junta to commit crimes of conflict-related sexual violence. Rape continues to be used as a weapon of war to traumatize and intimidate young women and girls. In Southeastern Burma, HURFOM has documented 5 women killed, 9 injured, 32 arrested, and 6 detained since the beginning of 2023. In addition, seventeen female teachers from the Civil Disobedience Movement arrested in February 2023 are still missing. Since the failed coup on 1 February 2021, HURFOM has documented that over 65 women have been killed, 190 were injured, and 700 were arrested. In addition, out of 125 total enforced disappearances since the coup in Southeastern Burma, 30 have been women in HURFOM target areas of Mon State, Karen State and Tanintharyi region. Gendered violence persists across the country. Women face ongoing risks as the military junta increases its presence, particularly in areas like Karen State, where opposition to the Burma Army has been fierce and unrelenting. Gendered violence is both targeted and indiscriminate. At the beginning of the year, on 1 January 2023, the junta forces patrolling a local area in Mon State fatally shot two young women riding a motorcycle in the back. The two victims were both severely injured. In a separate case involving attacks against women, the Burma Army arrested several young women at the end of January 2023, including four from Ye township and six from Abaw village and Kyar-tan village, Mon State. They were tortured and examined at a military training camp. HURFOM reporters from the area confirmed that the junta forces jailed four women detainees out of the ten who were abducted. The victim’s family members have appealed for the truth and justice to emerge. The junta’s treatment of women is entrenched in decades of patriarchal rule and institutions which discriminate heavily based on gender. HURFOM has reported that various forms of gender-based violence still occur in areas where internally displaced people have fled. Harassment and domestic violence are rising as there are worsening tensions within households due to the lack of food security and livelihoods. Women human rights defenders are working to provide social services that reduce stress in the home, such as clothing and monetary support. Mental health and psychosocial support are critical for war-affected families. And yet – despite the many challenges facing them, women have persevered. They continue to advocate for their rights and freedoms and for equality to be a pillar for a free and fair Burma. While women continue to take significant risks to protect themselves, their families and their loved ones, the international community must take their plight seriously. More protection for women and girls is needed from the international community. Funding for women-led organizations and supporting cross-border aid is one-way global actors can lend solidarity to those on the ground and offer support during this time of immense uncertainty. They can pursue international accountability mechanisms that hold the regime to account, including for their crimes against women and girls. Further, HURFOM condemns the ongoing gendered violence. On Women’s Day, and every day, HURFOM calls for gender equality and for all stakeholders to do their part in ending gender-based violence once and for all. As enshrined in the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War states: “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault.”..."
Source/publisher: Human Rights Foundation of Monland
2023-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2023-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: In a dire situation, the prominence of women in social, political, and economic life give reason for hope.
Description: "International Women's Day on 8 March celebrates the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call for action for accelerating women’s empowerment and gender equality. Why does commemorating the International Women’s Day in Myanmar matter? I started writing this op-ed wanting to explain to the unborn generation of children why gender equality and the empowerment of women matters in Myanmar today. It is the ingrained hope of a mother wanting to pass on a better future to her child. It is also my call for action to all involved to further advance on gender equality and the empowerment of women as we are facing an erosion of many hard-earned gains in terms of gender equality. Myanmar’s women and girls have been hit disproportionately hard by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Feb. 1, 2021 coup and the pursuant security, humanitarian, and socio-economic crisis. The economic downturn has led to an increasing pay gap between women and men, and women-led businesses, which are often small and micro-enterprises or in the informal sector, have struggled more to make a recovery. Access to sexual and reproductive healthcare services has been severely diminished. While reliable figures are not available, all indicators point to an increase in various forms of sexual and gender-based violence across Myanmar, while access to response services and to justice for survivors is often minimal to non-existent. Why does gender equality matter, will you ask? “If society is like a bird with two wings, if one is broken the bird will not be able to fly” will I answer. If women, who make 52 per cent of the population are not equally represented in decision making bodies, lack equal access to basic rights, equal employment and income opportunities, and continue to face the threat of violence in their day-to-day lives, they will not be able to fully claim and exert their rights, then society will never be able to fully thrive and to use its full socio-economic potential towards a sustainable and prosperous future. Women in Myanmar have shown tremendous resilience but continue to face unequal access to productive resources, reproductive rights and suffer violence and abuse. The multiple crises have seen an extraordinary amount of women’s engagement socially and economically, with women playing central and life-saving roles in local and community-level pandemic and humanitarian responses, often in extreme circumstances. Previously marginalized women have begun playing increasingly visible leadership roles, and the unity within the women’s movement is at an all-time high. Threats of violence However, all of this has come at a high cost, with individual women leaders and women’s organisations finding themselves under-resourced, often at a risk of depletion and over-burdening, and facing increasing threats and violence both online and in real life for their outspoken and brave leadership. The 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan reports that women have been hit disproportionately by conflict, the political and economic crisis, and their subsequent economic impacts due to social norms around work, disempowerment in the workplace and their traditional role in their households and communities. Of the 4.5 million people prioritized for life-saving humanitarian support this year, 52 percent are women. Despite the extremely challenging circumstances, the United Nations in Myanmar together with its local partners will reach 2.3 million women and girls in humanitarian assistance covering prevention and response to gender-based violence, HIV/AIDS prevention, cash transfer and food distribution in 2023. Undoubtedly, the multiple crises have led to an across-the-board erosion of many hard-earned gains of the past decades in terms of gender equality and women’s empowerment as the ratification of the United Nation Convention on Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) or the National Strategic Plan for the Advancement of Women. But as dire as the situation is in Myanmar, the continued prominence of women in all aspects of social, political, and economic life give reason for hope as well. To halt the regression of gender equality and women’s empowerment, Myanmar women and women’s rights organizations need the urgent support of the international community, including from UN agencies, to listen to their appeals and to continue advocating on their behalf. This includes adaptive and flexible support to women’s organisations providing aid to populations in need in remote areas relying on their knowledge and networks to be able to localise and deliver aid efficiently and effectively. A bird with two equally strong and intact wings will fly high and far towards a prosperous and sustainable future. On March 8 and beyond I, on behalf of UN Women, commit to stand for gender equality in Myanmar, today and always..."
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Source/publisher: "RFA" (USA)
2023-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2023-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "The Women's League of Burma will organize 16 Days of Activism in various forms and activities along with white ribbons campaign under the theme of "Justice + Accountability = End System of Impunity” to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which falls today on the 25th November. The Women's League of Burma is not only solely opposed to violence but also uses the Zero Tolerance policy to condemn any kind and act of violence. In addition, WLB has documented all forms of violence committed against women and highlighted the issues from the national to the international level for justice and accountability. Burma/Myanmar is a country of prolonged civil war, and the main reason for the increase in violence against women in various ways is the use of the patriarchal system and military dictatorship. Additionally, due to the existing mindset dominated by patriarchy, the presence of those who practice the ideology of the patriarchy, and military dictators who seized power unjustly for generations, the survivors have not received full justice and accountability until today. According to the WLB’s members' organizations, since the t military junta seized the power on 1st February 2022 until today, they have documented 111 domestic violence cases, 14 rape cases committed by civilians, at least 16 rape cases, and 3 sexual assault and violence cases committed by the military Junta’s soldiers. In addition, according to news media, there are more than 40 cases of women being raped and burned to death for forced disappearance. The violence continues to occur every day with no punishment mechanism for the perpetrators, who are getting impunity for their crimes. Additionally, because of the current situation in Burma/ Myanmar, it is a terrifying situation that no one, including women, girls, and persons with diverse sexual orientations, has no security protection but is also deeply concerned. WLB has designated the Military Junta as a criminal for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, which have been systematically and intentionally committed for generations. Therefore, WLB strongly urges to work together in respective roles to ensure accountability of the perpetrators and to achieve justice. Women’s League of Burma would like to encourage women, girls, persons with diverse sexual orientations, and anyone to join the White Ribbon Campaign to eliminate physical, mental, and sexual violence and to stand against all forms of violence with WLB. For the reason stated above, the Women's League of Burma urges authorities and officials as follows: • To collaborate with national and international human rights organizations and women organizations to eliminate violence against anyone, including women, girls, and persons with diverse sexual orientations, as soon as possible. • To take effective action against perpetrators who have committed violence against women, girls, and persons with diverse sexual orientations. • To develop effective policies and implementation activities to stop violence, to prevent and protect against violence. • To provide the necessary security protection and services, rehabilitation programs, and financial support for the victims and survivors. • For the international community to take effective action to end the system of impunity and access to justice for the crimes committed by the military Junta..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2022-11-25
Date of entry/update: 2022-11-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) မှ ယနေ့ ၂၀၂၂ ခုနှစ် နိုဝင်ဘာလ၊(၂၅)ရက်နေ့တွင် ကျရောက်သော နိုင်ငံတကာအမျိုးသမီးများအပေါ် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုပပျောက်ရေးနေ့တွင် “တရားမျှတမှု + တာဝန်ခံမှု = ပြစ်ဒဏ် ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်များကို အဆုံးသတ်ခြင်း” ဆိုသည့် ဆောင်ပုဒ်ဖြင့် (၁၆) ရက်တာအတွင်း လှုပ်ရှားမှုများ၊ ပုံစံမျိုးစုံဖြင့် အသံထုတ်ဖော်ခြင်းများ၊ ဖဲကြိုးဖြူကမ်ပိန်းများ ပြုလုပ်သွားမည်ဖြစ်သည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) သည် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုမှန်သမျှကို လုံးဝဆန့်ကျင်ကန့်ကွက်သည်သာမက အကြမ်းဖက်မှုမှန်သမျှ ပပျောက်စေရန် (Zero Tolerance)မူကို ကိုင်စွဲ ကျင့်သုံးပြီး မည်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှု မဆို ရှုတ်ချကန့်ကွက်သည်။ ထို့အပြင် အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) သည် အမျိုးသမီးများအပေါ် ကျူးလွန်နေသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုမှန်သမျှကို မှတ်တမ်းတင်ပြီး တရားမျှတမှု ရရှိရေး အတွက် နိုင်ငံအဆင့် မှ နိုင်ငံတကာအဆင့် ထိ အမြဲတမ်းမီးမှောင်းထိုးပြနေသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် ရှည်လျားသော ပြည်တွင်းစစ်ပဋိပက္ခများ ဖြစ်ပွားနေသော နိုင်ငံဖြစ်ပြီး အမျိုးသမီးများ အပေါ် နည်းမျိုးစုံဖြင့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ ပိုမိုများပြားလာသည့် အဓိက အကြောင်းအရင်းမှာ ဖိုဝါဒကြီးစိုးသည့် စနစ် ကျင့်သုံးခြင်း နှင့် စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် ကြောင့်ဖြစ်သည်။ ထို့အပြင် ဖိုဝါဒကြီးစိုးသည့် အတွေးအခေါ် များ ရှိနေခြင်း၊ ဖိုဝါဒကြီးစိုးနိုင်ရန် လက်တွေ့ကျင့်သုံးနေသူများ ရှိနေခြင်းနှင့် ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက် မတရား အာဏာ သိမ်းသော စစ်အာဏာရှင်ကြောင့် ကျူးလွန်ခံရသူများအနေဖြင့် ယနေ့အချိန်အထိ တရားမျှတမှု နှင့် တာဝန်ယူမှု တာဝန်ခံမှု အပြည့်အ၀ မရရှိသည်ကို တွေ့ရှိရသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) သည် ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁)ရက်နေ့ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ် မတရားအာဏာသိမ်းသည့်အချိန်မှ စ၍ ယနေ့ထိ အိမ်တွင်းအကြမ်းဖက်မှု (၁၁၁) မှု၊ အရပ်သားမှ ကျူးလွန် သော မုဒိမ်းမှု (၁၄) မှု၊ စစ်တပ်မှ ကျူးလွန်သော မုဒိမ်းမှု (၁၆)မှု ထက်မနည်း၊ စစ်တပ်မှကျူးလွန်သော လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာနှောင့်ယှက်မှု (၃)မှု ထက်မနည်း ရှိသည်ကို အဖွဲ့ဝင်အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ၏ မှတ်တမ်းများအရ တွေ့ရှိရသည်။​ ထို့အပြင် သတင်းမီဒီယာများတွင်လည်း အမျိုးသမီးများကို မုဒိမ်းကျင့်ပြီး မီးရှို့သတ်ဖြတ် လက်စဖျောက်သည့် အမှုများ (၄၀) မှု ထက်မနည်း ရှိပြီး အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ နေ့စဉ်နှင့်အမျှ ဖြစ်ပေါ်လျှက် ရှိနေကာ ကျူးလွန်နေသူများမှာ အပြစ်ပေးအရေးယူဆောင်ရွက်မည့်ယန္တရား မရှိသည့်အပြင် ပြစ်ဒဏ် ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့် ရရှိနေသည်ကို တွေ့ရှိရသည်။​ ထို့အပြင် လက်ရှိ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရေးအခြေအနေကြောင့် အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များနှင့် လိင်စိတ်ကွဲပြား သူများ အပါအဝင် မည်သူတစ်ဦးတစ်ယောက်မှ လုံခြံရေး အကာအကွယ် မရှိသည့်သာမက လွန်စွာစိုးရိမ်ရ သည့် အခြေအနေကို တွေ့ရပါသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) သည် ခေတ်အဆက်ဆက် ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ ရာဇဝတ်မှု ကျူးလွန်နေသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်ကို စစ်ရာဇဝတ်မှု၊ လူသားမျိုးနွယ်စု များအပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သည့်ရာဇဝတ်မှု နှင့် လူမျိုးသုဉ်း သတ်ဖြတ်မှုရာဇဝတ်မှုများ ကျူးလွန်သော တရားခံ အဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ထားပါသည်။ ထိုကြောင့် ကျူးလွန်သူအကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ် များ ကို တရားမျှတမှု ရရှိရေးနှင့် တာဝန်ယူမှုတာဝန်ခံမှု ရှိလာစေရန် အတူတကွ မိမိတို့ ကျရာကဏ္ဍများတွင် ဆောင်ရွက်ကြရန် မိမိတို့ အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) မှ အလေးအနက်တိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များနှင့်လိင်စိတ်ကွဲပြားသူများအပါဝင်အဝင် မည်သူမဆို စိတ်ပိုင်း၊ ရုပ်ပိုင်း၊ လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာနှင့် မည်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှု မဆို ပပျောက်ရန် အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) မှ ဦးဆောင်ကျင်းပသည့် ဖဲကြိုးဖြူကမ်ပိန်းကိုလည်း ပူးပေါင်းပါဝင်ကြရန်နှင့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုမှန်သမျှကို ဆန့်ကျင်ကြရန် ထပ်မံတိုက်တွန်းအပ်ပါသည်။ အထက်ဖော်ပြပါ အခြေအနေများကြောင့် အမျိုးသမီးများအဖွဲ့ချုပ် (မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ) သည် အောက်ပါအချက်များ ကို သက်ဆိုင်ရာတာဝန်ရှိသူများအား တောင်းဆိုလိုက်ပါသည်။​ အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များနှင့် လိင်စိတ်ကွဲပြားသူများ အပါအဝင် မည်သူ့အပေါ်မဆို အကြမ်းဖက်မှု အမြန်ဆုံးရပ်တန့်ရန် ပြည်တွင်း၊ ပြည်ပရှိ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးတက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသည့် အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ နှင့် အမျိုးသမီးများ အဖွဲ့အစည်းများ အတူတကွ ပူးပေါင်းဆောင်ရွက်ရန်။​ အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ အမျိုးသမီးငယ်များ နှင့် လိင်ကွဲပြားသူများ အပေါ် အကြမ်းဖက်မှု ကျူးလွန်သူများကို သက်ဆိုင်ရာတာဝန်ရှိသူများ မှ ထိရောက်စွာ အရေးယူ ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးရန်။ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများရပ်တန့်ရန် နှင့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ ကြိုတင်ကာကွယ်ခြင်း နှင့် အကာအကွယ် ပေးနိုင်ရန်အတွက် ထိရောက်သည့် မူဝါဒများ ရေးဆွဲချမှတ်ရန်နှင့်၊ လုပ်ငန်းအကောင်အထည်ဖော် ဆောင်ရွက်မှုများကို သက်ဆိုင်ရာ တာဝန်ရှိသူ များမှ လုပ်ဆောင်ရန်။ ကျူးလွန်ခံရသူများ နှင့် ရှင်သန်ကျန်ရစ်သူများအတွက် လိုအပ်သည့် လုံခြုံရေး အကာအကွယ်နှင့် ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများ၊ ဘ၀ပြန်လည်ရပ်တည်နိုင်ရေး အစီအစဉ်များ၊ ဘဏ္ဍာငွေ ပံ့ပိုးခြင်းစသည့် လိုအပ်ချက်များ ကို သက်ဆိုင်ရာ တာဝန်ရှိသူများ အသီးသီးမှ ဆောင်ရွက်ပေးရန်။ အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်မှ ကျူးလွန်နေသည့် ရာဇဝတ်မှုများကို ပြစ်ဒဏ်ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်များ ရပ်တန့် စေရန် နှင့် တရားမျှတမှု ရရှိရန် နိုင်ငံတကာ တာဝန်ရှိသူများမှ အမြန်ဆုံး အကောင်အထည်ဖော်ရန် တောင်းဆိုအပ်ပါသည်။ ..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2022-11-25
Date of entry/update: 2022-11-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "After 18 months of the Spring Revolution, resistance forces around the country have become more sophisticated. Although they started the revolution against the Myanmar military using homemade rifles, now they can use automatic weapons like the AK-47 rifle, as well as drones. And women from various regions of the country are now among those who are fighting against the military regime. Armed resistance started in late May last year, four months after the military seized power on February 1, 2021. Since then, resistance forces commonly known as People’s Defence Forces (PDF) have been formed around the country. Women are part of the PDFs, as well as working as medics, raising funds and supporting the PDF base camps. Moreover, female-only units are being formed in some regions to fight against the military dictatorship. Myaung Women Warriors is one of those units, having been formed in October last year... Myaung Women Warriors Myaung Women Warriors (M2W), famous for its landmine attacks against junta troops in Sagaing Region, was formed by female civilians from Sagaing’s Myaung Township in order to eradicate the fascist dictatorship, as well as to show that women can be involved in the revolution and to promote the role of females, according to Amara Hmuee, the spokesperson for M2W. Although M2W comrades are sometimes involved in landmine attacks against junta forces, their main duty is to make mines and distribute them to the at least 22 PDFs currently operating in Myaung Township. “The damage the mines can do depends on the type of mine. We choose which mine to use depending on the number of soldiers we are attacking. For example, we use a certain mine for military vehicles and we use another mine against infantry,” the twentysomething Amara Hmuee told The Irrawaddy. She and the other members of M2W took part in military training and learned the techniques of making landmines before the all-women force was formed. Leaders from the Civilians Defense and Security Organization Myaung shared the techniques of making landmines that they had learned from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). M2W fighters have been involved in mine attacks against regime forces since October 30, 2021. There are 225 members in M2W, including striking teachers who are part of the Civil Disobedience Movement, university graduates and students and women from farming villages. They are aged between 18 and 45. Although M2W comrades are sometimes involved in landmine attacks against junta forces, their main duty is to make mines and distribute them to the at least 22 PDFs currently operating in Myaung Township. “The damage the mines can do depends on the type of mine. We choose which mine to use depending on the number of soldiers we are attacking. For example, we use a certain mine for military vehicles and we use another mine against infantry,” the twentysomething Amara Hmuee told The Irrawaddy. She and the other members of M2W took part in military training and learned the techniques of making landmines before the all-women force was formed. Leaders from the Civilians Defense and Security Organization Myaung shared the techniques of making landmines that they had learned from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). M2W fighters have been involved in mine attacks against regime forces since October 30, 2021. “The men always want to fight and to take up arms. So there was some weakness in the production of mines. That’s why M2W decided to specialize in making mines,” said Amara Hmuee. M2W produced 1,130 mines within a year and all were used in missions against junta forces. M2W has shared mines with all the resistance groups in Myaung Township. Moreover, some allied resistance forces from Chaung-U and Myinmu townships in Sagaing, Yesagyo in Magwe Region and Ngazun in Mandalay Region have also used M2W-made mines. Since the formation of M2W, eight battles have been fought in cooperation with those allied forces and 85 soldiers have been killed in those clashes. Moreover, 21 mine attacks have been carried out and at least 139 junta troops have been killed and 37 injured. Despite a lot of difficulties in making mines, M2W comrades do their best to supply plenty of mines to resistance groups. “Although we haven’t encountered any difficulties with explosives, sometimes we have been in trouble in the weapons factory,” said Amara Hmuee. “Once, we all had to run out of the factory because a fire broke out while we were making gunpowder.” Nor were the M2W members experienced in the use of the welding and stone crushing machines used in the manufacture of mines. Some women suffered injuries to their hands while using the machines. Others have experienced combat. “When I was at the frontline, an artillery shell landed near us and felled a big tree. I was really afraid because it was my first time under fire,“ Amara Hmuee recalled. Ethnic women fighters Some ethnic women have joined ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) such as the KIA, the Karen National Union, Karenni Nationalities Defense Force (KNDF) and the Chin Defence Force (CDF). The KNDF Battalion 5 women’s unit was formed in May 2021 with dozens of members. The KNDF was the first EAO to form a female force after the coup. A lot of women were keen to participate in the revolution, so the KNDF formed a female unit, according to Soe Myar, a spokesperson for the KNDF’s women’s unit. Its members are aged between 18 and 25. They were university and school students and striking teachers and civil servants before they took up arms. Soe Myar, who is 18 and a former student from Kayah State, joined the KNDF’s female unit in August 2021 in order to destroy the military dictatorship. “There are a lot of female combatants who go to the frontline. It’s not a strange thing that women are fighting at the frontline,” Soe Myar told The Irrawaddy. The KNDF’s female fighters focus not only on fighting, but also act as medics and in other support roles. “We women fight the military by doing as much as we can in various sectors in the revolution,” said Soe Myar. Like their female comrades in the KNDF, some women residents of Chin State have joined the CDF since last year. Chin State has around 27 resistance groups. Some 16 – totaling 9,000 fighters in all – have joined forces with the Chinland Joint Defense Committee (CJDC). Around 500 women are currently in 13 resistance groups in Chin State, according to the CJDC. CDF-Mindat has the most female members, with around 120 women in the group. Most of the women in Chin PDFs and EAOs are former university and school students, according to Daisy, a member of CDF-Kanpetlet Battalion 1, which has around 90 female fighters. “We don’t accept the military dictatorship. We want a system governed by the people that is accurate and fair,” Daisy told The Irrawaddy. Daisy was a 22-year-old university student before she joined the CDF, where she works in administration. Some women comrades go to the frontline, while others support the fighters. “It’s not just fighting in the revolution, but doing whatever you can to participate in the revolution,” said Daisy. She added that the revolution started from nothing and now there has been some progress in terms of weapons and finances.... Tiger Women Drone Force... Resistance forces, including M2W, also use drones to bomb regime targets. Tiger Women Drone Force (TGR), part of the Myaung People Defense Force, has been attacking military convoys on the Mandalay-Monywa Road since August of this year. TGR was formed in August 2022 with 15 members in order to fight junta troops like the male resistance fighters do. “When the male combatants fight against the junta troops, the female PDF members want to do the same. So we formed the drone force to attack regime soldiers, as well as to show that women can fight in combat,” said Kyar Khin Sein, or Tiger Lady, the leader of the TGR. Its members are women from various sectors and they spent a month training with the drones. TGR has two drones each worth almost US$5,000 and use bombs made by the Myaung People Defense Force. The group conducts drone attacks in Sagaing, especially on military convoys using the Mandalay-Monywa Road. As of October, around 30 missions have been carried out and some 48 regime soldiers have been killed. “All military reinforcements use the Mandalay-Monwya Road, so we want to cut access to the highway. That’s why we carry out drone attacks on it,” said TGR leader Kyar Khin Sein. But the group faces difficult and dangerous conditions when it carries out its attacks. “We run when the regime scouts shoot at us while we are trying to bomb a military target,” recalled Kyar Khin Sein... Women fighters are committed to the revolution... The women participating in the revolution will keep fighting the junta until it is gone and they want the public to believe in the resistance fighters. “We want democracy. We are fighting the military to get freedom for our country. We hope all of the public will also fight for federal democracy,” Kyar Khin Sein told The Irrawaddy. The men and women who join the PDFs are considered to be soldiers of the people and are ready to give their lives for the revolution, but they also need weapons and ammunition, added the TGR leader. She asked Myanmar people at home and abroad to make donations so that weapons can be bought for the resistance forces. All of the resistance fighters are ready to sacrifice their lives and they believe strongly that the revolution must succeed. “We want the public to stay strong because we will fight against the military dictatorship until the end,“ said KNDF female fighter Soe Myar..."
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Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
2022-11-14
Date of entry/update: 2022-11-14
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Description: "စာစောင်မှာပါဝင်တဲ့ အကြောင်းအရာများကို page မှာဝင်ရောက်ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်သလို စာစောင်အပြည့်အစုံကို အောက်ပါ link ကနေ ဝင်ရောက်ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပါတယ်..."
Source/publisher: Women Alliance Burma
2022-09-11
Date of entry/update: 2022-09-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "We, the Women's League of Burma (WLB) and the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) along with World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) , International Service for Human Rights (ISHR), Mesoamerican Initiative of Women Human Rights Defenders, Association for Women's Rights in Development (AWID) and FORUM-ASIA are calling for global attention to stop the Burmese military junta from executing democracy activists, who are on the death row in detention including 9 women human rights defenders (WHRDs) . We are greatly concerned about their fate following the execution of Phyo Zeya Thaw; Kyaw Min Yu, known as "Ko Jimmy," Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, the country's first death sentences carried out in over 30 years. Despite the widespread international condemnation of the execution, the military junta spokesman stated at a press conference that they had proceeded with the executions to keep the stability of the country in line with the rule of law, and it would not hesitate to repeat the actions. Moreover, the statement of the junta's Ministry of Foreign Affairs also said that they would continue to "take necessary legal actions against criminals" and tell foreign governments and agencies to stop interfering in the country's domestic affairs. All WHRDs were convicted after closed trials in the military court that fell far short of international standards. Alarmingly, reports revealed that death row detainees at Insein Prison have been separated from other inmates and a number of prisoners may be at especially high risk, as they have received more than one death sentence for their anti-regime activities. All has indicated that the illegitimate military junta is planning to continue the horrifying execution of political prisoners sentenced in death penalty. As of 30 August 2022, a total of 8 3 post-coup death row political prisoners including the following 9 women human rights defenders: 1. Myit Myit Aye 2. Moe Moe Myit Aung 3. Zin Mar Tun 4. Hla Hla Naing (Ka) Ma Naing 5. Khin Wint Kyaw Maung 6. Hsu Wai Hnin 7. Su Myat Thwe. 8. Cho Cho 9. Aye Aye Min These women were among other many fellow women, who actively and bravely participated in various activities using their professional skills, facing great personal risks to protest against the military coup, and to put an end to the brutal military dictatorship. It is high time to take decisive action against these serious violations of international law to preserve international peace and security and fulfil mandates contained in Resolution 1674 regarding the protection of civilians and Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. The international community, the United Nations bodies, the United Nations Security Council and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) must raise their voices for securing the human rights, safety, and welfare of the women of Burma/Myanmar. Women's League of Burma (WLB) and Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) calls the International Community to: Condemn the Burmese military junta for killing civilians and executing Human Rights Defenders in the strongest terms and take effective action to stop further executions and atrocities Reject the Burmese military and its proxies by supporting and standing with the people of Burma to topple the military dictatorship; Apply concerted and strongest actions against the junta for the immediate and unconditional cessation of military violence and the release of all arbitrarily detained, including human rights defenders and WHRDs. Immediately dispatch a well-equipped monitoring and intervention mission to Burma to end the military violence and terror campaign against the people, to prevent further atrocities; Enact targeted sanctions against the Burmese military and its proxies to effectively cut off financial flows; Institute a comprehensive global arms embargo, with robust monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, to end the direct and indirect supply, sale, or transfer of all weapons and other equipment that may be used for training, intelligence and military assistance; Refer the situation on human rights in Burma to the International Criminal Court for their crimes against humanity, which have been perpetrated against innocent civilians, including peaceful protests and ethnic groups..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma and Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development
2022-09-01
Date of entry/update: 2022-09-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "ဖက်ဒရယ်စနစ် သန္ဓေတည်ဖို့ ပြည်နယ်ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ အကောင်အထည်ဖော်စို့" စကားဝိုင်းဆွေးနွေးပွဲမှ ကောက်နုတ်ချက်အပြည့်အစုံကို WLB ၏ ဝဘ်ဆိုဒ်တွင် ယခု ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပါပြီ။.....Now you can access the Federalism Beyond Revolution: Panel Discussion’s Journal; Volume 2 on the WLB's website..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2022-08-22
Date of entry/update: 2022-08-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Unjustly sentenced to death, Jimmy, Phyo Zayar Thaw, Aung Thura Zaw, and Hla Myo Aung were actually killed, the military council announced on July 25. Despite warnings and objections from the international community, the decision was made without informing the families of the political prisoners who were killed. In addition, there are reports that other people who have been unjustly sentenced to death are being prepared for execution. We, the Burmese Women's Union, strongly condemns the unlawful killing of these political activists in prison. Currently, there are 77 people who are unjustly sentenced to death, including 9 women. In the view of BWU, the jurisdiction under military council was unjust and all the sentences were biased. In the current situation, the sentences themselves should be regarded as crimes and murders. From the perspective of international human rights, the act shows no respect for justice and human rights in terms of law. Furthermore, the right to life does not allow the death penalty to be imposed on anyone. The action is also obviously against the essence of democracy. BWU is seriously concerned that the terrorist military council is in a position to carry out more executions. So, now is the time for us to unite more to prevent such kind of actions. The actions of the Terrorist Military Council ignore the interests of the people and risk the sweat, blood and lives of many people to maintain their power. Therefore, in eradicating the military dictatorship, the related alliance groups, Democracy and human rights activists and all the people should work together in harmony, hand-in-hand. Although the international community, including ASEAN, warned and protested against the execution of political activists, the Terrorist Military Council did not recognize and acted against it. The heinous actions of the Burmese military council proves that it is time for the international community, including ASEAN, to take more practical measures to bring changes in Burma. Therefore, it is important to immediately stop the inhumane acts of Burmese military. And, we the Burmese Women Union, would like to urge international governments to put more and severe pressures against Burmese military to stop its unlawful actions..."
Source/publisher: Burmese Women's Union
2022-08-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-08-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "For the first time in the nation’s history, the number of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Burma/Myanmar has reached nearly 1 million people. The junta has torched 12,000 civilian homes across the country, in what can only be viewed as the military’s overarching strategy to intentionally displace the population, rather than a by- product of local level retaliation. The Burmese Army is actively preventing the delivery of lifesaving assistance to people affected by the conflict – blocking roads, destroying non-military supplies, imposing travel restrictions on international humanitarian workers and arresting local activists and people delivering lifesaving aid to IDP camps from Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Despite the overwhelming evidence that the Burmese Army has committed grave crimes against humanity, and is the root cause of the humanitarian crisis, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and ASEAN’s humanitarian body (AHA), agreed to deliver humanitarian aid to Karenni/Kayah, Karen states, and Magwe, Sagaing and Bago regions in consultation with the work committee of the military junta . OCHA and AHA’s assessment and delivery of programs will provide the junta with access to areas it has directly targeted with airstrikes and on-ground offensives. The agreement not only legitimizes the regime; it places the Burmese Army in a position to weaponize humanitarian aid. People all over Burma/Myanmar are facing severe food insecurity with an estimated 25 million people now living under the national poverty line, and 6.2 million people in need of life-saving aid. The conflict, along with the impact of COVID-19 containment measures, super-charged economic instability, leading to a currency crisis, rising inflation rates and a collapsed banking system. Women have been most impacted by the economic crisis, not just experiencing significant job losses, but taking on more unpaid care and domestic work. Women are also more likely than men to make sacrifices to reduce the financial stress on households. Alongside the peaceful pro-democracy movement, various armed resistance forces have emerged across the country. Some of the most effective armed resistance forces are fighting junta soldiers in an area called the Dry Zone, west of Mandalay. Not being a traditional battle ground for the junta, they have recruited, armed and trained pro-military networks to provide back-up, intelligence and local geographic knowledge. The pro-military networks are referred to widely as Pyu Saw Htee. The Pyu Saw Htee are reportedly poorly armed and have failed to take control of the region. The clashes between the two forces has unleashed a self- sustaining cycle of violence with retributive attacks on both sides..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2022-07-11
Date of entry/update: 2022-07-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "This year's theme for Myanmar’s International Women’s Day is “Break the bias, Reject Dictatorship”. On this day, we would like to celebrate all women and girls fighting for democracy, human rights, justice, and peace not only in Myanmar but across the world. We also would like to honor those women and girls who have sacrificed their lives during our revolution. Since the coup in Feb 2021, more than 107 women have been murdered by the junta. And many women and girls have reportedly been tortured and some even sexually assaulted during their detention and interrogation by the fascist military. Successive military generals in Myanmar have used bias against women for decades, discriminating against them in all aspects of life. The history of Myanmar under military generals and their brutal dictatorship is filled with evidence of this bias, and rampant violence against women in particular. The world knows these inhuman generals have used not only bullets and fighter jet as weapons but also raped and other forms of gender-based abuse, causing women to suffer for the rest of their lives. There has been not only intimidation, torture, and discrimination against women in general, but they have imprisoned and insulted our elected leaders, like the State Counselor of Myanmar, Daw Aung San Su Kyi. In fact, the first victim of the Military coup was a young woman student, just 19 years old – Mya Thwate Thwate Khine. It is very telling that the first victim of the junta's “shoot to kill” policy was a woman. The testimony of the junta's victims, whether Rohingya, Kachin, Chin, Karen, Kareni, Rakhine, Shan, Mon or Barma were shocking and there seems to be no end to the litany of crimes the junta is responsible for. Mountains of evidence are even now being collected by UN bodies such as the Independent Investigation Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). These Military generals will be held accountable for their terrorism, and in this pursuit, no stone will be left unturned. We will bring these perpetrators to justice through national and international justice mechanisms. Even as we were preparing this statement for international women’s day, it was reported that a woman was raped and killed together with her 3-year-old daughter by the military terrorists in Pauk, Magway division. There are many similar events committed by the fascist junta, both in the past and at the present. We will never forget their crimes and we will continue to fight to dismantle the military dictatorship and fight for a country where we can end all forms of discrimination and dismantle the military dictatorship. We will fight for a country free of bias, stereotypes, gender violence, and sexual discrimination. To all the women and girls in our country, keep fighting for the revolution, and to all the women and girls whom we have lost during our revolution, we promise you all that your sacrifices are not in vain, and together we can build a country that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive. Together we can all BREAK THE BIAS and END DICTATORSHIP..."
Source/publisher: Ministry of International Cooperation Myanmar
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-09
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Description: "HURFOM: On this International Women’s Day, the Human Rights Foundation of Monland (HURFOM) wishes to extend our support and appreciation for the women of Burma, who continue to show great strength and resilience during these challenging times. Against the backdrop of the military junta’s deplorable actions, women of all ages and backgrounds have stood tall in the face of adversity, and used their courage to conquer the patriarchal entity that is the Tatmadaw. No revolution has ever been successful without the participation and leadership of women and girls. This is all the more true in Burma, where hundreds have been killed and thousands detained by the military junta. Despite widespread oppression of their rights and freedoms, women have continued to show their commitment to the Spring Revolution on the frontlines as medics and soldiers with allied opposition forces and through joining various pro-democracy causes such as the Civil Disobedience Movement. Over the last year, HURFOM has documented a notable increase in the targeting of young women in Mon State, Karen State and Tanintharyi region by the junta. Students in particular are regularly abducted for organizing pro-democracy activities and providing moral or monetary support to the various resistance movements. Female students are regularly abducted by the security forces where they face even more risks in junta custody, as the regime has a reputation of sexually harassing and raping women in prison. As a result of the instability, young people have attempted to flee to neighboring countries but have regularly been denied asylum and sent back to Burma. A majority of them are young women who are being deprived of their fundamental protection rights. Indiscriminate firing and shelling have also led to violence being deployed against women and resulted in them being killed or injured in the crossfire of violence. There are an estimated 20,000 new internally displaced people in southern Karen and Tanintharyi region, with the majority being women and children. The targeted gendered violence and abduction of young women and girls is symptomatic of a wider problem of impunity, which incites further violations of human rights. The junta has created systems which shield soldiers from accountability and embodies a deeply flawed entity which lacks moral consciousness and compassion of the harm they are willingly perpetrating. They have also long denied and dismissed the lived experiences and trauma of ethnic women who have been violated by the Burma Army. HURFOM envisions a future for women in Burma where they are safe from all forms of violence, and are recognized as true equals across all sectors. HURFOM is regularly inspired by the advocates and young women leaders in our community, and we look proudly to their leadership in the current context, and future challenges which lay ahead..."
Source/publisher: Human Rights Foundation of Monland
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-09
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Description: "This International Women’s Day, we, Women’s Peace Network, would like to express our gratitude to all the women across the world who stand up for their rights and fight for equality, peace, justice, and freedom. For a more just world, these women have risked their lives to dismantle the system of patriarchy and oppression underpinning our society. We take this day to remember them and remind ourselves of their legacy. Today also marks over a year since the Myanmar military toppled an elected government, intensifying its decades-long campaign of terror against our country’s people. Despite losing more than 90 women to the junta, at least 1600 to arbitrary arrest and detention, and hundreds of thousands more to forced displacement, we continue to risk our lives for full equality and self-determination. Ethnic minority communities know the Myanmar military’s hatred of us all too well: for generations, its forces have committed mass atrocity crimes, including the most egregious forms of sexual and gender-based violence, across our homelands. Amid its genocide against Rohingya, the military has weaponized sexual violence to strategically destroy our country’s ethnic minority and indigenous group. The victims and survivors of such atrocities await justice to this day. We are thus working tirelessly to defeat this patriarchal regime that only serves to subjugate us. In Myanmar and beyond, many of us know that our collective future rests upon a truly inclusive and democratic system that holds perpetrators of all forms of injustice accountable. This International Women’s Day, we ask you to remember and celebrate these brave women not just today but every day. At Women’s Peace Network, we stand in solidarity with our fellow women and fight to ensure that the Myanmar military is held accountable for its heinous crimes. When this justice is served, we will embrace our victory. Until then, we ask you to join our fight. We will never be free until all of us are free..."
Source/publisher: Women's Peace Network
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Size: 400.91 KB 428.87 KB
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Description: "The US State Department has recognized the parallel National Unity Government (NUG)’s deputy minister for women, youth and children affairs, Ma Ei Thinzar Maung, for her human rights and pro-democracy activities with the International Women of Courage (IWOC) award. Established in 2007, the award honors women who have demonstrated exceptional courage, strength and leadership to bring about positive change to their communities, often at personal risk and sacrifice. The 27-year-old is one of 12 women to receive the IWOC this year. Other winners include lawyers, human rights defenders, women’s rights activists and parliamentarians from Nepal, Bangladesh, South Africa, Iraq, Brazil, Liberia, Libya, Moldova, Romania, Vietnam and Colombia. A human rights activist since 2012, Ma Ei Thinzar Maung was the first female president of the student union of Yadanabon University. She was among several students who were arrested and faced violent crackdowns in 2015 for seeking changes to an education bill that limited academic freedom. She has been involved in minority rights, including for the Rohingya, and has demanded an end to conflict in Kachin and Rakhine states. The State Department announced [on Tuesday which is also international women’s day] that Ma Ei Thinzar Maung is an inspiring and influential pro-democracy voice, who emerged as a symbol of peaceful public resistance after the February coup, who worked to support peaceful activism like the civil disobedience movement and engagement with young people after the coup. Ma Ei Thinzar Maung faces an arrest warrant and is in hiding but she remains committed to democracy and continues to work for a strong, inclusive and democratic Myanmar that respects human rights, the State Department said. The award will be presented virtually next week. The State Department has recognized more than 170 women from over 80 countries with the IWOC. Other IWOC recipients from Myanmar include the current NUG foreign affairs minister, Daw Zin Mar Aung, in 2012 and women’s rights activist Daw May Sabe Phyu in 2015..."
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
2022-03-09
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Today, on International Women's Day 2022, the Women's League of Burma condemns the coup d’etat committed by the militaristic Tatmadaw that obstructs our efforts to achieve our equality objectives by actively reinforcing the patriarchy. On February 1, 2021, the Tatmadaw staged a coup to revitalize military dictatorship, and coup has not only violated democratic principle, but it has also taken away the opportunities to promote the participation and leadership role of women in politics as well as in every other level of decision-making. Furthermore, the institutionalization of male dominance is not only strengthening the systems that favor men and traditional practices that treat women as a subordinate class who are weak and dependent, but it is also leading to an increase in violence against and oppression of women. With the intention to aggravate fear among the public, the Tatmadaw has been using different forms of sexual violence including rape as weapons of war in non-Bamar ethnic areas for more than 70 years. Since the military coup, the strategic use of sexual violence has been rising substantially. Women have become targets of gender-based human rights violations and war crimes including murder, unlawful detention, imprisonment, and hostage-taking since the coup. And the military's continued commitment of these crimes with impunity have led to a total of 107 women killed and 1527 women imprisoned. So long as the Tatmadaw remains in power and continues to bolster the entrenchment of patriarchy, they will continue to enjoy impunity for committing war crimes. Therefore, we, the Women's League of Burma, would like to reiterate that now is a crucial time to eradicate the Tatmadaw and all the other institutions that are based on patriarchy. Therefore, to build a peaceful federal union in which we want to reside, Women's League of Burma hereby urge young people, women and all revolutionary forces including Spring Revolution forces to join our efforts in collectively abolishing not only the military dictatorship but all forms of dictatorship that are underpinned by patriarchy alongside the slogan, "For equality, end patriarchy"..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "As today, March 8th, marks International Women’s Day, KHRG would like to honor all the women who have defended human rights and continue to do so in this critical time. We extend our appreciation for their contributions, dedication and achievements now and in the past. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day is “Break the Bias” meaning that all of us, collectively, must work together to break gender bias and ensure women’s equality. Whether deliberate or unconscious, bias makes it difficult for women to move ahead. Bias against women exists at every level of our communities and can only be broken if each of us is active in fighting against it. Since the military coup on February 1st 2021, women have actively led and participated in the fight for human rights and democracy. Women led the first anti-coup protests and the first person to be killed in anti-coup protests was a woman. Since then, countless women have made unspeakable sacrifices in the fight for democracy and human rights. As the situation in Burma/Myanmar has become increasingly dangerous and unpredictable, more and more women have become victims of killing, torture, rape and detention. However, women are choosing to fight back at whatever cost to regain their rights and the rights of all people in Burma/Myanmar. During past periods of armed conflict in Burma, women often assumed positions of authority within their communities, despite the risk to their own security. Due to fighting and human rights abuses, many men fled their villages or went to fight on the frontlines, leaving women to take on leadership roles traditionally occupied by men. Following ceasefire agreements in 2015, men have taken back positions of authority. Women in Burma, however, continue to actively fight for human rights and a better future for their children, yet often in the margins. As armed conflict has resumed, women are once again taking on risky positions within their communities. Women’s voices and their leadership need to be recognised and promoted in this critical time, but also ensured into the future. In Southeast Burma where armed conflict is escalating, thousands of civilians have been displaced, including women and children. Displaced mothers and pregnant women are living in conditions unsafe for childbirth and adverse to the caring of young children. Displacement sites leave women subject to physical security, food insecurity, poor sanitation, COVID-19 infection and other illnesses, inclement weather, and other unforeseeable threats. The defence of human rights is thus critical to the defence of women’s rights in such situations. Today, we would like to honour all the women who have given or dedicated their lives for others, women who have fallen victim to atrocities and chose to fight, and women who take care of and protect their communities. As we recognize these women and their courage, all of us must continue fighting for a more equal world where there is no more bias, stereotypes and discrimination..."
Source/publisher: Karen Human Rights Group
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-08
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Size: 119.83 KB 113.15 KB
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Description: "Women in Myanmar have shown their strength over decades of armed conflict. They have also reshaped a landscape of patriarchal values that have long attempted to shape the country. Advocates have been calling for stronger legislation to protect women from physical and emotional violence, but there has been a disappointing lack of desire to pass laws which would protect survivors and ensure access to justice. The malice exhibited by the Myanmar junta includes many years of sexual violence perpetrated during internal conflict. Under these harrowing circumstances, women and girls bear the burden. They are targeted by soldiers while trying to escape raids, and flee organized violence. Those who survive are left traumatized and often without adequate access to psychosocial counseling. Their lives, along with their families, are forever marred by the regime’s vehemence. Pathways to justice are filled with roadblocks, including costly trials and protection granted to soldiers. The junta has been able to evade accountability and increase the likelihood of repeat offenses. Years of impunity has reinforced a deeply flawed legal system that denies the dignity, safety and security of victims. Since the failed Myanmar coup on 1 February 2021, civilians have come under fire as soldiers have attempted to squander resistance movements through any means necessary. Over 1,500 people have been killed and hundreds more injured, according to local documentation groups. Against this backdrop of unyielding violence, women’s resistance movements have prevailed under the darkest of circumstances. Pro-democracy campaigns have taken place in spite of the threats and risks to their physical and digital security. In the presence of the Myanmar military, women have never been safe. Nevertheless, women’s voices for change continue to persevere. Against all odds, indeed, they continue to resist..."
Source/publisher: Network for Human Rights Documentation - Burma
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "On International Women’s Day, the UN in Myanmar reaffirms its solidarity and commitment to the women and girls across Myanmar. As we mark the occasion of International Women’s Day, the United Nations in Myanmar reiterates its commitment to put women and girls at the centre of its development and humanitarian work in response to the ongoing crises in the country, to ensure that their needs are met, and to support their role and agency in shaping a future path for their country. The theme for 2022 is “gender equal today for a sustainable tomorrow”, recognizing that gender equality and women's rights are fundamental to global progress on peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development. Throughout history, the women of Myanmar have played a key role in the development of their country. In the past two years, they have both assumed a leading role in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic and been at the forefront calling for a return to democracy and respect of human rights while being disproportionally affected by the compounded crises that the country is going through. According to the latest humanitarian update from the United Nations in Myanmar, as of 28 February 873,000 people are displaced in Myanmar, including 502,600 people who have fled their homes since 1 February 2021 and 370,400 people from previous conflicts. The majority of IDPs are women and girls. Both the World Bank and International Labour Organization analyses show that the socio-economic impact of the crisis has disproportionally affected women and girls. According to the ILO, 580,000 women were estimated to have lost their employment in just the first six months of 2021. A recent Study by the UN Development Programme and UN Women reveals that women are bearing the brunt of the impact of COVID-19 and the military takeover with its unprecedented impact on the economy. Women have adopted drastic coping mechanisms to deal with falling incomes and nearly half of women report a significant increase in their unpaid care and domestic work, reducing their chances to earn a livelihood. Women are also reporting increased difficulty in reaching services including maternal health services. To address this reality, the members of the United Nations Country Team have worked tirelessly with local women civil society organizations and their partners to prioritize the need of women and girls in their response to the crises. In 2021, the United Nations delivered sexual and reproductive health services for 46,158 women and gender-based violence services for 28,611 women across the country and supported 6,502 maternal emergency referrals, helping women in hard-to-reach and conflict-affected areas to receive essential health care. The UN also delivered food and nutrition assistance including school feeding and resilience building support for about 1.5 million women and girls across the country, reached more than a quarter of a million women and girls with critical water, sanitation and hygiene supplies and provided more than 120,000 conflict-affected women and girls with access to safe water. Together with partners, over 14,000 girls and 3,500 women were also provided with mental health and psychosocial support services, delivered in communities and through child-friendly spaces. With support from donors, the UN has provided the equivalent of 1.7 million USD in cash transfers to 39,042 vulnerable garment workers, overwhelmingly women. Financial inclusion partners also provided loans totaling more than 498 million USD to 2.4 million clients, 91 per cent of whom were women, in the first half of 2021. In additional 5.2 million USD in loans were disbursed to more than 257,000, 93 per cent women, in conflicted-affected areas. On International Women’s Day, the UN in Myanmar reaffirms its solidarity with women and girls, and its commitment to stand by their side as they forge the future of their country. We also echo the words of the UN Secretary-General in recognizing the contribution of women and girls, their ideas, innovations, and activism that are changing our world for the better, and their leadership across all walks of life. Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach..."
Source/publisher: UN Country Team in Myanmar via "Reliefweb" (New York)
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "ဆယ်စုနှစ်များနှင့် ချီသည့် ပဋိပက္ခ စစ်ပွဲများအတွင်း မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အမျိုးသမီးများသည် ၎င်းတို့၏ ကြံ့ခိုင် သန်မာမှုကို ပြသခဲ့ကြသည်။ တိုင်းပြည်တွင် နှစ်ပေါင်းများစွာ အမြစ်တွယ်နေသည့် ဖိုဝါဒ ကြီးစိုး မှုကိုလည်း ပုံစံပြောင်းပစ်ကြသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများအပေါ် ရုပ်ပိုင်း၊ စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ မှ ကာကွယ်ရန် ခိုင်မာသည့် ဥပဒေများ ပြဌာန်းပေးရန် တောင်းဆို စည်းရုံးလှုံ့ဆော်ကြသည်။ အသက် ရှင်သန် ကျန်ရစ်သူများအား အကာအကွယ်ပေးရန်နှင့် တရားမျှတမှု ရရှိစေရန် အာမခံမည့် ဥပဒေများ ပြဌာန်းရန် ဆန္ဒမရှိသည်မှာ စိတ်ပျက်ဖွယ်ဖြစ်သည်။ မြန်မာစစ်တပ်၏ ရန်လိုသော သက်သေအဖြစ် ပြည်တွင်းပဋိပက္ခအတွင်း နှစ်ပေါင်းများစွာ လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင် ရာ အကြမ်းဖက်မှု ကျူးလွန်ခြင်းဖြစ်သည်။ ထိုသို့ မချိမဆန့် ခံစားရသည့် အခြေအနေအောက်တွင် အမျိုးသမီးနှင့် လုံမပျိုများမှာ ဝန်ထုတ်ဝန်ပိုးကို ထမ်းထားရသည်။ တိုက်ခိုက်မှုနှင့် ကြံစည်ထားသည့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများမှ လွတ်မြောက်ရန် ကြိုးပမ်းသည့် အမျိုးသမီးများမှာ စစ်သားများ၏ ပစ်မှတ်ထား ခြင်း ခံရသည်။ အသက်ရှင်ကျန် လွတ်မြောက်လာသူများမှာလည်း စိတ်ဒဏ်ရာများ ရရှိထားပြီး လုံလောက်သည့် စိတ်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ နှစ်သိမ့်ဆွေးနွေး ပညာပေးမှုများ မရရှိပေ။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်တို့၏ လုပ်ရပ်ကြောင့် ၎င်းတို့၏ ဘဝ တသက်တာလုံး မိသားစုနှင့်အတူ အရှက်တကွဲ အကျိုးနဲမှုကို ခံစားကြရ သည်။ တရားရုံးတွင် ဖြေရှင်းသည့် ကုန်ကျစရိတ် ကြီးမြင့်မှုနှင့် စစ်အာဏာရှင် တပ်သားများအား အကာအ ကွယ် ပေးထားမှု အပါအဝင် တရားမျှတမှု ရှာဖွေရေး လမ်းကြောင်းများကိုလည်း ပိတ်ဆို့ထားသည်။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်များသည် တာဝန်ယူ တာဝန်မှုကို ရှောင်ကွင်းပြီး အကြိမ်ကြိမ် ထိုးစစ်ဆင်နေသည်။ နှစ် ပေါင်းရှည်ကြာ ကျင့်သုံးနေသည့် ပြစ်ဒဏ်ကင်းလွတ်ခွင့်ဓလေ့ကြောင့် တရားစီရင်မှု စနစ်ကို အားနည်း သွားစေပြီး နစ်နာသူများ၏ ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာကို ချိုးနှိမ်ငြင်းပယ်ရာ ရောက်သည်။ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ် ဖေော်ဝါရီ ၁ရက် အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးချိန်မှစ၍ စစ်သားများက ၎င်းတို့အား ဆန့်ကျင် ခုခံသူ များအား နည်းပေါင်းစုံဖြင့် ဖြိုခွဲခဲ့ရာ ပြည်သူလူထုမှာလည်း နှိကွပ်မှုပေါင်းစုံ ခံနေရသည်။ စစ်တပ်၏ အကြမ်းဖက် ဖြိုခွဲမှုကြောင့် ပြည်သူ ၁၅၀၀ ကျော် သေဆုံးခဲ့ပြီး ရာနှင့်ချီ၍ ဒဏ်ရာရသည်ဟု မှတ်တမ်း တင်သည့် အဖွဲ့အစည်းများက အစီရင်ခံကြသည်။ ထိုသို့ တင်းမာပြင်းထန်သည့် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုများ နောက်ခံတွင် အမျိုးသမီးများ၏ ခုခံတွန်းလှန် လှုပ်ရှားမှုမှာ နေရာအနှံ့အပြားတွင် ပေါ်ပေါက်လာသည်။ စစ်အာဏာရှင်တို့အား ဆန့်ကျင် တွန်းလှန်နေသူများ၏ ရုပ်ပိုင်း၊ အသုံးပြုသည့် မိုဘိုင်းဖုန်းနှင့် အင်တာနက် ဆက်သွယ်မှု လုံခြုံရေး ခြိမ်းခြောက်ခံနေရသော်လည်း ဒီမိုကရေစီရေး စည်းရုံးလှုပ်ရှားမှု များ ဆက်လက်လုပ်ဆောင်နေသည်။ မြန်မာစစ်တပ်များ နေရာယူ တပ်စွဲထားသည့်နေရာများတွင် အမျိုးသမီးများ၏ ဘဝမှာ လုံခြုံစိတ်ချရမှု မရှိပေ။ မည်သို့ပင်ဆိုစေကာမူ အပြောင်းအလဲအတွက် အမျိုးသမီးများ၏ အသံမှာ မဆုတ်မနစ် ထွက် ပေါ်နေပြီး ဆန့်ကျင်တားဆီးမှုများကို ကြံကြံခံလျှက်ရှိသည်မှာ အမှန်ပင်ဖြစ်သည်။ ယခုပူးတွဲအစီရင်ခံစာကို လူ့အခွင့်အရေးမှတ်တမ်းကွန်ရက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ (ND-Burma), မွန်ပြည်လူ့အ ခွင့်အရေး ဖောင်ဒေးရှင်း (HURFOM) နှင့် ကချင်အမျိုးသမီးအစည်းအရုံး ထိုင်းနိုင်ငံ (KWAT) မှ ပြုစုထားပြီး မြန်မာပြည်ရှိ အထူးသဖြင့် ကချင်ပြည်နယ်၊ ရှမ်းပြည်မြောက်ပိုင်း၊ ကရင်ပြည်နယ်၊ မွန်ပြည်နယ်နှင့် တနင်္သာရီ တိုင်းဒေသကြီး ရှိ အမျိုးသမီး နှင့် လုံမပျိုများမှာ လွန်ခဲ့သည့် နှစ်အတွင်း စစ်အာဏာရှင်တို့၏ ခြိမ်း ခြောက် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုကို မည်သို့ ခံနေရကြောင်း ဖော်ပြထားသည်။ အစီရင်ခံစာတွင် အမျိုးသမီးများ ကြုံတွေ့နေရသည့် စနစ်တကျ ခြိမ်းခြောက်၊ အကြမ်းဖက်ခံရမှုများကို လည်း မည်သို့ ကျော်လွှားခဲ့ကြသည်ကို ဖော်ပြထားသည်။..."
Source/publisher: Network for Human Rights Documentation - Burma
2022-03-08
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: s key members of the resistance, the women hope their sacrifices will break down barriers across society.
Description: "More than a year after Myanmar’s coup, women are joining the ranks of anti-junta paramilitary groups and assuming key posts within the opposition, a trend they say is crucial to ending military rule and rebuilding a more equitable country. Since the military seized power from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy on Feb. 1, 2021, life is worse in Myanmar by nearly every measure. The nation’s economy is in shambles, government services have ground to a halt, and rule of law is nearly nonexistent. Security forces have arrested at least 9,500 people and killed 1,620 – mostly during peaceful anti-junta protests, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Dozens of those killed were women, according to the group, while rights organizations have decried the military’s use of sexual violence as a weapon against its opponents since the coup. As the situation in Myanmar becomes increasingly desperate, women from all walks of life have assumed roles more typically associated with men in the effort to end military rule — whether by advancing the nationwide Civil Disobedience Movement, organizing street protests, or taking up arms as members of prodemocracy People’s Defense Force (PDF) paramilitary groups. Tin Tin Nyo, chairwoman of Burmese Women’s Union, told RFA’s Myanmar Service that women are more likely to sacrifice their families and even their lives to take part in the resistance movement because the stakes have never been higher. She said that women are needed in these roles if the opposition hopes to remove the junta from power and ensure that all stakeholders have a seat at the table when order is restored. “[Women] will not give up and will keep fighting to eliminate military rule — we need to acknowledge that as a nation,” she said. “Women are participating in the cause to build a better future for Myanmar. They need to participate in leadership roles. Their labor is crucial to advance our society, which is deteriorating in every area.” RFA spoke with several female leaders in the resistance movement who said that they were driven to action out of a sense of duty to protect their nation from junta misrule. They said that they hope their contributions will help to break down barriers that limit the role of women in society. Amaya joined the Myaung Women Guerrilla Group (MWGG) in Sagaing region’s Myaung township and regularly fights against the military alongside her male counterparts. She said she and other women paramilitaries could no longer stand by and watch while junta soldiers “shot and killed young people in the street,” particularly after those in Myaung township began “moving from one village to another, committing every crime imaginable, on a daily basis.” “We were protesting peacefully but they were killing us lawlessly, so we decided that armed resistance was the only option,” she said. “Slogans such as ‘Down with the fascist authoritarian regime’ and ‘Our cause is Federalism’ motivated us to participate in the movement.” MWGG members have told RFA that the group was launched in October to empower women who might otherwise be preyed upon by raiding troops. They said that MWGG fighters now regularly participate in operations using explosives and “exterminating military informers.” ‘Fighting to protect’ the people Htet Htet Naing, a female commando from a PDF group based in the seat of Sagaing region, said that after witnessing death and destruction in her region, she felt compelled to fight on the frontlines. “There are many challenges, and it is more challenging for women. It is very exhausting to take part in the training. The food we are eating is substandard,” she said. “We keep in mind that only by fighting, will we succeed. We remind ourselves that the people are behind us, and we are fighting to protect them.” Cinderella, a fighter from the Dove KK Southern Shan/Kayah PDF medics team of doctors and nurses from Kayah state, said it isn’t difficult to remind herself of why she joined the armed resistance. “This revolution has emerged to eliminate the reign of a class of people who rule by violence and lawlessness, in a time of injustice where human rights exist only in books,” she said. “All of Myanmar’s people, both men and women, must take part in this revolution. I am here to contribute physically and intellectually for our collective future. No matter what kind of challenges lie ahead, we will do whatever we can to succeed.” Mya Hnin Yee Lwin, a former actress who joined the armed resistance, said that she gave up a comfortable life to help motivate her countrymen “not to give up on the revolution.” “We are living a lifestyle that I could never have imagined, but I no longer think, ‘What’s in it for me?’ I can only think about how I can contribute to the revolution,” she said. “I believe [justice] always prevails in the end and I believe we will reach our destination one day.”..."
Source/publisher: "RFA" (USA)
2022-03-07
Date of entry/update: 2022-03-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "၂၀၂၁ နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးမှာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအဝှမ်း အလွှာပေါင်းစုံက အမျိုးသမီးထုရဲ့ တော်လှန်စိတ်ဓာတ်နဲ့ ရဲရင့်ပြောင်မြောက်စွာ ဦးဆောင်မှုတွေဟာ အာဏာလု စစ်အုပ်စုကို သွေးပျက်မတတ် ထိတ်လန့် တုန်လှုပ်စေခဲ့တာပါ။ မြန်မာ့သမိုင်းမှာ ပထမဦးဆုံးအဖြစ် ထမီအလံလွှင့်ထူပြီး ငါတို့ထမီ၊ ငါတို့အလံ၊ ငါတို့အောင်ပွဲ ဆိုတဲ့ ဣတ္ထိယ နွေဦးတေးဟာ နိုင်ငံနယ်နမိတ် အပြင်ဘက်ထိ တုန်ဟီးစေခဲ့တယ်။ ပြည်တွင်းသာမက ကမ္ဘာ့တဝှမ်းက ပြည်သူအပေါင်း မြန်မာ့အမျိုးသမီးထုရဲ့ တော်လှန်စိတ်ဓာတ်ကို လေးစားတန်ဖိုးထား အသိအမှတ်ပြုခဲ့ကြရပါတယ်။ အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်အုပ်စုဟာ စစ်အာဏာရှင်တို့ရဲ့ ထုံးစံအတိုင်း ဆန့်ကျင်သူတိုင်းကို လက်နက်အားကိုးပြီး ရက်စက်ကြမ်းကြုတ်စွာ ဖြိုခွဲခဲ့တယ်။ အကြောက်တရားနဲ့ အုပ်ချုပ်နိုင်အောင်ကြိုးစားခဲ့တယ်။ သို့သော်လည်း ပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံးက နောက်မဆုတ်စတမ်း တိုက်ပွဲဝင်လာတာဟာ ဖေဖေါ်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့ဆိုရင် တစ်နှစ်တင်းတင်းပြည့်ခဲ့ပေမယ့် တော်လှန်စိတ်ဓာတ်ဟာ ပြင်းသထက် ပြင်းထန်ပြီး ခိုင်မာသထက် ခိုင်မာလာတာကို တွေ့မြင်နေတာပါ။ ဒီအထဲမှာ အမျိုးသမီးတွေဟာလည်း ရှေ့တန်းက အားကောင်းစွာ ပါဝင်တော်လှန်နေဆဲပါပဲ။ တနှစ်ပြည့်တဲ့အချိန်မှာ အကြမ်း ဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုဟာ ထောင်ချီတဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးများကို ထောင်သွင်း အကျဉ်းချထားခဲ့တယ်။ ရာချီတဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးများဟာ အကြမ်း ဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုရဲ့ ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက် ပစ်ခတ်သတ်ဖြတ်ခြင်း ခံခဲ့ရတယ်။ ယန္တရားမျိုးစုံကို အသုံးပြုပြီး ညှဉ်းပန်းနှိပ်စက်မှုတွေ ပြုလုပ်နေဆဲဖြစ်တယ်။ သို့သော်လည်း အမျိုးသမီးထုဟာ စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ် အကြွင်းမဲ့ ကျဆုံးရေး၊ ပြည်သူ့လွတ်မြောက်ရေးနဲ့ ဒီမိုကရေစီအခွင့်အရေးအပြည့်အဝ ရရှိရေးအတွက် ဘဝတွေ၊ အသက်တွေကို ပေးဆပ်ရင်း ရှေ့တန်းက ရဲ့ရင့်စွာ တိုက်ပွဲဝင်နေတုန်းပါ။ ဒီအစီရင်ခံစာဟာ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအဝှမ်း တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးပေါင်းစုံ ပါဝင်တဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးထုရဲ့ စွန့်လွှတ်အနစ်နာခံမှု၊ ပေးဆပ်မှုနဲ့ တော်လှန်စိတ်ဓာတ်ကို ဂုဏ်ပြု မှတ်တမ်းတင်ရင်း နွေဦးတော်လှန်ရေးအတွင်း အကြမ်းဖက်စစ်အုပ်စုလက်ချက်နဲ့ ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရတဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးသူရဲကောင်းများအား အလေးပြု မော်ကွန်းတင်လိုက်တဲ့ အစီရင်စာတစ်စောင်ပဲ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။..."
Source/publisher: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
2022-01-31
Date of entry/update: 2022-02-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Size: 10.65 MB (Original version), 4.73 MB (Reduce version) - 74 pages
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Description: "In this Spring Revolution, the revolutionary vigor and decisive leadership of the women of Burma, belonging to all classes and ethnicities, has shaken the military junta to their very core. For the first time in the history of Burma, women were able to unfurl their Hta-Mein [female skirt/Sarong] as flags; proclaiming “Our Hta-Mein! Our Flag! Our Victory!”. This heroine chant of the Spring Revolution resonated across the country and beyond. The valiant spirit of the women of Burma was acknowledged not only domestically but all around the world. The terrorist-like military tried to mercilessly crush any kind of opposition with excessive force using heavy weaponry. They carry out tactics of terror to scare the population into submission. Yet, the spirit of the people has not faltered, and their unwavering resolve is just getting stronger after a year, with February 1, 2022 marking one year after the military unsuccessful coup in the Burma. From the very start, women have continuously put up a vigorous fight in the frontlines. To punish and suppress them, in the span of this past year, the military junta has imprisoned thousands of women and tortured many of them horrendously in numerous ways. These heinous acts are still being perpetrated by the military all throughout the country. Regardless, women in Burma are resolute in their goal to end the military dictatorship, liberate the masses, and obtain full democracy within the country. And it is with that determination that they keep fighting in the frontline, risking their lives and futures for this cause. This report tries to acknowledge and commemorate the revolutionary spirit and sacrifice of women of all ethnic groups of Burma, and those fallen heroes who perished at the hands of the terrorist military junta..."
Source/publisher: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners
2022-02-16
Date of entry/update: 2022-02-16
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf pdf
Size: 9.85 MB (Original version), 3.97 MB (Reduce version) - 67 pages
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Description: "Spurred on by military atrocities, young people are turning to armed struggle against the regime – leaving supportive but fearful families behind When Peh Reh’s* mother, Mi Nya*, lost contact with him in September, she had little doubt as to where he had gone. Four months earlier, the 19-year-old had told her he wanted to join the armed resistance against the military, which had seized power from the democratically-elected government in Myanmar in February 2021. Yet she refused to let him leave their home in Myanmar’s south-eastern Karenni state (also known as Kayah). “In my eyes, he is still so young,” she says. “If I could, I would like to keep my son next to me all the time.” Intense fighting between armed revolutionary groups and the military had been escalating in Karenni state since May, three months after the coup. Q&A What is the Reporting Myanmar series? Like thousands of other families, Peh Reh and his family left their homes and sought shelter in the forest. There, he and his father waited for lulls in the fighting to return to tend to their farm, while his mother went deeper into the forest with the three younger children. The family tried to return home but were forced to flee a second time as the fighting escalated around their village. A few days later, Peh Reh disappeared. "I told him to pray and be careful at all times. I pray for him every day" - Mi Nya The next time his mother heard from him he was in a training camp for an armed revolutionary group. This time, Mi Nya decided not to stand in his way. “I told [my son] to pray and be careful at all times. I also pray for him every day” she says. Peh Reh is one of a rising number of young men and women across Myanmar leaving their families to take up arms as the country is plunged into violence, poverty and mass displacement, with more than 1,400 civilians killed in military crackdowns on the pro-democracy movement since February 2021. As the people of Myanmar endure internet blackouts, arbitrary arrests, a ruthless curtailing of freedom of speech, and escalating military attacks on civilian areas, many of the country’s youth have decided armed resistance is their only option. On the other side of the country in Kalay, a small city in Sagaing region near Myanmar’s north-western border with India, 21-year-old Zaw Htet* took part in the street demonstrations that erupted after the coup, while his mother went on strike from her public-sector job as part of a broader civil disobedience movement. Soon after, the military began using deadly force on protesters around the country, including in Kalay. By 28 March, protesters in the city had begun defending themselves with guns, barricading themselves behind sandbags and firing homemade weapons back at soldiers and police who attacked them with snipers, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. By the time the military destroyed the protest camp, at least 18 civilians were dead. As Zaw Htet endured this terrifying experience, his mother, Aye Mya*, was punished for joining the civil disobedience movement. The military evicted her and her family from government housing in June, and she has since been selling street food to survive. These experiences intensified both Zaw Htet’s and his mother’s hatred of the military, and when he told her he wanted to join the armed struggle, she supported him. She has only seen him once since he left in July. His absence has left her anxious about how her son is enduring the harsh conditions of life in the forest. “Now that he is a revolutionary fighter, he might be sleeping on the ground,” she says. “I worry about whether he has warm clothes or not. Whenever it rains, I worry he may be soaked.” She also follows the news with dread as clashes escalate in Kalay township, and young people are arrested and killed daily. Yet, despite this, she says she is optimistic that the young generation can succeed where, three decades ago, her generation could not. In 1988, she was active in the student-led pro-democracy protests, when the country also erupted in turmoil as the former regime arrested thousands and opened fire on crowds. Although Aye Mya initially joined those protests, she stopped when the firing started. Now, she says she is no longer afraid. “This time, the revolution is very different than in 1988. Young people today have greater knowledge of politics. They are determined and braver than us,” she says. Some mothers have joined the revolution themselves, including Shwe Yun Eain*, a 23-year-old farmer from Sagaing region’s Myaung township. In October she left her three-year-old daughter with her mother and went off to fight. “My mother told me, ‘My daughter, do not worry for your daughter. I will take good care of her. Just focus on the revolution,’” she says. “I cannot sit still while the whole nation is fighting against military dictatorship.” A cartoon of a girl holding a gun ‘My first time holding a gun’: from Myanmar student to revolutionary soldier – a cartoon Read more She has spent the past three months training with the country’s first all-female armed resistance group, the Myaung Women Warriors. Not wanting to endanger her mother or daughter by making contact, she has only seen them once since she left home. The Myaung Women Warriors’motto is “the hand that swings a baby’s hammock can also be part of the armed revolution,” and Shwe Yun Eain says that despite the hardships she faces, she remains committed to her decision. “As a mother, I have had many ups and downs since I joined the armed revolution,” she says. “I continue fighting to root out this evil system for my daughter’s future and the next generation.” * Names have been changed to protect identities. Nu Nu Lusan is a freelance journalist from Kachin state based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She focuses on human rights and social justice issues in Myanmar and especially covers issues around ethnic minorities, rural areas and women. Emily Fishbein is a freelance journalist writing on human rights and social justice in Myanmar..."
Source/publisher: "The Guardian" (UK)
2022-02-04
Date of entry/update: 2022-02-05
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Women in Myanmar have been tortured, sexually harassed and threatened with rape in custody, according to accounts obtained by the BBC. Five women who were detained for protesting against a military coup in the country earlier this year say they were abused and tortured in the detention system after their arrests. Their names have been changed in the following accounts to protect their safety. Warning: this piece contains disturbing descriptions of abuse. Since Myanmar's military seized power in February, protests have swept across the country - and women have played a prominent role in the resistance movement. Human rights groups say that although the military in Myanmar (also known as Burma) used disappearances, hostage-taking and torture tactics before, the violence has become more widespread since the coup. As of 8 December, 1,318 civilians have been killed during military crackdowns on the pro-democracy movement, including 93 women, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) non-profit human rights organisation. At least eight of those women died while in custody, four of whom were tortured to death in an interrogation centre. More than 10,200 people have been detained in total, including over 2,000 women. Democracy activist Ein Soe May was imprisoned for almost six months - the first 10 days of which were spent in one of Myanmar's notorious interrogation centres, where she alleges she was sexually assaulted and tortured. Soe May old the BBC that one morning, while making placards for a protest, she was arrested and bundled into the back of a van. "It was already night when I arrived [at an undisclosed location]. I was blindfolded and made to dodge imaginary objects as I made my way to the interrogation room, so they could make a fool of me," Soe May said. Her captors questioned her, and for every answer they didn't like they hit her with a bamboo stick. Soe May said she was also repeatedly pressed for details of her sex life. One interrogator threatened: "Do you know what we do to the women that end up here? We rape and kill them." She was then sexually assaulted while blindfolded. "They pulled down the oversized top I was wearing, they touched me as they did it, exposing my body," she said. Her blindfold was later removed, and she saw one of the guards take all but one of the bullets out of his revolver. When she didn't give them details of her contacts, they made her open her mouth and "forced the loaded revolver inside it", she said. Makeshift detention centres According to Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), interrogation centres "could be anything from makeshift holding sites, a room in a military barrack or even an abandoned public building". This was corroborated by a lawyer in Myanmar who spoke to the BBC, but asked not to be named for her own safety. She said she represented several detainees who had also reported being tortured and sexually assaulted during interrogations. "One of my clients was wrongly identified but arrested anyway. When she explained she wasn't the person the authorities accused her of being, she was tortured with an iron rod which was rolled over her shins repeatedly until she lost consciousness," the lawyer said. The woman was then "sent to another interrogation centre where she alleges a male guard told her that if she slept with him, he would get her released", she added. The lawyer described a legal system in Myanmar as opaque, and where attorneys like her are sometimes powerless. "We try to challenge [arrests and interrogations], but we are told the processes are legal and that [interrogators] have been given orders." While it is impossible to verify Soe May's account, the BBC spoke to other female detainees who also said they had been tortured and sexually assaulted in interrogation centres. "They forced me to raise the three-finger salute [a symbol of resistance in Myanmar] for more than an hour as a guard stroked my hair to intimidate me," one detainee said. Another woman, who was taken to an interrogation centre in Shwe Pyi Thar township, said: "They pulled the girls out of the room. Some girls came back with some buttons on their clothes undone or missing." 'Fake news' The BBC put Soe May's testimony to Myanmar's Information Deputy Minister Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun, who denied any torture was being carried out by the military and dismissed it as "fake news". Earlier this year, the military broadcast an image of a female detainee. Her face had been beaten to the point she was unrecognisable. The image went viral. She is still in prison, facing weapons charges. The BBC asked Maj Gen Zaw Min Tun why the military did not hide the injuries. He said: "It can happen when arrests are made. They try to escape and we have to capture them." Solitary confinement Abuse does not just happen in secret interrogation sites. An activist in her 50s, who we are calling Ms Lin, described to the BBC how she was placed in solitary confinement for more than 40 days inside Yangon's Insein prison. Ms Lin didn't have anything in her cell but the clothes she was wearing - not even necessary medication. During her detention she grew increasingly weak. "I would lie in the dark and worry I was going to die," she said. "Sometimes, I heard shouting and crying from nearby cells. I kept thinking about who was being beaten." She recounts how one day a male officer entered her cell with several female officers. "When they were about to leave, I noticed the male officer was videoing me," she said. She made a complaint, but said it was "futile". HRW researcher Manny Maung told the BBC that often in prisons about 500 women would be crammed into rooms only big enough for, at most, 100 detainees. They would have to take turns to sleep, because they can't all lie down at the same time. They were also being denied basic sanitation, she said, adding such a step was "denying them a fundamental right". The woman who was taken to Shwe Pyi Thar interrogation centre also experienced this in prison. "The women who had just arrived from the interrogation centres had wounds that hadn't healed, whilst some were menstruating and were only allowed to shower after seven days in detention," she said. Soe May, who was released in an amnesty of more than 5,000 prisoners in October, said her activism was worth the fear of being re-arrested. "I understand there is always a possibility I could get arrested again and I might die, but I want to do something for my country," she said. "Although I don't feel safe, I want to continue to be part of this movement." Illustrations by Davies Surya and Jilla Dastmalchi..."
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Source/publisher: BBC News (London)
2021-12-09
Date of entry/update: 2021-12-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "The Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) has presented the 2021 Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Award to The Women’s League of Burma. The Women’s League of Burma (WLB) is a national network of 13 ethnic women’s rights organisations working towards the advancement of the status of women for a peaceful, just and federal democratic union for over 20 years. In the immediate aftermath of the military takeover earlier this year, WLB closed its Yangon office and established an advocacy team to work underground in Burma/Myanmar and across the border in Thailand and India. They now produce a monthly situation report detailing human rights violations against women, which has become a key source of data used by journalists, global analysts and activists. Presenting the award ACFID President Susan Pascoe said “Throughout 2021, WLB has been at the forefront of challenging the military coup in Myanmar, demonstrating outstanding leadership in international advocacy promoting women’s human rights. “Members of the WLB risk their lives every day to defend and advance the rights of women of all ethnic identities in Burma. This award acknowledges their courage in the face of violence. Continuing on, Marc Purcell, CEO of ACFID, stated that “ACFID supports WLB’s call for urgent action to reject the military junta and support a transition towards an inclusive, federal democracy.” WLB has taken a strong public position in promoting the human rights of Rohingya women. It was one of the first civil society organisations in Myanmar to speak out against the military’s deadly crackdown on the Rohingya Muslims in August 2017, which resulted in more than 700,000 people fleeing across the border into Bangladesh. On receiving the award, the General Secretary of the WLB, Naw Hser Hser said, “Following the coup, the majority of the people of Burma, including democracy activists and women’s human rights activists, have felt let down by much of the international community. This award sends the message to women human rights defenders in Burma, including from the 13 member organizations of WLB, that the Australian community does recognise and support our struggle for justice and peace. The award motivates us, boosts us to withstand any obstacles and helps sustain us. “We hope through this award more people in the Australian community will understand the scale of atrocities committed by the military junta and will reject the military junta, and over 70 years of struggle of ethnic nationalities against the dictatorship. “We hope the international community, including the Australian Government, will join with other democracies to adopt targeted sanctions on military leaders and their business interests. [We hope that] “This award is dedicated to all heroines, both fallen and alive, especially ethnic women, who have dedicated their lives to our struggle for fundamental rights. On behalf of WLB, I would like to say thank you and express our most sincere gratitude and appreciation for presenting us with the Sir Ronald Wilson Human Rights Award from the Australian Council for International Development. We are humbled at the recognition of our work, and accept the award with grace and humility.”..."
Source/publisher: The Australian Council for International Development
2021-11-22
Date of entry/update: 2021-11-23
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
Size: 145.71 KB
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Description: "The Women's League of Burma (WLB) strongly condemns the gang-rape of a mother of four children from Akllui village of Tedim township in Chin state by three military junta soldiers at her home. She was assaulted between 11 P.M to midnight on November 11, 2021. Forty soldiers arrived in Akllui village on November 7, 2021. After their arrival, three junta soldiers entered the home of a mother of a one-month-old baby around 11 P.M on November 11, 2021. They interrogated and investigated her and her husband on allegations that they had ties to members of the People's Defense Force (PDF). Despite the couple's insistent denials that they had no affiliation to the civilian armed groups, the soldiers refused to accept their testimonies. They began to threaten them, and forced them to switch off the lights in their home. One of the soldiers took the husband to the back of the house and aimed a gun at his head before slamming his head on a glass table where he sustained injuries. The remaining two soldiers went into the bedroom and told the woman to put her young baby down, and forced her to lie on the bed. Guns were aimed at her and they threatened to kill her. She was raped repeatedly while she begged for mercy. After some time, two of the three soldiers came back. They threatened the husband and the other one raped the mother again in front of the husband and left. At midnight, the three drunk soldiers returned and forced the husband to watch while two of the soldiers raped the woman again. The soldiers confiscated the couple's phone, power-bank, and a cash amount of 18 000 Myanmar Kyats and gold earrings. They made the husband escort them on a motorbike to a local liquor shop; and beat and tortured the husband when they found out that the shop was closed. This case of a harrowing gang-rape against a post-partum mother in Akllui is further evidence that impunity still continues for the Burma military's systematic use of rape as a weapon of war and sexual violence against ethnic women. Since the coup on 1 February 2021, sexual violence has become more widespread. WLB calls for urgent action to hold the military junta accountable through international accountability mechanisms for their crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2021-11-19
Date of entry/update: 2021-11-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf pdf
Size: 85.15 KB 418.57 KB
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Sub-title: Fighters say the group empowers women, who have been targeted by soldiers in village raids.
Description: "Activists in Myanmar’s Sagaing region have formed the country’s first women-only anti-junta militia, a collection of students, teachers, farmers and white-collar workers fighting to take back the country from well-armed government troops who toppled the democratically elected government in a Feb. 1 coup. Hera, 16, said she quit high school to take a position as commander in the Myaung Women Guerrilla Group (MWGG) after watching soldiers attack unarmed protesters and civilians. “The local civilians must flee their homes when the soldiers arrived in the village,” she said. “I shed tears whenever I see them in the refugee camps, and it motivates me to fight. I have no fear because I was willing to give up my life when I signed up to be in the group. I want to fight for democracy.” The military has launched offensives throughout Myanmar’s remote border regions that are under the control of ethnic armies and anti-junta People’s Defense Force (PDF) militias, and reports suggest that troops regularly raid villages, looting and burning homes and attacking civilians. Junta security forces have killed 1,275 civilians since taking over in a Feb. 1 coup, according to the Bangkok-based Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. At least 80 of those killed were women, the group said. Last week, soldiers allegedly raped two young women in Chin state’s Tedim township, prompting rights groups to decry the military’s use of “sexual violence as a weapon” since the coup. A member of the MWGG who gave her name as Amera told RFA’s Myanmar Service that the group was launched in Sagaing’s Myaung township last month to empower women who might otherwise be preyed upon by raiding troops. “It is assumed that women’s hands are meant for the rocking the cradle, but we want to show to the people that our hands are also capable of armed resistance to the military regime,” she said. “Besides, we women face discrimination in many ways, given the situation in the country. All in all, we have come out to break down the barriers that limit the role of women in society.” Amera said that MWGG fighters now regularly participate in operations using explosives and “exterminating military informers.” A MWGG platoon commander named Athena told RFA that she took up arms to serve in her brother’s place after he was killed in a mine explosion during a militia training drill. “My family members were worried at first and they asked me to come back home after my brother died. But I decided not to go home until democracy has been restored,” she said. Women in resistance movements Many women have taken part in anti-junta movements since the coup, with some joining the armed resistance and others peacefully protesting the military regime. On Sept. 6, 11 women-led protest groups from Yangon, Mandalay, Monywa, and towns in Sagaing joined together to form the Women Allied Forces. A woman protest leader who organized daily actions against the military coup in Monywa told RFA that the formation of an all-women militia is a significant milestone in the resistance movement. “The situation [since the coup] has led us to demonstrate that women can do the same jobs as men. I think these resistance movements bring more equality and may help to eliminate discrimination in the future,” she said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. “Some people think it is not so special that women participate in protests. But it is extraordinary to see the women bravely fighting in militia group. They have made their mark in the history of the resistance movement.”..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "RFA" (USA)
2021-11-20
Date of entry/update: 2021-11-20
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "In the eight months since the military coup of the 1st February 2021 Myanmar's economy and health care systems have been crippled and internal armed conflicts have been expending across the country. Since September 7th, the day the National Unity Government (NUG) announced a defensive war against the military junta by the National Unity Government (NUG), armed conflicts between local resistance forces and the military (SAC) have intensified in some states/ regions of Myanmar. Military arrests of civilians targeted women activists and youths, and the military has used artillery attacks on civilians during the armed conflicts. Within the armed conflict, the military is systematically suppressing women in their political resistance, including through the use of sexual abuse during detainments and interrogation. Women have to gamble with their lives under the military dictatorship and collapsed heath care system, there is a general lack of physical security in the country. Women can be arrested anytime, anywhere and could be taken as hostages, as well as the ever-present threat of being caught in active conflict. Despite the extreme risk of being imprisoned, tortured, or killed, the women's hunger for peace inspires them to continue this revolution by leading strikes and organizing support for members of civil disobedience movement, and even taking up arms. According to information from the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) and Burmese Women's Union (BWU), from February 1 to September 30, a total of 1267 women were arrested and 57 women were sentenced. In addition, 78 women were murdered by the military (SAC). The information presented here comes from credible sources collected by the BWU. BWU accepts the facts that the actual death rate and eradication of public property likely to be significantly higher. Women in Political Conflicts In civil wars and situations of political uncertainty, women and children suffer the most. In the period following the military coup, countless civilians were killed and injured due to artillery attacks, abandoned military weapons, and land mines in the villages. Among these deaths and injuries, there are women and children as young as two years old Some deaths were due to the lack of health care services during detentions and imprisonment. A woman named Khin Mar Cho who suffered from diabetes was arrested There are reports that there are many cases where the military has informed family members that such deaths during detention, imprisonment and interrogation were due to covid-19. Family members have lost the right to accurate information and face difficulties when trying to meet their detained family members. One of the barbarous acts of military juntas is that a pregnant woman was arrested under the suspicion of being a member of a people's defense force (PDF). She gave birth at a village while under arrest, as soldiers were forcing her to walk to their station. As soon as she gave birth, she immediately had to carry on to the station; the soldiers forced the villagers to carry her.2 Ma Soe Mi Mi Kyaw who was arrested on September 20th tried to under the 505(B) law and detained by Minkin Police. During the detainment, she did not get permission to receive medical treatment and as a result, she died while in detention.1kill herself by drinking methylated spirit due to torture during the interrogation. By scrutinizing her case, it is impossible to even imagine the level of torture women experience at the hands of the military junta, to acquire information during the interrogation process. Through the observation of several cases, it is found that the military is violating fundamental human rights through using torture and denying health care to detainees..."
Source/publisher: Burmese Women's Union
2021-10-29
Date of entry/update: 2021-10-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Size: 1.13 MB 1.87 MB
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Description: "On the day marking seven months since the Burmese military’s attempted coup, the Women’s League of Burma (WLB) reinforces our condemnation of the junta’s illegal and unjust seizure of power and categorically rejects the assault on civilian livelihoods including the infringement of basic human rights freedoms and protections by the Burmese Army, and in particular the targeting of women and girls through sexual violence as a weapon of war. WLB also condemns the junta’s efforts of using its controlled media and personnel to defame women who have joined resistance forces fighting against them, particularly the junta’s spokesperson shameful use of sexist and patriarchal language against these brave women. Since February the first, the whole country has been pushed back to living under constant threats and insecurity. The military has used all forms of violence including arrest, killing, torture and sexual assault to suppress any actions taken against the coup. Over 1,000 civilians have been killed by security forces, including over 73 women. More than 1,084 women were among 7,300 people arrested simply for their political views. Moreover, the junta has launched military offensives including airstrikes in Kachin, Karen, Karenni/Kayah, Rakhine and Shan State and Sagaing Region. As a result, more than 240,000 people have been internally displaced across the country adding to the already-existing numbers of IDPs. Among those, 80 percent, are women and children who face risks of malnutrition and sexual violence by the Burmese soldiers. Pregnant women have been forced to give birth while hiding in the jungle without proper health care. An increase number of rape and sexual abuse by the junta’s security forces against women has been reported daily. Besides its brutal attacks against the people, the Burmese military is blocking the routes to transport humanitarian aid to those in need, or even arresting relief workers. This humanitarian crisis unfolding across the country has heightened the needs of vulnerable communities against the backdrop of a raging pandemic. The COVID-19 has allowed the junta to restrict the movement of opposition forces and to limit civilian access to health care. WLB reiterates our commitment fighting against all forms of dictatorships in our country alongside with our alliances in the federal democracy movement as well as with various international and regional actors to raise awareness about the situation inside Burma, in particular highlighting the plight of women, girls including all human rights defenders. On this occasion, we urge international community to act as follows: To the International Community Categorically reject the military junta by supporting and standing with the people of Burma to topple the military dictatorship; To apply pressure on the junta for the immediate and unconditional cessation of military violence and the release of all arbitrarily detained protesters and political prisoners including female detainees as well as an end to the use of sexual violence by security forces against female detainees;..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2021-09-01
Date of entry/update: 2021-09-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "1.1 Background Once again like déjà vu the land of Myanmar splashed international front page headlines for its recent brutal crackdown on protestors and monks in the autumn of 2007. People intercepted the news with unsurprised horror as their memories flashed back to the infamous 1988 uprisings that prematurely ended the lives of at least 1,000 civilians in Rangoon alone and possibly 3,000 nationwide. 1 This time around it was different with the international community and media quickly coming to the aid of the protestors in voicing condemnation of the junta‘s actions and calling for support for the protestors. Human rights and exiled Burmese activists further increased pressure on the international community to take action against Myanmar and distance themselves from the military regime. The 2007 anti-government protests (lasting from August 15th until approximately October 31st) were initially led by students and pro-democracy activists in response to the government‘s increase of fuel prices, which consequently caused a spike in public transport and staple food prices.2 In what was already an impoverished situation with inflation at ahistorical levels, it was of course no surprise that social unrest ensued. This particular fuel hike served as a watershed event for all the economic problems that had been troubling the people of Myanmar for the last two decades since the last uprising of 1988 took place. Monks from all over the country eventually joined in and took to the forefront of the protests in what would be dubbed the ―Saffron Revolution‖ symbolizing the color of the robes the monks wore. This did not appease the junta leaders as they proceeded forward with a brutal crackdown on the protestors that resulted in the beating and killing of both civilians and monks alike. The final death toll of the junta crackdown varies between the junta‘s own official figures of 10 up to the 200 casualties claimed by dissident groups. In addition, many monks were consequently detained and put in prison camps while some fear that many of them were murdered. Upward to 6,000 demonstrators in all were arrested with many of them being gradually released.3 As if it was not enough that Myanmar had garnered worldwide criticism for its loathsome antics, Cyclone Nargis would draw renewed world attention and criticism to the country. On May 2nd of 2008, less than a year after the Saffron Revolution, Myanmar experienced the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of Myanmar claiming the lives of over 100,000 people. Abundant criticisms were directed toward the junta from the bungling of their own relief effort to the blockage of international aid, and of their undeterred determination to proceed with elections the following weekend. All of the mishandling and mismanagement of the crisis kept the junta on the front page news while the international community desperately explored alternatives to get help to those who needed it most. Yet again the junta reminded the world of its indifference to its own people and mocked the world community for its inability to do anything. It is unforeseen at this point whether this catastrophe has resulted in anything more than minimal cooperation from the regime and often it is only for handouts of international aid. Cyclone Nargis will presumably serve as a painful lesson that even in the worst state of crisis the junta of Myanmar will still refuse to buckle to outside pressure. Twenty years has now passed since the 1988 uprisings that initially brought international attention to Myanmar and Nobel laureate Daw Aung Suu Kyi to the forefront of the democratic opposition. Due to Aung San Suu Kyi and her party comrades‘ repeated arrests and detentions for their political activities, the international community has adopted numerous diplomatic strategies over the years with the hopes of coercing the junta into releasing the political prisoners and into accepting the 1990 election results that favored Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). There has been consistent international pressure and activism over the years for the release of the more than one thousand political prisoners locked up for their participation in the 1988 demonstrations and/or other political activities. Despite the myriad approaches undertaken by various actors the last two decades, Daw Aung Suu Kyi and many others remain in captivity and the junta still rules the country with an iron fist. The most popular approach utilized by state actors against the junta has by far been the imposition or threat of economic sanctions. The historical timing of Suu Kyi‘s arrests and Myanmar‘s deplorable human rights behavior against the backdrop of the post-Cold War relations proved a pivotal stimulus for the use of economic sanctions as a diplomatic tool. In terms of international cooperation in the United Nations, it wasn‘t until the end of the Cold War that the international organization finally achieved unprecedented cooperation in the United Nations Security Council (UN SC). Prior to this relations amongst the Security Council permanent members had chilled from the start of the Cold War and dimmed any hopes for cooperation in the Security Council. The renewed cooperation that brought an end to the chilly relations in the UN SC was marked by the Iraq invasion of Kuwait. As a result of this new unity, a string of peacekeeping and enforcement activities followed suit, howbeit it was not military activities that proved the most popular method of choice, but alternatively it was economic sanctions that proved most appealing to Security Council members. It comes as no surprise then that the 1990s has been dubbed ―the decade of economic sanctions.‖ 4 Howbeit, not all these economic sanctions consisted of multilateral mandatory economic sanctions as outlined under article 41 of the UN Charter. On the contrary, many economic sanctions were and are indeed today unilateral. Since the rejuvenation of the UN SC following the Cold War, economic sanctions have persistently been issued often to the detriment of the civilian population. A strong majority of the literature on economic sanctions have questioned and raised doubts over the efficacy of sanctions. A magnitude of political leaders, human rights activists, and scholars remain for the most part oblivious and aloof to the detrimental harms of sanctions despite that nearly all are aware that the infamous Iraqi sanctions campaign claimed the lives of half a million (of which the majority were children). This is clearly another case of ―collective amnesia‖ since the international community too often forgets the catastrophic errors of their time in spite of slogans that cry “Never Again”. Sanctions are assumed to be a less costly alternative to armed force when measuring the cost of lives, but as former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali expressed: Sanctions, as is generally recognized, are a blunt instrument. They raise the ethical question of whether suffering inflicted on vulnerable groups in the target country is a legitimate means of exerting pressure on political leaders whose behaviour is unlikely to be affected by the plight of their subjects. 5 An overwhelming amount of literature and research by experts and scholars concede that sanctions have had in fact drastic implications for vulnerable populations and frequently did not achieve the objectives it had aimed for. My particular concern in this debate, which is needy of more research, is the impact of sanctions on women. Women have appeared to suffer the brunt of sanctions according to numerous anecdotal evidence since women are often times more vulnerable to economic sanctions due to their gender and their relative impoverished and disempowered position. Be that as it may, research in this area remains obsolete or very minimal and is henceforth worthy of attention due to the urgency of this problem as this paper will show..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Malmö University (Sweden)
2009-01-14
Date of entry/update: 2021-08-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Size: 1.41 MB (149 pages)
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Description: "ကျမတို့မြန်မာ့အမျိုးသမီးသမဂ္ဂ BWU က လစဉ် အမျိုးသမီးတွေနဲ့ ပတ်သက်တဲ့ သတင်းအချက်အလက်တွေ စုဆောင်းပြီး ပြင်ဆင်ထားတဲ့ လစဉ် သတင်းအနှစ်ချုပ်ကို ဖတ်ရှုလို့ ရပါပြီရှင့်။ ဒီ သတင်းအနှစ်ချုပ်က ဇူလိုင်လထဲမှာ အမျိုးသမီးတွေ ရင်ဆိုင်ခံစားနေရတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေကို ကျမတို့ စုဆောင်းရရှိတဲ့ အချက်အလက်တွေအပေါ် အခြေခံပြီး ပြင်ဆင်ထားတာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်ရှင့်။ ဒီအချက်အလက်တွေကို လိုအပ်သလို ပြန်လည်ကိုးကားနိုင်ပါတယ်။ အကြံပြုချက်တွေကိုလဲ ကြိုဆိုပါတယ်ရှင့်။..."
Source/publisher: Burmese Women's Union
2021-08-01
Date of entry/update: 2021-08-04
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
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Description: "August 1, 2021 Joint statement from UNFPA and UN Women in Myanmar: impacts of the compounded political and health crisis on women and girls in Myanmar Yangon – Six months since the military takeover in Myanmar, the country faces a compounded political and public health crisis, on top of intensification of conflicts, putting the lives of even more women and girls at serious risk with the deteriorating socio-economic situation adding hundreds of thousands of people to those in need of humanitarian assistance in the country who were not previously targeted for humanitarian support. Since February 1, women and girls have been at the frontlines as leaders of civil society organizations, civil servants, activists, journalists, artists and influencers, exercising their fundamental rights to express their hopes for the future of their country. Even before the coup, women, who make up 75 per cent of Myanmar’s healthcare professionals, were at the forefront of the COVID-19 response. Now, during a tragic surge in COVID-19 cases, many women continue in their activism and serve their communities while also assuming significant responsibilities as caregivers for sick family members, and for their children’s home-based learning. Women and children are also expected to bear the heaviest brunt of the combined crises with those most at-risk including single women, pregnant and breastfeeding women and girls, ethnic and religious minorities, older persons, people with disabilities, children and people of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations. The impact on women workers has already been pronounced with 580,000 women estimated to have lost employment since February 1. Women and girls experience challenges to access sexual and reproductive health services due to the collapsed health system, with attacks on hospitals, financial barriers and movement restrictions further jeopardizing their health and well-being. Over 685,000 women are currently pregnant in Myanmar and it is estimated that nearly 250 preventable maternal deaths may occur in the next month alone if they are not able to access appropriate emergency obstetric care. Furthermore, the adolescence of over almost five million girls (10 to 19 years old) in Myanmar has been seriously disrupted by public-health, loss of school-year, and security-related restrictions and fears. LGBTIQ+ populations have flagged serious concerns about their mental health and wellbeing before the coup, and these concerns are now heightened. Moreover, with continued arbitrary arrests and detainment of women and girls and people of diverse gender identities and sexual orientations, serious protection concerns persist with continued reports of sexual harassment and of sexual violence perpetrated against activists and detainees. Conflict-related sexual violence remains a key risk given recent reports on top of evidence of widespread previous allegations. Non-governmental organizations, civil society organizations and women’s organizations/activists have been working very hard to respond to all these increasing safety, health and protection risks faced by women, girls, young people and people of diverse gender identities and sexual orientation. While the need to provide support to these population groups increases, the operational environment is becoming more and more challenging due to the ongoing conflict/insecurity as well as the COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to the banking crisis and the access restrictions. UNFPA and UN Women as co-chairs of the UN Gender Thematic Group in Myanmar stand in solidarity with the women and girls of Myanmar and urge all stakeholders in Myanmar and abroad to listen to their voices and uphold commitments to international human rights for all people. We reiterate the UN Secretary-General’s call to release all who have been arbitrarily detained and echo the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence to end all forms of violence against women and girls. We will continue to work with our partners to deliver life-saving social and health services to reach women and girls in Myanmar.....UNFPA နှင့် UN Women မှ ပူးတွဲ သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်ချက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်း ပိုမိုဆိုးရွားလာသော နိုင်ငံရေးနှင့် ကျန်းမာရေးဆိုင်ရာ အကျပ်အတည်းများက အမျိုးသမီးနှင့် မိန်းကလေးများအပေါ် သက်ရောက်မှုများ ရန်ကုန် - မြန်မာနိုင်ငံသည် စစ်တပ်မှ အာဏာသိမ်းပြီးနောက် ခြောက်လတာကာလအတွင်း နိုင်ငံရေးနှင့် ပြည်သူ့ကျန်းမာရေးဆိုင်ရာ အကျပ်အတည်းများကို ဆိုးရွားစွာ ရင်ဆိုင်နေရသည်။ ပဋိပက္ခဖြစ်ပွားမှုများ မြင့်တက်လာမှု နှင့်အတူ အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များ၏ ဘဝများသည် လွန်စွာစိုးရိမ်ရဖွယ်ရှိနေပြီး လူမှုစီးပွားဆိုင်ရာ အခြေအနေများ ယိုယွင်းပျက်စီးလာခြင်းကြောင့် ယခင်က လူသားချင်းစာနာထောက်ထားမှုဆိုင်ရာ အထောက်အပံ့ပေးမှု အောက်တွင် မပါဝင်ခဲ့သည့် လူပေါင်းသိန်းချီကာ လူသားချင်း စာနာထောက်ထားမှုအကူအညီများ လိုအပ်နေပါသည်။ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁)ရက်နေ့ ကတည်းက အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များသည် အရပ်ဘက်လူမှုအဖွဲ့အစည်း ခေါင်းဆောင်များ၊ ပြည်သူ့ဝန်ထမ်းများ၊ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများ၊ သတင်းသမားများ၊ အနုပညာရှင်များနှင့် လူထုကိုသြဇာလွှမ်းမိုးသူများအဖြစ် ရှေ့တန်းမှနေ၍ ၄င်းတို့၏ အခြေခံအခွင့်အရေးများကို ကျင့်သုံးကာ နိုင်ငံတော်၏ အနာဂတ်အတွက် မျှော်လင့်ချက်များကို ထုတ်ဖော်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ အာဏာမသိမ်းမီကပင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၏ ကျန်းမာရေး စောင့်ရှောက်မှုဆိုင်ရာ ပညာရှင်များ၏ ၇၅ ရာခိုင်နှုန်းဖြစ်သော အမျိုးသမီးများသည် COVID-19 တားဆီးကာကွယ်ရေး တုံ့ပြန်ဆောင်ရွက်မှုများတွင် ရှေ့တန်းမှ ပါဝင်ခဲ့ကြသည်။ ယခု COVID-19 ဖြစ်ပွားမှုများ တဟုန်ထိုး များပြားလာချိန်တွင် အမျိုးသမီးများစွာသည် ၄င်းတို့၏ လှုပ်ရှားဆောင်ရွက်မှုများကို ဆက်လက်ဆောင်ရွက်ပြီး ၄င်းတို့၏ လူမှုအသိုက်အဝန်းကို အလုပ်အကျွေးပြုနေကြသလို နေမကောင်းသည့်မိသားစုဝင်များကို ပြုစုစောင့်ရှောက်ရေး၊ ကလေးများ နေအိမ်အခြေပြု ပညာသင်ကြားရေး စသည့် အရေးပါသော တာဝန်များကိုလည်း ဆက်လက် တာ၀န်ယူ လုပ်ဆောင်နေကြသည်။ အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် ကလေးငယ်များသည် နှစ်ခုပြိုင် အကျပ်အတည်းရိုက်ခတ်မှုကို အဆိုးရွားဆုံး ခံစားရဖွယ်ရှိပြီး တကိုယ်ရည်တကာယ အမျိုးသမီးများ၊ ကိုယ်ဝန်ဆောင်မိခင်နှင့် နို့တိုက်မိခင်များ၊ လူနည်းစုဖြစ်သော တိုင်းရင်းသားလူမျိုးစု၊ ဘာသာရေးအုပ်စု၊ သက်ကြီးရွယ်အိုများနှင့် မသန်စွမ်းသူများ၊ ကလေးသူငယ်များနှင့် လိင်စိတ်ခံယူမှုကွဲပြားသူများ၊ လိင်စိတ်တိမ်းညွှတ်မှု ကွဲပြားသူများသည်လည်း ပိုမိုထိခိုက်ခံစားရမည် ဖြစ်သည်။ ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ ၁ ရက်နေ့နောက်ပိုင်း အမျိုးသမီးအလုပ်သမားများအပေါ် သက်ရောက်မှုအနေဖြင့် ခန့်မှန်းခြေ အမျိုးသမီးဦးရေ ၅၈၀,၀၀၀ ခန့် အလုပ်အကိုင်ဆုံးရှုံးကြရသည်။ ကျန်းမာရေးစနစ်ပြိုလဲခြင်း၊ ဆေးရုံများအား တိုက်ခိုက်ခံရခြင်း၊ ငွေကြေးဆိုင်ရာ အခက်အခဲများ ကြုံရခြင်းနှင့် လှုပ်ရှားသွားလာမှု ကန့်သတ်ချက်များကြောင့် အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များသည် လိင်မှုနှင့် မျိုးဆက်ပွား ကျန်းမာရေး ဝန်ဆောင်မှုများရရှိရန် စိန်ခေါ်မှုများစွာ ရင်ဆိုင်ကြရသည့် အပြင် တဆက်တည်းမှာပင် သူတို့၏ ကျန်းမာသုခကိုလည်း ထိခိုက်ပျက်စီးစေသည်။ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံတွင် လက်ရှိ ကိုယ်ဝန်ဆောင်နေသည့် အမျိုးသမီးအရေအတွက် ၆၈၅,၀၀၀ ကျော်ရှိသည်။ ထိုအမျိုးသမီးများသည် သင့်တင့်လျောက်ပတ်သော အရေးပေါ်သားဖွားပြုစုစောင့်ရှောက်မှု မရရှိပါက နောက်လတစ်လထဲ၌ပင် ကြိုတင် ကာကွယ်နိုင်သည့် မိခင်သေဆုံးမှု ၂၅၀ ခန့်ရှိမည် ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ခန့်မှန်းထားသည်။ ထိုမျှသာမက မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အသက် ၁၀နှစ်နှင့် ၁၉နှစ်ကြားရှိ ဆယ်ကျော်သက် မိန်းကလေးငယ်ပေါင်း ၅ သန်းနီးပါးမှာ ပြည်သူ့ကျန်းမာရေး ထိခိုက်မှု၊ စာသင်နှစ် ဆုံးရှုံးမှုနှင့် လုံခြုံရေးဆိုင်ရာ တားမြစ်ချက်များ၊ အကြောက်တရားများကို ဆိုးရွားစွာ ရင်ဆိုင်နေရသည်။ LGBTIQ+ များသည် ၄င်းတို့ ကြုံတွေ့နေရသည့် စိတ်ကျန်းမာရေးဆိုင်ရာ စိုးရိမ်မှုများကို စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုမတိုင်မီကပင် ထုတ်ဖော်ပြောကြားခဲ့ပြီး ယခုအချိန်တွင်လည်း ပိုမိုစိုးရိမ်ဖွယ် အခြေအနေ ဖြစ်လာသည်။ ထို့အပြင် အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များ၊ လိင်စိတ်ခံယူမှုနှင့် လိင်စိတ်တိမ်းညွှတ်မှုကွဲပြားသူများကို မတရားဖမ်းဆီးချုပ်နှောင်ခြင်း၊ ထိန်းသိမ်းခြင်းများအား ဆက်တိုက်လုပ်ဆောင်လာမှုနှင့်အတူ တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများနှင့် ဖမ်းဆီး ထိန်းသိမ်းခံ ထားရသူများ အား လိင်ပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ နှောင့်ယှက်ခြင်း၊ အကြမ်းဖက်ခြင်းများအကြောင်း ဆက်တိုက် သတင်းပေးပို့တင်ဆက်မှုများသည် အထူးအကာအကွယ်ပေးရေးကို လုပ်ဆောင်ရမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း အလေးပေးဖော်ပြနေပါသည်။ ယခင်စွပ်စွဲချက်များနှင့် ဆက်စပ်သည့် ထိပ်တန်းသက်သေခံ အထောက်အထားဆိုင်ရာ အစီရင်ခံစာများအရ ပဋိပက္ခဆိုင်ရာ လိင်အကြမ်းဖက်ခြင်း သည် အဓိက အန္တရာယ်တစ်ခုအဖြစ် တည်ရှိနေဆဲဖြစ်သည်။ အစိုးရမဟုတ်သောအဖွဲ့များ၊ အရပ်ဘက်လူမှုအဖွဲ့များ၊ အမျိုးသမီးအဖွဲ့များနှင့် တက်ကြွလှုပ်ရှားသူများသည် အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များ၊ လူငယ်လူရွယ်များ၊ လိင်စိတ်ခံယူမှုနှင့် လိင်စိတ်တိမ်းညွှတ်မှု ကွဲပြားသူများ ရင်ဆိုင်ကြုံတွေ့နေရသည့် လုံခြုံရေး၊ ကျန်းမာရေးနှင့် အကာအကွယ်ပေးရေးတို့တွင် ဘေးအန္တရာယ်ဖြစ်နိုင်မှု များပြားလာသည့်အခြေအနေကို တုံ့ပြန်နိုင်ရန် အထူးကြိုးစားဆောင်ရွက်လျက်ရှိသည်။ အဆိုပါအုပ်စုများအား အထောက်အပံ့ပေးရန်မှာ ပိုမိုလိုအပ်လာသလို လက်ရှိဖြစ်ပွားနေသော ပဋိပက္ခအခြေအနေသာမက COVID-19 ကပ်ရောဂါ၊ ဘဏ်လုပ်ငန်း အကျပ်အတည်းနှင့် အသွားအလာ ကန့်သတ်မှုများကြောင့် လုပ်ငန်းဆောင်ရွက်မှုအခြေအနေမှာလည်း တစ်စထက်တစ်စ စိန်ခေါ်မှုများ ပိုမိုများပြားလာပါသည်။ UN Gender Thematic Group တွင် ပူးတွဲသဘာပတိအဖြစ် တာဝန်ယူထားသော UNFPA နှင့် UN Women အဖွဲ့တို့သည် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များနှင့်အတူ တသားတည်း ရပ်တည်လျက်ရှိသည်။ ၄င်းတို့၏ အသံကို နားထောင်ကြရန်နှင့် လူသားအားလုံးနှင့် သက်ဆိုင်သော အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ကတိကဝတ်များကို လိုက်နာဖော်ဆောင်ရန် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်းနှင့် နိုင်ငံရပ်ခြားတွင်ရှိသော သက်ဆိုင်ရာ ဆက်စပ်ပတ်သက်သူများအားလုံးကို တိုက်တွန်းပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့အနေဖြင့် မတရားဖမ်းဆီးထိန်းသိမ်းထားသူများအားလုံးကို ပြန်လွှတ်ရန် ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထွေအထွေအတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ်၏ တောင်းဆိုမှုနှင့် အမျိုးသမီးနှင့် မိန်းကလေးများအပေါ် အကြမ်းဖက်မှုအားလုံးကို အဆုံးသတ်ရန် ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထွေထွေ အတွင်းရေးမှူးချုပ်၏ လိင်ပိုင်းအကြမ်းဖက်မှုဆိုင်ရာ အထူးကိုယ်စားလှယ်ထံမှ တောင်းဆိုမှုကို ထပ်လောင်း ဖော်ပြလိုပါသည်။ ကျွန်ုပ်တို့သည် မိတ်ဖက်အဖွဲ့များနှင့်အတူ အသက်ကယ်ဆယ်ရေး လူမှုဘ၀ဆိုင်ရာနှင့် ကျန်းမာရေးဆိုင်ရာဝန်ဆောင်မှုများကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံရှိ အမျိုးသမီးများနှင့် မိန်းကလေးငယ်များ ရရှိစေရန် ဆက်လက်ဆောင်ရွက်သွားပါမည်။..."
Source/publisher: UNFPA Myanmar and UN Women Asia and the Pacific via United Nations Myanmar
2021-08-01
Date of entry/update: 2021-08-01
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "As part of an ongoing monthly analysis WLB has released our June briefer on the situation of human rights amid the military coup in Burma, where 57 women have been killed & 1,060 women have been arrested. There must be justice & accountability!..."
Source/publisher: Women's League of Burma
2021-07-22
Date of entry/update: 2021-07-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Format : pdf
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Sub-title: Heavily pregnant women displaced by fighting risk their lives to give birth after being forced from their homes in escalating conflict.
Description: "On a stormy night in June, Rosemary lay in the darkness of her home in a deserted village in Myanmar’s Mindat township, gripped by labour contractions as Mai Nightingale, a 25-year-old midwife, tried to stifle her cries. “Only the two of us were left alone in the village. We closed all the doors and windows of the house and stayed quietly inside,” said Mai Nightingale. “When she felt pain, I put a blanket in her mouth because we feared that soldiers might hear her.” Like others interviewed for this article, Al Jazeera has used pseudonyms for Mai Nightingale and Rosemary for their safety. Rosemary’s contractions had begun the previous night, but with soldiers approaching her village in southern Chin State, she and the other villagers fled into the forest. But there was no proper shelter from the unrelenting rain, so Rosemary and Mai Nightingale decided to take the risk of encountering soldiers and return the next morning. “The situation didn’t favour delivering a baby,” said Mai Nightingale. “We saw Burmese soldiers walking towards our village but we couldn’t turn back because [Rosemary] was already exhausted.” Rosemary’s husband did not dare accompany her for fear that, if seen, soldiers would mistake him for a member of a local armed group. Since a February 1 military coup, civilian defence forces, armed largely with hunting rifles and homemade weapons, have sprung up across the country to fight against the regime, and Mindat has been a hotspot of resistance since May. In line with tactics the military has used for decades to quash an armed rebellion and terrorise the people, soldiers launched disproportionate attacks on Mindat including firing artillery, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns into residential areas while imposing martial law, causing the town to empty, according to local media reports. Young men are particularly likely to be targeted. Rosemary delivered her baby shortly after the sound of soldiers had faded, and Mai Nightingale cut and tied the umbilical cord with a razor blade and some thread which, lacking other means of sterilisation, she boiled in water. Although Rosemary and her baby are healthy and unharmed, the circumstances of the birth highlight the increasing risks which mothers and newborns face amid an escalating humanitarian crisis. Mai Nightingale and two other nurses interviewed by Al Jazeera, who are providing maternal and newborn healthcare to those displaced by armed conflict, say they are severely limited in their ability to safely deliver babies, and that physical insecurity further imperils pregnant women and newborns amid the continuing violence. “The main health risks for pregnant women and newborn babies are their lives. They can die during labour or after because they have to run whenever soldiers get closer to where they are hiding,” said a nurse in Loikaw township, Kayah State who goes by the nickname Smile. “There is not enough medical equipment or medicine … Babies cannot get vaccinations or adequate shelter.” Collapsing health system Some 230,000 people have been newly displaced since the coup, according to United Nations estimates. The military has not only attacked civilians but has also cut off food and water supplies to people affected by conflict, shelled displacement camps and churches of refuge, shot displaced people attempting to fetch rice from their villages, and burned food and medical relief supplies along with an ambulance. Meanwhile, Myanmar’s health system has all but collapsed, leaving few options even for those women prepared to risk returning to their town or village to give birth or seek vaccinations or treatment for their babies. Ongoing medical worker strikes amid a broader Civil Disobedience Movement have left government hospitals threadbare, while some health facilities have shut down altogether. The military has also repeatedly attacked healthcare professionals and facilities and occupied hospitals. "My mother placed her hand on my cousin and prayed. By the grace of God, she successfully gave birth." - SMILE, MYANMAR NURSE Alessandra Dentice, Myanmar representative ad interim with the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), told Al Jazeera that the vast majority of pregnant women displaced since the coup lack access to emergency obstetric care, while routine immunisations for children have “come to an almost complete halt”. “Without urgent action, we estimate that annually 600,000 newborns will miss out on essential newborn care, creating serious risks for their survival and long-term wellbeing across the country,” she said, adding that about 950,000 children are also missing out on critical vaccination services. In Mindat, Mai Nightingale has so far assisted three displaced women to deliver. Two of them, she said, had to keep moving in search of safe shelter in the days leading up to giving birth, causing them physical pain and possibly inducing their labour. Mai Nightingale knows that providing medical services to pregnant women and newborns while lacking facilities or hygienic equipment is exceedingly dangerous for the women and their babies, and that security forces could also target her, but says she feels it is the only option. “Even though soldiers could arrest both the patients and me, I will continue helping people who need medical assistance,” she told Al Jazeera. “There is no one else who can help them.” Pregnant women in Kayah State, where an estimated 100,000 people have been displaced since early June, also face a perilous situation. On June 8, the UN special rapporteur for Myanmar warned of “mass deaths from starvation, disease and exposure” in Kayah due to military attacks and the blockage of food, water and medicine to those who fled to the forest. Smile, a 24-year-old nurse, escaped her village in Loikaw township on June 11 with her cousin, who was in the throes of labour contractions while she fled. “Artillery fell near the rock where we were hiding. That day was [my cousin’s] due date but she couldn’t deliver … we had to escape to safety,” said Smile. “She had to carry heavy things while we were running.” Recalling advice from her mother, also a nurse, Smile had grabbed a delivery kit with rubber gloves, forceps and scissors as she fled the village. “My mother told me that medical workers cannot stop even if the world is in chaos,” she said. She and her mother rubbed down the equipment with spirits while her cousin’s husband built a bamboo and tarpaulin tent, under which they delivered her cousin’s baby. “My mother placed her hand on my cousin and prayed. By the grace of God, she successfully gave birth without [heavy] bleeding,” said Smile. But tragedy has befallen some displaced mothers. Little time to grieve In Loikaw township, Khu Meh delivered twins at a local clinic on April 8. One was born dead; Khu Meh fled home with the other, a girl, in mid-May. “We travelled very far and moved from place to place, sometimes sleeping in the bushes,” she said. About three weeks later, the second twin died in the jungle while drinking milk at Khu Meh’s breast. Some 40km (25 miles) north, in Shan State’s Pekon township, Mary fled her home in the last week of May, when she was more than seven months pregnant. “The military was firing every night … we were very scared to sleep at home,” she said. She sheltered in a church, but after it was shelled on June 6, she fled again, to a cornfield where she delivered her fifth child, a baby boy, under a bamboo and tarpaulin shelter with the help of a local midwife. The next week brought endless rain, and Mary’s baby died suddenly. There was little time to grieve. Mary and her remaining children had to flee again a week later due to approaching soldiers. Although Myanmar saw a fall in maternal mortality rates and under-five mortality between 2000 and 2017, according to UNICEF, it remained one of the riskiest places for new mothers and infants in Southeast Asia even before the coup. Maternal mortality was 250 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2017, while under-five mortality was 48 children per 100,000 live births. Al Jazeera was unable to locate data on maternal and infant mortality among displaced populations in Myanmar since the coup. Naw Winnie, a nurse from Demoso township, Kayah State who was herself displaced by fighting, is now volunteering with a local aid group in the mountainous area where she fled. She told Al Jazeera that illness among young children is common. She has treated dozens of skin infections and cases of diarrhoea, and fears that health problems will only increase because of poor hygiene caused by factors including the scarcity of clean water and the lack of toilets. The rainy season started in June, making sanitation more difficult and increasing the risk of catching a cold, flu, or mosquito-borne illnesses. Naw Winnie is also looking after more than 10 pregnant women. She had initially planned to send them to a temporary clinic near the foothills of the mountain, but the clinic’s volunteers and patients were forced to evacuate amid heavy fighting on June 16. Now she is not sure what she will do. One of the women, now more than five months pregnant, previously gave birth by Caesarean section, and Naw Winnie is concerned the woman could haemorrhage if she delivers vaginally, but it is simply too risky to perform a Caesarean section in the jungle. “We don’t have access to safe and hygienic facilities or equipment to deliver babies,” she said. “If I assist in delivering a baby without hygienic facilities, it will put both mothers and babies in danger.”..."
Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera" (Qatar)
2021-07-21
Date of entry/update: 2021-07-21
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Topic: Women's Rights
Sub-title: Few Toilets, No Menstrual Hygiene Supplies
Topic: Women's Rights
Description: "When “Mi Mi” (a pseudonym) prepared for anti-coup demonstrations in Yangon in late February, she carefully chose to wear a pair of jeans and sneakers so she could run from the abusive security forces. The last thing on her mind was to carry menstrual pads in case she was detained. Myanmar’s police and military had begun to intensify crackdowns on protesters opposing the military’s February 1 power grab. As the security forces threw teargas onto the street and shot rubber bullets, she became disoriented, then trapped. Seven male police officers beat and kicked her when she fell on the ground. “Once I was down, one of them kept me down while the others kicked me with their boots,” Mi Mi said. “Then they hauled me over to a police truck…One of them held my head back and another guy punched me very hard in the face.” Mi Mi, 23, said the stress of the physical attack and arrest brought her menstrual period on early. Authorities eventually took her to Insein prison, the main detention facility, where she was held with more than 500 other women in facilities normally used for men. The women there had access to only two toilets with no water and no doors. Female prison guards repeatedly denied Mi Mi’s requests for sanitary pads until she bled heavily through her jeans. Finally, after 48 hours, they eventually gave her just one pad. Mi Mi said the experience was humiliating and left her with trauma causing nightmares even after her release. She said the stigma in Myanmar about menstruation and degrading treatment of women made it difficult for her to speak more openly. Female detainees have reported the “dehumanizing” experience of Myanmar prisons, explaining that they suffered during menstruation because prisons do not provide sanitary napkins. Since the coup, women have also reported sexual violence and other forms of gendered harassment and humiliation from police and military officials. The lack of adequate toilets with running water and privacy, and insufficient menstrual hygiene supplies can constitute degrading treatment in violation of international human rights law. The Myanmar authorities should respect the right of women and girls to manage menstruation with dignity..."
Source/publisher: Human Rights Watch (USA)
2021-06-08
Date of entry/update: 2021-06-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: It is women—teachers, factory workers, nurses, lawyers—who are again guiding people out of the darkness of military rule, Esther Wah writes
Description: "Women across Myanmar have long taken leading roles protecting their villages, land, and forests. We continue to be marginalised, perceived as weak or incapable, but it is women who for generations have courageously led communities through periods of adversity. The military coup on February 1 crushed the hopes and futures of people throughout the country, and we began a descent back into the nightmare of complete army control. It is hard to find the words to describe the pain we continue to suffer under the military’s domination. But yet again we see women—teachers, garment factory workers, nurses, lawyers—leading the grassroots movement against the junta, standing at the forefront of demonstrations, organising communities, providing support and care for villages and neighbourhoods. It is women who are again guiding people out of the darkness. We have no choice. We know that authoritarian military patriarchal rule has grave implications for women throughout the country; the tyranny that the military imposes upon women’s bodies is unbearable. Rape and sexual assault have long been weaponised by Myanmar’s armed forces against populations in every ethnic state in the country. We have seen this pattern repeated since the coup, now in towns and cities where no one is safe travelling, sleeping or passing through checkpoints. Every act of daily life poses new dangers. This is why we must stand up, we must fight, and we must win. In their April briefing paper, the Women’s League of Burma reported that more than 800 women had been detained and more than 40 killed since the coup. From those who have been detained there have been reports of torture and grievous sexual violence by the regime’s troops. Airstrikes and artillery shellings in Kachin, Karen and Kayah states have collectively displaced well over 100,000 people. Among them are pregnant women, children, and the elderly, languishing in squalid camps, hiding the jungle like animals, or, in the case of Karen State, stuck on the banks of the Salween River, unable to cross the border to Thailand. “There is no more peace and security for women,” one human rights defender from Kachin State told me recently. She noted that the discrimination and gender-based violence of the past had worsened in the years prior to the coup, and that shootings and sexual assault perpetrated against women were common due to the civil war and Myanmar military occupation of Kachin lands. Since the coup, this “culture of male violence,” as she described it, has intensified. “It hurts a lot, and it is completely unacceptable. There is no rule of law, no protection—the law has been abolished by the military. The situation is hopeless,” she said. Even as the any guarantee for our safety deteriorates, women continue to be at the forefront of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which aims to unseat the junta. Its main tool of resistance is a general strike, where people from across all sectors have refused to return to work until democracy is restored. Much of the CDM campaign has been led by women-dominated industries, as workers sacrifice their wages and their physical safety for the future of the country. Participation in the CDM comes with the risk of arrest, torture and murder by the junta. It started early: in mid-February, two female teachers who had joined the CDM were beaten and arrested in the Kachin State capital of Myitkyina. Even after the military forced schools to open on June 1, more than half of the country’s 400,000 teachers have refused to work while the junta is in power. Most of those on strike are believed to be women. Teachers in the CDM have been temporarily or permanently suspended from their jobs, and more than 100 are facing criminal charges by the regime. Many no longer dare to live in cities and towns and have fled to rural areas, with some even hiding in the jungle. One ethnic Karen teacher on strike in Tanintharyi told me she was not going back to work because she does not want to “live as a slave under the military dictatorship.” “I do not want to be involved in any administrative machinery that will prolong the new military dictatorship. I do not want to pass on this slave education system to the new generation,” she explained as to why she continues her strike. She is one of many women throughout the civil service who is sacrificing her own safety and livelihood for the benefit of future generations. Women have also been integral in leading protests against the military, using the power of their own womanhood to destroy the army’s control. The htamein campaign—in which women’s sarongs were used as flags or strung up above roads in urban areas—showed how women’s clothing instilled fear among soldiers, who feared they would lose their masculine power if they passed underneath the clothes. Images of Kachin nun Sister Rose Nu Tawng have been seen around the world, a symbol of compassion and courage. In the midst of a protest crackdown in Myitkyina in March, she was photographed on her knees with her arms outstretched, begging members of the junta’s armed forces to “shoot and kill [her]” instead of children. While the police paused the violence momentarily, they continued shooting at demonstrators only moments after the iconic photos were taken. In ethnic areas, women have long taken leadership positions through periods of war and hardship. In Karen State, for example, there are many villages where it is women who serve as village heads. Because of the civil war and ongoing military oppression, men have been worried that they would face torture or murder if they took on the role of village head, leaving women to do the job instead. Women throughout the region have had to protect their communities from violent attacks and negotiate with the military when they came to their villages. Being on the frontlines is not new for us. These leadership positions continued through periods of temporary ceasefire, as women in ethnic areas addressed ongoing persecution and led efforts to recover lands and forests that were confiscated by the military. Women-led organisations across the ethnic states have also played central roles in civil society movements, creating new platforms and spaces for women throughout the country to be heard. Despite the prominent roles of women within emergent civic spaces, there had been little space for women to participate in official roles within government or the peace process prior to the coup. In the newly formed anti-coup National Unity Government, women make up around one-third of cabinet positions, a presence we have not seen in previous national administrations. While Myanmar is a deeply conflicted society divided by ethnicity, gender, class, and generational differences, we see that the military’s power grab has united us: today we stand together against patriarchal and racist military control. Ethnic groups from the Karen to the Kachin to the Rohingya to the Burmese, from older generations to Gen Z, from women to men, from factory workers to doctors—we all stand against military oppression. This revolution is for all of us, and in a new Myanmar, women, ethnic minorities, youth and the working class will take a leading role in shaping it. There is no going back, only forwards. This revolution is ours, and we will defeat our common enemy. Esther Wah is an indigenous Karen woman. She works with ethnic communities across Myanmar on their right to protect the land and forests..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Myanmar Now" (Myanmar)
2021-06-07
Date of entry/update: 2021-06-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "The world will have noted that women have been on the front lines of the revolution in Myanmar, with activists, elected officials, and journalists such as Ei Thinzar Maung, Thinzar Shunlei Yi, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, Daw Myo Aye, Naw K’nyaw Paw, and Tin Htet Paing playing significant roles. Many have assumed that this is a newfound feminist ferocity, but from ancient Queen Pwa Saw, to the first woman surgeon Daw Saw Sa, who qualified in 1911, Myanmar women have always been as strong as, if not stronger than, our men. The sad truth is our cause was set back by over 60 years of brutal and misogynistic oppression by the Burmese military. I spent last Tuesday reviewing evidence from a Myanmar women’s group for submission to the U.K. Foreign Affairs Committee’s inquiry into the Myanmar crisis. Just reading about the atrocities committed by military forces meant I slept badly that night. Nearly 50 women have been killed in the protests so far, and around 800 women have been arrested. Sixty percent of the people involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement, a peaceful protest designed to shut down the country, are women, and they continue to face sexual violence, harassment, abuse, and threats from the junta. Many, including beloved film stars such as Paing Phyo Thu and May Toe Khine, have been charged under Section 505A of Myanmar Penal Code—a disproportionately punitive piece of legislation, and a hangover from colonial times that basically criminalizes freedom of speech. In prison, military forces have subjected women detainees to more violence, humiliation, and even torture. A huge part of this is a horrific reflection of the misogyny—cloaked in patriarchy—that the military holds dear, having beaten it into the hearts and minds of the people of Myanmar. The military declares itself the father of the nation, but one that deems its female children as lesser human beings. Before Myanmar, then called Burma, first fell to military dictatorship in 1962, its women enjoyed an unusual measure of freedom and power. In 1919, the first women’s association Konmari Athin, was formed; in 1932, Daw Hnin Mya was elected as the country’s first woman councillor; and in 1952, Claribel Ba Maung Chain became the first woman government minister. Burmese women kept their maiden names and property, they handled financial affairs, and voting rights were granted to them in 1922, only 4 years after women in the U.K. got the vote. Melford Spiro, the famous anthropologist, wrote: “Burmese women are not only among the freest in Asia, but until the relatively recent emancipation of women in the West, they enjoyed much greater freedom and equality with men than did Western women.” Many successful businesses were owned by women, including the Naga Cigar Company founded by my great-aunt Naga Daw Oo and the Burmese Paper Mart, founded by my grandmother Daw Tin Tin, who was also a senior member of Upper Burma’s Chamber of Commerce. Another great-aunt was the famous dissident and writer Ludu Daw Amar, who founded the newspaper Ludu Daily. Shortly after the coup in 1962, all of their businesses, along with those of countless other women, were either shut down or requisitioned by the Myanmar military who were adamant that women should no longer have such power and influence. The women’s liberation movement in the country was far from perfect. Even some of our most progressive women, such as author Daw MiMi Khaing, still saw men as spiritually superior, thanks to outdated religious views. But the movement was on the right track until it was derailed by the dictatorship. It then entered what writer Kyaw Zwa Moe referred to as a “feminine ‘dark age’”—an era in which the military and its hardline clerical supporters reinforced dogma for their own regressive agenda. For example, every Burmese man is deemed to have hpone or glory. An ancient fable relates that men will lose their hpone if they walk under or come into contact with women’s sarongs (known as htamein) or undergarments; according to the military, this was because women are inferior or unclean. This is, however, a subversion of the original superstition which was that women are sexual temptresses; when I had my first period, I was told that I could no longer climb pagodas in case I toppled them with the might of my vagina, and that only men could ever be innocent enough to ascend to the highest plane of nirvana. This concept was just as sexist, but it at least recognized that women were powerful rather than pathetic. Shortly after the February coup, Myanmar women gladly took advantage of these attitudes to use htamein as barricades against the military. Even the junta knew that it was being ridiculous: If you need any further evidence that the Myanmar military does not really believe that htamein are unclean, its members have been known to wear them at special events because their astrologers once told them that only a woman would rule Myanmar. The idea of a woman being in charge was so loathsome to the military that when it came to pass, in the person of Aung San Suu Kyi, the generals banned people from saying her name or displaying her picture. During decades of its rule, the military not only sidelined women in terms of financial, cultural, and political power, even worse, they also brutalized them in war—especially women from minority groups like the Rakhine, Shan, Rohingya and Kachin—using campaigns of rape and other forms of violence and terror. It should come as no surprise that women fight alongside men in the ethnic armed organizations, whereas the Myanmar military has no women in its combatant ranks. But the flames of female resistance never really died down in Myanmar, despite the military’s worst efforts. In 2007, there were notable women activists in Myanmar’s Saffron Revolution, including Nilar Thein, Phyu Phyu Thin, Mie Mie, Su Su Nway and Naw Ohn Hla. At the time, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners estimated that since the 1988 Uprising, which also saw many women take a prominent role, more than 500 Myanmar women had served prison terms because of their political activism. In 2015, Phyoe Phyoe Aung, general secretary of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, was one of the student leaders whose protest against the National Education Bill was violently suppressed by military police in Letpadan. This time around, women activists such as Thinzar Shunlei Yi and Ester Ze Naw are again at the forefront, women lawyers such as Zar Li have been working day and night to ensure the release of detainees, and women journalists such as Naw Betty Han and Nyein Lay are risking arrest and injury to report on developments in Myanmar. Even the first death of a protester was that of a 19-year-old female, named Mya Thwe Thwe Khine. Since Feb. 1, hundreds of thousands of other women have exchanged their work tools for daily protest marches. Medical workers, teachers, and garment workers are on strike and are all from sectors dominated by women. Tin Tin Wei and Moe Sandar Myint are, respectively, an organizer and the chairwoman of Myanmar’s Federation of Garment Workers, and have spoken out against the coup so vociferously that the latter has gone into hiding for her own safety. The most promising sign of a much-needed return to gender equality in Myanmar is that the National Unity Government, made up of ousted lawmakers in hiding, has appointed several women ministers, including human rights advocate and former political prisoner Zin Mar Aung as minister for foreign affairs and Ei Thinzar Maung as deputy minister of women, youth and children’s affairs—the latter appointment being groundbreaking in more ways than one, as she is the youngest minister ever at the age of 26. After decades of misogynistic and violent oppression by Myanmar’s military and its cronies, it finally looks like the women of Myanmar might be taking back everything that we lost and more. The Women’s League of Burma is an umbrella organization of 13 women’s groups, such as the Shan Women’s Action Network, who are working together to enhance the role of women of all backgrounds and ethnicities at a national and international level. A global, growing feminist movement called #Sisters2Sisters has even been set up, through which more than 80 civil society organizations are demanding an end to the violence against women in Myanmar and the immediate release of women human rights defenders..."
Source/publisher: Time Magazine (New York)
2021-05-31
Date of entry/update: 2021-06-02
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Since the Burmese military staged a coup d’état on February 1, 2021, people from all different sectors, ages, and backgrounds have actively participated in anti-coup demonstrations in various ways. In response, the military and security forces have brutally cracked down on peaceful protesters, who have suffered arrests and other inhumane abuses. Despite the oppression and brutal crackdowns, people have not stopped taking to the streets and making their voices heard. Defying the risks, women have stood on the frontlines holding bulletproof shields. Some have been arrested, brutally harassed, and even killed. Their memory and stories must not be forgotten, and must serve as lessons for the next generation. For this reason, Honest Information (HI), a women’s media platform, is creating this record of women’s participation in the 2021 Spring Revolution, for the period of February 1 to March 31, 2021. Our hope is for this to become a memorial document for the women’s movement after the revolution is over.....Women Lead the Demonstrations: On February 6, six days after the coup, large crowds of people staged a mass protest against the military dictatorship in downtown Yangon. The country was awoken to the loud slogan, “End the military coup!” Women have dominated the protests in all sectors, which has made the movement even more powerful. The first labour strikes began with thousands of workers from Hlaing Thar Yar industrial zone in Yangon, most of whom were women. On the same day, the young political activist Ma Ei Thinzar Maung, led a strike starting in Hladen, Yangon.....Creative Demonstrations: Anti-coup demonstrations accelerated throughout February, and people all across the country took part in creative demonstrations against the junta. Women organized and participated in some of the most significant demonstrations, including the hundreds of thousands of protestors representing the union of education and health workers who have taken part in the revolution. Housewives and elderly women have participated by banging pots and pans every night to protest the coup since February 2. On February 10, over one hundred young women marched in the streets wearing colourful ball gowns and wedding dresses; and on February 11, mothers groups marched in Yangon, carrying their babies. After the military released over 23,000 prisoners on February 12, including those convicted of violent crimes, some houses in wards and quarters of Yangon were victim to arson. Local people organized self-security watches of their neighborhoods, and took turns patrolling at nighttime. Women also participated in these security efforts and also acted as watch persons. On February 20, women gathered and performed a symbolic ritual of taking out the roots from bean sprouts. This symbolizes the Burmese people wanting to remove the roots from the military dictatorship. On February 25, protestors all across the country took part in the Thanakha Strike, also known as “The Battle of Thanakha”. Thanakha is a traditional cosmetic face paste, made from ground barks of the Thanakha tree. Women made fresh Thanakha, and used it to paint different messages and shapes on the faces of protestors to send a message of anti-coup resistance. On February 28, an historic demonstration was organized by a women’s group in Kayah, where more than 100,000 women marched against the military dictatorship carrying bras and sanitary pads. They sent the message that women’s lives under the military are not safe, and even sanitary pads are better at protecting women than the military is. On March 15, teachers gathered at Bagan Pagoda to pray and swear (religious belief, saying true words to fulfill desire) for those who have fallen to the military dictatorship. Housewives also took to the streets on March 22 and 25 in South Dagon and Mrauk-U Township, Rakhine, using kitchen materials and vegetables to protest against the military coup..."
Source/publisher: Honest Information
2021-05-06
Date of entry/update: 2021-05-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "A few weeks ago, a strange sight began appearing in the streets of Myanmar (Burma). Women have been hanging their traditional htamein – the pieces of cloth they wear as skirts – from ropes tied to windows or utility poles, suspending them above the streets like decoration for a parade. Some attach them to sticks and carry them as flags. These women are not simply putting out the laundry; they are protesting the coup d’état staged by the Burmese military on 1 February. “Men think they have special powers just for being men,” Khin Ohmar, a women’s rights activist in Myanmar, tells Equal Times. “And they believe that walking underneath a piece of women’s clothing will make them lose their special powers.” The htamein are thus used as shields to protect the protest areas and prevent the military from entering. From the very beginning, women have been at the forefront of protests against the coup that deposed Myanmar’s civilian government led by the iconic Aung San Suu Kyi. According to data provided to Radio Free Asia by the local organisation Gender Equality Network, women make up some 60 per cent of the protesters who have taken to the streets and between 70 and 80 per cent of the movement’s leaders. Many are nurses, teachers and textile factory workers, who already found themselves in a vulnerable situation due to Covid-19. Many of the women who have taken to the streets have given their lives to protect Myanmar’s fragile democracy, says Wah Khu Shee. The first was 20-year-old Mya Thwe Thwe Khine, who became a symbol for the movement after her death on 19 February. Then came Ma Kyal Sin, a 19-year-old killed in early March at a protest in Mandalay, in the north of the country, who became another symbol, along with the phrase written on her t-shirt that day: “Everything will be OK.” The military announced its takeover in early February after months of refusing to accept the results of the November 2020 elections, in which Suu Kyi’s party was victorious. Since then, at least 750 people have been killed by security forces and more than 3,696 have been arrested, charged or convicted, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.....Signs of a failed democracy: Last February’s coup d’état is nothing new for the people of Myanmar. The Burmese military first seized power in 1962 and would tightly control the country for nearly five decades. In 1990, after changing the country’s official name to Myanmar in an attempt to gain greater international recognition, the military government allowed for elections to be held. But when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) opposition party emerged victorious, the junta annulled the election results and increased repression. When the military government once again announced a path towards ‘disciplined democracy’ in 2003, the process was seen as another attempt at improving public relations. A new constitution, which reserved significant power for the military, was adopted in 2008 and in 2010 the first elections took place. The NLD refused to participate in those elections in protest of an electoral framework that prevented Suu Kyi from running. However, new elections in 2015 led to a handover of power to a civilian government controlled by Suu Kyi, a decisive step for many towards democratic transition. But according to Gabrielle Bardall, Research Fellow at the Centre for International Policy Studies, University of Ottawa, and Elin Bjarnegård, Associate Professor in Political Science at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, the absence of women throughout this process has been conspicuous. The new constitution, for example, reserves 25 per cent of seats in parliament and several ministerial posts for the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s armed forces, which only recently opened up to women. Not even Suu Kyi’s presence in key positions of power – though the constitution prohibited her from becoming the country’s president because she was married to a foreigner and had children of another nationality – was not enough to change the country’s political dynamics. “The example of one woman [in power] is not enough. We need women who understand women’s issues and stand up for women’s rights,” says Wah Khu Shee. Suu Kyi, whose whereabouts are currently unknown, has been criticised for not making gender equality one of her priorities. According to Bjarnegård, there has also been little change within the political parties. “I haven’t seen too many big changes or signs that reform has been an important priority for the parties,” she says. As she explains, one of the main problems has been finding women who want to go into politics. “All the women we interviewed needed the full support of their families and husbands to enter politics professionally,” she continues, pointing to the country’s “patriarchal culture” as one of the main impediments. In the November 2020 elections, women won only 15 per cent of seats.....Shifting gender roles: Khin Ohmar still remembers how difficult it was to be a woman in her early years of activism. In 1988, the country rose up against the military junta after a student was killed by the police. Ohmar, also a student at the time, refused to stay home. “I had a very difficult situation with my family because they tried to stop me from taking to the streets,” she says. Ohmar went on to become vice-president of one of the student unions that formed in those years, at a time when women were often relegated to administrative and financial positions. “Some doors opened for women to occupy certain leadership positions, but it was still very patriarchal,” she continues. While in exile over the following decades, Khin Ohmar remained involved in the pro-democracy movement but felt that many still refused to take the issue of gender equality seriously. “They thought we only wanted to talk about women’s issues. But we wanted to talk about politics, about the federal system,” she explains. “That’s why our country is stuck. The roots of this patriarchy run too deep.” But Ohmar has seen a change in gender roles over the course of the current protests. “In 1988, the leaders were men. This time, they’re women. It’s exciting,” she says. According to the 2019 report Feminism in Myanmar, political reforms after 2010 “opened space for the coordination of efforts by women’s organisations inside and outside the country,” in an activism that has “engaged not only with fulfilling the basic needs of communities but also with the policy reform process.” The report further argues that women have improved their capacity for social mobilisation and networking during the years of democratic transition. Bjarnegård has also observed a change in dynamics. “The current protests have shown us that something is changing. We see young people, both men and women. It’s another generation that is in some ways more liberal, that has had access to Facebook and that has been influenced by other countries,” she says. She cites the example of the peace process between the government and some of the principal ethnic guerrillas (2011-2015), in which only four women were present in the delegations sent to negotiations (less than 6 per cent of the total number of representatives, according to Bardall and Bjarnegård’s data). However, she holds onto a small glimmer of hope: “I hope that, this time, we can see [the impact of] the improvements that women have experienced in decision-making [during the democratic period].” She hopes that these changes will prevent women from once again being “relegated to the kitchen” when peace returns. “There have been improvements but it’s still very difficult…we have to wait and see..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Equal Times"
2021-05-07
Date of entry/update: 2021-05-07
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Description: "Ministry Investigates Sexual Violence in Detention: 1. We strongly condemn the serious allegations of sexual and gender-based violence against women and girls in unlawful detention committed by the military-led State Administrative Council and its security forces. We have received many disturbing reports of women being tortured, verbally and sexually assaulted, severely beaten causing serious injuries, including a case of a woman being raped during an interrogation by the security forces. Some detained women have also reportedly been humiliated in public, forced to dance in the streets to entertain the security forces, while others have been groped and manhandled during arrests. One woman miscarried while in detention as a result of mistreatment.....2. These cases are indicative of the wider pattern of sexual and gender-based violence committed by Myanmar’s military that has persisted for years with impunity, particularly against ethnic minority women and girls in armed conflict areas. In 2019, the United Nations Independent International Fact-Finding Mission (IIFFMM) found that the military committed "widespread and systematic" gender-based violence against ethnic communities, employing tactics such as rape, gang rape, sexual slavery and other forced sexual acts against women, girls, boys, men and transgender people. According to the IIFFMM, such violations could amount to crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. The military’s use of rape as a weapon of war to terrorize ethnic communities has been widespread and systematic, particularly in ethnic conflict-affected areas, and has been widely documented by the local ethnic women organizations and the international community.....3. We are deeply troubled that the State Administrative Council appears to have set aside the Joint Communique that was signed by the Government of Myanmar and the United Nations in 2018. This agreement was adopted under the framework of United Nations Security Council resolution 2106 (2013) and requires Myanmar’s military to implement specific time-bound commitments that include the issuance of clear orders through chains of command prohibiting sexual violence and accountability for breaching these orders, as well as timely investigation of alleged abuses.....4. We appeal to the international community to immediately investigate the allegations of widespread sexual and gender-based violence being committed by the military junta so that all perpetrators, regardless of seniority or rank, can be held accountable for their actions. Furthermore, we believe that immediate action is needed to end the ongoing intensification of nationwide attacks against civilians by the military, that includes widespread allegations sexual and gender-based violence. We therefore urge the UN Secretary-General to use his good offices to deter further grave violations from taking place. This could include an official visit to Myanmar by the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Myanmar, with the goal of stopping the military terror and violence and securing the safety of the people of Myanmar.....5. We are committed to a zero-tolerance policy for crimes of sexual and gender-based violence, in line with Myanmar’s obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, including UN Security Council resolution 1325 and related resolutions, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We call on the UN, including the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary- General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, the Special Rapporteur on human rights situation in Myanmar, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, ASEAN Commission on the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Women and Children, and the international community to work with our Ministry to protect the rights of women, youth and children and stop and prevent further violence. We all have a responsibility to hold the perpetrators of such heinous crimes to account and to address the needs of survivors through a survivor-centered approach, including provision of necessary services such as medical care and psychological support. The ministry will continue investigate these allegations and document the incidents in order to bring justice for all victims. Our Ministry stands with the victims and survivors of sexual and genderbased violence and commits to ending violence against women, youth and children and to ensure justice and accountability....Ministry of Women, Youth and Children's Affairs National Unity Government..."
Source/publisher: National Unity Government of Myanmar
2021-04-29
Date of entry/update: 2021-04-29
Grouping: Individual Documents
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Sub-title: Some 60 percent of protesters against the military coup are women who fear their hard-won rights hang in the balance.
Description: "Every day at sunrise, Daisy* and her sisters set out to spend several hours in the heat cleaning debris from the previous day’s protests off the streets of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. Protests have erupted around the country since the military seized control of the government after arresting democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, on February 1, and declared a year-long state of emergency. According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a non-profit rights organisation formed by former political prisoners from Myanmar and based in Thailand, 715 civilian protesters have been killed and more than 3,000 people have been charged, arrested or sentenced to prison for taking part in protests. March 27 marked the deadliest day of the anti-coup protests so far, with more than 100 deaths in a single day. Daisy, a 29-year-old elementary school teacher, has been out of work since the first week of February, because schools have been closed as a result of the protests, but is the sole earner and carer for her two younger sisters, aged 15 and 13. Despite this, she spends a portion of whatever money she has left to help feed hungry protesters. The military makes use of dalans – local people who are forced to spy on their neighbours and, in particular, to target women living alone whose homes are easy targets for looting and harassment. As a result, Daisy and her sisters have been forced to move home three times and are now in hiding with relatives. “The military are preying on vulnerable women, breaking in and raiding where we live to seize our belongings and lock us up for no reason,” Daisy says. But despite having little financial security, Daisy continues to help with the protests. “As women, we are the most at risk under the military but however large or small, our place is in the revolution.”.....Outrageous displays of ‘profanity’: Across Myanmar, women protesters have lined the streets with vibrant traditional women’s clothing and undergarments in the hope of challenging a long-held taboo around women’s clothing. “Htaimein – Burmese for sarongs and intimate women’s wear – are perceived as ‘unclean’ in traditional Buddhist belief and thus considered inferior in Burmese society,” explains 25-year-old Su, an activist and university student who does not wish to give her full name for fear of reprisals. Su is originally from Dadaye, a town in the Ayeyarwady region of southwest Myanmar. “Coming into contact or walking under these is believed to bring bad luck, reducing one’s hpone – masculine superiority – in Buddhist belief.” She says hanging up sarongs has been an effective deterrent to keep the military from attacking the protesters as their staunch beliefs will not allow them go anywhere near the orchestrated clothing lines. Women are also using their sarongs to create flags and hats for men to parade alongside banners that read “our victory, our htaimein” to celebrate wielding a degrading superstition about women as a successful defence strategy. In a similar vein, women have been hanging sanitary towels drenched in red paint to emulate blood over photos of the military general, Min Aung Llaing. “For a society where men, including Min Llaing, detest the idea of menstruation, smearing his face with what he finds the dirtiest is unimaginably humiliating,” Su explains. “Sarongs and sanitary napkins are symbolic of the women in Myanmar and how they are regarded as inferior to men in society.” By weaponising these displays of “profanity”, women say they are reclaiming their status against the same patriarchal attitudes that perceive them as lesser in society.....Civil disobedience as a means of resistance: The Women’s League of Burma, an organisation which seeks to increase women’s participation in public life in Myanmar (which was formerly called Burma), estimates that 60 percent of those protesting are women, while the AAPP says women make up almost 40 percent of those arrested. The Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) has brought the country’s public services, including healthcare, schools and banks, to a halt. It is also behind efforts to deprive the military of its income by boycotting military-owned services and products such as tobacco, alcohol, coffee and oil, and refusing to pay government taxes. Chit*, a 26-year-old doctor-in-training from Yangon, has been part of a group of female medical volunteers tending to the wounded during the protests. She believes providing medical care to protesters is a duty for all doctors. She says she has heard of one female doctor who was shot by the military while trying to aid a patient. “As women, we are expected to stay in ‘safe’ areas of the protests but we know our place is wherever help is needed.” Female lawyers and bankers have formed an informal group to offer legal and financial advice to civilians, especially those trying to flee the country. “We want to offer our services to those in general need of legal routes or financial advice. We know the public have been put in a compromising position given a pandemic then a coup so free verbal consultations, advice, and going through documents with them is an extension of our efforts against the military,” explains Min Thwaw, a private lawyer practising in the capital, Naypyidaw. “Many white-collar workers have lost their jobs and those females workers continue to be threatened by authority figures but the military need us [the workers] more than we need them. Without us, the banking system will collapse soon and economic crisis will remain irreversible – a price we are willing to pay to cripple the military,” she adds. Economic uncertainty caused by the military takeover is likely to have a negative effect on the country’s $6bn garment and footwear industry. As a result, thousands of garment workers, predominantly young women, have taken part in demonstrations, urging the multinational companies they work for to denounce the coup and protect workers from being fired or even killed for protesting. While some Western brands have remained silent over the military takeover in Myanmar, The Benetton Group, H&M, Primark and Bestseller all suspended new orders from factories there until further notice, following pressure from within and outside Myanmar. Despite this, trade unions in Myanmar stress companies are not doing enough and are demanding more “concrete action” like documenting and addressing human rights abuses with their respective governments and committing to partial payments of orders. Many garment workers have left their family homes for the safety of other family members in order to participate in the strikes. They include 27-year-old Jasmine (who did not wish to give her full name) and five of her colleagues. They live together in a 250-square-foot flat in Yangon, surviving on food donations from the wider community as well as community money handouts – funds raised by local and international supporters of the CDM to finance the movement from afar – a portion of which they need to send back to their home villages to support their families as well. These young women march defiantly together in large human chains with arms interlocked. Jasmine says this is an effective tactic adopted by garment workers who are protesting to ensure the police do not separate them from each other. “They yank protesters away to break the chain then abuse those they capture in jail or publicly.” On February 18, about 1,000 garment workers producing clothes for Primark were reportedly locked in GY Sen Apparel Company’s factory for taking part in the protests by supervisors who sympathised with the military. Upon breaking free after several hours, many of them were fired. Jasmine also says that she and her colleagues have been intimidated with verbal abuse by factory owners, who confront the women physically, they say, and who have been trying to fire them for protesting. For now, Jasmine still has her job, although many of her colleagues have been laid off. “These are the challenges we are faced with on top of a coup; borderline starvation and no pay. We need the companies we work for to denounce these heinous acts, recognise what we are going through and protect us,” she says. Since the women live together, they have been easy targets for the military and factory owners. During the day, the workers liaise with activists to gather information about locals collaborating with the military by providing details about people’s whereabouts and public gatherings. This way, they can find out about potential morning break-ins into workers’ homes and abductions by the military and police carrying out military orders. As the evening sets in, workers quietly gather in one house to make plans for the next day’s protests. The military blacks out the internet every night from 1am to 9am and has banned all social media to stop protesters from informing each other about arrests or possible military targets. It is meticulously tracking telecommunications. It also imposes a strict overnight curfew and deploys soldiers with orders to shoot on sight anyone who breaks it. Jasmine and her friends have heard frightening rumours about people being shot or abducted if they are found to be breaking curfew. The women, therefore, move carefully on foot from one house to another in the dead of night to relay crucial information regarding potential break-ins, abductions and to make plans for protests. “We cannot afford to risk brushing off anything heard through the grapevine as hearsay. Nobody is here to protect us but ourselves,” says Jasmine.....The LGBTQ community: The LGBTQ community has also participated in the protests, marching with rainbow flags. “We know they despise our identity so we offer them the highest form of indignation, standing united and proud in the skin we feel most comfortable [in],” says 30-year-old trans woman Diamond. Diamond believes that the LGBTQ protests have encouraged more people to come out as gay or trans. “People come up to join marches then disclose this is their first time being publicly trans or gay because it is an opportune time to be true to who they always have been.” However, the LBGTQ protest efforts were cut short at the start of March when the military began a crackdown on the community by raiding homes and detaining members. Out of fear of surveillance and arrests, Diamond and several of her friends from the transgender community have either fled the country or gone into hiding. “As a trans woman, I want the future generation of Myanmar to know the LGBTQ community risked everything and stood valiant against the military,” she says.....Sexual violence as a military tactic: Protests against a male-dominated military that has no women at all in its senior ranks and very few (0.2 percent) in the rank and file, have come at a great cost to women. Activists say that military and police have manhandled, groped and sexually harassed female protesters. “If you’re leading a large crowd, they will try to grope your breasts from behind to physically remove you or, at the very least, will try to unbutton your blouse with their baton,” says Daisy. “Women who have gone into custody have been subjected to unnecessarily prolonged strip and search, as well as groping.” Sexual violence is nothing new in military operations in Myanmar. It has been used to crack down on the Rohingya Muslim population since 2017. Instances of gang rapes by soldiers, forced public nudity and humiliation, and sexual slavery in military captivity have been reported by the Rohingya population, according to investigations by the UN. With violence against protesters escalating – and no sign of the protests stopping – Daisy says she fears the military will use mass rape tactics “as a last resort tool any moment now”.Nandar, a 26-year-old feminist activist from Shan State, claims Myanmar is culturally a deeply patriarchal society where the military sees itself as the “father” of the nation, assuming the “dominant and masculine role”. “By nature of a patriarchal system, social hierarchies are formed through hyper-masculinity and deeply conservative views that consider women subservient,” she says. The lack of women in the senior military ranks, she says, indicates the absence of women’s voices in the political sphere and further marginalises them, reinforcing stereotypes and transferring a woman’s importance in the political space to passive social roles instead. Nandar, who does not wish to give her full name for fear of reprisals, says: “The progress feminism made [under democracy] allowed women to see the value of their participation in every sector, moving the country forward. But under a misogynistic military which renders women entirely invisible, we will enter a dark future. Democracy took us one step forward but returning to dictatorship is taking us five steps back.” Despite all the odds, women have used their momentum to vocalise their opposition to patriarchal control and the lack of democratic freedom in the country. They have been the backbone of the protests and are promising not to back down..."
Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera" (Qatar)
2021-04-25
Date of entry/update: 2021-04-25
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "For decades, ethnic women in Myanmar have documented acts of sexual violence committed against them in the hopes that, one day, perpetrators will be held accountable for their crimes. They had reasons for hope as recently as five years ago, when the government of Myanmar endorsed the international Declaration of Commitment to End Sexual Violence in Conflict and Aung Sung Suu Kyi was elected the first woman leader of the country in a historic victory. Today, violent conflict between military and ethnic groups remains as intense as ever, while wartime sexual and gender-based violence continues unabated and unpunished. The direct and later indirect rule by the military since 1962 has had a long-term effect on the lives of women in Myanmar. They expected their fundamental rights to be restored under the new quasi-civilian arm of government, led by Suu Kyi. Instead, the web of military presence and business interests in ethnic areas of the country continue to devastate ethnic women. In August, the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar released a report documenting cases of gang rape, sexual slavery, and other forms of sexual abuse in heavily-militarized areas in several states: Shan, Kachin, and Rakhine. Investigators found that sexual violence has become a regular tactic used against civilians by the Tatmadaw, the official name of the country’s armed forces..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Women's Media Center" (USA)
2019-11-20
Date of entry/update: 2019-11-22
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Topic: Women's Political Participation
Topic: Women's Political Participation
Description: "As Myanmar’s historic reform process continues to evolve, more women are needed in leadership roles of all kinds, including in parliaments. Despite their low numbers, the positive contributions of women MPs in both national and subnational parliaments have already earned the recognition of their constituents. With general elections approaching in 2020, it is time to ask if Myanmar’s political parties will nominate more women, and if so, will they be elected. Though candidate selection very much depends on decisions by party leaders, the good news is that female candidates will not have to make this journey alone. Myanmar now has a small corps of veteran female MPs who can give constructive guidance to women running for office. In early September 2019, The Asia Foundation and a local partner organization, Phan Tee Eain, convened the fourth nationwide Women MPs Forum in Nay Pyi Taw, with 58 women parliamentarians. These included nine MPs from the two houses of the national parliament, the Amyotha Hluttaw and Pyithu Hluttaw, and 49 MPs from parliaments in Kachin and Shan States and the regions of Yangon, Mandalay, Magwe, Sagaing, and Ayeyarwady. The forum was an opportunity to consider strategies to support female candidates in 2020. One key strategy that emerged from the discussions was to share their own experiences as woman MPs, so that female candidates will know what to expect and how to exploit their own unique strengths to win public office..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "The Asia Foundation" (USA)
2019-10-23
Date of entry/update: 2019-10-24
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "More than 2,000 people have been displaced from their homes in Myanmar's northern Shan state, as the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, an ethnic Palaung armed group and the Myanmar army staged tit-for-tat attacks. That's despite unilateral ceasefire announcements by both sides in the past two months. And civilians caught in the middle of that fighting are bearing the brunt..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "Al Jazeera" (Qatar)
2019-10-10
Date of entry/update: 2019-10-11
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "At a Myanmar studies workshop late last year, I eye through the papers we are to comment on and notice the absence of women from the bibliographies I read. When I question this, the response is first a bored kind of silence before one of the participants explains, patiently, that everyone writing extensively on these topics is already included. When I object, and offer to share names of women writing on this topic, someone else, probably thinking that he is supportive, smiles and says, sure, for the sake of political correctness. Send the list on. I try to make an argument for the importance of including other perspectives, try to emphasise that which gets lost when we take knowledge for granted and assume one type of knowledge is necessarily the same as—or an acceptable stand-in for—another. I see someone yawn. When the papers come out I notice – again – the absence of women from the bibliographies. The references I sent on were never used. Why does this matter? Why is this, the absence of certain voices, so troubling? Let me tell you a secret. It is NOT about political correctness. If anything, it is scholarly laziness, which I am as guilty of as anyone else. I am aware of how easy it is to use reliable, and therefore repetitive, citation practices, rather than making the effort to look for new studies on the topic I am interested in. Researching new work – whether actually new or just new to me – takes time. I easily fall back on old patterns, well-threaded research paths..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: "TEACIRCLEOXFORD"
2019-09-09
Date of entry/update: 2019-09-09
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: ''On December 9, 2018 the Women’s League of Burma (WLB), an umbrella organization comprised of 13-member groups, celebrated nineteen years of activism for women. Over 500 people joined the ceremony for the anniversary, which was held at Inya Lake Hotel, Yangon, to pay tribute to generations of reformers and to commemorate the events that happened since December 1999, when the second forum of the Women’s Organization of Burma was held in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The goal of this summit was to encourage a dialogue that would maintain the spirit of the Pang Long Agreement – an understanding reached in 1947 which sought to make Burma a Union of equal and independent states but was never implemented. The women in attendance at the summit further explored their ideas and views on how to overcome long-ingrained gender stereotypes they believed were holding the country back from progress. A platform was needed to give women of different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds a voice. Thus, the Women’s League of Burma was established...''
Creator/author: Nang Kham Awn, Maggi Quadrini
2019-01-29
Date of entry/update: 2019-02-08
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: English
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Description: "The women discussed issues for two days and decided to form the new Grassroots Women’s Network. At the conclusion of the seminar the attendees jointly endorsed the following resolutions: We call on the Burma Army to stop their military operations in all ethnic areas. We want the 2008 constitution to be abolished and call on the Burma Government to begin a process whereby a genuine federal constitution can be drawn up. We also call on all stakeholders to stop mega development projects in all ethnic areas until there is genuine peace and a political settlement. There must be no forced repatriation of refugees. We also call on the international community and donors to continue to support humanitarian aid to refugees and IDPs according to international standards until peace is restored in the country..."
Creator/author: The Karen Women’s Organisation
Source/publisher: Karen Women's Organisation
2018-03-30
Date of entry/update: 2018-12-17
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language: Sgaw Karen, Burmese ျမန္မာဘာသာ, English
Format : pdf
Size: 336.17 KB
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Description: "In Myanmar, there is a general attitude that issues affecting women fall exclusively under the purview of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement. This policy paper explores how gender mainstreaming in subnational governance can take place outside of what is typically considered women-centric policy domains in Myanmar, using the fisheries and livestock sectors as examples...Since 2011, Myanmar has begun implementing significant governance reforms. The 2008 Constitution provided a framework for the beginning of decentralization, shifting from a highly centralized and authoritarian system to one that more closely resembles a democracy. The formation of State and Region (S/R) governments, Myanmar?s newly established subnational governing bodies, has created opportunities for legislation, policies, and budgets that are more responsive and representative of local needs. While the introduction of subnational institutions has indeed laid the foundations for increasingly democratic practices, the road towards gender equality continues to face significant challenges under Myanmar?s current governance structure. These challenges include: zz A complex administrative structure that neglects to clearly define roles, responsibilities, and reporting relationships;1 zz A general attitude that issues affecting women fall exclusively under the purview of the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief, and Resettlement; and zz Outdated governance systems that pose barriers to equitable participation..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: Asia Foundation
2018-08-15
Date of entry/update: 2018-08-26
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
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Description: "Sixty years of military rule in Myanmar has seen the critical role of women?s political participation marginalized. From an extremely low base, the 2010 general elections increased the opportunity for women?s participation in governance. The 2015 general elections presented another opportunity for a more inclusive representational government, and Myanmar saw a significant increase in the number of women parliamentarians. However, there remain substantial challenges to addressing the gender gap in political participation in Myanmar. Given the nascent but evolving context for women?s political participation in Myanmar, The Asia Foundation thought that it would be useful to document the experiences of the first generation of women parliamentarians to understand better their motivations and the challenges they face. We hope that the insights that they have about their own situations and what can be improved will be useful for the next generation of women?s parliamentarians as well as informing relevant support provided by government, political parties, and civil society organizations to increase gender equality in Myanmar..."
Creator/author:
Source/publisher: The Asia Foundation and Phan Tee Eain
2017-04-00
Date of entry/update: 2018-04-14
Grouping: Individual Documents
Language:
Format : pdf
Size: 1.46 MB
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