Kachin civilians are increasingly targeted by the vaunted Burmese army in retaliation for their impotent campaign to wipe out the Kachin Independence Organization and its military wing KIA. Daily accounts of Burmese army burning down villages, raping the Kachin women, bombing innocent civilians, arresting and torturing local residents are reported from local sources.
As another sign of grave human rights violations against indigenous people of the land, Burmese army soldiers of 347th LIB and 118th LIB gang-raped a 48 years old Kachin woman (name withheld) in a Church at Lupi village in Chipwi on May 1. Another villager Yu Ta Gwi, aged 59, testified that about 10 Burmese soldiers surrounded the woman, beat her with gun butts and stabbed her with knives. The soldiers pinned the woman down and forcibly removed her clothes and repeatedly raped her for three days inside the Church, said Yu Ta Gwi. He continued that he heard her crying all the time till he himself was stabbed in his thigh and beaten until collapsed and lost consciousness.
Burmese government soldiers left the two of them after torturing for three days. Yu Ta Gwi and the woman were found by former NDA (K), now BGF soldiers and taken to Pangwa Hospital. The woman suffers psychological trauma following torture and rape. Ngwa Sa, her husband, said in tears, “she doesn’t reply to me anymore, only talk about going home and I feel very sad.”
In a letter signed by KIO Chairman Lanyaw Zawng Hra, KIO Central Committee requested the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to send UN observer teams or intermediary teams to the conflict war zones, and to the towns and villages destroyed by the Burmese Army, and to the IDP camps in KIO areas. As Burmese army’s offensive continues, grave human rights violations reached to an alarming new level and humanitarian situation has deteriorated in Kachin and Shan State.
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