“Everyone was hoping it would be different this time, given the space for small reforms
by the government of Thein Sein” says Mark Farmaner of Burma Campaign UK reacting
to Wednesday’s release of over 300 political prisoners from jails in Myanmar. However,
an estimated 1,800 prisoners of conscience remain in prison - among them key democracy
leaders and monks who led the peaceful 2007 Saffron revolution.
The United
States, Europe and Australia say the release of political prisoners is essential to
lifting sanctions that have crippled the reclusive state. Greater reforms are also
key to the former Burma’s bid to chair the Association of South East Asian Nations
in 2014.
While Wednesday’s amnesty is the latest in a series of more democratic
openings by President Thein Sein’s government, - Mark Farmaner - says human rights
abuses are actually intensifying on the ground, out of the sight and mind of international
media.
“The government has broken ceasefires with armed ethnic political parties
that have been in place, in some cases for decades, they sent the Burmese army into
these ethnic states [Kachin and Karen – in northern Myanmar –ed] and the soldiers
are attacking villages, shooting people on site, torturing and also there is a mass
use of gang rape against ethnic minority women and even against children”.
Farmaner
says “international governments have to face up to the fact that they can not only
focus on Yangon and what happens with political prisoners when you have ethnic minority
populations being slaughtered in the same way as happened in Darfur, and is happening
in Libya and Syria”. Listen to his full interview with Emer McCarthy: