Junta Should Go Before ICC, Nobel Laureates Tell Ban

By LAWI WENG, Irrawaddy News, March 6, 2010.

In a meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in New York on Thursday, three activists, including two Nobel Peace Prize winners, called on the UN Security Council to refer Burma's junta to the International Criminal Court for its abuses against women.

Thin Thin Aung, a presidium board member of the Women's League of Burma (WLB), and Nobel laureates Shirin Ebadi and Jody Williams told Ban that sexual violence and other abuses against women in Burma are widespread and systematic, and can only be addressed by referring the matter to the ICC.

“At our meeting, we proposed that the ICC put the junta on trial for sexual violations against women and other human rights abuses, such as forced labor and forced relocation,” said Thin Thin Aung.

“These things are happening all over the country, but we can't find justice inside Burma, so we need to take this to the ICC.”

Ban said he would raise the subject at his next meeting with the UN Security Council, she added.

In the meantime, he said that he is waiting to hear a report from the UN human rights envoy to Burma, Tomás Ojea Quintana, who visited Burma last month. The report will be presented to the Security Council on March 25.

On Tuesday, Williams and Ebadi took part in the International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women of Burma, where 12 women spoke of their experiences of suffering at the hands of the Burmese junta's troops.

The event, held in New York and organized by the WLB and the Nobel Women's Initiative, ran live via the Internet.

A panel of jurists, including a former judge and two former prosecutors for the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, heard the testimony of the 12 women.

Ban said on Thursday that he fully agreed that the women needed to find justice, said Thin Thin Aung.

Burmese women activists started their campaign to bring the junta before the ICC on charges of crimes against humanity in 2008. Since then, several ethnic women's organizations based on the Thai-Burmese border have been collecting evidence of sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, torture and other abuses.

Khin Ohmar, the vice chairwoman of the Burmese Women's Union, said: “Women's organizations and human rights groups along the Thai-Burmese border have collected enough evidence. Now we want the Security Council to set up an investigation commission to decide whether this evidence can be sent to the ICC or not.

“If the UN and the international community don't try the Burmese regime under international law, it will not stop committing these crimes,” she said.

International and regional rights groups, such as the International Federation for Human Rights, Altsean-Burma and the Burma Lawyers' Council, have urged the European Union to support the establishment of a UN Security Council Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Burma.

Since 1997, the Burmese regime has destroyed over 3,000 villages and displaced over half a million civilians in eastern Burma alone, according to the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella organization responsible for the distribution of aid to refugees in camps along the Thai-Burmese border.