LICENSE TO RAPE: RUNAWAY SOLDIERS DISCLOSE ( Kao-Wao ) January 20, 2003

LICENSE TO RAPE: RUNAWAY SOLDIERS DISCLOSE

(Based on SWAN’s report and Kao-Wao, January 20, 2003)

According to Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), three soldiers who defected from the Burmese Army at the Thai-Burma border on January 17, 2003 testified that their officer boasted about raping women.

The soldiers, aged 17, 19 and 26, who had defected with their weapons from Infantry Battalion 226 testified that their commanding sergeant Myint Htay had boasted to them last month about having raped "five or six" women in Shan State.

The three soldiers, all forcibly recruited into the SPDC Army within the past year, were stationed at the border for only a few months, after undergoing training near Kengtung. "If officers feel comfortable boasting to their troops about raping women, it is clear that the culture of impunity for sexual violence in the SPDC Army is still in place," said Hseng Noung of the Shan Women's Action Network.

The soldiers, one of whom was only 16 when arrested at a bus station in Central Burma and forced to enlist, also said that there were child soldiers as young as twelve stationed at the SPDC camp opposite Piang Luang. It remains to be seen how the soldiers’ testimonies will affect the Burmese government’s denial of SWAN’s report on rape charges that attracted international and public condemnation. The Burmese government’s refusal to uphold the rights of woman on this charge indicates quite clearly the gender bias in Burmese society that they are devalued in all civil matters and whose testimonies of rape charges in Shan State were ignored and discredited.

Meanwhile, abuse, violence and discrimination against women go unpunished in other parts of Burma where the territorial Burmese army patrols.

Recently, according to a source from Khaw-Zar village, Ye township, troops from Infantry Battalion No. 273 being charged with the attempted rape of three women on November 7, 2002 in a village replied that they could “do anything they want.”

In searching for the Mon armed group, the Battalion No 273, surrounded the village and attempted to rape three women in the process, they targeted two Mon cultural dancers and a schoolteacher, a witness who recently arrived to the border said. They were freed after the schoolteacher asked the soldiers not to harm them. "The dancers stalled the soldiers saying they were sick before other people started to arrive,” said the witness.

"This is a black area and we can do anything we want," the army officer angrily told the villagers after the village headmen reported the case to him.

“These villagers came from another village for a cultural show organized by the teachers in the area. They had to travel quite a distance to see the show but it was cancelled due to incident. This has routinely happened to us like the Shan women, the only consistent thing that the Burmese Army seems to be able to do," said Nai Ba, a 67-year-old man.