Victims Prosecuted or Intimidated But Perpetrators Not Punished

As part of its ongoing campaign to cover up the military’s human rights violations, the government actively discourages complaints regarding military auses by retaliating against anyone who speaks up through victim intimidation tactics, including threatening and or prosecuting victims and witnesses. There is a firmly ingrained culture of impunity for heinous crimes committed by members of the military under the direction or blind eye of the SPDC and the intimidation and prosecution of victims leaves them without recourse and, even more disturbingly, punishes them for the violence they have already suffered.

The commission of heinous crimes and culture of impunity have been most severe in rural ethnic areas and are related to activities surrounding ongoing armed conflict.29 For example, Burmese women’s organizations have documented 875 cases of rape from 1988 to 2006 and believe that number is a me refraction of the total number because of the difficulty in accessing communities under SPDC control and the fear and stigma that keeps women and girls from reporting rape. Many times rape victims have been imprisoned and tortured after making formal complaints or bringing their story to the press.30

Similar patterns have been observed in the cases of forced labor and child soldiering in Burma. The government does not appear to have applied the penal code of military regulations in any child soldiering cases, which could have resulted in imprisonment. Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of child soldiers are believe to be serving in the army; their parents are often silent because reporting these cases to the authorities is often counter-productive. When a researcher for an international organization asked a community leader whether parents report their children’s forced conscription into the army, the man responded that it was too dangerous because local authorities would punish the parents, and the ILO and the UN would be powerless to protect them.31

Thus, the authorities continue to maintain a culture of impunity not only by restricting access to complaints mechanisms, but by harassing and taking legal action against those who bring complaints against the military.