Visit to the India-Burma Border

Executive Summary

“Please help us to fight for our indigenous rights. I am concerned and worried about our future in Burma. Burma’s political crisis is not only a democracy problem, it is also an ethnic and constitutional problem.” – A Chin student

Burma is ruled by one of the world’s most brutal regimes. The junta, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is guilty of sustained and egregious human rights violations, including the suppression of democracy, the denial of ethnic and cultural rights, and the widespread and systematic use of torture, rape as a weapon of war, forced labour, the forcible conscription of child soldiers, religious persecution and extrajudicial killings.

Among the poorest and most persecuted peoples of Burma are the Chin, a predominantly Christian ethnic group inhabiting Chin State and much of Sagaing Division, along the border with India. In addition to widespread human rights violations including religious persecution, forced labour and rape, over the past two years much of Chin State has been devastated by a chronic food shortage caused by a natural phenomenon of the flowering of the bamboo, which occurs approximately every fifty years. The bamboo flowering attracts plagues of rats, which then multiply in vast numbers. The rats then destroy the bamboo, rice fields, rice supplies, other food sources and almost all means of livelihood and survival for the local population. At least 100,000 people in more than 200 villages have been affected by the chronic food shortage caused by this phenomenon, and many have died of hunger and famine-related disease. The crisis is expected to last another two years, but the effects are predicted to continue for five years.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) travelled to the India-Burma border with a delegation led by Baroness Cox, Chief Executive of the Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust (HART). During what was CSW’s fourth visit to the area since 2004, the delegation received first-hand testimonial evidence of continuing human rights violations, and the effects of chronic under-resourcing of health care in Chin State. The delegation also heard allegations that international funding for emergency food relief for victims of the chronic food shortage, provided to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) through the World Food Programme (WFP) by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), was being offered to villagers in the form of loans repayable at 200 per cent interest, in at least 17 villages in Paletwa Township. CSW and HART have reported these allegations to the UNDP and called for an urgent investigation. If true, they raise grave questions about the integrity of the UNDP’s assistance in the area.

The delegation also met with leaders of the Chin community in Mizoram, including the Chin National Council (CNC) and the Women’s League of Chinland, and discussed the forthcoming elections in Burma planned for 2010. The CNC said that while they had no confidence in the election process or the new Constitution imposed by the military regime, they would support candidates who wished to contest the election, provided they shared the CNC’s “vision for democracy”. According to the CNC, the people in Chin State would not boycott the election, partly because they would probably be forced by the military to vote, and partly because they may wish to vote so that they “can prove the injustice”. However, the CNC emphasised that “we do not support or accept the Constitution or the 2010 elections”.

CSW also met Chin and Kachin refugees in New Delhi, and had meetings to discuss India’s policy on Burma with the Minister of State for External Affairs Dr. Shashi Tharoor, the Convenor of the Indian Parliamentarian Forum for Democracy in Burma, Sharad Joshi MP, the All India Christian Council, and academics at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

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