A Serious Plea for Peace in Burma

Sent: Sunday, January 27, 2013 10:09 PM
Subject: URGENT APPEAL: KACHIN STATE BURMA

                                              Jan. 25 2013

Dear People,

I am writing to you from northern Kachin State on the border of Burma
and China. For days I have listened to sustained heavy mortar and
artillery fire from the Burma army as it slowly closes in. The
civilians are preparing for the worst.

The Churches are open on a 24 hour basis.The people pray for
deliverance from a conflict where Kachin soldiers, with the support of
tens of thousands of civilians, are fighting for survival against an
army several times their number.  In such a conflict, article 3 of the
Geneva Conventions, protecting civilians from intentional violence,
applies.The Kachin authorities, it should be noted, are not a
terrorist group, as for example the former Tamil Tigers were; nor are
they a gang of war lords involved in narcotics: rather they have been
carrying out the duties of self government responsibly for many years,
and are supported by most of the Kachin people who are bonded by their
Christian faith. They are targeted , however, by the Burma army on the
basis of what constitutes their identity: their religion and their
ethnicity.The law of genocide thus applies.

The first point that should be made is that there has been no
ceasefire and there is no ceasefire.. On the morning of Saturday the
19 of January at 6.00 a.m., the time the ceasefire was due to commence
according to President Thein Sein's order, I stepped outside my house
to be soon greeted with the sound of mortar and artillery fire.This
was not sporadic small arms fire, but systematic heavy shelling from
the Burma army.It was replicated elsewhere in Kachin State, but only a
small fraction of it has been captured and transmitted by the media.I
would therefore like to express grave concern at much of the
international community's gullible acceptance of the "ceasefire" which
was either a deliberate grotesque hoax, or the result of a systemic
failure in the Burma army chain of command to implement President
Thein Sein's order.

The second point is that Kachin fixed defensive positions protecting
civilians are probably unsustainable.Confronted with jet bombers,
artillery, heavy mortars and overwhelming numbers of ground troops,
Kachin soldiers may be unable to protect their civilians in the long,
or even medium term.

The third point is that in such an eventuality there may be not just a
humanitarian disaster, but the infliction of widespread crimes against
humanity. This is for two reasons. Firstly the civilians are likely to
resist because they have nowhere to flee.Gentle people I know are
preparing to fight. Women are reportedly leaving their babies on the
China side of the border and returning to resist. A probable
humanitarian disaster is thus likely to be exacerbated by appalling
human rights violations. Part of my time here has been spent listening
to testimonies of violently displaced Kachin people.They are some of
the worst I have heard in all my time in Burma. One young mother of a
seventeen day old baby was reported by her father to have been
bayoneted to death: another  gang raped to death; another woman was
shot in her village while her young son hid watching in a sugar cane
field. I have to live with the boy's eyes forever. A woman described
her husband being shot in the stomach, then facially grotesquely
mutilated. The point of telling you this is to alert you to the very
serious possibility that such acts may be repeated on a large scale in
the event of a Burma army victory, especially where civilians try to
resist and there is no foreign observer force.

The fourth point is that as this massive assault on Kachin areas
continues, the more likely it is that other non Burman groups will
resort to active resistance in solidarity. Burma may disintegrate
further into civil war..

Effective action must therefore be taken very quickly to avoid
repetition of previous disasters. The UN has carried out studies of
its failures in Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka and described at
least one of them as amounting to  "Complicity with evil".The same
fatal passive complicity may result in a disaster in northern Kachin
State. This letter is thus the gravest appeal to the outside world to
stop it from happening.This is not a "communal riot" : this is a
massive military attack on the Kachin ethnic religious group which is
trying to resist in the limited territory it controls.

The following should therefore be implemented::

1. Appointment of an effective UN envoy, genuinely committed to the
principles and articles of The Charter, mandated by the Security
Council with the right to unhindered access to all areas of Kachin
State and especially to internally displaced people.If the military
controlled government refuses access, it could be facilitated by China
which is supportive of a ceasefire and does not wish to be flooded
with refugees. Some of the most threatened Kachin areas are, it should
be noted, adjacent to China;

2. A ceasefire, preferably mandated by the Security Council, supported
by the Chinese and US governments, the EU, and relevant UN organs,
monitored by an effective UN observer group, should be declared..

3. A just and lasting peace, with the objective of  establishing real
autonomy within the context of a genuine Federal Union, should be
negotiated and implemented, if the so called reform process is to have
any validity.

4. A firm reminder to the military controlled government that
sanctions were suspended, not cancelled, and in the event of a refusal
to implement a ceasefire they will be reimposed. If a genocidal attack
on civilians occurs an appropriate response will be made.


Guy Horton
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London
Northern Kachin State
25 January 2013