Junta Rejects US Human Rights and Narcotics Reports

By WAI MOE

The military junta that rules Burma has rejected two recent reports by the United States Department of State, according to Burma’s state-run media.

Burma’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs released two statements which denied charges made in the US State Department’s 2008 Country Report on Human Rights Practices and International Narcotics Control Strategy Report.

In rejecting the US human rights report, the Burmese ministry said, “Instead of making false allegations at other nations [the] US should concentrate on uplifting its own human rights record.”

The regime also said that the US report repeated its “unfounded and unsubstantiated allegations of human rights violations” in Burma. “It is saddening to find,” the statement added.

In responding to the report on narcotics, the Burmese ministry said it had groundlessly identified Burma as one of three countries in the world that had failed demonstrably to meet its international counter narcotics obligations.

“It is regrettable that such an unfair categorization was made, ignoring Myanmar [Burma]’s strenuous efforts in combating narcotic drugs,” the Foreign Ministry said, adding that Burma’s national efforts in combating drug problem were carried out with little or no external assistance.

The statement by the ministry slammed the US report for its “inaccurate and politically motivated assessments.”

The US State Department said on February 25 in its 2008 report on human rights that the Burmese regime continued to abridge the right of citizens to change their government and committed other severe human rights abuses. It said that government security forces allowed custodial deaths to occur and committed extrajudicial killings, disappearances, rape and torture. It also criticized the regime for indefinitely detaining activists without charges.

In the narcotics report, released on February 27, the regime was singled out for failing to control the production and distribution of illicit drugs.

“Both UNODC [United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime] and US surveys of opium poppy cultivation indicated a significant increase in cultivation and potential production in 2007, and production and export of synthetic drugs (amphetamine-type stimulants, crystal methamphetamine and Ketamine) from Burma continued unabated,” the report stated.

Although Burma’s state-run media published the regime’s response to the US reports, it failed to cover a much bigger international story: the International Criminal Court’s decision to issue a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir for genocide in Darfur.

However, the junta mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar, reported the inauguration ceremony for Sudan’s Merowe Dam, at which Bashir addressed a crowd.

Like the Sudanese regime, the Burmese junta has been accused by human rights groups of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing during its military offensives against insurgents.