Hello Northeast chapters! As I hope you all have heard by now, December 4 is our Northeast Regional Advocacy Institute at Tufts University in Boston. This is a fabulous event every year, very interesting and re-invigorating for the chapters that attend. You’ll hear about some issues PHR is currently advocating on, get new ideas for human rights education and advocacy, both on campus and in the wider political sphere, and meet some other equally motivated students. It’s also a great opportunity to network with each other, especially chapters that are near you, to coordinate joint actions and events.
At this year’s Insitute, we’ll hear from such exciting speakers as PHR CEO Frank Donaghue (who is always a treat), a representative of the Asylum Network, an expert on health and human rights in Burma, and a resident from Dartmouth, who will tell us about keeping yourself active in human rights advocacy through residency, something I’m sure we’re all interested in.
So, everyone should come, I promise it will be worth taking the time out of your busy schedule. You can register here. (And on that note, everyone in your chapter should also register themselves to receive updates and opportunities from the PHR National Student Program – you can do that here.)
Remember the calamitous end to Sri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war back in May? Some 16,700 non-combatants were wounded and several thousand more were killed during the final onslaught. Fighting between the 150,000-strong Sri Lankan Army (SLA) and the 7,000-strong Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) armed forces resulted in 300,000 displaced minority Tamils.
Although both sides committed mass atrocities, recent video footage of apparent executions (warning: this video contains graphic images) of 9 Tamil POWs supports widespread allegations of war crimes by the SLA.
But the international community, most notably the UN Security Council, remains idle while it should be launching a commission of inquiry.
Senator Jim Webb recently opined in the New York Times that we can’t afford to ignore Myanmar (the official name of Burma since 1989). The senior Democratic senator from Virginia rightly calls for increased engagement with Burma, but for all the wrong reasons. Without knowing better, one could read the Senator’s piece and believe the only problem with Burma is a blemished democratic process that lacks political openness.
Such whitewashing belies the stark reality that over the past five decades of continuous military rule, ethnic minorities have abided widespread mass atrocities. Murder, forced displacement, slave labor, conscription of child soldiers, torture and rape comprise the military’s arsenal of rights abuses inflicted against these non-combatants.
The Burmese do need outside help, as the Senator admits, but engaging with the current regime on the electoral process will only strengthen the hand of the military and ensure continued repression of ethnic minorities who make up one-third of the populace.
