From The ADDHU - the Association for the Defense of Human Rights

1- Helpless and Stranded
The look on Lei Lei's face is one of hopelessness. She takes no notice of the school uniform that a private donor had left for her. Instead, the 12-year-old girl stares ahead at the vehicles passing back and forth along the highway. On her back, her sick sister coughs relentlessly. Every time a car passes by, Lei Lei raises her hand and shouts, “Please give us some food!”

A truck stops a bit farther ahead and Lei Lei’s head swiftly turns in its direction. She sets off running, her baby sister bouncing up and down in the sarong over her shoulder. Some of her friends are already waiting with hands scratching the air toward the truck drivers. After a struggle, Lei Lei emerges with a small pack of steamed rice. She shares some with her sister and eats the rest greedily.

Today was the 19th day that Lei Lei had spent begging for food on the highway—some three weeks since Cyclone Nargis destroyed her family home in Bogalay and killed her father. “I feel sad when I hear that other children will go back to school next month though,” she says. “But for now, I need food, not schooling.”

“This time last year, my father took me to Rangoon to buy text books and stationery for school,” Lei Lei recalls tearfully. She lays her small hand on her sister’s forehead to check her temperature. “My sister has got a bad cold,” she murmurs. “She has been out in the rain for so long.” Though they have plastic sheets for shelter at night, they have no protection from mosquitoes. Like other traumatized survivors, Lei Lei also dreams about the fatal night that swept her father away. "I cry out at night," she admits. "My mother cries in her sleep,” she says. “When I ask her in the morning, she says she was thinking about my father.”

In the meantime, the Burmese junta is bargaining with the international community to leave all matters of aid and reconstruction in its hands. When asked what she expects of the future with regard to education or her dreams, Lei Lei frowns and shakes her head. "I must be on the side of the road from dawn to dusk every day," she says solemnly.

2- Few Aid Workers in the Delta, Say Aid Groups

Very few foreign aid workers have reached the Irrawaddy delta to help cyclone victims, two days after an agreement was made between UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Burma’s head of state, Snr-Gen Than Shwe, to allow all aid workers access, said international aid groups.

At a press conference in Bangkok on Saturday, the UN general-secretary said, “Snr-Gen Than Shwe agreed to allow all international aid workers to operate freely and without hindrance. We agreed to establish [logistics hubs incorporating] air, sea and road links to the most affected areas.

Veronique Terrasse, a communications officer for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Bangkok, said that about eight foreign workers from her organization had reached the Irrawaddy delta, although most foreign workers were still staying in Rangoon. MSF currently has 49 foreign aid workers in Burma.

3- Hope for release of Aung San Suu Kyi

It comes as supporters of the democratically elected leader of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, have been speculating that the junta is planning an easing of her house arrest conditions or even a release, as part of its concessions to huge international pressure. The detention order that confined her to a fifth consecutive year of incarceration expired last night.

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi walks with others at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon, Myanmar May 6, 2002.
(AP Photo/David Longstreath)

Today, on the 18-year anniversary of Burma’s last democratic elections, Freedom Now deplores the extension of the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Under Article 10(b) of Burma’s State Protection Law 1975, a person in Burma who is deemed a “threat to the sovereignty and security of the State and the peace of the people” may be detained for up to a maximum of five years through a restrictive order, renewable one year at a time. Ms. Suu Kyi was initially detained in May 2003, and the five years of maximum detention expired on May 24, 2008.

“The Burmese junta’s extension of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest in clear violation of its own law comes as no surprise,” said Jared Genser, lead counsel for Ms. Suu Kyi.

4- Regime Must Explain Suu Kyi’s Detention: NLD

Burma’s main political opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), told the Burmese military government on Wednesday that the party is ready to fight against the unlawful detention of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The NLD also called on the regime to explain in legal terms why they are extending the house arrest of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Nyan Win, a spokesperson for the NLD, told The Irrawaddy on Wednesday, “We are ready to prove why the extension is illegal. If the Burmese junta thinks her continued detention is legitimate they must provide reasons and evidence.”

The NLD stated that it would appeal the decision through legal means. The military regime announced on Tuesday that Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention had been officially extended for six months, although several sources have claimed that the detention order was for one more year.

Meanwhile, international leaders and human rights groups are deeply upset over the extension of Suu Kyi’s house arrest and have criticized that Burmese government for violating its own law.


Myanmar's opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, pays obeisance to monks chanting prayers in front of her residence in Yangon in this September 22, 2007 file photo.
BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE REUTERS/Stringer/Files (MYANMAR)


5- More than ever, migrants are turning to professional smugglers.

In a joint project with The New York Times, FRONTLINE/World reporters Andrew Becker and Lowell Bergman, and producer Oriana Zill de Granados investigate the increasingly lucrative business of human smuggling along the Mexican border.

In Tijuana, they track down a man they call "Rafael" who has worked as a smuggler for more than decade. "I don't consider myself a criminal when I smuggle people," Rafael tells Bergman, speaking on condition of anonymity. He argues that his clients just want to work and as long as there is poverty in Mexico and jobs in the U.S. nothing will stop the flow of laborers across the border.

The going rate for a dangerous trip through the desert can cost more than $2,000; crossing through a normal point of entry with counterfeit documents can cost as much as $10,000. The safest passage is when a smuggling operation manages to bribe a U.S. border guard.

Through interviews and undercover surveillance video from U.S. law enforcement officials, Bergman follows the dramatic story of one such corrupt U.S. border guard, Michael Gilliland, a decorated Customs and Border Protection inspector with 16 years of experience who was enticed by smugglers offering money and sex.

"If you have a corrupt border official working for you, you've got the keys to the nation," says FBI supervisor Andy Black. And investigators say they have some 200 open cases they are looking into.

6- Save the Children Warns of Starvation in Burma

Thousands of children in Burma could die of starvation within two or three weeks, a British charity said. Save the Children UK said its research showed that an estimated 30,000 children under five years of age in the devastated Irrawaddy Delta were already acutely malnourished even before Cyclone Nargis tore through the region—and that several thousand among them are now at risk of death.

"With hundreds of thousands of people still not receiving aid, many of these children will not survive much longer," the charity said in a statement. "Children may already be dying as a result of a lack of food."

7- Humanitarian Aid Also Needed for Thai Border Refugees

While international aid donors and Western governments are lining up to provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of Cyclone Nargis, more than 140,000 refugees and displaced persons from Burma’s ongoing armed conflicts are facing a drastic cut in aid.

Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella organization that provides assistance to more than 140,000 refugees from Burma residing in 10 refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border, has released an urgent letter of appeal requesting US $6.8 million to maintain aid to the Burmese refugee at minimum international standards.

“If we do not get a certain amount of dollars, we will have no choice but to cut the ration, so we are only be able to provide about 1,100 kilocalories (kcals) per person per day from August,” she told The Irrawaddy.

The shortfall in the TBBC’s budget came after a sharp increase in global rice prices earlier this year, according to Thompson.

“We are in a critical time because of the global food crisis and the cyclone in Burma,” said Thompson. “It has brought many issues to a head at the same time. We have to be flexible to deal with the emergency inside the country; at the same time we have remain open to the fact that Burma is still generating new arrivals of refugees.”

8- International Efforts Still Failing Child Soldiers
(New York, 20 May 2008)
New Global Survey Finds Children in Fewer Conflicts but Still Fighting

Despite progress, efforts to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers are too little and too late for many children, according to the 2008 Child Soldiers Global Report, launched today by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.

“The international community’s commitment to ending the global scourge of child soldiering cannot be doubted, but existing efforts are falling short,” said Dr. Victoria Forbes Adam, director of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers. “Laws, policies and practices must now be translated into real change to keep children out of armed conflict once and for all.”

There have been positive developments over the past four years. The coalition’s research shows that the number of armed conflicts in which children are involved is down from 27 in 2004 to 17 by the end of 2007. Tens of thousands of children have been released in that time from armies and armed groups as long-running conflicts in Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere have ended.

But the report shows that tens of thousands of children remain in the ranks of non-state armed groups in at least 24 different countries or territories. The record of governments is also little improved – children were deployed in armed conflicts by government forces in nine situations of armed conflict, down only one from the 10 such situations recorded when the last Global Report was published in 2004.

Myanmar remained the most persistent government offender. Its armed forces, engaged in long-running counter-insurgency operations against a range of ethnic armed groups, still contained thousands of children, some as young as 11 years old. Children were also used by government forces in Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Yemen. Palestinian children were used on several occasions as human shields by the Israel Defense Forces, and a few British under-18s were deployed to Iraq up to mid-2005.

Children have also been used as spies. In some countries child soldiers who have escaped, surrendered, or been captured by government forces were locked up instead of receiving support to return to their families and communities. Burundi, Israel, and the United States were among the countries where there were allegations of ill-treatment or torture of child detainees alleged to have been associated with armed groups.

Children have also been used in combat by armed groups in at least 18 countries or territories. These children, some 12 years old or even younger, were exposed to death, injury, and psychological trauma. In Afghanistan, Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and Pakistan teenagers were used in suicide attacks.

Those who lose out most are girls. The existence of girls in fighting forces, in combat and non-combat roles and as victims of sexual slavery, rape and other forms of sexual violence, is well known. “Tens of thousands of children – particularly girls – are effectively rendered invisible during the demobilization and reintegration process,” said Forbes Adam.

“2012 will mark the 10th anniversary of the enactment of the international treaty on child soldiers,” said Forbes Adam. “Over the next four years the international community must make good on its pledge to end the use of children in armed conflict.”

9- Children in US Custody Held Without Due Process
Geneva, May 21, 2008

US forces in Iraq should ensure that children it takes into custody are treated according to their status as children, and given prompt judicial review and access to independent monitors, Human Rights Watch said today. On May 22, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child will meet in Geneva to review US compliance with the international treaty banning the use of child soldiers, which requires states to help with the recovery and reintegration of such children under their control.

US military authorities, operating as the Multinational Forces in Iraq, were as of May 12, 2008 holding 513 Iraqi children as “imperative threats to security,” and have transferred an unknown number of other children to Iraqi custody. According to a recent report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI), children in Iraqi custody are at risk of physical abuse.

Human Rights Watch calls on US military forces in Iraq to:

• Ensure children in its custody receive prompt access to independent legal assistance and family visits;

• Provide children with prompt review of detention by an independent judicial body;

• Release children who have been detained for more than a year, in compliance with Section 6, Article 5 of Coalition Provisional Authority Memo 3 (revised) of June 27, 2004;

• Separate very young and other particularly vulnerable children from other detainees;

• Allow UNICEF, UNAMI, and other independent monitors confidential access to children in US custody;

• Refrain from transferring physical custody of children to Iraqi authorities pending trial when there is reason to believe they will be at risk of abuse; and,

• Ensure the right to education and recreation of all children in US custody.

News collected from the Human Rights Watch news services and Burmese newspapers on the exile.

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