ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ၀င္ မျဖဴႏွင္းေထြး ဖမ္းဆီးခံရမွႈ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔ေ၀ဖန္ ( VOA Burmese)

Interview with Human Rights Lawyer Min Lwin Oo

by ကိုသားညြန္႔ဦး

အခုႏွစ္အေစာပိုင္းတုန္းက လက္ပံေတာင္းေတာင္ ေၾကးနီစီမံကိန္းက တ႐ုတ္၀န္ထမ္းႏွစ္ဦးကို ျပန္ေပးဆဲြတယ္ဆိုတဲ့ အမႈနဲ႔ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ အဖဲြ႔၀င္ ျဖဴႏွင္းေထြးကို အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက ဖမ္းဆီးခဲ့တာေၾကာင့္ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ အဖဲြ႔၀င္ေတြေရာ ေဒသခံေတြပါ ကန္႔ကြက္ဆႏၵျပမႈေတြ ရိွေနပါတယ္။

AHRC အာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ေကာ္မရွင္ကေတာ့ ဒါကို ကန္႔ကြက္လိုက္ၿပီး၊ ေဒသခံေတြအေရး ေက်ာင္းသားေတြက ၀င္ေရာက္ကူညီတာကို အာဏာပိုင္ေတြက အၿငိဳးထားတဲ့လုပ္ရပ္ ျဖစ္ပံုရတယ္လို႔ ဗီြအိုေအကို ေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒီကိစၥနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီး AHRC က ျမန္မာေရွ႕ေန ဦးမင္းလြင္ဦးကို ကိုသားညြန္႔ဦးက ဆက္သြယ္ေမးျမန္းထားပါတယ္။

ေမး။             ။ ေက်ာင္းသားသမဂၢ အဖြဲ႔၀င္တဦးျဖစ္တဲ့ မျဖဴႏွင္းေထြးကို အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကေန တေလာတုန္းက ဖမ္းဆီးလိုက္တဲ့ကိစၥနဲ႔ ပတ္သက္လို႔ ေက်ာင္းသားတက္ႂကြလႈပ္ရွားသူ ေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားက ကန္႔ကြက္မႈေတြ ရိွေနပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ ေဒသခံေတြကလည္း အဲ့ဒါကို ဆႏၵျပတာေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ အဲေတာ့ ဒီအမႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ AHRC အေနနဲ႔ ဘယ္လိုျမင္သလဲခင္ဗ်။ အမႈက မွ်မွ်တတ ရွိရဲ႕လား။

ေျဖ။              ။ “တကယ့္ ေဒသခံေတြလည္းျဖစ္တဲ့သူေတြကိုေတာင္ မွ ေက်ေအးၿပီးေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ လႊတ္ေပးၿပီးၿပီဆုိရင္ ျဖဴႏွင္းေထြးကို ဒီပုဒ္မနဲ႔ ဆက္လက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အေရးယူထားတဲ့ဥစၥာက မျဖစ္သင့္ဘူးလို႔ပဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔က ျမင္ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့တခါ ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး လုပ္ေဆာင္တဲ့ကိစၥမွာလည္း သာမန္အမ်ိဳးသမီးတေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ ဒီလိုလုပ္ေဆာင္ႏုိင္ဖို႔ဆုိတာက အလြန္တရာ ခဲယဥ္းတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့တခါ အခင္းျဖစ္ပြားစဥ္ကလည္း ဒီဖမ္းဆီးထိန္းသိမ္းျခင္းခံရတဲ့ ေဒသခံႏွစ္ဦးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ အမႈမဖြင့္ဘူးဆုိတာေတြ၊ အေရးယူ ေဆာင္ရြက္ျခင္းမျပဳဘူး ဆုိတာေတြကို ဒီ၀မ္ေဘာင္စက္႐ံုကေနၿပီးေတာ့ ကတိေတြေပးထားတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ သိရပါတယ္။ အဲ့ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္း ရြာသား ၅ ဦးကို ေက်ေအးၿပီးေတာ့ လႊတ္လိုက္တယ္ဆုိတာကို က်ေနာ္တို႔ သိရပါတယ္။ ဒီအမႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ရြာသူရြာသားေတြနဲ႔သာ သက္ဆုိင္တယ္၊ ျဖဴႏွင္းေထြးနဲ႔ေတာ့ ဒီကိစၥက ပတ္သက္ဖို႔ သိပ္လမ္းမျမင္ဘူးလို႔ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ျမင္ပါတယ္။”

ေမး။             ။ အခု ဒီ သူ႔ရဲ႕ျပႆနာနဲ႔တဆက္တည္းပါ ဒီႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားဆိုတဲ့ အဓိပၸါယ္သတ္မွတ္က်တဲ့ ကိစၥကလည္း နည္းနည္း႐ႈပ္ေထြးေနပါတယ္ခင္ဗ်။ အဲေတာ့ တက္ႂကြလႈပ္ရွားသူေတြဘက္ကလည္း သူ႔ကို ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးဖို႔ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ ေတာင္းဆိုေနပါတယ္။ ဆုိေတာ့ ဒီအမႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ မျဖဴႏွင္းေထြးဟာ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ သတ္မွတ္ႏုိင္ပါသလား။

ေျဖ။              ။ “ဒီ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ျမန္မာႏုိင္ငံတြင္းမွာ ဖြဲ႔ထားတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္း သားမ်ား ျပန္လည္ စိစစ္ေရးေကာ္မတီကိုေတာင္မွ သူတုိ႔က ဖ်က္သိမ္းၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္ဖို႔ အစီအစဥ္ ရွိေနၿပီေလဗ်ာ။ အဲေတာ့ ဒီျပစ္မႈေတြနဲ႔ စြပ္စြဲခံရတဲ့ ကိစၥရပ္ေတြမွာေတာ့ သူတို႔က ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသား မရွိဘူး။ ဒါက ရာဇ၀တ္မႈေတြနဲ႔ စြဲဆိုထားတာပဲ ျဖစ္တယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ကာ အစိုးရဘက္ကေတာ့ ေျပာမွာေပါ့ဗ်ာ။ အဲ့ဒီလိုပဲ တခ်ိန္လံုး ေတာက္ေလွ်ာက္ ျငင္းပယ္လာခဲ့တာပဲ။”

ေမး။             ။ ဟုတ္ကဲ့ ကိုမင္းလြင္ဦးအျမင္ကေရာ မျဖဴွႏွင္းေထြးအမႈက ျပန္ေပးမႈပါတယ္၊ ေနာက္တခါ တရား႐ံုးကို ဆင့္ေခၚတာ မလာတဲ့အမႈ ပါပါတယ္။ အဲေတာ့ ဒီအမႈက ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားလို႔ေရာ သတ္မွတ္လို႔ရလား၊ ကိုမင္းလြင္ဦးအျမင္။

ေျဖ။              ။ “ဒီဥစၥာက က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ျပန္ေျပာလို႔ရွိရင္ နည္းနည္းေတာ့ ေနာက္ေၾကာင္းျပန္လွည့္ဖို႔ လိုတာေပါ့ေနာ္။ အဲေတာ့ ဘာျဖစ္လဲဆုိေတာ့ကာ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ဒီ ၂၀၀၇ တုန္းကလည္း ဗမာႏုိင္ငံလုံးဆုိင္ရာ ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားသမဂၢ ဖြဲ႔စည္းဖို႔အတြက္ ဆိုၿပီးေတာ့ မဟန္နီဦးတို႔ ရာဟုေက်ာ္ေက်ာ္ေမာင္တို႔၊ စည္သူေမာင္တို႔၊ မတင္ဇာခိုင္တို႔၊ သင္းဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးဥပေဒနဲ႔ အေရးယူခံရတာေတြ ရွိပါတယ္။ အဲ့ဒီမွာ ဟန္နီဦးကို စာေမးပြဲေျဖေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာပဲ စာေမးပြဲမေျဖဘဲနဲ႔ ဒီ ကုန္ေစ်းႏႈန္းက်ဆင္းေရးအတြက္ စီတန္းလမ္းေလွ်ာက္တဲ့အထဲမွာ ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ အသင္းအဖြဲ႔ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးအတြက္ ဦးေဆာင္လႈပ္ရွားတယ္ဆုိၿပီးေတာ့ အျပစ္ေပးခဲ့တာေတြ ရွိတယ္။ အဲ့ဒါ ဗကသ ဖြဲ႔စည္းေရးအတြက္ ေဆာင္ရြက္တဲ့ကိစၥရပ္ေတြေပါ့ေနာ္။ အခုလည္းတခါ လာျပန္ၿပီ။ ဒီလိုမ်ိဳး ေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ပါ၀င္ပတ္သက္တယ္ဆုိတဲ့အေပၚမွာ အၿငိဳးအေတးနဲ႔ လုပ္ခဲ့တယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တို႔အေနနဲ႔ ဒါကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံေရးေနာက္ခံ မကင္းတဲ့အတြက္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးအက်ဥ္းသားလို႔ပဲ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ကေတာ့ သတ္မွတ္ရမွာပါပဲ။”

ေမး။             ။ အၿငိဳးအေတးေတြ ျဖစ္မယ္ဆုိရင္ေတာ့လုိ႔ ကိုမင္းလြင္ဦး က ေျပာတယ္ဆုိေတာ့ ဒီကိစၥက အၿငိဳးအေတးျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ေရာ ယူဆလို႔ ရလို႔လား။

ေျဖ။              ။ “က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ အျမင္ကေတာ့ေပါ့ဗ်ာ ဒီလက္ပံေတာင္းေတာင္ အေရးကိစၥမွာ ေဒသခံေတာင္သူလယ္သမားေတြကို အႀကံေပးတာ၊ ကူညီတာ၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမား အေရးေတြကို တက္တက္ႂကြႂကြ လုိက္လံေျဖရွင္းေပးတာ၊ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားေတြကို ပညာေပးတာ စတဲ့ကိစၥရပ္ေတြမွာ ဒီေက်ာင္းသားေတြ ပါ၀င္ပတ္သက္လို႔သာ ဒီေဒသခံ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမားေတြက ဆူပူအံုႂကြရတယ္ဆုိတဲ့ အျမင္ အစိုးရမွာ ရွိေနတယ္။ အဲဒါကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ဒီ လက္ပံေတာင္းေတာင္ကိစၥကို ေလ့လာလုိက္တဲ့တေလွ်ာက္လံုး၊ ေနာက္ၿပီးေတာ့ ေတာင္သူလယ္သမား အေရးကိစၥရပ္ေတြ ေလ့လာတဲ့ ကိစၥတေလွ်ာက္လံုးေတြမွာ ဒါေတြက ေက်ာင္းသားေတြအေပၚမွာ အၿငိဳးထားတယ္ဆုိတာေတြကို က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ေတြ႔ေနရပါတယ္။”

http://burmese.voanews.com/audio/2453715.html

http://burmese.voanews.com/content/phyu-hnin-htway-ahrc/2453723.html

RFA March 27 TV Interview with AHRC, regarding on the New Election commotional law

RFA March 27 TV Interview, regarding on the New Election commotional law

သမၼတဦးသိန္းစိန္ လက္မွတ္ေရးထိုးထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တဲ့  ျပည္ေထာင္စုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္ ဟာ လိုအပ္ခ်က္တစ္ခုျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ေလ့လာသူေတြကေျပာပါတယ္။ အျပည့္အစံုကို RFA အဖြဲ႔သား ကိုေနရိန္ေက်ာ္က စုစည္းတင္ျပထားပါတယ္။

ေနရိန္ေက်ာ္။    ။မတ္လ ၁၉ ရက္ေန႔ရက္စြဲနဲ႔ ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စုေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္ဥပေဒ ဟာအစိုးရအေရြ႕အေျပာင္းျဖစ္ၿပီးေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာ လိုအပ္လို႔ ထုတ္ျပန္တာလို႔ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုဂေရစီ အဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္အတြင္းေရးမွဴးဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက အခုလို ရွုျမင္ပါတယ္။ ဆိုလိုတာကေတာ့ ၂၀၁၀ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲမတိုင္ခင္ထုတ္ျပန္လိုက္တဲ့ ဥပေဒဟာ စစ္အစိုးရလက္ထက္မွာေရးစြဲခဲ့တာျဖစ္ၿပီး အခုကေတာ့ လြတ္ေတာ္ရွိလာတဲ့အတြက္ ျပင္ဆင္ထုတ္ျပန္ဖို႔လိုအပ္လာတဲ့အတြက္လို႔ဆိုပါတယ္။ ဒါ့အျပင္အခုထုတ္ျပန္တဲ့ဥပေဒမွာ အရင္ဥပေဒမွာမပါတဲ့ ၾကားျဖတ္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲဆိုင္ရာ ဥပေဒမွာထည္႔သြင္းေရးစြဲထားတာေတြ႔ရတယ္ လို႔လဲဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းကေျပာပါတယ္။ ဒီဥပေဒအရထူးျခားခ်က္ကို ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက ေထာက္ျပတာက ဒီလိုပါ။

ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္း။    ။ထူးျခားတဲ့ အခ်က္တစ္ခုက  Back of Recall လို႔ေခၚတဲ့ ျပန္လည္ရုတ္သိမ္းခြင့္လြတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္ တစ္ေယာက္ကို မဲဆႏၵရွင္ေတြက ျပန္လည္ရုတ္သိမ္းလို႔ရတယ္လို႔ ဥပေဒမွာပါတယ္။ သို႔ေသာ္လည္း ဘယ္အဖြဲ႔အစည္းက ဒါကို ေဆာင္ရြက္မယ္ဆိုတာမပါဘူး။ ဒီကေန႔ထုတ္တဲ့ ဥပေဒမွာေတာ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စု ေကာ္မရွင္ဥပေဒက ဒါကိုေဆာင္ရြက္ ႏိုင္တယ္ဆိုတာပါလာတယ္။ ဒါက ထူးျခားမွုဘဲ။

ေနရိန္ေက်ာ္။    ။ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္လူႀကီးအျဖစ္တာ၀န္ထမ္းေဆာင္ရမယ့္ ပုဂိဳလ္ရဲ႕ အရည္အခ်င္း သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္မွာလည္း ဥပေဒကၽြမ္းက်င္သူေတြျဖစ္ရမယ္လို႔ေဖာ္ျပထားတာဟာ ေကာင္းတဲ့ လကၡနာျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္းက ေထာက္ျပပါတယ္။

ဦးဥာဏ္၀င္း။    ။ဒီေကာ္မရွင္ ဥပေဒမွာ ေဇာင္းေပးထားတာဟာ ဥပေဒလုပ္ငန္းမွာ လုပ္ခဲ့ဖူးတဲ့လူေတြ တရားသူႀကီးေတြ၊ အစိုးရေရွ႕ေန၊ ေရွ႕ေန သူတို႔ကိုေဇာင္းေပးၿပီးေတာ့ လုပ္ထားတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒီဥပေဒနဲ႔ ပက္သက္ၿပီး ေတာ့ ျပန္လည္ဖြဲ႔စည္းတဲ့ တရားသူႀကီးဥပေဒေလာက ကသူေတြပါလာဖို႔ ဒီလိုေတြ႔ရတယ္။

ေနရိန္ေက်ာ္။    ။အခုထုတ္ျပန္တဲ့ ဥပေဒသစ္ အခန္း ၂ မွာ ေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႔၀င္ေတြဟာ ႏိုင္ငံ၀န္ထမ္းျဖစ္ခဲ့လို႔ရွင္ရင္ ေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႔ ၀င္အျဖစ္တာ၀န္ေပးအပ္ခံရတဲ့ေန႔အစၿပီးေတာ့ အၿငိမ္းစားယူၿပီးျဖစ္တယ္လို႔ အခ်က္ပါ၀င္ပါတယ္။ ဒီအခ်က္ကိုေတာ့ အာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႔ က ေရွ႕ေနဦးမင္းလြင္ဦးကို Skype internet က ေနၿပီးေတာ့ တဆင့္ ေမးျမန္းၾကည္႔တဲ့အခါ သူက အခုလို သံုးသတ္ပါတယ္။

ေရွ႕ေနဦးမင္းလြင္ဦး။     ။ႏိုင္ငံ၀န္ထမ္းျဖစ္ခဲ့လို႔ရွင္ရင္ ေကာ္မရွင္အဖြဲ႔၀င္အျဖစ္ေရြးခ်ယ္ျခင္း ခံရတဲ့ေန႔ကစၿပီး ေတာ့ အၿငိမ္းစားယူၿပီးၿဖစ္သကဲ့သို႔ မွတ္ယူရမယ္ဆိုတဲ့အခ်က္ကိုကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ဒါကိုၾကည္႔ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ ႏိုင္ငံတကာ အစိုးရေတြအေနနဲ႔ေသာ္ဌင္း၊ ေလ့လာတဲ့သူေတြနဲ႔ေသာ္ဌင္းေရြးေကာ္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္အေနနဲ႔ လြတ္လြတ္ကင္းကင္းရွိတယ္ဆိုတဲ့သေဘာကိုျပခ်င္တဲ့အတြက္အစိုးရသစ္က ျပင္ဆင္ေရးစြဲလိုက္တယ္လို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ ထင္ျမင္ယူဆပါတယ္။

ေနရိန္ေက်ာ္။    ။ဒီဥပေဒဟာ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေကာ္မရွင္အေနနဲ႔ပိုၿပီးလုပ္ပိုင္ခြင့္ေတြမ်ားလာတယ္လို႔လဲသူကဆိုပါတယ္။

ေရွ႕ေနဦးမင္းလြင္ဦး။     ။အခုဖြဲ႔စည္းပံု အေျခခံဥပေဒမွာ ျပဌာန္းထားတဲ့အခ်က္အလက္အတိုင္းျပန္လည္ထည္႔သြင္း ထားတဲ့အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ျမိဳ႕နယ္အဆင့္ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲေကာ္မရွင္ေတြပါ ဒီဥပေဒတက္ကၽြမ္းတဲ့သူေတြပါ၀င္လာႏိုင္တဲ့အခြင့္အလမ္း ေတြရွိလာတာကို ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လည္းေရႊးေကာက္ပြဲနဲ႔ပက္သက္လို႔ အျငင္းပြားမွုေတြေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားကို ဥပေဒနားလည္တက္ကၽြမ္းတဲ့သူေတြပါ၀င္ဆံုးျဖတ္တဲ႔ခံုရံုးကေနစစ္ေဆးေပးႏိုင္မယ္လို႔ ကၽြန္ေတာ္တို႔ထင္ျမင္ပါတယ္။

Ceasefires will not Bring about Lasting Peace: Burmese Ethnic Leaders.... ASIA Calling 28 January 2012

Ceasefires will not Bring about Lasting Peace: Burmese Ethnic Leaders
Saturday, 28 January 2012 12:07 Banyar Kong Janoi
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[Photo: Banyar Kong Janoi]

Photo: Banyar Kong Janoi
Burma’s government has held ceasefire talks with ethnic Kachin rebels to end fighting near the northern border with China.

But officials say the preliminary meeting did not yield any major breakthroughs.

The Kachin Independence Army or K-I-A is one of the country's most powerful and well-armed rebel groups.

Earlier this month the government signed a ceasefire with Karen rebels in the east of the country. It has also held talks within the last two months with the Shan State Army.

But as Banyar Kong Janoi reports many are suspicious about these ceasefires.

61 years old, Law Reh sings about the richest of his homeland -- the Karenni state in eastern part of Burma.

He has spent the last two decades in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border because of fighting between an armed group of Karenni Progressive Party and the government.

Law Reh says he is lucky to be alive after being forced to work as a porter for the Burmese military.

“They used us to clear landmines. I witnessed people being killed and tortured in front of me. One of them was a teacher, who taught Karenni language in our village school. He had his mouth cut out in front us. He finally bleed to death. Around 100 people in our group, including me were going to be shot but then the soliders changed their minds and decided to let us starve. We went with out food for ten days. We some how manage to survive but I was so weak I could not lift my arms. Then we were finally allowed to go home.”

Early this month (January) the Karen National Union and the Burmese government agreed to a ceasefire.

But Law Reh is not convinced that it’s safe enough to leave Thailand and go home.

Hhun Okkar is a spokesman for the United Nationalities Federal Council, an alliance of ethnic armed groups.

He is also suspicious about the recent ceasefire aggrements.

“The ethnic groups have made ceasefire agreements with the military government many times before with past military leaders and now with the President Thein Sein. Although different tactics were used to reach agreements we can see the government’s intention is the same. The government promises to improve economic opporitunites for the ethnic groups but they never aggree to real political power. Now we are expecting that their will be discussions about ethnic political power but we are not sure if it will happen. It’s too early to say the problem has been solved.”

Burma has eight major ethnics groups who make up 40% of Burma's population.

They have been demanding - without success - for greater regional autonomy from the majority Burman-led central government since independence from Britain in 1948.

Khun Oo Reh is the general secretary of the Karenni Progressive Party.

He says the government needs to understand what ethnic groups are fighting for.

“We have been discriminated against and we have been ignored. The majority Burman ethnic group always wants to control the country. We are not treated fairly. Also we are fighting to protect our ethnic identity. We want self-determination. We want a federal democractic system in Burma. When Burma gained independence from Britain it was not so that the Burman people could rule but so all ethnic group could have self-determination. We all have to live and rule together.”

He says it is too early to say whether the nominal civilian government under the leadership of Thein Sein is serious about giving ethnic groups a greater say in how they are governed.

“Throughout history the ruling party in Burma, whether you call it a military dictatorship or the Burmese government, always name us separatist groups. They don’t use the word ‘Federalism’; they only talk about the ‘Union of Burma’. Their slogan is ‘federalism is separatism’. I believe that none of the ethnic groups are demanding an independent state. What we are fighting for is a real federal democratic system in Burma. There is no guaranteeee for peace unless there is a political solution, ceasefires can be broken at anytime.”

Interview with legal advisor U Aung Thein

BURMA: Interview with U Aung Thein

In Burma, Is it possible to make complaints if someone is tortured by the police?

Yes it is possible to make complaints. Police beat people during investigations into criminal cases. They investigate the person according to their suspicions, especially outside of Yangon. There have been several cases in which the victim dies as a result of the torture.

If the case is politically related the torture may be extreme. The case of Aung Naing Win proves this. He was a member of the National League for Democracy and was arrested on the suspicion of being involved in the bomb at Basontaung‘s fair and Junction 8 and Dagon Center in Yangon. The police arrested people who had been to Myawaddi and Maesot, the Thai-Burma Boarder. Win was arrested by the Special Departments and died in their custody. His family members were not informed about his death. When the time came to have his body cremated the police tried to give the family 100,000Kyats (100$) saying that it was for the expenses. However, the family did not accept it and tried to prosecute the authorities who had tortured him. The court rejected the case because the family members tried to prosecute them under the Coroners Act. The police, on the other hand said that he died because he had suffered from hepatitis. When the doctor carried out his examination he found that Win's his ribs had been broken to the point where they penetrated his liver. His external injuries showed that he had been seriously injured. His stomach Bio-C result showed that he had, in fact, suffered from Hepatitis B so the doctor ignored the physical injuries and concluded that he died because of this disease.

Another case is that of a human rights defender, Myint Aye. He was arrested along with his friend, Yan Shwe on suspicion of taking part in a bombing near the office of State Peace and Development Council. He was innocent of the crime he was accused of and was only involved in human right work. His friend Yan Shwe had been to Thailand and had been in prison. In custody, the police officer burned his penus in front of Myint Aye saying that his friend would be burned if he did not admit that crime. Myint Aye called one of his friends to come to the station and said that even though he had not done any crime he would sign a confession to prevent the torture of his friend. He was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment.

Another case is that of Than Myint Aung who was accused of a bombing in Sanchaung, in Yangon. He was seriously tortured during the investigations which lasted one month. As he was so seriously tortured during the investigations he was admitted to a mental hospital but the judge did not take that into consideration and he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment.

In North Okkala, police officers arrested a husband who quarreled with his wife. He died in custody due to torture. His relatives made a complaint about the case but it was not accepted

These are cases that occurred in Yangon. The torture cases outside Yangon are getting worse. For example, if someone dies as a result of torture during an investigation process they will burn the body in order to remove the evidence. At least in Yangon the cases are covered by the media and the family of the torture victims can make complaints. But we have never known how many cases involving torture happen outside of Yangon.

Are there any places to make complaints outside of Yangon?

Where? To the police station again? Human Rights groups and the National League for democracy members and lawyers helped the victims and their families. They documented the cases and then send them into the media. But the military and police help each other; if a soldier kills a person the police cover it up. If the police kill a person, the doctors cover it up.

Do the family members of the victims try to prosecute against the police officers?

They cannot do anything because there is no evidence.
If they arrest someone and he or she is in the hospital as a result of torture, they do the prosecution process after hospitalization. When they prosecute a person they detained that person without remand. I had been always taking care of these kinds of cases before my license was revoked.

Are there many lawyers who can take care of these kinds of cases?

There are few lawyers who dare to take these cases because they are intimidated by the authority. The cases against authorities lead them into troubles. They just want to cooperate with the judges and make money. For me, I never care about that. Even for the Aung Naing Win case, I helped the victim’s family to prosecute the general but the court did not accept it. We even tried to prosecute the general at the Supreme Court but finally the case was close according to the conclusion of the doctor. This was the first case to appear in the media.

Is there anything to add?

In Burma, most of the torture cases are related to politicians and the people who are related to the politics. If the torture victim is a woman they are not allowed to eat nor take a bath during periods. Men are seriously tortured during investigation but we cannot show any evidence about torture before the court despite telling the judge the victim was tortured. As a lawyer, I need legal protection to give legal services to the activists or victims who are related to politics. The police force is a part of executive. When police prosecute someone the judges accept the charge and rule. The judicial system seems like to judge whatever police prosecute. The judicial system is paralysed. The judicial system is not fair. All judges give punishments to any victims that the police prosecute.

(U Aung Thein is a legal advisor ) He was sentenced to 4 months under the pretext of contempt of court) His license to practice was revoked just before he took part in Aung San Suu Kyi's case with Yattaw.

Interview with political prisoner

Torture experiences by Burmese political prisoner

When were you sent to the prison and why?

I have to talk about my background first. I graduated in 1986 majoring in history and prepared to continue for my Master's Degree. In 1988, I participated in the demonstration along with many other students in Yangon and fled to Thailand. On the way back to Burma in 1991 with some documents given by the ethnic leaders, I was arrested in 1991. I was sentenced to death accused of being State’s revolutionary. This was later changed to 20 years imprisonment because of the many efforts of religious leaders. As there are many violations outside the prison, you can imagine how worse the human rights violations in inside prison.

What are your experiences in the prison? What about the others’ experiences?

We were all tortured. Not only political prisoners but also other criminal prisoners had been tortured in different ways. When we complained about the injustice to the authority, we were beaten. Most of the prisoners in the prison are children. They have been sent to the prisons because they tried to escape from the government army. These children have been abused sexually. Some of the criminal prisoner bribed the authorities to be able to abuse these children sexually.

And if some criminal looked at the authority brutally, the authority beat them unconscious. My friends and I wrote about that and tried to send it to outside, but the letter was caught by the authority and I was put in solitary for 3 months. Criminal prisoners had been beaten everyday. I had only been beaten three or four times a week. In 24 June 1994, I changed to another prison. They had been governing the prisoners like a jackass. Later on, I was tortured because I did a hunger strike because of some unsatisfied reason. I had been changing the prisons all the times. Once I had been in the prison where malaria was wide spread.

In 2000, the International Committee of the Red Cross had access to Burmese prisons and donated required medicines. But prison’s staff sold them instead of giving them to the prisoners. Criminal prisoners complained about their experiences in the prisoners to the ICRC during their visits. When ICRC went back, criminal prisoners were beaten till their teeth fell out from their mouths. When the ICRC came back again to the prisons, the prisoners did not dare to talk about their problems to them. They were even afraid of ICRC.

Were all kinds of torture they use bad?

There are so many rural prisons in Kalay, Chin States, and Western Burma. Prisoners had not had enough food. In addition to that, they had been beaten when they were weak because of illness gain by malaria. At least 20 prisoners had died a month in all of the prisons. Some prisoners committed suicide. The prisoners’ authorities used to say “You are not human being, you are just a prisoner”. Most of the prisoners were not criminal but they were deserters. If you really want to see how bad torture is in the prison, just watch the movie which is about Nazi Germany and the Jews. It is like that. I was released late 2008. I have been watched all time even though I was released. I fled to Thailand finally.

Interview with Basil Fernando

How is Torture practiced in Sri Lanka?( Basil Fernando interview)

In Sri Lanka, torture is the usual constant practice. Torture is practiced in Sri Lanka all the time, in all police stations and during military operations. It is the usual constant practice. They use torture because torture is easy and cheap if you want to get a confession quickly. Because the criminal system is so badly organized, an ordinary Constable can torture a person, but cannot conduct an investigation. Investigative technique requires training, time, patience and many other skills. If you want to do things economically, then you use torture. That is their raison d’etre.

If there is an insurgency, people may be tortured who are thought to be members of a questionable organization. However, if one is a prominent political figure they will not be tortured because of status and money. So, it comes down to the fact that ordinary, poor people are tortured. In the course of an ordinary criminal investigation of stealing or robbery, the police mostly use torture to get whatever they want.

Torture in police stations, in military compounds and in detention centers is done in secret, without witnesses. Then they can deny the fact when somebody dies in custody. Excuses might be given that the person died of a heart attack or he hung himself at the police station because according to the law, torture is forbidden. And we have a law which says that torture is a crime punishable by 7 years imprisonment. So torture is a crime. Since you cannot commit a crime openly, you torture people where only police or military people are present. This is their process whereby there is no evidence or complaints, because where does the person go who was tortured?

Officially, they can complain to higher police authorities, to human rights commissions, to police commissions, to lawyers, to the courts, even the Supreme Court. Under the fundamental rights umbrella, they can file a petition with the Supreme Court. The fact is that none of these things ultimately result in any real solutions. So, most people don’t complain because at the end of the day there is no point in doing so. At the beginning they may want to voice their complaints, but get discouraged because it brings on more troubles. For instance, someone will come and say things or offer you some money. In the end, large numbers of people don’t take the trouble to complain because it is useless. They don’t have faith in the police. They know that if you go to the police, there is no point. The higher officer will not enquire into the case, and most certainly will take no action against the ordinary policeman, but rather will take their side. He will try to do a cover- up, making people loathe to go to higher officers and complain, although they have the legal right to do so.
T
he Human Rights Commission has also done nothing to solve this problem. They go to the Courts in some cases but it takes several years to hear a case. And should the court give a judgment it is not honored by everybody. So in the end, you get nothing. Formally speaking, you have the right to make a complaint. But there is no real system to do so and get the complaint investigated. If the government is not supposed to do torture, they can make things very simple .They must budget appropriate monies to ensure more properly trained, professional people to investigate crimes. Otherwise, police officers will continue to torture.
So, how can the same government which allows the police to commit torture, also take legal action against them? This is the contradiction. Legally they can, speaking they can, but practically government cannot do both. If the government permits police officers to torture, they cannot take a firm standard against those officers who torture.

These two things cannot go together. Common sense tells us that the Sri Lankan situation is not different from many other Asia countries such as Thailand or the Philippines where a proper policing system is not in operation. Police, who investigate crime according to a standard, develop ways and make professional enquires. But we, we have a physically beaten-up style where police do not do these things. This is a high-level industry that is tolerated. Everybody depends on the system. If you don’t and allow an opposition party to get too much power, then you use the police to beat them up at various stages. As a result people will not take to protesting. Torture is used for stopping such things as: protests, organizing political parties, people talking in the public and to intimidate people. They rule by intimidation. They rule by creating fear. That is why torture is everywhere.

What do the Sri Lanka Human Rights organizations do for the victims of torture?

They do their best. They collect information to get people to talk. What else can they do if there are no legal remedies? And when the people are willing to talk, publicize it. Send it to the government even though they know nothing will happen, send it to the newspapers and send it to the internet. They can do urgent appeals and write reports. But, first they get it in the press, so as to generate a great deal of publicity. Some of them also help the torture victims by facilitating psychological and physical treatment and protection. They also aid them in filing many cases or finding cases. None of this ends up in good results however. About all they can do is to get information and publicize.

According to your experience, what is the most difficult area in which to work in your country?

Everywhere is difficult .You need the law, you need the system and the system is broken down everywhere in the country. And of course, it is worse in places where there has been civil war. In the north-east, where there has been civil conflict, there is nothing and the military are everywhere. These people are in the worst position. But, generally, every place is like that.

Are people tortured by the police afraid to make a complaint?

If they complain, who is going to look after the complaint? The police will come back and beat them because they complain. They are merely trying to make a protest about their troubles. Therefore, they will be beaten to create more difficulties for them, because basically the people are afraid of being tortured.

How does the Human Rights Organization encourage these people?

If a woman is raped, you don’t have to encourage talking. She will talk because she is angry. You don’t need to encourage, you only need to listen. There are enough people to listen. Everywhere people are talking about it. People know that it is wrong but people cannot do anything officially about it. But people complain to each other. People complain to their family, their neighbors and people talk. What the human rights group and the others can do is listen, record what they are saying, get it published and get it discussed. But you don’t have to encourage them because people are already very angry. The Human Rights Organization will send them to the government. That’s all they can do. There are many places that people know where somebody will listen to them. So they go to these places and say this is what happened to me.

So they have small town officers, in a small place where it is known what has happened to you. If you go there, you can file a complaint. You can say what you want and the people know what you are saying. They will type up the complaint and officially send it to official channels. They will get it published in the newspaper and other places. And finally they will send it to the international human rights organization. That is what a HR organization does.

What are the difficulties for those who work in the field in Sri Lanka?

The difficulty is the legal system is not used. The Legal system doesn’t help the victim or the legal system for that matter. They both suffer the same problem. If the Legal system is good these things don’t happen. The police are not good, the courts are not good and the government only respects vested money interests. These are the main difficulties. Added to that, government knows that some HR organizations are helping people and the people are therefore stronger. As a result, they try to discourage the Human Rights Defender. In the last analysis, the problem is that there is no system in place that protects both people and the legal system itself.

An additional something

The thing is, everybody knows that torture exists in every part of Asia. People know this but people don’t talk it over. It is not the victim’s problem. People in general as well as the popular media should talk about what they really know .They should stop being hypocrites. Everybody knows what is happening. The real problem is the bigger media outlets, the larger civil society, organizations, and women’s organizations. There are numerous human rights organizations. They know what is happening, but they don’t talk about it enough. Brutality abounds.

The police are brutal, society is brutal and very often people are also brutal. If men have problems at home, they may beat their wives because they know the police will not do anything about it. So torture problems, domestic violence, violence against woman are all related. People should put things together, that is, if the State is brutal, you cannot make the general society civilized. There is no point in trying to punish only the husband because it is the society that is brutalized. You can see everywhere where torture has been used. In the schools, the teacher will use punishment against the child as they think this is the way to discipline students. So, police use torture, schools use physical punishment, husbands beat their wives, all part of a violent society. Sri Lanka is a very violent society.

( Interview) Basil Fernando ႏွင့္ေတြ႔ဆံုေမးျမန္းခ်က္

ေမး....သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုဘယ္လိုမ်ိဳးအသံုးျပဳပါသလဲ။

သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံမွာ ႏိွပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကို လူေတြအသံုးျပဳေနက် အေလ့အက်င့္တခုပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ရဲစခန္းေတြ၊ စစ္တပ္ေတြထဲမွာဆိုရင္ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုအသံုးျပဳတယ္။ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကို အသံုးျပဳတဲ့အေၾကာင္းရင္းကေတာ့ သက္သာတယ္၊ လြယ္တယ္၊အျပစ္ဝန္ခံလာေအာင္လို႔ျမန္ျမန္လုပ္လို႔ရတယ္။ ျပစ္မႈဆိုင္ရာတရားစီရင္ေရးက်င့္ထံုးေတြကလုပ္ခ်င္သလိုလုပ္ထားေတာ့၊သာမန္ရဲဝန္ထမ္းလည္း ႏိွပ္စက္လို႔ရတယ္။စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးျခင္းကိုေတာ့လုပ္လုိ႔မရဘူး။ဘာလို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့စံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးတာကေလ့က်င့္မႈလိုတယ္။
အခိ်န္လိုတယ္။ စိတ္ရွည္ဖို႔လိုတယ္။ သက္သက္သာသာနဲ႔ သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ေတြရခ်င္ေတာ့ႏွိပ္စက္မႈကိုပဲသံုးတယ္။

တကယ္လို႔ အစိုးရဆန္႔က်င္တဲ့အဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြရွိလာျပီဆိုရင္သံသယရွိတဲ့ အဖြဲ႔ကအဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေတြကႏွိပ္စက္ခံရႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့တေယာက္ေယာက္က ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ျပီးအရွိန္အဝါရွိမယ္ဆိုရင္ေတာ့ သူ႔ရဲ႕အေျခအေနရယ္ပိုက္ဆံရယ္ေၾကာင့္ သူ႔ကိုႏွိပ္စက္ရဲမွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ဒါေပမဲ့ ရိုးရိုးသာမန္လူေတြကေတာ့ သူခိုးမႈဓါးျပမႈေတြကိုစစ္ေဆးရာမွာ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုခံရပါတယ္။

ရဲစခန္းေတြမွာ ၊ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးစခန္းေတြမွာ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုလုပ္ရာမွာ သက္ေသမခ်န္ပဲ
တိတ္တဆိတ္လုပ္ေဆာင္ပါတယ္။ သူတို႔ရဲ႕ထိန္းသိမ္းေရးစခန္းေတြမွာ ႏွိပ္စက္ရင္းေသသြားရင္ေတာင္မွ
သူတို႔က ႏွလံုးေရာဂါေၾကာင့္ေသတယ္၊ဒါမွမဟုတ္အဲဒီလူကကိုယ့္ကိုကိုယ္သတ္ေသတယ္လို႔ ေျဖရွင္းပါတယ္။ သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံမွာကႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းတဲ့လူကုိရႏွစ္ျပစ္ဒါဏ္ခ်ရမဲ့ဆိုတဲ့ဥပေဒရွိပါတယ္။ဒါေၾကာင့္ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္း
တာကျပစ္မႈျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ျပစ္မႈကိုေပၚေပၚထင္ထင္လုပ္လို႔မရေတာ့ ပုန္းလ်ိွဳးကြယ္လ်ွိဴးနဲ႔သူတို႔လူေတြရွိတဲ့ေနရာမွာပဲ
ႏွိပ္စက္တာေပါ့။အဲဒါကသက္ေသမခ်န္ဘဲလုပ္တဲ့သူတို႔ရဲ႕နည္းလမ္းပါ။

ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈ ရွိလာျပီဆိုရင္တရားဝင္ေတာ့ ရဲဌာနေတြနဲ႔၊လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ေတြကို ေရွ႕ေနေတြကို၊တရားရံုးေတြကိုေတာ့တိုင္ၾကားလို႔ရတယ္။လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအေျခခံအခြင့္အေရးေတြအရသူတို႔ေတြက တရားစြဲဆိုဖို႔အတြက္တရားရံုးခ်ဳပ္အထိသြားလို႔ရပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမဲ့ေနာက္ဆံုးမွာမေအာင္ျမင္ပါဘူး။ဒါေၾကာင့္လူေတြက ပထမေတာ့တိုင္ဖို႔အတြက္လုုပ္ျပီးေနာက္ပိုင္းမွာေတာ့စိတ္ဓါတ္က်တာကေတာ့တိုင္တာက အရာမထင္ဘဲသူတို႔ပဲဒုကၡေရာက္လို႔ပါဘဲ

။ဥပမာအားျဖင့္ေျပာရရင္တေယာက္ေယာက္ကလာျပီးတခုခုလာေျပာျပီးပိုက္ဆံလာေပးတာတို႔ဘာတို႔ရွိတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆံုးမွာေတာ့လူေတြက ကိုယ့္ကိုကိုယ္ဒုကၡေရာက္မခံဘဲ တိုင္ၾကားတာကိုမလုပ္ေတာ့ပါဘူး။ သူတို႔ကရဲကိုလည္းမယံုပါဘူး။သူတို႔သိတာကတိုင္လည္းအရာမထင္ဘူး၊ရဲအရာရွိေတြကလည္းစစ္ေဆးမႈမရွိဘူး၊ အေရးယူမႈလည္းရွိမွာမဟုတ္ပါဘူး။ျပီးေတာ့ရဲဘက္ပဲလိုက္မွာပါဘဲ။သူတို႔ကေတာ့ဖံုးကြယ္ဖို႔ၾကိဳးစားမွာပါဘဲ။
လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ကဒီျပႆနာကိုေျဖရွင္းဖို႔ဘာမွမလုပ္ႏိုင္ေသးပါဘူး။သူတို႔ေတြကတရားရံုးကိုဒီအမႈေတြကို
တိုင္တယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့ တရားရင္ဆိုင္ရတာက ႏွစ္ေတြအမ်ားၾကီးၾကာတယ္။တရားရံုးကေကာလူေတြမေလးစားတဲ့အမႈေတြကို ဘယ္လိုလုပ္ဆံုးျဖတ္ေပးေတာ့မလဲ။

ေနာက္ဆံုးမွာေတာ့ တရားစြဲတဲ့လူကဘာမွမရဘဲျပီးသြားတဲ့အမႈေတြရွိတယ္။တရားဝင္ေျပာတာကတိုင္လို႔ရတယ္။
တကယ္ေတာ့တကယ္အေရးယူျပီးစစ္ေဆးေမးျမန္းတဲ့စနစ္မရွိဘူး။တကယ္ေတာ့အစိုးရကႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကို လုပ္ဖို႔ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္မရွိဘူးဆိုရင္ သူတို႔လုပ္ရမွာကလြယ္လြယ္ေလးပဲ။အမႈေတြကိုစစ္ေဆးဖို႔အတြက္ကၽြမ္းက်င္တဲ့လူေတြနဲ႔၊ တာဝန္ရွိတဲ့လူေတြကိုသင္တန္းေပးဖို႔အတြက္လိုအပ္တဲ့ပိုက္ဆံရွိထားရပါမယ္။ဒီလိုမွမဟုတ္ရင္ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကို
ရဲေတြကဆက္လက္အသံုးျပဳေနမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

အစိုးရကရဲေတြကိုႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းလို႔ရေအာင္ခြင့္ျပဳထားျပီးေတာ့အဲဒါကိုအေရးယူလို႔ရေအာင္ဘယ္လုိလုပ္ႏိုင္မွာလဲ။ ဆန္႔က်င္ဘက္ၾကီးဘဲ။ ဒီ၂ခုကအတူတူသြားလို႔မရပါဘူး။ကိုယ့္အသိအရကိုယ္ေျပာရမယ္ဆုိရင္သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံဟာ တျခားအာရွႏိုင္ငံေတြနဲထူးမျခားနားတဲ့အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မႈပံုစံရွိတယ္လို႔ေျပာရမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျပစ္မႈေတြကိုစစ္ေဆးတဲ့ ရဲေတြက စနစ္တက်နည္းလမ္းေတြကိုရွာျပီးစံုစမ္းစစ္ေဆးရမွာပါ။သူတို႔ကစနစ္တက်မစစ္ေဆးတတ္ေတာ့လူေတြကိုရိုက္ႏွက္ျပီး
စစ္ေဆးတယ္။ ျပီးေတာ့ အာဏာရပါတီကအတိုက္အခံပါတီကိုအာဏာေပးရမွာစိုးတဲ့အတြက္ အဖြဲ႔ဝင္ေတြကိုႏွိပ္စက္ခိုင္းတာေတြဘာေတြရွိတယ္။

အဲဒီေတာ့လူေတြကဆႏၵျပပြဲမွာမပါဝင္ရဲေတာ့ဘူး။ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုဆႏၵျပပြဲတို႔ ၊ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီေတြကလုပ္တဲ့ ပါဝင္တဲ့လူေတြကိုေၾကာက္ေအာင္ေျခာက္ခ်င္လို႔သံုးတယ္။လူေတြကိုေျခာက္လွန္႔ျပီးအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တယ္။ ေၾကာက္ေအာင္လုပ္ျပီးအုပ္ခ်ဳပ္တယ္။

ေမး....သီရိလကၤာကလူ႕အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြကႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့လူေတြအတြက္ဘာလုပ္ေပးလဲ။

အေကာင္းဆံုးလုပ္ေပးတယ္။ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြကသတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ေတြရယူတယ္။ လူေတြဖြင့္ဟေျပာလာေအာင္လုပ္တယ္။ လူေတြကစကားေျပာခ်င္လာတဲ့အခါမွာအဲဒါကိုလူေတြသိေအာင္လုပ္ေပးတယ္။ ဘာမွအက်ိဳးထူးမလာဘူးဆုိတာသိေပမဲ့လည္းအစိုးရကိုစာပုိ႔တယ္။သတင္းစာမွာပါလာေအာင္လုပ္တယ္။ အင္တာနက္မွာပါလာေအာင္လုပ္တယ္။အစိုးရနဲ႔ကုလသမဂၢကိုေတာင္းဆိုစာေတြပို႔တယ္။စာတမ္းေတြေရးတယ္။
တခ်ိဳ႕ေတြကႏွိပ္စက္ခံရတဲ့ လူေတြကိုစိတ္ပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာနဲ႔ ရုပ္ပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာကုသမႈေတြမွာပါဝင္ကူညီေပးတယ္။ အမႈေတြကိုစုစည္းေပးတယ္။ရလဒ္ကေတာ့အေကာင္းၾကီးေတာ့မဟုတ္ပါဘူး။လုပ္ႏိုင္တာကေတာ့သတင္းေတြရယူျပီး ျဖန္႔ေဝေပးတာတာပါဘဲ။
ေမး....Basil ရဲ႕အေတြ႕အၾကံဳေတြအရ ဘယ္လိုေနရာမ်ိဳးမွာလုပ္ရတာအခက္ခဲဆံုးလဲ။

ေနရာတိုင္းကေတာ့ခက္တာပါဘဲ။ လူေတြကဥပေဒလိုတယ္။စနစ္လိုတယ္။ဒီစနစ္ဟာ တတိုင္းျပည္လံုးမွာပ်က္ဆီးေနတယ္။ အဆိုးဆံုးေနရာေတြကေတာ့ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ေနရာပါပဲ။ အေရွ႕ေျမာက္ပိုင္းကပ ိပကၡျဖစ္ခဲ့တဲ့ ေနရာမွာေတာ့ စစ္သားေတြဘဲရွိျပီး က်န္တာဘာမွမရွိဘူး။ဒီလူေတြကေတာ့ အဆိုးဆံုးပါဘဲ။ေနရာတိုင္းမွာလည္းဒီအတိုင္းဘဲလို႔ေျပာလို႔ရပါတယ္။
ေမး.....ႏွိပ္စက္ခံရတဲ့လူေတြကတိုင္ရဲလား။

တကယ္လုိ႔သူတို႔တိုင္ရင္ဘယ္သူေတြကသူတို႔ကိုလာတာဝန္ယူမွာလဲ။ ရဲကဘဲသူတို႔ဆီကိုျပန္လာျပီးတုိင္လုိ႔ဆိုျပီး ထပ္ရိုက္တယ္ေလ။သူတို႔ တကယ္ေတာ့လူေတြကသူတို႔ ခံစားရတဲ့ဒုကၡေတြကိုထုတ္ေဖာ္ေျပာဖို႔ၾကိဳးစားမွာပဲေလ။ လူေတြကႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းတာကိုေၾကာက္ေတာ့့သူတုိ႔ကရိုက္ႏွက္ျပီးလူေတြကိုေျခာက္တယ္။
ေမး.....လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြက အဲဒီလုိလူေတြကိုဘယ္လိုအားေပးလဲ။

တကယ္လုိ႔အမ်ိဳးသမီးတေယာက္ဟာအဓမၼက်င့္ခံရျပီဆိုရင္သူတို႔စကားေျပာလာေအာင္ အားေပးဖို႔မလိုဘူး။သူ႔ဘာသာသူေျပာလိမ့္မယ္ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့သူစိတ္ဆိုးေနလို႔ပဲ။ အားေပးဖို႔မလိုဘူး၊နားေထာင္ေပးဖို႔႔ပဲလိုတယ္။နားေထာင္ေပးမဲ့လူေတြလည္းရွိတယ္။ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာလူေတြကအဲဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ေျပာေနၾကတယ္။လူေတြကဒါဟာမမွန္မွန္းသိတယ္။
ဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ တရားဝင္လုပ္လို႔မရတာပဲရွိတယ္။လူေတြကသူတို႔မိသားစုဝင္ေတြကိုေျပာၾကတယ္။ သူတို႔ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းေတြကိုေျပာၾကတယ္။ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းမွာလုပ္တ့ဲလူေတြလုပ္ႏိုင္တာကနားေထာင္ေပးဖို႔နဲ႔ လူေတြေျပာတာကိုမွတ္ထားျပီးေတာ့လူေတြသိေအာင္ျဖန္႔ေပးတယ္။လူေတြအဲဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔
ေဆြးေႏြးလာေအာင္လုပ္ေပးတယ္။

လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြလုပ္ႏိုင္တာကအဲဒီလူေတြအႏိုင္က်င့္ခံရတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကိုအစိုးရသိေအာင္
ပို႔ေပးတယ္။ သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အဲဒီလိုမ်ိဳးနားေထာင္ေပးႏိုင္မဲ့ေနရာေတြ၊လူေတြအမ်ားၾကီးရွိတယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္လူေတြကက်ေနာ္၊က်မဆီမွာဒီကိစၥျဖစ္တယ္ဆိုျပီးအဲဒီေနရာေတြမွာေျပာျပတယ္။သူတို႔မွာ တေယာက္ေယာက္ကတခုခုျဖစ္ျပီဆိုရင္ျမိဳ႕နယ္တာဝန္ခံဆီသြားတိုင္လို႔ရတယ္။မင္းဘာလုပ္ခ်င္တယ္
ဆိုတာကိုေျပာလို႔ရတယ္။ သူတို႔ကမင္းတုိင္ခ်င္တာကိုမွတ္ထားျပီးသတင္းစာတို႔ တျခားေနရာတို႔ မွာျဖန္႔ေပးတယ္။ေနာက္ဆံုးလုပ္ေဆာင္တာကေတာ့ ႏုိင္ငံတကာလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြကိုပို႔ေပးတာပါဘဲ။
ဒါေတြကေတာ့လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္းေတြ ကလုပ္ေပးတာပဲျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ေမး......သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံကလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြရဲ႕ဝန္ထမ္းေတြရဲ႕အဓိကအခက္အခဲကဘာလဲ။

ဥပေဒျပဳစနစ္ပါဘဲ။ဥပေဒျပဳစနစ္ဟာ အႏိုင္က်င့္ခံရတဲ့လူေတြကိုကာကြယ္ေစာင့္ေရွာက္မေပးပါဘူး။ တကယ္လို႔ဥပေဒျပဳစနစ္ကသာေကာင္းမယ္ဆိုရင္ဒီလိုအမႈေတြျဖစ္လာစရာအေၾကာင္းမရွိပါဘူး။
ရဲဝန္ထမ္းကလည္းမေကာင္းဘူး၊တရားရံုးကလည္းမေကာင္းဘူး၊အစိုးရကလည္းပိုက္ဆံကိုပဲၾကည့္တယ္။
အဲဒါေတြကအဓိကအခက္အခဲေတြပဲ။အစိုးရကလည္းအခ်ိဳ႕လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႕အစည္းမွာလုပ္တဲ့လူေတြက
လူေတြကိုကူညီေပးေနတာသိတယ္။ ေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးလုပ္မွန္းလည္းသိတယ္။အဲဒီေတာ့လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး
ကာကြယ္တဲ့လူေတြကို ႏွိပ္ကြပ္ဖို႔ၾကိဳးစားတယ္။ ေနာက္ဆံုးေလ့လာပိုင္းျခားမႈအရသီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံမွာလူေတြကိုနဲ႔ဥပေဒကို ကာကြယ္ေပးတဲ့စနစ္မရွိဘူးဆိုတာပါဘဲ။
ေမး........ဘာမ်ားထပ္ေျပာခ်င္ပါေသးလဲ။

အာရွႏိုင္ငံကေနရာတိုင္းမွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈရွိတာကိုလူတိုင္းသိတယ္။ လူေတြကသိတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့မေျပာဘူး။ အဲဒါကအဲ့ဒီ့ႏွိပ္စက္ခံရတဲ့လူေတြရဲ႕အျပစ္မဟုတ္ဘူး။သာမန္လူေတြနဲ႔ မီဒီယာေတြကအဲဒါကိုေျပာေပးရမယ္။
ေဝဖန္တာကိုရပ္ရမယ္။ လူတိုင္းကဘာျဖစ္ေနလဲဆုိတာကိုသိတယ္။ တကယ့္ျပႆနာက မီဒီယာၾကီးေတြ၊အမ်ားျပည္သူနဲ႔ဆိုင္တဲ့အဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြ ၊တျခားအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြ၊ အမ်ိဴးသမီးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းေတြဘာပဲ။သူတို႔ကဘာေတြျဖစ္ေနလဲဆိုတာသိတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့ဒါကိုမေျပာၾကဘူး။ ရဲေတြကလည္းၾကမ္းတမ္းတယ္၊ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ကလည္းၾကမ္းတမ္းတယ္။တခါတရံမွာလူေတြကလည္းၾကမ္းတမ္းတယ္။
ေယာက်္ားတေယာက္ကအိမ္မွာျပႆနာရွိျပီဆိုရင္သူတို႔ကသူတို႔ရဲ႕မိန္းမေတြကိုရိုက္တယ္။ဘာျဖစ္လုိ႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ရဲေတြက
အဲ့ဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔ဘာမွလုပ္မွာမဟုတ္ဘူးဆုိတာသိေနလုိ႔ပါဘဲ။

ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈျပႆနာ ၊ အိမ္တြင္းအၾကမ္းဖက္မႈျပႆနာနဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသမီးေတြကို
အၾကမ္းဖက္တဲ့ျပႆနာက ဆက္စပ္ေနပါတယ္။ တကယ္ေတာ့တိုင္းျပည္ကၾကမ္းတမ္းရင္လူေတြကိုလည္းယဥ္ေက်းျပီး အျပဳအမူေကာင္းေအာင္လုပ္လုိ႔မရပါဘူး။အဲ့ဒီ့အၾကမ္းဖက္တဲ့ေယာက်္ားကိုဘဲအျပစ္ေပးလုိ႔မရပါဘူး။
ဘာ့ေၾကာင့္လဲဆိုေတာ့ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ကိုက ၾကမ္းတမ္းလို႔ပါဘဲ။ ေနရာတိုင္းမွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုေတြ႔ႏို္င္ပါတယ္။ ေက်ာင္းမွာလည္းဆရာေတြကတပည့္ကိုအျပစ္ေပးတာကိုေတြ႔ႏိုင္ပါတယ္။သူတို႔ကဒီလိုနည္းနဲ႔အျပစ္ေပးမွနာခံမယ္ထင္လို႔ေလ။ ရဲေတြကႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုအသံုးျပဳတယ္။ဆရာေတြက ရုပ္ပိုင္းဆိုင္ရာအရအျပစ္ေပးတယ္။ ေယာက်ာ္းေတြကသူတို႔မိန္းမေတြကိုရိုက္တယ္။ အကုန္လံုးကအၾကမ္းဖက္ေနတာပဲ။သီရိလကၤာႏိုင္ငံကတကယ့္ကိုအၾကမ္းပတမ္း ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ရွိတဲ့ႏိုင္ငံပဲျဖစ္တယ္။

Interview with Basseer Naweed

How is torture practiced in Pakistan? (Baseer Naweed)

Torture is very common in Pakistan. It generally happens during the detention .They torture to get confessions or bribes. At present there is no law which criminalizes torture in the country. Torture is a common occurrence because the authorities know that they would not be brought before the court.

Do people who are tortured by the police dare make complaints?

Generally for those who are brave, their family members make complaint. We have statistics of torture victims. Every year more than 1300 people are tortured and they are the people who complain to the police. But how can the police officers register a case against themselves? It is because of this that they don’t allow the people to make complaints. So people who are tortured by the police do not complaint generally because no one can take care of them.

Is there any HR organization that works in inside Pakistan? What are their main activities?

Yes, they collect the information about human rights violations. However, even the activists don’t know much about the issue of torture. The Asian Human Rights Commission works does a lot of work on that issue. There is no such move in the country against the torture, no one is working on the law which should prohibit the torture.

As a staff of the AHRC, what do you do for the people who are tortured by the police?

Actually those people who are tortured by police contact the AHRC directly themselves. We are very successful in documenting torture which should be more focused in Pakistan.

What are the difficulties have you faced on human rights or torture issue in your country?

People don’t want to narrate the stories of torture because whenever they tell the story, the police punish them again. Any how we just sent the activist to collect the story saying that we will not mention his or her name .That is the difficulties we have faced generally. Under the constitution and law, whoever goes before the court, the judge should ask the accused person whether he or she was tortured. The court judges and police work so closely that they don’t ask it. No investigation has even been initiated from the court against the torture. That is also another weakness of the courts.

Does Pakistani think torture is a crime?

Yes, they think torture is a crime. But they don’t know the law. When I was in a meeting last year, I asked many lawyers about torture issues but they don’t know anything about that. When the police officer tortures someone in front of the public, the others try to stop it but the person who tries would be beaten. Actually it’s because of the absence of the law against torture that the police and law enforcement enjoy the power. They created the fear psychosis in the society by using their power.

What is your future plan for Pakistani as a staff from HR organizations?

HR organization should work on the torture issue. HR organizations do the work of compiling and most of them are lawyers. We have pointed out that there are more than 52 tortures centres run by the military. Even in the high court they don’t take action about the torture cases. We work much more on sensitization of the issue of torture. We try to make the torture issue a priority issue. We have to work much more so that there should be a movement in Pakistan against torture and against unlimited law enforcement agencies. We try our best.

( Interview) Baseer Naweed ႏွင့္ေတြ႔ဆံုေမးျမန္းခ်က္

ေမး….ပါကစၥတန္မွာ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းျခင္းနဲ႔ကို ဘယ္လိုေၾကာင့္ အသံုးျပဳရတာပါလဲ။

ပါကစၥတန္မွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းျခင္းကိုအသံုးျပဳျခင္းဟာအရမ္းတြင္က်ယ္ပါတယ္။ထိန္းသိမ္းထားတဲ့
အခ်ိန္မွာႏွိပ္စက္တာပိုမ်ားပါတယ္။ျပီးေတာ့ပိုက္ဆံလိုခ်င္လို႔ရယ္နဲ႔ျပစ္မႈကိုဝန္ခံေအာင္လို႔သံုးတာပိုမ်ားပါတယ္။
ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းတဲ့အာဏာပိုင္ေတြကတရားရံုးမေရာက္ဘူးဆိုတာသိေနေတာ့အဲဒါကိုလုပ္ဖို႔ဝန္မေလးေတာ့ဘူးေပါ့။

ေမး…..ႏွိပ္စက္ခံရတဲ့လူေတြက တိုင္ရဲလား။

အရမ္းသတိၱရွိတဲ့လူေတြရဲ႕မိသားစုဝင္ေတြကေတာ့တိုင္ပါတယ္။က်ေနာ္တို႔မွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့လူေတြရဲ႕စာရင္းရွိပါတယ္။
ႏွစ္စဥ္ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့လူ၁၃၀၀ေက်ာ္ရွိတယ္။အဲဒီလူေတြဟာတိုင္ၾကားတဲ့လူေတြပါ။ဒါေပမဲ့တိုင္တန္းခံရတဲ့ရဲေတြကသူတို႔ ကိုထိခိုက္လာမဲ့အမႈကိုဘယ္ဖြင့္ေပးမလဲ။အဲဒီေတာ့ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့လူေတြဟာသူတို႔ကို တာဝန္ယူႏိုင္မဲ့လူမရွိေတာ့ မတိုင္ေတာ့တာမ်ားတယ္။

ေမး…..ပါကစၥတန္မွာလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းဘယ္ႏွစ္ခုေလာက္ရွိလဲ။သူတို႔ရဲ႕အဓိကလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ကဘာလဲ။

လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းရဲ႕အဓိကလုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ကေတာ့လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးခ်ိဳးေဖာက္တဲ့သတင္းအခ်က္အလက္ေတြကို စုေဆာင္းတာပါဘဲ။ဒါေပမဲ့ ပါကစၥတန္မွာက လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအတြက္လုပ္ေနတဲ့လူေတြေတာင္မွ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈျပႆနာကို မသိၾကဘူး၊အာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ကေတာ့အဲဒီ႔ျပႆနာကိုအဓိကလုပ္ေဆာင္တယ္။ပါကစၥတန္မွာအဲဒီေလာက္အထိအဲဒီျပႆနာကိုအေလးအေပးဘူး။ဘယ္သူမွလည္းႏွိပ္စက္င္းပန္းျခင္းကိုကာကြယ္ႏိုင္တဲ့ ဥပေဒကိုျပဌာန္းဖို႔မလုပ္ေဆာင္ဘူး။

ေမး….အာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕ ဝန္ထမ္းအေနနဲ႔ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့ လူေတြအတြက္ဘာလုပ္ေပးပါလဲ။

ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့လူေတြဟာအာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ကုိတိုက္ရိုက္ဆက္သြယ္ပါတယ္။ပါကစၥတန္မွာေတာ့ အေလးထားသင့္တဲ့ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္တဲ့အမႈေတြကိုေဆာင္ရြက္ရာမွာက်ေနာ္တို႔အာရွလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးေကာ္မရွင္ရဲ႕
လုပ္ေဆာင္ခ်က္ဟာေတာ္ေတာ္ေလးတာသြားပါတယ္။

ေမး……..ပါကစၥတန္မွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့အမႈ၊ဒါမွမဟုတ္လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးနဲ႔ပတ္သက္တဲ့အမႈေတြကိုေဆာင္ရြက္ရာမွာ ဘာအခက္အခဲေတြနဲ႔ၾကံဳေတြ႔ရပါလဲ။ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းခံရတဲ့သူေတြဟာသူတို႔ရဲ႕အမႈေတြကိုမေျပာျပခ်င္ဘူး၊ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ သူတို႔ေျပာျပတိုင္းရဲကသူတို႔ကိုအျပစ္ေပးျပန္ေရာ။ဒါေပမဲ့လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအတြက္လုပ္ေနတဲ့လူေတြကသြားေမးျမန္းျပီးနာမည္ကို
မေဖာ္ျပပါဘူးဆိုျပီးေျပာရတယ္။ဒါကေတာ့ပထမအခက္အခဲပါ။ေနာက္တခုကအေျခခံဥပေဒအရတစံုတေယာက္ဟာ
တရားရံုးမွာတရားရင္ဆိုင္ေနရျပီဆိုရင္တရားသူၾကီးဟာစြပ္စြဲခံရသူကိုႏွိပ္စက္ခံရလားလို႔ေမးရပါတယ္။တရားသူၾကီးနဲ႔ရဲဟာပလဲနံပသင့္ေတာ့တရားသူၾကီးဟာဒါကိုမေမးပါဘူး။ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈနဲ႔ပတ္သက္လို႔တရားရံုးကဘာမွလုပ္ေဆာင္မႈမရွိပါဘူး။ဒါကေတာ့တရားရံုးေတြရဲ႕အားနည္းခ်က္ပါ။

ေမး….ပါကစၥတန္ကလူေတြက ႏိွပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈကိုအမႈလို႔ျမင္လား။

ျမင္ပါတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့သူတို႔ကဥပေဒကိုမသိပါဘူး။မႏွစ္ကအစည္းအေဝးမွာက်ေနာ္ေရွ႕ေနေတြကိုႏိွပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈနဲ႔
ဆိုင္တဲ့အမႈကိုေမးၾကည့္ေတာ့ေက်နပ္စရာေကာင္းေလာက္တဲ့အေျဖမရခဲ့ပါဘူး။ဒါဟာဥပေဒမွာႏိွပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈနဲ႔ဆိုင္တဲ့
ဥပေဒမရွိလုိ႔ပါဘဲ။အဲဒါကအာဏာရွိတဲ့လူေတြကိုႏိွပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းမႈမွာေပ်ာ္ေမြ႕ေစပါတယ္။ အာဏာသံုးျပီးျခိမ္းေျခာက္တဲ့
သေဘာပါဘဲ။

ေမး……လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းကဝန္ထမ္းတေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ေရွ႕ဆက္ျပီးဘာေတြလုပ္ေဆာင္သြားမယ္ဖို႔ရွိပါသလဲ။
လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖြဲ႔အစည္းကဝန္ထမ္းတေယာက္အေနနဲ႔ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းျခင္းဆိုင္ရာကိစၥေတြကို အေလးေပးလုပ္ေဆာင္သြားဖို႔ရွိပါတယ္။လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအတြက္လုပ္ေဆာင္တဲ့လူေတာ္ေတာ္မ်ားမ်ားဟာေရွ႕ေနေတြျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ပါကစၥတန္မွာက စစ္တပ္ကေနထိန္းခ်ဳပ္ထားတဲ့ ႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းေရးစင္တာ၅၄ခုရွိတယ္လို႔ က်ေနာ္တို႔ကေထာက္ျပပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔က အဲဒါနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ျပီး သူတို႔ေတြအဓိကထားလာဖို႔လုပ္ေနပါတယ္။က်ေနာ္တို႔ုလုပ္ေဆာင္ရမွာက ပါကစၥတန္မွာႏွိပ္စက္ညွင္းပန္းျခင္းနဲ႔ပတ္သက္ျပီးလူေတြပိုျပီးတက္တက္ၾကြၾကြပါဝင္လာေအာင္နဲ႔မေရမတြက္ႏိုင္တဲ့ အာဏာပိုင္နဲ႔ဆိုင္တဲ့ဌာနေတြကိုတြန္းအားေပးသြားဖို႔ရွိပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္တို႔ဟာတတ္ႏိုင္သမွ် အေကာင္းဆံုးျဖစ္ေအာင္လုပ္မွာပါ။

Interview with Norman Voss

I am working for the Asian Human Rights Commission on the Indonesian desk.
Torture in Indonesia is carried out by the police and by the military.
A few years ago, before 2002, the police and the military were one body.
While they were later separated, the police practice is still lacking a civil and law based approach.

In Indonesia there is no law against torture and it is thus not a criminal offense. In many cases, when police torture somebody, they arrest them and beat them but no legal action is taken against this behavior. There is no strong punishment meted out to them. Because of the lack of a criminalization of the act of torture, they have not clearly violated the law. People think violence by the police this is the norm: police beat criminals because they are criminals and should be treated harshly. Often people have been tortured because they repeatedly file complaints about many forms of injustice such as complaints that both the police and the military are running businesses and that they infringe on civilian interests.

Today, we received a case of a journalist who was beaten by a military commander because he discovered that the military command was running a logging business in the forest. He wrote an article, published it in the local newspaper and as a result the military commander came and assaulted him.

What are the reasons why police use torture?

According to cases we have received, the police torture for the following reasons: to further the vested interests of others, to intimidate people, to obtain a false confession, to punish people for something they have done that others may not like. There have been people so violently tortured that they died as a result of the torture.

What do the human rights organizations do for torture victims in Indonesia?

Their options are limited. They can facilitate legal aid, and a free lawyer, if the people are poor. They can only help in filing a complaint because there is no law in the penal code to cover torture. There is not much they can do to bring the perpetrators to justice, because torture is not illegal.

Are Indonesians knowledgeable about the concept of torture?

Not very many are aware of the basic concepts. They equate torture with violence. They do not realize that torture is specifically related to officers of the State. They accept to some extent that police torture. Take an example, from local television programs, which depict police beating a citizen. This would cause outrage in other countries because it is seen as wrong. But, in Indonesia, it is not understood entirely as a wrong. Most people who are affected by torture are themselves criminals. For example, thieves: they steal, police apprehend them and they are beaten up. They don’t often complain because they are not sure that this is wrong treatment.

They may reason that because they committed a crime they should get this type of punishment. So, they do not complain. But, this is not a reasonable opinion to hold, because in fact the police are not allowed to punish. The police are only allowed to investigate under orders. Punishment should only be dispensed after a Judge decides that a person is guilty of a crime. Punishment can be imprisonment but not torture in any form.

As a staff member of the AHRC, how do you work with partner Organizations?
We are interacting with groups in Indonesia who are working on Torture. It is much easier to work in Indonesia than say compared to working in Burma .They can write articles for newspapers, they can make complaints. Many organizations are doing just that. They can lobby the parliament to change the penal code so that torture becomes a crime. They can work on changing the criminal procedure code which is the process for arresting someone and bringing them before the courts.

It should include safeguards to ensure that police cannot do what they want during the process. And there are some empowerment activities going on. There are some groups that are more strongly affected by police torture, namely drug users, prostitutes or poor incomes groups. They are easily subjected to torture .The local organization explains to them what are their rights, what they can do and should do when they are arrested. Plans are made for campaigning and organizing rallies.

What is your challenge in working for Indonesia?

Groups, such as legal aid groups are working in different local offices in the country where victims can come to them. However, in some places like Papua, police would be suspicious about their activities. There are many inter-acting agencies which intimidate by their presence. As a result, people find it difficult to talk openly about the issues or feel constrained to go to an internet café or even to talk with friends on the street about human rights issues. So, our biggest challenge is to communicate and publish effectively. It is very easy to send an email from a regional organization like ours, to update the website, to make posters, or to make phone calls.

Is there any specific law against torture in Indonesia?

There is no specific law against torture in Indonesia, but there are some laws that are related to torture such as police assault or mal treatment. Legislators and some members of parliament responded to requests for a new law against torture saying that there are already suitable laws in place. But, regarding human rights violations, there is no law in Indonesia implementing the standard of the UN Convention against Torture.

Is there anything else to add?

Lack of public awareness on the subject of torture is a big problem. At the present time, there are mostly human rights groups who are educated about torture, together with a few victims groups. They have decided to support the struggle against torture. They are freely advocating calling for reforms in the law, not to mention international pressure from UN bodies. Generally, the public does not perceive torture as the most important issue. Poverty is seen as the priority problem, corruption is seen as a priority problem but torture is not perceived as a problem personally affecting them.

The code of conduct for the police was reviewed to effect police reform. The new code of conduct strongly prohibits the use of torture. Internal police regulations also reinforce this prohibition. And if police continue to engage in torture, they would be disciplined internally or fired from their positions but with no jail time. That is much different from criminalizing torture.

Interview with Rajesh Hamal

Nepal ( Rajesh Hamal interview)

I am working as an advocate. In the past, I have worked for a human rights organization.

How is torture practiced in Nepal?

Generally, torture is used to get information and confessions from suspects. I have worked for advocacy groups in the past and we tried to monitor detention centers in many places. There is no investigation system in our country. The police don’t have access to proper equipment so they rely on torture. The government doesn’t provide the necessary training for the police and those involved in national security.
In some cases, people have been beaten in public. The media has recorded these cases. Generally, human rights organizations and media - if they find hear of torture case – can publicize these cases widely.

How does a human rights organization help the public?

There is a human rights organization which publishes annual reports;
they intervene in cases in which they find violations of human rights.
For example, some organizations monitor civil political rights violations. There is another organization which works on economic and social rights and other organizations work in advocacy and monitoring.

What are the challenges of working for human rights NGO in Nepal?

Most people are not aware of their rights, but some people are. Once I was giving training to the police, and they asked me how they can get information from people without beating them. To come out of these practices, people need to know have other options and strategies. They need to know what their rights and duties are. If they are aware of these things, they will be respectful. We need to educate people like that.

How do you educate the people?

I am working for Amnesty International’s organization. We train policemen and we train the public to be aware of their rights. We used to do different seminars for people, and we would also publish pamphlets.

Does the Nepali government allow you to publish these materials?

Yes, they allow us to create such publications. We have a good insurance of publication rights and media rights. In Nepal, nearly 50% of the people do not know how to read and write, so we use radio or television programs which can be more useful to them.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Nepal is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as well as the Convention against Torture (CAT.) The Convention requires all countries that have ratified it to criminalize torture. Nepal has an active law called the Compensation for Torture Act which was passed in 1996. However, this does not criminalize the act of torture. Instead, it provides victims with compensation. The compensation is given by the state but not by the police. The other thing is that the policeman who inflicts torture on a victim has to go through the legal system with a public prosecutor.

It becomes ridiculous, because the public prosecutor has to defend and prosecute the policeman. This doesn’t make sense. Public prosecutors can provide legal aid, but they should not have to fulfill so many roles.

Torture will not be removed unless it is treated like a crime. So first, we have to denounce torture and criminalize it. Secondly, the act which criminalizes torture should be properly implemented. Thirdly, the police should be trained in techniques of interrogation and investigation which do not involve violence. Also, the people should be aware of their rights. This is what is needed for torture to be removed from Nepal.