This week there is no disputing among the international community that the people of Burma are suffering. Burma is literally a country burring, as the fires of repression have burned too long. While it is much too lengthly to go into the full extent of Burma/Myanmar's current situation and history, I wanted to give you some very brief information on the children's rights situation.
Children in Burma have spent decades facing countless human rights abuses, such abuses include; forced child labor, human trafficking, rape of girls by the military. Other violations include the denial of food, housing, religion, mutilations, death and denial of state.
Such examples of the abuses in Burma, are the Rohingya children, Muslim's who have been systematically discriminated against by the military regime, based on their ethnicity and religion. Rohingya children are “Stateless”, thanks to the Citizenship Act put into effect 15 years ago, which fails to recognize them. The situation in Burma is complicated in regards to the ethnic struggles and discontent, as their are more than 1oo various languages in the country. However it's not as simple as that, as many groups overlap, and have multiple religious affiliations amongst them. The law caused a great deal of people to be ‘denaturalized’, including the Rohingya.
Four years ago Asia Forum placed a Submission before the Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2003, making the following concluding remarks:
“Rohingya children bear the full brunt of the military regime's policies of exclusion and discrimination towards the Muslim population of Rakhine State. The combination of the factors listed above, which deny them fundamental human rights, gravely damage their childhood development and will affect the future of the Rohingya community.”
The report showed the clear violations of the following children's rights; Right to freedom of movement, Right to Food, Right to Health, Right to education. Unfortunately the Rohingya children are not alone in their suffering, for Burma is a country ripe of human rights violations and children of many ethnicities suffer grave abuses. Another such group is the Karen people, who are the second largest ethnic population, after the Burmans, and they are the majority of refugees from Burma in Thailand. Karen Christians, who are around 40%, have been severely persecuted and denied their religious freedoms.
These are not merely children's rights abuses in Burma, but forms of ethinic cleansing, and the suffering in Burma has gone on too long. For now as all eyes are on Burma, once again we must wait and pray that this time someone will come to the aid, and end the suffering of the children of Burma. However as the protests continue, and thus so does the violence, one only has to realize that this is not a new situation, Burma has been burning for a long time. For decades we have failed to answer the cry of the Burmese children, and thus we have left them in a country that is imprisoned within it's own self.
Links:
For more information on the counties history, click here.
Online Burma/Myanmar Library
Free Burma Coalition
NGOs in Burma/Myanmar
Burma (Myanmar): The Time for Change
