• TAKE ACTION NOW: SIGN UP For Week Of Action to End Mass Atrocities in Burma
• New Report from Harvard Law School Finds Crimes in Burma
• UN Official Breaks Silence on crimes against humanity in NY Times
• Key Facts, Report, and Videos on Mass Atrocities
• How do International Tribunals and the International Criminal Court Work?

BACKGROUND

Many Americans shudder when imagining the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere in the 1990s. But, right now, a dictator in Southeast Asia is carrying out war crimes and crimes against humanity on a massive scale against his own people. His name is Than Shwe, and he rules the Southeast Asian country of Burma. Together, we can make it stop.

SCALE OF ABUSES

Many of the abuses committed under Than Shwe’s rule represent some of the world’s most horrific ongoing acts. For example, Than Shwe’s regime has destroyed over 3,300 ethnic minority villages in eastern Burma alone, recruited tens of thousands of child soldiers, forced up to 2 million people to flee their homes as refugees and internally displaced, and used rape as a weapon of war against the women of Burma. These abuses continue today.

Watch this video clip, Ending Impunity, made by the Women’s League for Burma. It depicts the brutality of the Burmese Army and the systematic use of rape as a weapon against ethnic women.

HOW DO WE KNOW THIS IS HAPPENING?

Well respected organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium, the Women’s League of Burma, and many others have documented the crimes committed by Burma’s military.

Importantly, even many organs of the United Nations have admitted what is happening. United Nations expert on human rights in Burma, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, has recognized the pervasive system of impunity that Than Shwe has created in Burma, stating “Serious human rights violations have been widespread and systematic, suggesting that they are not simply isolated acts of individual misconduct by middle- or low-ranking officers, but rather the result of a system under which individuals and groups have been allowed to break the law and violate human rights without being called to account.”

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE?

Many abuses committed by Burma’s military regime are crimes against humanity and war crimes. This means that they are illegal under international law. As a result, the United Nations can send Burma to the International Criminal Court, or establish an international criminal tribunal to arrest and prosecute Burma’s military regime. Some example of how this happened in the past are the Nuremburg Trials, the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (that indicted Slobodan Milosevic). Read here to learn how this can happen for Burma.