UN envoy investigating Burma protests

A UN human rights envoy is due to arrive in Burma today on a mission to find out how many people were killed and detained during the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the UN’s independent rights investigator for Burma, had been barred from visiting the country since November 2003.

He has said he will leave this time around unless he gets full support from the junta.

“If they don’t give me full cooperation, I’ll go to the plane, and I’ll go out,” he said recently after the government gave him a green light to visit the country for five days.

Pinheiro has a history of prickly relations with the ruling generals.

He abruptly cut short a visit in March 2003 after finding a listening device in a room at a prison where he was interviewing political detainees.

Later that year, he accused the junta of making “absurd” excuses to keep political opponents in prison.

The human rights envoy has submitted a proposed itinerary for his visit to the Burma government, which was still being “fine-tuned”, said Aye Win, a UN spokesman in Burma.

Pinheiro’s trip comes three days after the departure of UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who attempted during a six-day visit to kick-start talks between the junta and the pro-democracy opposition.

As a result of Gambari’s trip, detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was allowed on Friday to meet the leaders of her opposition party for the first time in three years.

Suu Kyi said through a party spokesman she was “very optimistic” about the prospects of dialogue with the government.

The regime cracked down on Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party after it won elections in 1990. Instead of honouring the election’s results, the military stepped up a campaign of arrest and harassment of the party members, and eventually closed most of its offices.

Suu Kyi has been in government detention for 12 of the past 18 years, and continuously since May 2003.

The junta, which has long been criticised of human rights abuses, has come under renewed international pressure since it crushed pro-democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks in September.

The government says 10 people were killed in the September 26-27 crackdown, though diplomats and dissidents say the death toll was much higher. Thousands were arrested, with the events triggering intense global condemnation.

Amnesty International submitted a letter to Myanmar authorities on Friday expressing concern over “grave and ongoing human rights violations” committed since the crackdown, including “widespread arbitrary detentions, hostage-taking, beatings and torture in custody and enforced disappearances”.

The London-based human rights group said about 700 political prisoners remain in custody and accused the regime of 72 disappearances. It demanded that Pinheiro be given full and unrestricted access to the country’s detention centres.

Pinheiro cited unidentified sources last month as saying between 30 and 40 monks and 50 to 70 civilians have allegedly been killed.

The discrepancies show the need for an independent and thorough investigation, he said.

After getting initial permission last month for the visit, Pinheiro said he would demand access to prisons and try to determine the number of people killed and detained by the government.

The UN Human Rights Council condemned the crackdown at an emergency session October 2 and urged an immediate investigation of the rights situation in Burma.