By Asian Human Rights Commission |
March 23, 2013
The Asian Human Rights Commission has been following with concern
news of the latest outbreak of communal violence in Burma. Although the
circumstances of how the violence began are clouded, the president on
22 March 2013 declared an indefinite state of emergency over four
townships of Mandalay Region–Meikhtila, Wundwin, Mahlaing and
Thazi–after the imposition of an order under section 144 of the Criminal
Procedure Code on March 20 to shut down businesses until the situation
improved failed to quell growing conflict that has officially left
eleven people dead. Eyewitness accounts put the number of dead possibly
in the dozens, with many people besides injured.
It would be disingenuous of the authorities in Burma to describe the
violence as unexpected. Throughout the latter part of 2012, they
permitted demonstrations by thousands of persons calling for the
expulsion from the country of Muslims in the west alleged
to have
entered illegally. At that time, a number of reprise attacks occurred
against targets in other parts of the country, although these did not
spread widely and attracted little media attention. Yet now the response
has been, as previously, to react with the introduction of a state of
emergency as if confronted with an event that was wholly unexpected, for
which the authorities had not been prepared.
Although this state of emergency is only the first proclaimed by the
president for 2013, it is the latest in a series since he took office
that is beginning to set a familiar pattern, and indeed, return Burma to
its regular programming during years of dictatorship: that is, when in
doubt, send in the army.
That the use of a state of emergency is becoming the default response
to any type of widespread violence is at least as much a cause for
concern as the incidence of violence itself. Although nobody doubts the
seriousness of the situation and the need for the concerned authorities
to have means at their disposal to address the violence, the question
needs to be asked as to why the police operating under more conventional
juridical measures appear as yet incapable of dealing with any
incidence of violence that occurs in the country, and what the
consequences for the fledgling political changes in Burma might be if
the proclamation of a state of emergency remains the default response to
incidents of this sort.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee in 2001 spoke to these
issues when it observed that a state of emergency ought to be imposed
only where the nation is somehow threatened existentially, and that,
“Not every disturbance or catastrophe qualifies as a public emergency
which threatens the life of the nation” (CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.11, 31
August 2011, para. 3). It is unlikely that some violence in some
northern towns of Burma, serious as it is, could be found to warrant the
proclaiming of an emergency under international standards, especially
when practically no other interventions were even tried before its
proclamation.
The ready resort of the president to the proclaiming of a state of
emergency each time local authorities are unable to deal with a
situation not only constitutes an affront to international standards but
also casts grave doubts over his assertions that the country is
changing and growing politically. Granted that the declaration of a
state of emergency is a marginal improvement from the dark days in the
final years of military dictatorship when the army dispensed with any
pretence of legality whatsoever, and imposed its authority over crowds
on the streets without reference to legal parameters; however, given
that it provides the military free rein to do what they wish in the
affected areas once ordered, and given that it is of unlimited duration,
these improvements are modest, and hardly consistent with the
democratic aspirations that the president espouses each time he goes
abroad.
The problem for the authorities in Burma today is really how to
protect lives, property and human rights without having to resort
repeatedly to measures associated with the authoritarian governments of
old, measures inimical to the express intention of the state in Burma to
democratise. No easy solution exists to this problem. But, one way that
is bound, in the long run, to encourage rapid slippage back into the
politics of old is the repeated use of states of emergencies. Therefore,
the Asian Human Rights Commission urges that the situation in Meikhtila
be stabilised through the use of conventional forces and instruments,
and that the state of emergency be lifted at once and the army in Burma
returned to the barracks.
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