The State Department has contacted the Burmese military government to express its outrage and urge an investigation into a new report that officers have systematically raped hundreds of ethnic minority women and girls.
The ruling military junta recently released from house arrest the Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist Aung San Suu Kyi and has taken other steps to rebuild contacts with Washington and win the removal of economic and other sanctions. But the report on the alleged campaign of rape has stirred concern on Capitol Hill and within the Bush administration, possibly setting back those efforts.
The report, by the Thailand-based Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network, extensively detailed rapes involving at least 625 girls and women by Burmese army troops in Shan state, the largest of the seven ethnic minority states in Burma, also known as Myanmar. The report concluded that the Burmese military, as part of its campaign to bring ethnic areas under its control, officially condones rape as a "weapon of war" against civilian populations.
The report was based on interviews with refugees on the Thai-Burmese border. It found that the rapes were committed between 1996 and 2001 by soldiers from 52 different battalions, most by officers in front of their troops. The rapes were often extremely brutal, with one-quarter resulting in death. In some instances, the bodies were then displayed to local communities. Many of the girls -- as young as 5 -- and women were gang-raped, or raped repeatedly for periods of up to four months, the report said.
"We are appalled by reports that the Burmese military is using rape as a weapon of war against civilian populations in the Shan states," a State Department official said yesterday. "We have raised our concerns with the Burmese regime and urged them to fully investigate any and all allegations of the systematic rape of ethnic minority girls and women in Burma."He said the United States expects the regime to "punish those guilty of such heinous crimes" and to "take immediate steps to end any such violence within its borders."
The U.S. charge d'affairs, Priscilla A. Clapp, discussed the report with officials in Rangoon, the capital. The State Department official would not say whether U.S. officials planned to conduct their own investigation or whether Secretary of State Colin L. Powell would raise the issue when he travels this month to a meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers.
In the wake of the report, the chairman and the ranking member of the House International Relations subcommittee on international operations and human rights have condemned the Burmese regime on the House floor.
"In the last few weeks the regime in Burma has been trying to create a facade of civility and diplomacy," said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), chairman of the subcommittee. "However, the recent reports demonstrate the continual terror and repression the people of Burma find themselves under -- day in and day out."
The report could not come at worse time for the regime, which earlier this year agreed to pay more than $450,000 a year to a lobbying firm with ties to President Bush to help push for the normalization of relations between the United States and Burma. Charles Francis, an official at the lobbying firm, DCI Associates, did not return a call for comment.
U Linn Myaing, the Burmese ambassador to the United States, also did not return a call.