WLB organized worldwide for protecting women rights

Mizzima News (www.mizzima.com)

November 23, 2007 - Burma's women's leadership does not stop with detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. A new publication profiles and draws attention to the detention and plight of some twenty other women who performed critical functions during the protests of August and September.

Accordingly, a group of rights activists is calling for 16 days of campaigning to bring attention to the plight of Burmese women activists in the country's ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy, from November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, to December 10, International Human Rights Day,

"For women of Burma who face and are under state-sanctioned violence this call cannot be more relevant than ever and the international community needs to have strong commitment and will to work harder towards protecting and securing women's human rights," reads a statement from the Asia-Pacific Peoples' Partnership for Burma (APPPB).

APPPB says that international focus and assistance to the struggles of Burma's women is especially important, as there exist no domestic organizations inside Burma to which the women can turn for help. Women's organizations in Burma are said to fall under the jurisdiction of the military and are managed by wives of military personnel.

A majority of the cases that the release studies concern women who have been active since the 1988 uprising and had since joined ranks with the 88 generation students movement.

Women 'fugitives' arrested are subjected to harsh prison conditions with scant medical attention. Some of those that fled arrest are chronicled as having to leave children behind, while others have had relatives arrested in their place.

The report goes on to mention that in addition to the number of arrests made against women activists on the streets of Rangoon and throughout Burma, the regime detained hundreds of nuns who, in their pink dress, participated alongside monks in the mass protests of late September.

Five women still on the run from Burmese authorities, including Phyu Phyu Thin and Ni Mo Hlaing, also yesterday sent a letter addressed to several United Nations officials. The missive calls on the international organization and its representatives to undertake a thorough study of human rights abuses perpetrated against women at the hands of the military junta.

In the run-up to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Women's League of Burma (WLB) has initiated a Women's Human Rights Defenders Campaign.

The group is calling on the release of all detainees by December 10. According to a WLB statement released today, 106 women, inclusive of six nuns, remain in custody.

"We are particularly concerned that the women, including nuns, recently detained are facing gender and sexual violence in addition to the other deprivations and unacceptable conditions in the prisons," says WLB spokesperson Paw Hset Hser.

The Campaign was launched this morning at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok. WLB brings together a dozen national and ethnic-based Burmese women's rights groups.