Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Report: Myanmar's Chin people persecuted

Denis D. Gray (AP)

An ethnic Chin child refugee sits with his mother in a refugee camp in Kuala Lumpur. Myanmar's military regime is perpetrating widespread abuse of the mainly-Christian Chin ethnic group, who face famine, forced labour, torture and persecution, a rights group has said (AFP/File/Tengku Bahar).

BANGKOK, Thailand – The Chin people, Christians living in the remote mountains of northwestern Myanmar, are subject to forced labor, torture, extrajudicial killings and religious persecution by the country's military regime, a human rights group said Wednesday.

The New York-based Human Right Watch said as many as 100,000 people have fled the Chin homeland into neighboring India, where they face abuse and the risk of being forced back into Myanmar.

"The Chin are unsafe in Burma and unprotected in India," a report from the group said. The report said the regime in Myanmar, also known as Burma, continues to commit atrocities against its other ethnic minorities.

Myanmar's ruling junta has been widely accused of widespread human rights violations in ethnic minority areas where anti-government insurgent groups are fighting for autonomy. The government has repeatedly denied such charges. An e-mailed request for comment on the new report was not immediately answered.

Chief Secretary Vanhela Pachau, a top official for India's Mizoram state, said he had not seen the report and could not comment.

"(The police) hit me in my mouth and broke my front teeth. They split my head open and I was bleeding badly. They also shocked me with electricity," the group quoted a Chin man accused of supporting the insurgents, who are small in number and largely ineffective. More>>

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