Six Reasons to Welcome US Support for War Crimes Probe

By DR ZARNI

On 24 Aug, the United States officially confirmed that it is "exploring how best to proceed" on the initiative to push for "a properly structured international commission of inquiry that would examine allegations of serious violations of international law in Burma".


My old college mate from Mandalay University would not welcome this move. In the 1980s, he confessed to me that he had raped a young Shan village woman at gun point as she was preparing to bathe in the Salween river. He was at that time a young private on patrol in Eastern Shan State.


In a matter-of-fact manner, he told me he was encouraged to rape the woman by his immediate superior, a battle-seasoned sergeant in his company who, I presume, had himself committed such crimes in ethnic minority territories where he had served.

Only rapists encourage and condone other rapists.


My former friend later deserted the Tatmadaw or Burma’s armed forces. He would have been court-martialed and punished not for the rape but for desertion, if it weren’t for the fact that his uncle was one of Ne Win’s top deputies.

The Obama Administration’s bold move now to help bring rapists and others guilty of severe human rights abuses to justice has been widely hailed by leading dissidents from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to political exiles.

The news is also highly welcome among the bulk of the Burmese population, who see the with anger and hatred of a military regime that—in the words of long-time political prisoner Win Tin, a veteran leader of the NLD—has created a “hell on earth” in Burma.

In fact, hardly ever has a Burmese government policy decision been greeted with such widespread approval by the targeted beneficiaries. Contrastingly, prolonged economic sanctions and the US engagement policy have not enjoyed universal appeal among the Burmese. Here, even people with shared visions and normative ideas differ while moralizing their own policy preferences and antagonizing those who disagree.

The opposition and the public in Burma are fully aware of the apparent hypocrisy inherent in Washington’s decision to make the Burmese military junta answerable to the international system of justice, a system which the United States itself has not agreed to abide by or observe.

Living amongst predatory Asian neighbors, Burmese peoples know the world doesn’t exist in a state of moral purity. Pragmatism must include coming to terms with the flawed international relations and trying to make the best of a difficult situation.

Furthermore, the Burmese public and the opposition have solid reasons to overlook US double standards and welcome Washington’s decision to inject the idea of justice into its Burma policy, a move which the silent majority in Burma view as long-overdue.

There will, of course, be a category of Burmese who oppose the US decision to move its Burma policy towards a prosecutorial path—those who committed war crimes and the leaders who tacitly condone them.

I know my former college friend’s unsettled feeling would have been shared by my late uncle, then a young infantry officer, whose liberal use of torture during interrogation killed an ethnic minority rebel captured during a military operation which he led.

It is only human that these men—a former friend and a close relative—who had horribly wronged their fellow country-people while on active duty would find even the abstract idea unpalatable, not to mention being scared of the reality of being held accountable for their violations of the Geneva conventions.

When armed men find themselves in the service of a military leadership that more or less encourages all manner of abuses against those deemed “destructive elements”, “enemies of the State” or “insurgents” (and, by extension, their communities) all hell breaks loose. And that is what has been going on in our country since the start of military rule in 1962. A move towards ending these war crimes must be made.