ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME
Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-131-2009
2 October 2009
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BURMA: Three children among six females imprisoned with hard labour
ISSUES: Rule of law; judicial system; illegal detention; child rights
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Dear friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has learned that three girls in Burma have been sentenced to a year in jail with hard labour for allegedly selling illegal lottery tickets. When the case against them came to court, the judge reportedly ignored evidence given that the three girls are not yet 16 years old, and should have been tried in a juvenile court. All six of the defendants claimed that they were innocent of the charges and that the police set them up; the AHRC has also received information that the police bribed the prosecutor to take the case.
CASE DETAILS:
In the mid-morning of 27 February 2009, a group of police from Daik-U station in Pegu, north of Rangoon, went to the house of Daw Aye Myint in Ushitkone village. She was in the fields at the time, and was called back to the house to find the police with her daughter, Ma Amy Htun, 15; her sister, Ma Sein Htwe, two other adult women and three other girls. The police accused them of running an illegal lottery ring–which are very common in Burma–and arrested them all. The accused denied the charges but were held at the local lock up and were denied bail. According to family members, each time they took food for the girls and women they had to pay the guards 500 Kyat (about 50 US cents) to give it.
One of the girls was found to be underage and was transferred to the juvenile justice system, but the others were recorded as ‘youths’, which under the current law in Burma means that they are 16 or 17 years old and can be tried as adults. The police allegedly falsified records to make the girls birth dates earlier than they are. The girls submitted evidence to the court, like testimonials from school headmistresses, to support the claim that they are children. The prosecutor and judge had special responsibilities to check the ages, which they failed to do. The police allegedly also paid the prosecutor to proceed with the case knowing that the ages of the girls had been falsely recorded.
As the government of Burma places special emphasis on the rights of women and children–the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women are the only two rights charters that it has joined–it should be possible to have this case opened and the girls released. The Child Law grants special authority to the social welfare minister to order immediate and unconditional release of children held in custody. So please sign and send the sample letter below.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The AHRC has been documenting numerous cases that address what it has described as Burma’s ‘injustice system’ which can be accessed by going to the appeals homepage and typing ‘Burma’ or ‘Myanmar’ into the search box: http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/. Two special reports have also been issued in the article 2 periodical, Saffron Revolution imprisoned, law denied (vol. 7, no. 3, September 2008) and Burma, political psychosis and legal dementia (vol. 6, no. 5-6, December 2007). There are also a number of related sites, including the AHRC Burmese-language blog, Pyithu Hittaing and the 2008 AHRC Human Rights Report chapter on Burma.
SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write to those listed below to call for the immediate release of the six convicted persons, especially the three girls. Please note that for the purposes of the letter Burma is referred to by its official name, Myanmar, and Pegu as Bago.
Please be informed that the AHRC is writing a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteurs on Myanmar and the independence of judges and lawyers, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, the UNICEF office in Burma and the regional human rights office for Southeast Asia calling for interventions into this case.
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