International Red Cross issues rare Myanmar censure

GENEVA, June 29 (Reuters) The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) today accused Myanmar's ruling junta of committing serious abuses against detainees and civilians, in a rare public censure from the humanitarian agency.

The Swiss-based ICRC, which normally deals with governments under a cloak of confidentiality, said thousands of prisoners in former Burma were forced to work as porters for the military, carrying heavy materials and walking ahead of soldiers through areas laden with landmines.

People living near Myanmar's border with Thailand have also been subjected to systematic human rights violations, the ICRC said, citing witness reports of soldiers destroying villages' food stocks, forcing people from their homes, making arbitrary arrests and committing violence including murder.

''The persistent use of detainees as porters for the armed forces is a matter of grave humanitarian concern. The actions of the authorities have also resulted in immense suffering for thousands of people in conflict-affected areas,'' ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said.

''The ICRC has repeatedly drawn attention to these abuses but the authorities have failed to put a stop to them,'' he said.

''The continuing deadlock with the authorities has led the ICRC to take the exceptional step of making its concerns public.'' The neutral organisation, mandated to monitor compliance with international humanitarian law, including the 1949 Geneva Conventions, makes such denunciations extremely sparingly.

It has previously aired concerns over violations in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, in 1979; during the Iran-Iraq war in 1987; in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1992; in Rwanda in 1994; and in Israel in 2004 over the West Bank Barrier's routing.

Kellenberger said government restrictions in Myanmar, which has been under military rule since 1962, have made it impossible for ICRC staff to move around independently and hampered the delivery of aid meant for humanitarian, apolitical purposes.

The organisation has been unable since late 2005 to visit any of Myanmar's estimated 1,100 political prisoners because authorities have not allowed it to conduct interviews privately, insisting that government-affiliated agencies also take part.

ICRC staff have not visited detained opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi since September 2003. Suu Kyi, whose house arrest was extended for another year in May despite international pleas to free her, has been confined for more than 11 of the past 17 years.

The ICRC, which started work in Myanmar in 1999, said it planned to remain in the country despite the limits imposed upon its operations. The organisation's 13 expatriate staff and 160 national staff continue to set up visits for family members of detainees, and support an orthopaedic centre in the country, Kellenberger said.

''It is our intention to stay in Myanmar,'' he told a Geneva news conference. ''There is still limited work we can do.'' REUTERS SLD RK1415