Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You know, time did not permit you to give your testimony orally, but this was in your written testimony and I read it, particularly the paragraph that begins with “Since June of 2011...”. You describe the many war crimes that have been committed against the Kachin people. You refer to the torturing of people for information, disappearances, people being killed, indiscriminate shelling and burning of villages, raping of women and children, laying of land mines, and booby-trapping of bodies. You conclude:
Because of this year of horrible atrocities against their people, the KIA has moved from defence to offense, attacking the Burmese army anywhere they can be found (this reprisal action began in the middle of April 2012).
When I read your description I realized what was happening in Burma in the last year—really, to the Kachin people—began almost at the same time, although a little bit later, as what was happening to the Syrian people in their assault.
I hope you don't mind the kind of comparison I'm making with regard to what is happening in Syria. There is this expression of international outrage in an ongoing way. Yet with regard to what is happening with the Kachin people, which according to witness testimony is a series of war crimes and assaults not unlike what is happening in Syria, not only is that outrage in fact not manifest, but you have the actual easing of sanctions on Burma, as you know, whether it be from the United States, the European Union, or from Canada and the like. How do you account for those two very different approaches from a point of view of policy, as I say, by the EU, the U.S., and Canada, to what seem to be similar situations in Burma regarding the Kachin people and in Syria?