Shan woman wins award

Shan woman wins award

Subhatra Bhumiprabhas, ANN, The Nation, Bangkok

Documenting sexual violence against Myanmarese refugees
recognized as huge contribution

A 23-year-old Shan activist has been named a winner of the
2005 Reebok Human Rights Award for her struggle against the rape
of women in Myanmar's Shan state.

Charm Tong, a member of Shan Women's Action Network (Swan),
was recognized as a resolute defender of the rights of refugee
women and children on the Thai-Myanmarese border.

Charm Tong has been combating sexual violence against women in
her homeland and along the Thai-Myanmarese border for years. She
was a researcher in a team that produced the report License to
Rape, a document that revealed the Myanmarese military regime's
use of sexual violence against ethnic women in Shan state.

License to Rape details 173 incidents of rape and other forms
of sexual violence by Myanmarese troops committed against 625
girls and women in Shan state, mostly between 1996 and 2001.

Charm Tong is herself a refugee from Myanmar. At the age of
six, her parents sent her to the Thai border to escape the war
between the Shan ethnic minority and the Myanmarese government.
She was forced to leave her hometown in central Shan state.
Living as a refugee on Thai soil, she received an education at a
local orphanage, learning about and witnessing the fate of young
refugees around her.

Many of her friends ended up in the sex trade or working as
child laborers.

At 16, Charm Tong joined Swan and helped coordinate a campaign
to draw international attention to the plight of Shan women -
both the victims of rape in her homeland and those fleeing to
Thailand. The young activist took a risk working along the Thai-
Myanmarese border to interview victims and document their cases
in License to Rape, which was released in 2002.

After releasing the report, the Swan office was forced to
close. Charm Tong and her Swan co-workers then worked
underground, moving from one place to another in a bid to stay
safe. Thai authorities, fearing the report would harm bilateral
ties with Myanmar, threatened them.

The report grabbed international attention and was high on the
agenda at the 59th annual meeting of the UN Commission on Human
Rights.

Yangoon has consistently denied the allegations detailed in
the report.

Myanmar's Prime Minister Lt-General Soe Win last week
addressed the annual meeting of the Myanmar Women's Affairs
Federation, and said Myanmarese women enjoyed equal rights with
men and had done so since birth.

"Unlike the women of other nations, Myanmar women do not need
to make demands nor struggle for women's rights as they have
enjoyed these rights since birth," Soe Win was quoted as saying
in The New Light of Myanmar.

Charm Tong said Soe Win was making a laughing stock of himself
by saying such things.

"Everyone knows that Myanmar is ruled by a military
dictatorship, ruled by men at every level, who are denying women
their rights in every sphere of society," she said, adding that
the Myanmar Women's Affairs Federation was just a token
organization, totally controlled by the military.

"It used to be headed by Khin Nyunt's wife, and now that Khin
Nyunt has been ousted, it is headed by Soe Win's wife. What kind
of an independent women's organization is that?" she added.

The Reebok Human Rights Award began in 1988, to recognize
young activists who have made significant contributions to human
rights.