[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 36 (Thursday, March 6, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E384-E385]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             THAILAND, BURMA, LAOS AND VIETNAM TRIP REPORT

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. JOSEPH R. PITTS

                            of pennsylvania

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, March 5, 2003

  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, I recently returned from a trip to Thailand, 
the Thai-Burma border, Laos and Vietnam with U.S.-based NGO Jubilee 
Campaign, and with Lord David Alton of the British House of Lords. We 
met with government officials, NGOs, and refugees, in Thailand, Laos 
and Vietnam to establish relationships and raise human rights concerns, 
particularly trafficking and religious freedom issues.
  I would like to begin with commending the people of Thailand for 
their well-deserved reputation for hospitality. I flew to Thailand on 
Thai Airways and had a wonderful experience. During our visit 
throughout Thailand, we were met with warm hospitality. It is this 
tradition and culture of hospitality that has made Thailand a safe 
haven for the refugees fleeing death and destruction in Burma. I urge 
the current Thai Administration not to pursue policies that would 
damage that reputation of wonderful hospitality.
  In Thailand, we met with organizations working with refugees along 
the Thai-Burma border and with the Internally Displaced People (IDPS) 
inside the jungles of Burma. The situation in Burma is dire, and I 
would not hesitate to call it, according to international legal 
definitions, genocide. In Article 2 of the 1948 Convention on the 
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined 
as ``any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in 
whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as 
such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or 
mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the 
group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical 
destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to 
prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of 
the group to another group.'' Reports make clear that the ironically-
named State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) of Burma, the ruling 
military junta, has engaged in a deliberate policy to eliminate the 
ethnic minorities. A scorched earth policy, destroying entire villages 
along with food storage and production sources, systematic rape, the 
use of humans, including women and children, as landmine sweepers, 
forced labor, also known as slavery, the refusal to allow the duly 
elected leader of the country to take office, and many other abuses 
have turned the country of Burma into one large concentration camp. 
Sadly, the international community has turned a deaf ear to the cries 
of the ethnic minorities, the refugees, the IDPS, the democracy 
activists. Why is it that the international community fought with 
weapons to stop the genocide in former Yugoslavia in Europe but 
is ignoring the one occurring in Southeast Asia? There are a large 
number of organizations that carefully track the violations in Burma so 
there is no shortage of evidence of the human rights abuses the SPDC 
commits. The Karen Human Rights Group, the Shan Human Rights 
Foundation, the Shan Women's Action Network, the Committee for 
Internally Displaced Karen People, the Assistance Association for 
Political Prisoners, Christians Concerned for Burma, Partners Relief 
and Development, and many other Burma groups produce reports of current 
and past atrocities committed by the SPDC. We were given copies of over 
one dozen reports which provide detailed documentation of these brutal 
policies. I urge my colleagues to read these reports to gain further 
understanding of the situation in Burma.

  My delegation visited refugee camps north of Mae Sot, Thailand and 
spoke with Karen refugees, Christians, Buddhists, and Muslims who all 
had fled the attacks of the SPDC on their communities. We saw landmine 
victims, orphans and school children, who all had suffered from the 
actions of the SPDC. The Thai government has been gracious in caring 
for these refugees, often with little help from the international 
community, yet there are many IDPs hiding in the jungles of Burma who 
need a safe place to go. I respectfully request that the Thai 
government allow the IDPs to enter the camps and be registered as 
refugees. In addition, I respectfully request that the Thai government 
allow the UNHCR to establish a permanent presence within the camps to 
help administer the needs of the refugees.

[[Page E385]]

  Mr. Speaker, our visit with the refugee orphans was both heart-
wrenching and a delight. It was a delight to see these young children 
and to hear the songs they sang to us, but it was heart-wrenching to 
hear the amount of tragedy in these young lives. One group of four 
children, the oldest was 12, had lost their father; their mother could 
not take care of them so she brought them to the orphanage. An eight-
year-old boy, who could not smile, had lost both parents, was then 
trafficked across the border to Thailand, somehow escaped from his 
``owners,'' and reached the safety of the refugee camps. It is 
heartbreaking to know that many of the young children, including the 
orphans, in the refugee camps had watched family or community members 
being killed by the SPDC, wounded or killed by landmine explosions, 
raped, or even burned alive.
  The drug problem in Southeast Asia can largely be traced back to the 
SPDC regime in Burma. The military runs, controls and earns the profits 
off the drug trade of a reported 1 billion plus methamphetamine pills 
per year. These drugs have had a huge impact on the young people of the 
region, so it is vital that we work even more closely with the Thai 
government in fighting against the drug trade controlled by the Burmese 
military. There are reports of the SPDC forcing its soldiers to take 
drugs before attacking ethnic groups--captured SPDC military personnel 
sometimes have difficulty remembering what took place during an attack.
  Mr. Speaker, it is vital that those responsible for the genocide of 
the ethnic groups in Burma be held to account. The reports of 
atrocities are reminiscent of the Nazis, their blatant disregard for 
human life and their policies of extermination. The ethnic cleansing of 
Burma is an international tragedy and I call on the international 
community to send monitors to Burma, to pursue prosecution of those 
responsible for these crimes against humanity, to press for the 
immediate end to deportation of democracy groups back to certain death 
in Burma, to press strongly for the recognition of the democratically 
elected government of Burma, and to send international peacekeepers to 
Burma. I call on the United States government to assist the refugees in 
Thailand, to increase pressure on the military regime in Burma and 
those nations that assist the junta, and to further assist the 
democracy and humanitarian organizations focusing on assistance to the 
people of Burma. One practical way we can assist the refugees is by 
offering scholarship opportunities for the refugee students to study 
abroad--the refugees currently have no legal means to continue their 
education past middle or high school.

  While in Thailand, we also met with organizations assisting women and 
children, often ethnic minorities from Burma, Thailand, Laos and 
Vietnam, who are victims of trafficking. Many of these victims end up 
as such due to lack of educational and economic opportunities or lack 
of citizenship rights in their countries. Organizations, such as the 
New Life Center, provide counseling, health and medical advice and 
treatment, education and job skills opportunities--many of those at 
risk for being trafficked, after the assistance provided by NGOS, 
return to their communities to help educate women and children about 
trafficking, health, and other issues.
  Our meetings with Thai officials in Bangkok with the National 
Security Council, the Foreign Ministry and Members of the Thai 
Parliament were helpful and I look forward to working with these 
officials to resolve some of the issues we discussed, particularly the 
current concerns about forced repatriation of democracy and 
humanitarian groups working on Burma issues and the certain death they 
would face if deported back to Burma.
  Our delegation then traveled to Laos to meet with government 
officials and some church leaders regarding various human rights 
concerns and other issues. Laos is one of the poorest countries in the 
world and one of only four nations in the world (Laos, Cuba, North 
Korea and Serbia-Montenegro) that do not have Normal Trade Relations 
(NTR) status with the U.S. Religious freedom issues have been a major 
concern in Laos, but reports from various organizations and officials 
suggest that the problem is slowly being addressed and there has been 
progress. We met with officials from the Foreign Ministry, the National 
Assembly, the Lao Front for National Construction and, the Women's 
Union, and NGO representatives. The openness and frankness of our 
discussions with officials in Laos was greatly encouraging as was their 
desire to improve the development of their country. There is much 
poverty in Laos and after discussions with Laotian officials, U.S. 
government officials, and some NGOS, it was clear that it is important 
that the United States extend Normal Trade Relations (NTR) status to 
Laos. Countries, such as Saudi Arabia, with horrendous human rights 
records do have NTR; though there is more progress needed, the 
government of Laos allows people of faith to worship, is working to 
help end trafficking in persons, has cooperated on missing persons 
issues, and desires to work for the development of opportunities for 
women and the poor. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the 
extension of NTR to Laos.
  The delegation traveled on to Vietnam to meet with government 
officials and representatives of a Buddhist organization and a 
Christian organization. In all meetings, the same issues were raised, 
and it was clear that the Central Party had a strong hold over the 
country. We had a very helpful meeting with the Ministry of Foreign 
Affairs and we look forward to interacting with them on a number of 
issues. In addition we met with the Government Board for Religious 
Affairs and the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs and plan 
to raise cases of religious persecution and trafficking with them. 
Prior to our visit, the Central Party had its Seventh Annual Plenum 
meeting, of which a major discussion point was religion. Unfortunately, 
a key directive from that meeting, referred to in a news report from 
the South China Morning Post, calls for religious people to be 
patriotic by `` `volunteering' in the struggle to `foil all attempts of 
hostile forces who abuse religious and ethnic minority issues to 
sabotage national unity and act against [the] political regime.' '' 
This most likely means further attempts at control of religious groups 
in Vietnam. Recent reports by a number of reliable organizations reveal 
increasing harassment, persecution and imprisonment of religious 
believers. We hope that the relationships we formed with Vietnamese 
officials during our visit will help resolve some of the current 
religious cases.

  In addition, during our visit to Hanoi we had the privilege of 
visiting the Hanoi Hilton, the notorious prison where members of our 
armed services were held during the Vietnam War and where Vietnamese 
citizens previously were imprisoned by the French military. The glass 
shards on the walls, the placards of personal stories, the stocks where 
prisoners were unable to move, the isolation cells and the torture 
devices were sobering reminders of the suffering of many people in 
Vietnam.
  Mr. Speaker, I had an excellent visit to Southeast Asia and I hope to 
return soon. I would like to commend the US Embassy officials in 
Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for their extraordinary work and assistance 
on this visit; it would not have been as successful without them.
  I urge my colleagues to join me in pressing for freedom for the 
people of Burma, continuing to strengthen our relationship with our 
close friends in Thailand, and furthering the relationship between our 
nation and the peoples of Laos and Vietnam.

                          ____________________