The Commission held hearings on Burma in Parliament in 2006. In a three-hour hearing on Burma on 25 April, the Commission heard evidence presented by Charm Tong of the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), Nurul Islam, President of the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation, Guy Horton, author of Dying Alive: A Legal Assessment of Human Rights Violations in Burma and Mark Farmaner, Campaigns Manager at Burma Campaign UK.

Charm Tong, a founder of the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), provided evidence of the widespread and systematic use of rape as a weapon of war on ethnic minorities in Burma by Burmese military regime. Charm Tong described the plight of the internally displaced people in Burma, and refugees on the Thai-Burmese border. Over one million people are internally displaced in eastern Burma alone, and over 155,000 refugees are in camps in Thailand.

Nurul Islam, President of the Arakan Rohingya National Organisation, described the suffering of the Rohingya people on the Burma-Bangladesh border.

Guy Horton, a human rights researcher funded by the Government of the Netherlands and author of Dying Alive: A Legal Assessment of Human Rights Violations in Burma, presented comprehensive evidence of widespread destruction and violence in eastern Burma, and argued that the abuses violate international law, particularly Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and laws on Crimes against Humanity and Genocide. He drew attention to the remarks of the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Burma, Paulo Pinheiro, who concluded in his report of February 2006 that: “The current Government strategy of targeting civilians in the course of its military operations represents a willful abrogation of its responsibility under international law.” As far back as 1998, as Mr. Horton highlighted, the then Special Rapporteur Rajsoolah Lallah QC said: “The Special Rapporteur is deeply concerned about the serious human rights violations that continue to be committed by the armed forces in the ethnic minority areas. The violations include extrajudicial and arbitrary executions (not excluding women and children), rape, torture, inhuman treatment, forced labour and denial of freedom of movement. These violations have been so numerous and consistent over the past years as to suggest they are not simply isolated or the acts of individual behaviour by middle or lower rank officers but are the result of policy at the highest level, entailing legal and political responsibility.”

Mr. Horton urged the international community to establish a United Nations Commission of Enquiry into the question of attempted genocide in Burma, and he encouraged the UK and other countries who are signatories to the Genocide Convention to refer a case of attempted genocide in Burma to the International Court of Justice.

Mark Farmaner, Campaigns Manager at Burma Campaign UK, presented a number of policy recommendations to the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission. He highlighted the weaknesses in the current EU Common Position in Burma, and urged the UK to introduce tougher targeted sanctions against the regime in Burma.

The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s Annual Report also recommends that a future Conservative Government appoint a Minister of State and an Ambassador-at-Large at the Foreign Office solely devoted to International Human Rights. The current Minister of State has responsibility for both trade and human rights, which the report claims means he “faces potential conflicts of interest and cannot give undivided attention to human rights”. The Commission plans to conduct a “substantive consultation” with human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to develop these ideas, and to conduct a review of the arms trade.

The Chairman of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, Gary Streeter MP, said: “This first annual report is an indication of how seriously we view the abuse of human rights around the world. It reviews countries where human rights violations are serious and widespread, and offers some policy proposals for action. We will continue to monitor human rights abuses around the world, gather information and develop ideas for a future Conservative Government.”

In his Foreword to the report, Mr Hague said: “Freedom and human dignity are at the very heart of Conservative values … It is absolutely essential, therefore, that we apply those values to all areas of policy, domestic and foreign … We have the privilege of living in freedom. But with that privilege comes the responsibility to use our liberty to speak up for those who are denied it … It is not only morally right that we should speak for the oppressed, it is also in our national interests to do so. Dictators do not make the best allies. Freedom and prosperity go together.”

In the speech at the event to launch the report, Mr. Hague also pointed out that Foreign Policy of a government cannot be based solely on Human Rights issues, but it needs to reflect other important affairs like trade, security and terrorism etc. But, he said, the Conservative Party will do their best to get the recommendations by the Human Rights Commission included in the foreign Policy of the Government in the future.

Mr Hague also mention that he personally met two remarkable human rights activists in the year 2006, and that one of them was from Burma, a young Karen woman from Burma called Nan Zoya Phan, who grew up in a refugee camp in Burma’s eastern border and has first hand experience about the human rights abuses committed in Karen state in Eastern Burma by Burmese military regime.

 Deputy Chairman of the Commission, Ben Rogers, also expressed about experiences in his fact-finding trips to Burma’s border areas where ethnic minority people are suffering from ethnic cleansing by Burma’s military junta. He said that he met a man there whose eyes had been taken out by Burmese regime’s soldiers. He also met a man whom Burmese soldiers made to stand naked, blindfolded, hands tied at the back, and cover with red ants all over his body and at the same time being electrocuted.

Ben Rogers said that he sometimes has to travel secretly at night on the back of a motor cycle on a narrow path along a mountain ridge without using head-lamps to avoid being seen by Burmese soldiers camping on nearby hill-tops.

The Conservative Party Human Rights Commission’s Annual Report includes chapters on the 18 countries which the Commission has monitored this year. It ranks the countries in three categories – freedom, the rule of law and human rights violations – using a scoring methodology adapted from Freedom House.

North Korea comes out as the worst violator of freedom and the rule of law, but Burma tops the list of violations and the overall list. The worst violators also include Chinese-occupied Tibet, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, Vietnam, Cuba and Belarus.

India is the only one of the 18 countries not included in the rankings, because as the world’s largest democracy it broadly respects freedom, the rule of law and human rights. However, the treatment of the Dalits or so-called “untouchables” and tribal groups, which number 250 million and are subjected to widespread discrimination and violence, is a concern and is detailed in a chapter in the report.

In the indexes, Burma rank second in the world for the lack of the rule of Law; Burma rank sixth for the lack of freedom, Burma rank number one for violations of human rights; and Burma tops in the overall score.