PRESS STATEMENT

The Kuki People Completely Reject

The military regime of Burma’s plan for a Sham Plebiscite by May 2008.

1^st March 2008, New Delhi.

The Kukis People of Burma express our outmost condemnation to the military regime of Burma’s decades old unjust and inhuman intervention in the lives of the people of Burma. We therefore completely reject the regime’s plan to hold a fraudulent plebiscite by May 2008 by giving the summary history of the military regime’s anti-people governance.

1. The military regime under the name ‘State Law and Order Restoration Council’ (SLORC), to contain the nation wide mass uprising for democracy, held the general election in May 1990 (18 years ago). Instead of handing authority over, according to law, to the National League for Democracy, that gained a landslide victory, the party leader, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest and has continued to be been held in that manner. Other MP’s have been tortured, killed, imprisoned or forced into exile.

These acts by SLORC are contemptuous violations of universal human rights and insult the principle of governance of which India is the largest example, that of democracy.

2. Those elected as Members of Parliament in the 1990 general election were forced to sign and endorse the pro-military constitution drafted in 1993 by the SLORC. This made a mockery of democracy.

3. Following the 1990 general election, the SLORC (now called SPDC – State Peace and Development Council) had, in a ploy to first outnumber and then Burmanise by assimilation the minority ethnic Kukis, set up immigrant settlements – for example Sayasan, Tanyoshin, Bandulah, Awngzeyah, Yanngyinawng, Yantaingawng, villages – in the latter’s areas by transmigration from the cities’ slums. The local Kukis were not only forced to provide materials required for the houses but also made to construct them without any payment, in other words by forced labour.

The same policy has been equally implemented in all the ethnic minority regions across Burma. Such action is now in transgression of the 7^th September 2007‘s United Nations Declaration on Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

4. The military regime which usurped power from the Parliament in 1962, and was discarded by the people in the 1990 general election, attempted over the years, notably in 1962, 1988 and 2007, to suppress and annihilate the movement for restoration of democracy by massacring hundreds of thousands of people – students, religious leaders (Buddhist, Christian & Muslim), elected MPs ethnic leaders, civilians including women and children.

In the absence of the peoples’ mandate, the regime has not the legitimate right to hold dialogue with Ms Aung San Suukyi and ethnic leaders. It does not deserve to be recognized as the legitimate government by the people within and outside Burma, or by nations and governments of the world.

5. Since 1990, the regime has, year after year, made never-to-be implemented promises for peaceful transformation to democracy. Of the seven road maps laid out in 2003, even the first step has not yet been fulfilled.

6. That the proposed referendum by May 2008 is nothing more than another ploy to legitimize, sustain and consolidate the regime’s rule and authority.

Only under UN monitoring and with full cooperation from our giant neighbours – India and China – can there be a free and fair plebiscite or election in Burma.

Given this past experience, there is not an iota of truth in the regime’s promises. The regime, the so called ‘State Peace and Restoration Council’ is responsible for decades of political turbulence, and for leading the state from prosperity to being the poorest nation in Southeast Asia.

The regime must surrender power and authority to the rightful custodian, the Peoples’ Parliament, and to be held to account for all the crimes it has committed during its reign.

WE, the Kuki people of Burma, fervently appeal for India’s responsible and urgent intervention as the largest democratic nation on earth, to stand against the military regime’s plan for a fraudulent plebiscite.

In service to the Kuki Peoples of Burma.

1. Kuki Peoples’ Congress (KPC)

2. Kuki Students’ Democratic Front (KSDF)

3. Kuki Women’s Human Rights Organisation. (KWHRO)