This report is released by the Norway-based non-governmental organization Partners Relief & Development (Partners).
It reveals first-hand testimony and frontline photographs of the increasingly brutal civil war in Burma’s Kachin State, which broke out on June 9 between the Burma army and the Kachin Independence Army, ending a 17-year-long ceasefire agreement.
Partners has traveled to the conflict zone several times since June and documented torture, extrajudicial killing, open fire on civilians, human shielding, unlawful arrest and detention, forced labor, forced relocation, displacement, property theft and property destruction by the Burma army. An estimated 30,000 civilians have fled the conflict and abuses by the Burma army since the war began in June. The report comes as the new semi-civilian government of Burma touts political and legal reforms; and as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepares to visit the country, the first visit by a US Secretary of State since 1955.