December 9th, 2013
MEDIA ALERT

KHRG Wins 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award

On Tuesday, December 10, 2013, the Karen Human Rights Group will receive the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy's 2013 Asia Democracy and Human Rights Award at a ceremony in Taipei. This prestigious award is given annually for "significant contributions to the advancement of human rights or democracy in Asia through peaceful means." KHRG is the first human rights organization operating in Burma to win the award.

"This award has a lot of symbolic value to KHRG as an affirmation of the importance and value of our work. The grant that accompanies it will allow us to continue and expand our work in the coming years," said KHRG's Field Director, Saw Albert Moo, who will represent KHRG at the award ceremony.

KHRG is an independent, unaffiliated, locally-led organisation; our commitment is to villagers whose voices are often ignored. To promote the voices of villagers, KHRG engages in field research documentation, report-writing, and local and international advocacy. KHRG also conducts workshops with villagers where villagers can openly discuss the abuses and the challenges they face, gain greater knowledge of protection strategies, and consider options for collective action in their local area. Throughout the years, KHRG researchers have documented forced labor, systematic destruction of villages and crops, forced relocation, arbitrary detention, torture, extortion, summary executions and sexual assault.

In the last two years, KHRG has continued to bring human rights violations in eastern Burma/Myanmar, and the responses of villagers to those abuses, to the attention of international actors. In 2012, a KHRG delegation travelled to New York to present at a UN Security Council consultation meeting on the issue of child solders. KHRG released the report "Uncertain Ground: Landmines in Eastern Burma", in 2012, and "Losing Ground: Land Conflicts and Collective Action in Eastern Burma", in March 2013. KHRG is currently writing a report analyzing continued human rights abuses since the Burma government-Karen National Union ceasefire, which was signed in January 2012. The report will be published in March 2014.

"Though the overall human rights situation in southeastern Burma has improved since the ceasefire, too many abuses remain, including killing of civilians, and destruction of civilian property. Abuses by profit-seeking actors have increased since the ceasefire, because drug traffickers and land-grabbing businessmen have a new freedom of movement, and landmines continue to kill and injure villagers and restrict their ability to move freely," said Saw Albert Moo, KHRG's Field Director. "We hope that the international community will continue to support the villagers of southeastern Burma as they act to claim their rights."

For more information about KHRG's work or to arrange interviews in Karen, English or Burmese, contact KHRG on +66(0)852685519 or +95(0)931764207 or email khrg@khrg.org