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Columbia University Symposium on Burma to Feature Panel of Burma Human Rights Abuse Specialists, Documentary Screenings

December 6, 2006

"More Pressure Needed Now," Says Panelist, Church World Service's Kekic

NEW YORK -- "The humanitarian crisis in Myanmar is accelerating, and more pressure needs to be applied to the U.S. now to step up its push on the United Nations to take immediate decisive action," says Erol Kekic of global humanitarian agency Church World Service.

Kekic, associate director for the agency's immigration and refugee programs, has just returned from November meetings with advocacy and refugee concern groups in Melbourne, Australia, and Bangkok, Thailand, and will join other Burma specialists and advocates in a panel discussion at a Columbia University Symposium highlighting human rights abuses in Myanmar (Burma), this Saturday (Dec 9).

The Focus on Burma Afternoon Film and Speakers Symposium is presented by the Columbia University Undergraduate Human Rights Program, the Burma 88 Coalition and Amnesty International and will feature two film screenings followed by a panel discussion on the escalating human rights crisis that is only recently gaining world attention.

Planners of the Columbia event say the human rights crisis in Burma is an issue that has been surprisingly absent on Columbia’s campus. The complex interrelationship of politics, culture, religion and ethnicity in Burma's crisis makes it an issue uniquely compatible with Columbia's acute social justice consciousness.

What, Who, Where, When:

Focus on Burma – An Afternoon Film and Speakers Symposium

Columbia University
Room 516 Hamilton Hall
(Corner 116th Street and Amsterdam Avenue)

Saturday December 9, 2006
Beginning 2:30 PM

Agenda:

2:30 PM:
Introduction: Geoffrey Aung, The Columbia Political Union, Columbia University (10 minutes)

Film 1: "Season of Fear" (Witness) (15 minutes)
Film 2: "State of Fear" (Frontline/WORLD PBS) (60 minutes)

4:30 PM:
Featured Panel: "Contemporary Human Rights Crises in Burma" (1 hour)

Moderator: Geoffrey Aung

Panelists:

Dr. Thaung Htun, National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma

Erol Kekic, Church World Service, and board member of the Thai-Burma Border Consortium

Jennifer Quigley, Global Justice Center and Women's League of Burma

Moe Chan, Burma Point

Sam Gregory, WITNESS

Kwe Say, Burma Issues

Background:

(Source: Columbia University)

When most people think of modern-day humanitarian tragedies, they think about Rwanda and Sudan. Yet, one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters is taking place not in Africa but in Southeast Asia.

Burma has the worst crisis of internal displacement in Asia-- over half a million people, the majority of whom are displaced ethnic and religious minorities in Karen State, Eastern Burma. They are on the run from the brutal military regime, the State Peace and Development Council, which has been in power since 1988, and which have systematically destroyed the capacity of these rural civilians to live independently.

Over the past ten years, 3000 villages have been destroyed and forcibly relocated by the regime. An additional million people have become refugees in countries on the other side of Burma’s borders. These attacks have greatly increased in recent months, yet the world does not know about this tragedy.

The ethnic and religious minorities, many of them culturally distinct from the ethnic Burman majority, find political representation in the National League for Democracy, the country’s opposition party founded by Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite being the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Price Laureate, Suu Kyi has accomplished the immense task of providing some unity to the wildly diverse country of Burma. Today, she is the leading figure in the most high-profile non-violent movement in the world.

Church World Service is one of the nine agencies the Department of State works with to resettle refugees within the U.S. and has been a vocal advocate at national and United Nations levels against the Myanmar junta’s violence and brutal repression of Burmese minorities.

Media Contact:
Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526;

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