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Community Organizations Karen Human Rights Group
Karen Human Rights Group
Karen Human Rights Group
Acronym
KHRG
Non-profit organization

Location

Myanmar

KHRG is an independent local organisation committed to improving the human rights situation in Burma by projecting the voices of villagers and supporting their strategies to claim human rights. We aim to increase villagers’ capability and opportunity to claim their human rights, and ensure that their voices, priorities and perspectives influence decision makers. We encourage other local and international groups and institutions to support villagers’ self-protection strategies.


Vision


The Karen Human Rights Group envisions a future in which people in Burma achieve full human rights and justice.


KHRG Activities


  • Field Research: KHRG trains community members in eastern Burma to document individual human rights abuses using a standardised reporting format; conduct interviews with other villagers; and write general updates on the situation in areas with which they are familiar. Community members are trained to summarise recent events, raise issues that they consider to be important, and present their opinions or perspectives on abuse and other local dynamics in their area.
  • Report-writing: In order to directly communicate the experiences and perspectives of villagers in eastern Burma, KHRG translates and publishes the Field Research on our website exactly as it was received in the form of Interviews, Incidents Reports and Situation Updates. To ensure villagers’ voices and priorities reach influence decision makers, KHRG staff compile and analyze the field information into thematic reports, area reports or in targeted submissions.
  • Village Agency Workshops: Conducted at the community level, KHRG facilitates workshops that provide a space for villagers to share their experiences and support their self-protection strategies by gaining knowledge about international human rights standards and available national mechanisms that they can use to claim their rights.
  • Local and International Advocacy: By sharing our Field Research, KHRG hopes to ensure villagers’ voices and strategies for coping with human rights abuse reach decision-makers who can influence their lives. We distribute our Field Documentation and Reports  to local and international human rights organisations, national institutions in Burma, United Nations agencies and rapporteurs, foreign governments and embassies, academics, journalists, and others.

Members:

Resources

Displaying 141 - 145 of 168

Enduring Hunger and Repression: : Food Scarcity, Internal Displacement, and the Continued Use of Forced Labour in Toungoo District

Reports & Research
August, 2004
Myanmar

This report describes the current situation faced by rural Karen villagers in Toungoo District (known as Taw Oo in Karen). Toungoo District is the northernmost district of Karen State, sharing borders with Karenni (Kayah) State to the east, Pegu (Bago) Division to the west, and Shan State to the north. To the south Toungoo District shares borders with the Karen districts of Nyaunglebin (Kler Lweh Htoo) and Papun (Mutraw).

Operation Than L'Yet: Forced Displacement, Massacres and Forced Labour in Dooplaya District

Reports & Research
September, 2002
Myanmar

In January 2002 it appeared that the SPDC considered most of Dooplaya district of southern Karen State to be pacified and under their control. But then Light Infantry Division 88 was sent in and commenced Operation Than L'Yet, forcibly relocating as many as 60 villages by July. Villagers were rounded up and detained without food for days, or force-marched to Army-controlled relocation sites after their houses were burned. Village heads, women and children were tortured.

Flight, Hunger and Survival: Repression and Displacement in the Villages of Papun and Nyaunglebin Districts

Reports & Research
October, 2001
Myanmar

This report documents in detail the plight of villagers and the internally displaced in these two
northern Karen regions. Since 1997 the SPDC has destroyed or relocated over 200 villages here,
forcing tens of thousands of villagers to flee into hiding in the hills where they are now being
hunted down and shot on sight by close to 50 SPDC Army battalions. The troops are now
systematically destroying crops, food supplies and farmfields to flush the villagers out of the hills,

Papun and Nyaunglebin Districts: Internally displaced villagers cornered by 40 SPDC Battalions; Food shortages, disease, killings and life on the run.

Reports & Research
April, 2001
Myanmar

Food shortages, disease, killings and life on the run.Based on new interviews and reports from KHRG field researchers, this update summarises the increasingly desperate situation for villagers in these two districts. In the hills, the people of several hundred villages are still in hiding, their villages destroyed by SPDC troops. Their survival situation is now desperate as 40 SPDC Battalions continue to systematically destroy their rice supplies and crops and landmine their fields, and shoot them on sight.