International NGO Responds to Reports of Burmese Military Torturing, Persecuting Its Own People

Media Contact:
Michael Givens
Director of Strategic Communications
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee
Phone: +1-857-540-0617
Email: mgivens@uusc.org

In response to an October 28 Associated Press report detailing widespread acts of torture committed by the Burmese military on the nation’s people, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee Vice President Rachel Gore Freed issued the following statement:

“The Associated Press article documenting the Burmese military’s acts of systematic persecution and torture should come as no surprise to any of us. Documentation and reports from the ground demonstrate empirically and anecdotally that the Tatmadaw have operated with impunity for years and that atrocities have escalated in the last year.

As a U.S.-based human rights organization with deep relations on the ground in Burma, our request is for the Biden Administration to support formally holding the Burmese military accountable for their violations of human rights, the genocide of the Rohingya people, and to support international protections for persecuted ethnic minorities and all Burmese people.”

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The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee (UUSC) is a human rights and solidarity organization founded as a rescue mission in 1940 during the Holocaust. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and with a membership of more than 35,000 supporters across the United States, UUSC’s programs focus on the issues of climate change, migrant justice, and crisis response.  

UUSC’s Burma program spans 25 years of donor support to Burmese- and ethnic minority-led human rights and humanitarian aid organizations.