Joe Pitts: “I strongly support H.R. 2330, the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 and urge all my colleagues to support this…”

“I strongly support H.R. 2330, the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 and urge all my colleagues to support this bill. The military regime is guilty of ethnic cleansing, systematic rape, forced porterage, destruction of homes, villages and food sources, the use of human land mine sweepers, and the detention of over 1200 political prisoners. Two excellent reports describe the horrifying systematic campaign of rape against the Shan, Karenni, Karen, Mon, Tavoyan and other ethnic groups. In the study License to Rape, investigators found that in "25 percent of the incidents documented, the girls or women were killed following the rape, by being shot, suffocated, beaten, stabbed or burned to death." In the study, No Safe Place: Burma's Army and the Rape of Ethnic Women, there is clear documentation of the military raping women fleeing the fighting, raping those incarcerated in military camps, raping those forced into labor for military, and raping women out foraging for food. In one case, a young women heard her sister's cries " `they are raping me'--but could do nothing to stop it. A day after she was taken, the soldiers brought her body back for the family to bury. Her wounds indicated clearly that she had been raped, perhaps to death, Despite the fact that the soldiers continued to return to their village after the murder," the young women and her family were too afraid to complain. The suffering of the people of Burma has gone on too long.”