Country: Myanmar
Group: Shan
Date Finalized: 4/19/2020
Team: Johanna McCombs (lead), Maya Shrikant, Leilani Alva
The Shan mostly reside in the Shan state inside Myanmar but also reside in other pockets around the country (Minority Rights, n.d.). Starting around 1950 the government of Myanmar has been discriminating and committing violent acts such as torture, rape, forced labor and destruction of property against the Shan people. The Shan people have claimed these acts were in an attempt to exterminate their people in a statement sent out by the General Secretary of the Shan Democratic Union (Minority Rights, n.d.). In 1962, the military captured the population’s princes and leaders in the Shan Democratic Union (Zam, 200). More than 300,000 villagers were forcibly evicted, some fleeing to Thailand where they were sometimes exploited for cheap labor or sex work (Zam, 2000). The fighting between the Shan state and the Burma government continues today, in 2011 a ceasefire was broken which caused a large number of displacements due to the destruction of houses and the killing of the Shan (Shan, n.d.). More than 43 Dams are being built in the Shan state, which has angered the Shan because it is on their land (Minority Rights, n.d.). The data quality score is a 2. There are a lot of personal accounts of the acts against the Shan but the government still refuses to acknowledge these events.
Source
- Minority Rights Group (n.d.). Shan. Retrieved March 14, 2020, from https://minorityrights.org/minorities/shan/
- Zam, K. (2000, Winter). SHAN STATEMENT ON 4TH JANUARY, 2000. https://www.burmalibrary.org/reg.burma/archives/200001/msg00097.html