Committee Rejects Bid to Change Constitution

the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who has stepped up her efforts to remove a clause from the military-drafted charter that bars anyone married to a foreigner or with children of foreign citizenship from becoming head of state.

Myanmar Army Accused of Torture in Kachin Conflict

A report released on the third anniversary of the start of the conflict in Kachin State has accused Myanmar’s armed forces of using torture in its fight against ethnic rebels in the country’s far north.

A parliamentary committee voted on June 6 not to endorse a proposed amendment to Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution that would make opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi eligible to become the country’s president.

The 31-member committee, consisting mostly of lawmakers from the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party and unelected military appointees to Parliament, voted 26-5 to reject calls to change the charter.

The move was a setback for

However, her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), said the vote was not the final word on the subject, as lawmakers are not bound to follow the committee’s recommendations.

Earlier in the month, the NLD rejected a warning from Myanmar’s Union Election Commission over Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s calls on the military to support the amendment. The body accused her of violating her oath as a parliamentarian by “challenging the army” in comments she made at a rally in Mandalay in late May.

—Zarni Mann

The report, titled “I Thought They Would Kill Me,” by the Bangkok-based group Fortify Rights, describes a variety of torture tactics employed, including beatings, sexual assault, sensory deprivation, and forcing victims to dig what they were told would be their own graves.

“The authorities have tortured Kachin civilians with brutal and inhuman tactics, and those responsible for these crimes have acted with complete impunity for three years,” the group’s executive director, Matthew Smith, said in a press release on June 9.

Fortify Rights said such practices are ongoing in Kachin and northern Shan states, where fighting between the Kachin Independence Army and government troops has flared on and off since the collapse of a 17-year-old ceasefire on June 9, 2011.

—Andrew D. Kaspar and Yen Snaing