The Kachin protesters were joined by activists from the Burma campaign UK. This included Zoya Phan, the daughter of the late Karen National Union (KNU) leader Mahn Sha. A large number of Rohingya protesters and supporters also came out to condemn the Burmese government’s treatment of the stateless Muslim minority.

Representatives of the largest Kachin diaspora organization, the Kachin National Organization (KNO), issued a statement on Monday afternoon criticizing Thein Sein and the British government's red carpet treatment of the ex-army general that many Kachin consider a war criminal.

The KNO statement noted that under Thein Sein's leadership Burma's military has carried out “crimes against humanity, war crimes and violations of international law” in Kachin and northern Shan state. Claims supported by a series of reports from Human Rights Watch and other prominent international organizations that have recorded the Burma army's use of rape as a weapon of war and deliberate targeting of civilians with gunfire and mortar bombs during the ongoing conflict. Fighting continues despite a recent 7 point agreement between the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the central government.

David Cameron and Foreign Minister William Hague seem unfazed by reports of the Burma army’s gross human rights violations against the ethnic Kachin. In fact the Cameron government is poised to offer the military training in the field of “human rights and the law of armed conflict”, according to recent media reports. Britain's Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that Britain will soon appoint a military attaché in Rangoon to "oversee the establishment of military to military contacts between the Burmese armed forces and their UK counterparts".

Official military ties between Burma and most western countries were frozen after August 1988 after army troops crushed a nationwide popular uprising, killing thousands of unarmed protesters in the process. It remains to be seen whether British military officials will actually be able to teach their Burmese counterparts much about human rights. The British military's own human rights record during their recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have received criticism by both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Last month Britain’s government was forced to issue a partial apology to veterans of the Kenyan independence struggle after a series of court victories by the last surviving Mau Mau fighters, many of whom claim to have suffered torture at the hands of their British military captors in the 1950's. After years of successive British government’s denying that such torture took place the foreign minister finally admitted in June that Kikuyu and other Kenyans had been tortured and endured other horrific abuses during the Mau Mau emergency era.