A total of 123 local and international NGOs have called on the Myanmar government to investigate the “enforced disappearance of Sumlut Roi Ja,” an ethnic Kachin woman who disappeared three years ago.
In a statement, delivered through Burma Campaign UK, 123 groups, including local 88 Generation Peace & Open Society, ALTSEAN-Burma, Kachin Women Peace Network and Burma Campaign UK, used the anniversary of her disappearance to call on the Myanmar authorities to “thoroughly investigate her enforced disappearance and hold the perpetrators accountable.”
On 28th October 2011, Myanmar army soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 321 abducted 28-year-old Sumlut Roi Ja along with her husband and father-in-law from their family farm near Hkaibang Village, Momauk Township, Kachin State, according to the press release.
Soldiers suspected the three had ties to the Kachin Independence Army – an ethnic armed opposition group. The soldiers ordered the three at gunpoint to carry corn to their outpost on Mubum mountain. Sumlut Roi Ja's husband and father-in-law managed to escape, evading the soldiers’ gunfire, on the way. Witnesses saw Sumlut Roi Ja at the camp several days before she disappeared.
Over the last three years, Sumlut Roi Ja’s family have filed numerous petitions asking the authorities to disclose her fate or whereabouts.
However, both the military and civilian authorities have consistently refused to investigate her disappearance and prosecute the soldiers who abducted her, according to the statement.
In March 2012, Myanmar’s Supreme Court rejected a writ of habeas corpus submitted by Sumlut Roi Ja’s husband two months earlier. The Supreme Court claimed there was no evidence that the army had detained Sumlut Roi Ja before her disappearance. Myanmar army officials denied having detained her. Sumlut Roi Ja is still missing and presumed dead.
