One year ago Tuesday, two Kachin teachers in their early 20s left a birthday party for one of their students.
The party went into the evening, after which the teachers went home. Their bodies were discovered the next morning.
No one has been charged and convicted for the rape and murder of Maran Lu Ra, 20, and Tangbau Hkawn Nan Tsin, 21. But no one has forgotten what happened to them.
And so tomorrow two very different events will mark the 1st anniversary of the horrific crimes.
U Yein Kyan, a member of the Kachin Baptist Convention, the group that the women worked for, said a ceremony will be held at the Kachin Christian Organization’s office in Yangon’s Lanmadaw Township.
“The truth hasn’t come yet,” he told the Voice Weekly. “We are making this ceremony to show the local and international community.”
Meanwhile, in Bangkok, the Kachin Women’s Association Thailand and the Legal Aid Network will release a new report called “Justice Delayed, Justice Denied” at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand. The report, while not focusing specifically on the teachers’ case, will look at “ongoing barriers to justice in Burma,” according to a statement.
The women had been volunteering in Shan state’s Kaung Kha village for almost a year when their lives came to an end. Suspicions immediately drifted to an army unit stationed in the area, and later to local residents, but civilian and official investigations have not yielded substantive results.
Translation: No one has been caught after 12 months.
