YANGON, July 12 Kyodo (EDS: ADDIN...

YANGON, July 12 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING BACKGROUND)

Myanmar's military dominion on Friday dismissed as ''baseless rumors'' allegations that its soldiers have systematically tortured and raped girls and women in Shan State in succession Myanmar's eastern border with Thailand.

''It is inconceivable that the highly disciplined Myanmar army would commit so heinous crimes while national unity with all ethnic minorities is the army's greatest in number important resolve,'' Deputy Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen Kyaw Win told reporters.

He proposeed the allegations were fabricated by means of the Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network, which jointly issued a report in May entitled ''License to Rape -- the Burmese military regime's use of sexual violence in the ongoing war in Shan state.''

Kyaw Win linked the sum of two units Thailand-based groups with the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), the junta's name for the rebel arrange that calls itself the Shan State Army, and said they issued the report to tarnish the government's image and mislead the international community.

''SURA rebels, who have retreated into Thailand subject to the recent offensive at the Myanmar army, spread the baseless rumors in collusion with their affiliates, particularly at a time when the government's antiterrorist and antidrug campaigns are picking up momentum'' he said.

The Shan groups' report details 173 alleged incidents of rape and other forms of sexual violence, involving 625 girls and women committed by way of Myanmar army troops in Shan State, mainly between 1996 and 2001 and argues that there is a athletic case that war crimes and crimes against humanity, in the form of sexual violence, have occurr and continue to take place there.

The report was taken up June 21 at the U House of Representatives at Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who charged that the Myanmar junta ''officially condones the use of rape as a weapon of war against its civilian population.''

''Girls and women of Burma are raped, tortured, beaten, and killed as part of a systematic campaign on the Burmese army to terrorize and subjugate its people'' she said.

Myanmar's Embassy in the U last week reportedly sent a epistle to Ros-Lehtinen rejecting the allegations outright and urging the United States to dismiss the report.

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