This report presents direct translations of 568 order documents and letters, selected from a total of 735 such documents. They dictate demands for forced labour, money, food and materials, place restrictions on the movements and activities of villagers, and make threats to arrest village elders or destroy the villages of those who fail to obey. Almost all of them were sent from SPDC military units and local SPDC authorities to village elders in Papun, Nyaunglebin, Pa’an, Thaton, Toungoo and Dooplaya Districts, which together cover almost all of Karen State and part of eastern Pegu Division (see Map 1 showing Burma or Map 2 showing Karen Districts). The remainder were sent by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), a Karen group allied with the SPDC, or were sent back and forth between village elders. All but a few of them were issued between January 2000 and January 2001, with the majority of them dated in the latter half of this period.

Villages in Karen areas receive a constant stream of order documents such as these almost every day, from all SPDC Army camps near their village as well as the various levels of SPDC authorities, commanding them to provide people for forced labour, materials and supplies for the Army, extortion money, food, crop quotas, intelligence and other forms of support for the military. Many of the orders simply command village elders to rush to Army camps for ‘meetings’ at which military officers dictate lists of demands and threaten them with punishment for any failure to comply. The orders translated in this report should be seen as only a small representative sample of the thousands of orders issued to villages in these areas during this time period. For every order reproduced here, hundreds more are issued every week. This report does not aim to provide a comprehensive picture of the human rights situation in these areas, but to provide a reference containing examples of several kinds of orders received by villages in several different regions. More information on the human rights situation in each District is available in other existing KHRG reports. Additional information on the structure and details of the SPDC and DKBA Armies can be found in "Abuse Under Orders: The SPDC & DKBA Armies through the Eyes of their Soldiers" (KHRG #2001-01, 27/3/01).

Over 300 of the orders in this report contain demands for unpaid forced labour placed on villages by SPDC authorities (this includes orders in the sections ‘General Forced Labour’, ‘Forced Labour Supplying Materials’, and many of the orders in the ‘Set to a Village’ sections). All of the orders demanding forced labour were issued well after May 14^th 1999, which is when the SPDC leadership claims to have issued ‘Order 1/99’ to all of their military and administrative units to halt conscription of forced labour under the Villages Act and the Towns Act, colonial-era laws which allow authorities to press-gang labour under certain circumstances. In practice, most of the demands made by the military and SPDC authorities violate the conditions of these Acts (for example, that only able-bodied and unemployed men be conscripted and that conscripted labour should be paid), and when demanding forced labour the authorities almost never even make reference to the Acts. Since May 1999 there has been no abatement in orders issued demanding forced labour, and the fact that those included below were issued by many different SPDC battalions and authorities in several different regions shows that such demands are not isolated incidents. In June 2000 the International Labour Organisation (ILO) gave the SPDC until November to take measures to bring an end to forced labour; when the deadline passed with no sign of positive reform, they voted to enact ILO Article 33 for the first time in the Organisation’s 83-year history. Under this Article, the ILO presses its member governments, workers’ organisations and employers’ organisations, as well as other United Nations agencies and bodies, to review their relations with the SPDC to ensure that they are not contributing to the continuation of forced labour in Burma.

The orders in this report demanding forced labour dated right up to January 2001 tend to support the ILO conclusion that the SPDC has taken no concrete action to reduce or eliminate forced labour. According to testimony gathered by KHRG from SPDC deserters, villagers, and some of the orders below, it appears that some sort of ‘window-dressing’ is occurring in the form of orders from higher authorities telling local authorities to tone down their use of forced labour (see for example Order #151 in the section ‘General Forced Labour’ below and Order #18 in "SPDC & DKBA Orders to Villages: Set 2000-B" [KHRG #2000-04, 12/10/2000]); however, as can be seen in Order #151 below, it appears that these orders only tell local civilian authorities not to use forced labour for their personal gain, while forced labour for the military and the State are still to be used as before. It even appears that these orders are increasing the use of forced labour by telling local authorities that they must no longer accept money from villagers to avoid forced labour, that people must come for the labour without exemptions. Further discussion on this subject is included in the introduction to the ‘General Forced Labour’ section below.

Originals of most of these orders were obtained by KHRG researchers in each region, while some were gathered by field researchers for the field offices of the Federated Trade Unions of Burma (FTUB) and the Karen Office for Relief and Development (KORD). KHRG would like to thank the field researchers of the FTUB and KORD for their extensive help in gathering these orders, and for working with KHRG to translate many of them.

General Forced Labour:     This section includes direct orders for forced labour at Army Camps, on roads, portering, and many other forms of forced labour, and related documents. Demands for bullock carts, tractors and boats are also included here, because these demands implicitly demand the forced labour of the owner/driver of the cart, tractor or boat.

Forced Labour Supplying Materials:     This section includes orders indirectly calling for forced labour by demanding materials from villagers which require intensive labour to produce and deliver. For example, demands for hundreds of thatch roofing shingles, tons of logs, or quantities of firewood or bamboo force villagers to do hard labour cutting, gathering, preparing and then delivering these materials to Army camps. In contrast, demands for rice, pigs, money and other goods are not included in this section because they are not as labour-intensive; they are included in the section ‘Extortion of Money, Food and Materials’.

Set to a Village I: All of these orders were sent to ‘Village A’ in Papun District between August and October 2000 from the same local authorities. Many of these are direct and indirect demands for forced labour. Rather than mixing them in with the other orders, we have presented them as a set to give an idea of the incessant stream of demands which village elders have to cope with.

Set to a Village II: All of these orders were sent to ‘Village B’ in Papun District between July and October 2000. As with ‘Set to a Village I’, most of them are for forced labour and they are separated here to give some idea of the incessant stream of demands placed on a single village.

Set to a Village III: These orders were all sent to ‘Village C’ in Thaton District between August and October 2000, and all of them relate to demands for teak wood from the local SPDC Army officers, who force all villages in the area to provide logs and planks which they then sell for their own profit.

Extortion of Money, Food and Materials: This section contains orders which use implicit or explicit threats to demand cash, rice, livestock, and various other goods from the villagers, usually with no payment whatsoever.

Crop Quotas: These are orders related to the rice quotas which the SPDC forces all farmers to hand over every year for less than half of market price. No exemptions are granted for bad years or natural disasters and the system is fraught with corruption, driving many farmers into starvation or off their land.

Restrictions on Movement and Activity: These orders force villagers to carry travel passes to be able to go anywhere and to register any guests in their own homes. They also restrict the transport of food to and from villages and ban villagers from cutting wood for their own use. We have also included the translation of a ‘Peace Pass’, an SPDC propaganda card which is supposed to allow freedom of movement to villagers if they volunteer to become informers.

Demands for Intelligence: These are sent to village heads ordering them to come and report intelligence information on all activities of their villagers and resistance movements in the area. Several of the orders demand that village heads provide ‘register lists’ of all families, crop acreages, schools, health clinics, monasteries and churches for military intelligence purposes.

Education, Health and Religion: This section includes orders for villagers to provide materials and forced labour to build schools, to attend HIV seminars and health clinic openings, and calls for people to go on SPDC-sponsored pilgrimages to temples in Rangoon and Pagan. It is divided into 3 subsections: Education, Health, and Religion.

Summons to ‘Meetings’: These orders call village elders to come to Army camps to meet with the military or SPDC authorities; the purpose is often unspecified, but at these ‘meetings’ the officers usually dictate demands for forced labour and materials, restrict the activities of villagers and issue threats.

DKBA Letters: All of the orders issued by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) have been placed in this section, with the exception of 3 DKBA orders which appear in the sections ‘Set to a Village I’ and ‘Set to a Village II’. The content of these orders is similar to those issued by the SPDC military and authorities. We have divided them into 5 subsections: Landmines, DKBA General Forced Labour, DKBA Demands for Materials and Money, DKBA Restrictions and Trade Controls Against Villagers, and DKBA & KPA Meetings and Festivals. The last subsection also includes one order, #568, which was issued by the ‘Karen Peace Group’, a smaller Karen group allied with the SPDC.

Within each of the above sections, we have sorted the orders chronologically from the oldest to the most recent, except in some sections with few orders where a topical sequencing is more appropriate. Orders with no indication of date are placed at the end of each section. Beside each Order Number heading we have given its district of origin (Papun, Pa’an, Thaton, Nyaunglebin, Toungoo, or Dooplaya) in parentheses.

Most of these orders were handwritten, some typed, and carbon-copied or copied on a cyclostyling machine if sent to more than one village. Many of them have been produced as form letters for distribution to many villages, with the village name and any other specific details written in afterwards by hand. The orders were written in Burmese with the exception of some of those issued by the DKBA; under each DKBA order we have indicated the language used.

We have attempted to accurately reproduce the visual page layout of each order, and underlining, etc. are as they appear in the order. ‘Stamp:’ gives the translation of the rubber-stamped unit identifier affixed to many of the orders, while ‘[Sd.]’ denotes the usually illegible signature of the issuing official. The language of many of the orders sounds awkward because Burmese grammar is very different from English; for example, the ordering of phrases within a sentence is almost opposite, sentences are often very long and convoluted, and personal subject and object pronouns are often omitted in Burmese. We have translated the words and expressions as directly as possible, though we have sometimes had to make minor changes in the sequence of the words for the wording to make sense and to have the exact same meaning in English. Moreover, many SPDC Army officers and Non-Commissioned Officers are semi-illiterate so they write with terrible grammar and frequent mistakes, and misspell place names and people’s names. Where necessary, we have added notes in italics in square brackets for clarification, but all other text is as it appears in the orders. All text not in square brackets is in the text of the order document itself.

To protect people and their villages against retaliation, we have blanked out the names of people, villages, Army camps, Army officers and other details where these could be used to track the villages involved. These have been replaced with ‘xxxx’, ‘yyyy’, ‘aaaa’ etc. We have generally used ‘xxx’ for numerals and general information, ‘xxxx’, ‘yyyy’, ‘zzzz’, ‘wwww’, ‘vvvv’, etc. for place names, and ‘aaaa’, ‘bbbb’, ‘cccc’, etc. for people’s names. When an order refers to several people or places, we have assigned each person and place a specific string (‘yyyy’, ‘cccc’, etc.) to keep the references consistent and avoid confusion. In blanking out names, we have often left the honorifics in place: for example, in Burmese ‘Daw’ is used for married women and ‘Ma’ for young unmarried women, while ‘U’ is for older or respected men, ‘Ko’ and ‘Maung’ for men close to the writer’s age, younger men or to indicate a lower level of respect. In Sgaw Karen, ‘Saw’ or ‘Pa’ are prefixes for men and boys and ‘Naw’ for women and girls, regardless of marital status.

In Burmese, numerals are usually written in parentheses; in the translations these have been omitted in most cases where they would not be used in English. As in the originals, all numeric dates are shown in dd/mm/yy or dd/mm format. Some orders use Burmese dates: the year 1362 is the period from April 2000-April 2001, the months begin at each new moon and are divided into the moon’s ‘waxing’ and ‘waning’ phases. We have noted the equivalent Gregorian calendar date where it is not already specified.

Most of the orders were issued by local SPDC Army commanders and Peace & Development Councils (PDCs), which are local-level SPDC administration at the Township, Village Tract and Village levels. A village tract is a group of 5-20 villages, usually 10-20 kilometres in diameter and administered from the largest village of the group. A township is a larger area consisting of several village tracts centred on a significant market town, and a district is several townships covering a significant geographic region. While the Township and often Village Tract PDCs consist of SPDC officials under direct military control, the Village PDC chairperson and members are appointed, often against their will, by the local military. Most orders are addressed to the ‘Chairperson’, who is the SPDC-appointed Chairperson of the Village Peace and Development Council (VPDC), and/or the ‘Secretary’ of the same VPDC. This council, consisting of a Chairperson, Secretary, and Members, is supposed to administer the village for the SPDC, which mainly consists of arranging whatever the Army and the higher-level PDCs demand. Other orders are addressed to the ‘Village Head’, who is head of the village elders, and is often the same as the VPDC Chairperson. If a village fails to comply with an order, the Chairperson or Village Head is usually the first to be punished by being arrested and beaten or detained for ransom; this is what is meant by threatening phrases such as "if you fail it will be your responsibility".

Village heads have to spend so much time supervising the forced labour of their villagers and running back and forth to the Army camp whenever summoned by the officers that it is difficult for them to find time to farm their own fields. Moreover, whenever the Army demands money, livestock or goods, it is difficult for the village heads to get it from the villagers so they often ends up paying for it themselves. Finally, the village head is at constant risk of arrest, interrogation and torture if he/she fails to comply with a single order or if there is any resistance activity near the village. Therefore, most villagers, especially in or near conflict areas, are too afraid to be a village head. Some villages now rotate their village heads every month if they cannot find anyone willing to take the responsibility. Another solution which is now used by many villages is to choose women as village heads, because the villagers feel that women, particularly elderly women, will be detained and tortured less often than a male headman would be. This is somewhat true, because Burmese culture requires that the young show great respect to parents and elders, and many Burmese officers feel intimidated when dealing with elderly women who remind them of their mothers; however, many of them will still not hesitate to detain or torture an elderly village headwoman. Some of the orders address the village headwoman colloquially as ‘Mother’, and the sender sometimes refers to himself as ‘Son’. Other terms such as ‘Uncle’ and ‘Auntie’ are usually terms of respect for elders or commanders, not actual blood relations.

At the village level, the ‘Chairperson’ is usually victimised by the local military; however, at the village tract and township levels the ‘Chairperson’ is often a corrupt SPDC appointee who works closely with the local military. The local Army often dictates demands to the Township or Village Tract PDC leaders, who then divide the demands among the villages and issue the written orders; this is why many of the orders to village heads are sent by village tract heads, but merely repeat the direct demands of the Army. The orders often contain phrases such as ‘in the Elder’s village’ or ‘the Elder yourself must come’; ‘Elder’ here is our translation of the gender-neutral term Lu Gyi Min, a reference to the village elder who receives the letter, and though it may sound awkward it is the closest term we have been able to find in English. In some past KHRG reports this was translated as ‘Gentleman/Gentlemen’, but we have discarded this because the Elder being addressed is frequently a woman.