SPDC and DKBA order documents: October 2007 to March 2008

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As evidence of ongoing exploitative local governance in rural Burma, this report comprises a collection of 59 translated order documents issued by SPDC and DKBA officers to village heads in Karen State between October 2007 and March 2008. The orders provide tangible confirmation of rural villagers' consistent testimonies regarding the regular demands for labour, money, food and other supplies to which their communities are subject by local military forces. Amongst other things, these order documents articulate demands for the payment of money and food; fabrication and delivery of building supplies; attendance at meetings; road clearance and construction; portering of military supplies; agricultural labour and the delivery of bullock carts. In almost all cases, such demands are uncompensated and backed by an implicit threat of violence for non-compliance. Almost all demands articulated in the orders presented in this report involve some element of forced labour in their implementation.

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Introduction and Executive Summary

As Burma's ruling military regime has sought to extend and consolidate State control across all areas of the country, regional army units have been required to utilise local labour, as well as money, food and other supplies extracted from local communities to support this military expansion.[1] Forced labour and other exploitative demands thus remain amongst the most pervasive of human rights abuses in Karen State and other, especially rural, areas of Burma. The military's dependence on the appropriation of labour, money, food and supplies from local communities in rural Burma was made explicit in a 1997 order by the central War Office to the country's 12 Regional Commands to acquire all logistical needs locally, rather than from central reserves.[2] Supported by the military's logistical dependence on civilian communities, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) Army as well as its largest local ally, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), have been expanding troop numbers, camps and bases in Karen State.

Given the widespread and systematic character of forced labour and other demands for money, food and supplies, these abuses have directly contributed to livelihoods vulnerability for large numbers of villagers across rural Karen State. Persistent - and almost always uncompensated - forced labour cuts into villagers' own work time, which remains crucial for tending agriculture crops or addressing other means of livelihood, engaging in wage labour or attending to household chores. Monetary extortion depletes villagers' limited financial savings, which could otherwise serve as a form of insurance to buffer against unexpected shocks, losses and personal expenses. Demands for food and other supplies undermine villagers' own nutritional and household needs. Combined over time, this systematic appropriation of labour, money, food and supplies erodes livelihoods, exacerbates poverty and worsens the region's humanitarian crisis.

Despite the harmful consequences of this exploitation, both SPDC and DKBA authorities have continued to regularly impose their demands on the civilian population of rural Karen State. These demands are often issued in the form of written order documents. These documents are written by the officers themselves or otherwise dictated by an officer and written down or typed by a scribe, before being dispatched to particular villages by a messenger (who is typically a local villager forced to serve in this role without compensation). Given the important role of order documents as evidence in advocacy around forced labour in Burma, there has been an increasing reluctance by military authorities to set down in writing specific demands and instead call village heads to attend 'meetings' at which they elaborate on what is required. Nonetheless, specific demands for labour, money, food and other supplies continue to be issued through written order documents dispatched by SPDC and DKBA authorities to village heads, backed up by an implicit threat of violence and in some cases an explicit threat that 'action' will be taken against those who do not comply (see for example order #27). Village heads who receive an order document with a stated demand or are called to a meeting where they are subsequently given demands must then arrange for the residents of their respective villages to comply or else attempt to respond in a manner that allows them to reduce or otherwise completely avoid the stated requirements.[3]

The present report comprises a collection of 59 translated order documents issued by SPDC and DKBA authorities in Toungoo, Nyaunglebin, Papun and Thaton Districts of Karen State between October 2007 and March 2008. Out of the total 59 documents, 15 were issued by SPDC authorities and 44 were issued by DKBA authorities. As the DKBA operates under sanction of the SPDC and as the two groups often participates in joint operations, demands on the civilian population issued by this group should be understood as having been sanctioned by the SPDC.[4] The eradication of DKBA-demanded forced labour is thus part of the SPDC's wider obligation to end this practice in Burma.

Orders dispatched by SPDC authorities were written solely in Burmese, while DKBA authorities dispatched order documents written in either S'gkaw Karen or Burmese. Order documents from both groups were either hand written or typed. Both SPDC and DKBA officers issuing the orders typically certified the letters with an official stamp. The order documents issued by SPDC authorities contained in this report include demands for thatch shingles, bamboo poles, pork, chicken, money and information. Compliance with these demands requires forced labour in the delivery of the stated items to specified army camps and bases. Further forced labour is also required in the collection of raw materials for, and in the fabrication of, thatch shingles and bamboo poles. The SPDC orders also include demands for other forms of forced labour involving attendance at meetings, carrying water, clearing and repairing vehicle roads and dismantling farm field huts. Other SPDC orders presented below that may not directly involve forced labour address restrictions on the sale of meat, announcements about landmine-deployed areas, registration of muskets and permission for specific villagers to travel. Those order documents issued by DKBA authorities and contained in this report include demands for the delivery of thatch shingles, betel nut, money, teak wood, rice and bullock carts; clearance and construction of vehicle roads; weeding of cashew plantations; attendance at meetings; provision of villagers to serve as soldiers and porters; the handing over of an escaped porter; permission to travel and restrictions on the use of rice mills. For a detailed list of the order documents contained in this report see the table included below on page ten.

On the one hand, these orders demonstrate the persistent threat of military predation to livelihoods vulnerability in rural Karen State. On the other hand, they reveal the determined opposition of villagers to such exploitation. Order document #38, for example, is in fact a follow-up letter appealing to the relevant village head to comply with a previously issued (yet simply ignored) order. Other orders contain additional comments added by KHRG field researchers about the particular responses of village heads to these demands. Delayed responses and late compliance on the part of villagers are common (for example order #31). Compliance is also frequently only partial in character. In response to order #17, for example, the relevant village head complied in principle with a demand for money, but gave 200,000 kyat (US $168) short of the amount demanded - telling the issuing officer that his villagers simply could not pay the initially-specified amount. The compliance in this case, furthermore, came four days later than the date demanded. Interestingly, order #56 is a demand for the relevant village head to turn over a porter who absconded while doing forced labour carrying military supplies. While such resistance, in the form of delayed or partial compliance, may seem slight at first glance, it is important to recognise that villagers employ such tactics in large numbers across rural Karen State (and presumably across much of rural Burma). While not formally organised, these daily acts of resistance go a long way in undermining the authority, and limiting the usable resources, of local military units.

What becomes clear from an examination of the order documents presented below is that both SPDC and DKBA units are essentially dependant on the uncompensated extraction of labour, money, food and supplies from rural communities across Karen State. The appropriation of these resources is widespread and systematic and plays a large role in undermining livelihoods, exacerbating poverty and worsening the region's humanitarian crisis. Nevertheless, as villagers are themselves fully aware of the harmful consequences of these demands, they have sought, through everyday forms of resistance to reduce or, where possible, wholly mitigate the demands imposed upon them.

Footnotes

[1] Such forms of appropriation are often termed as "rents", which are "commonly defined as the extraction of uncompensated value from others." (See, MacLean, K. 2007. "Spaces of extraction: Governance along the riverine networks of Nyaunglebin District," in Myanmar – The State, Community and the Environment, Asia Pacific Press, p. 259.)

[2] Selth, A. 2002. Burma's Armed Forces: Power Without Glory. Norwalk: Eastbridge, p. 136; see also, Callahan, M. 2007. "Of kyay-zu and kyet-su: the military in 2006." In Myanmar – The State, Community and the Environment, eds. Monique Skidmore and Trevor Wilson. Canberra: Asia Pacific Press, p. 46.

[3] For a thorough analysis of the function, implementation and consequences of forced labour and other demands in Karen State, see KHRG’s comprehensive 2007 report Shouldering the Burden of Militarisation.

[4] Mary Callahan, in her paper Political Authority in Burma's Ethnic Minority States: Devolution, Occupation, and Coexistence (East-West Center Washington, May 2007, p.39), terms the particular form of mixed political authority in DKBA-controlled areas as 'coexistence' between the SPDC and DKBA.

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