A Special
Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
April 11, 1995 / KHRG #95-13
Forced portering has come to be known as one of the worst forms of human rights abuse by the Tatmadaw, or Burma Army. Many people have heard the constant reports of civilians kidnapped, driven to the frontline like cattle under heavy loads of ammunition, forcibly starved and then killed as soon as they can no longer carry. In our reports, villagers and SLORC written orders often refer to "permanent porters", "operations porters", and various kinds of conditions experienced during portering, and it is useful to have an understanding of what all this means.
This document has been written in response to a specific request for a document
summarizing the various types and conditions of forced portering in Burma; however, we
will also distribute it more widely in case it may be of use to anyone who is interested
in Burma human rights issues. It is important to stress that this document discusses only
forced portering, and that this is only one of the many constant abuses being faced by the
peoples of Burma.
Away from the central plains, Burma is very rugged - steep mountainous terrain, dense forests, rainy season making paths impassable, and no roads. Even in the central plains, major roads are rudimentary. In the mountainous terrain covering most of the country, even such roads are nonexistent. People talk about the dry season from November to May as "fighting season", because during rainy season large-scale military operations are almost impossible to mount. Even in "fighting season", some means has to be found to transport ammunition and supplies over rough terrain. Ammunition and weapons are very bulky and heavy, and frontline soldiers also require alot of food and other supplies. While guerilla forces can live among the villagers, SLORC troops are hated by the population and must bring in their supplies because they cannot steal everything they need from the sparse village populations.
The use of civilian porters was common by the British Army in colonial days. Porters
were men who were either hired for money, or conscripted from a village and made to carry
supplies to the next village, where they were sent home and the process was repeated.
After Burmese independence, the Burma Army continued using similar practices. However, as
the Burma Army degenerated into a strictly repressive force and particularly after Ne Win
took power in 1962, portering became forced, unpaid, harsher and more brutal. Long before
SLORC took power in 1988, portering was already well-known among the people as a brutal
form of slavery that must be escaped at any cost. It was already driving refugees across
the borders.
SLORC has not only taken portering to new extremes of brutality, but they have also used it as part of the "Four Cuts" policy which aims to cut off civilian support for opposition forces by terrorizing the civilian population and making them destitute. In this context, villages are faced with such constant demands for porters and other forced labour that they can barely work to support themselves anymore. Villagers and townspeople alike must constantly face the threat of various types of portering, primarily the following:
OPERATIONS PORTERS
This is the type of portering many people have read about. These are porters who are kidnapped whenever SLORC needs a large number of porters at once for a military offensive or other large-scale operation. Soldiers sweep villages and take everyone; police units and army trucks sweep the streets of towns and cities, surround video cinemas, train stations, even weddings and religious festivals, and take every able-bodied person. Soldiers storm every house in a neighbourhood at 3 a.m. Sometimes women, children and the elderly are let go; sometimes not. The rest are piled onto trucks and taken to army camps or jails, where they are held pending further orders - some sit in jail cells for a week before the army comes to collect them. Apparently, the military command receives porter demands from each Battalion or Strategic Command, then decides where the porters are to be rounded up and issues orders to the army or district officials in the area, who then use soldiers, police and even firemen to round up porters. The porters are often taken in towns, cities or villages hundreds of kilometres from the fighting area, sometimes because of lack of sufficient local population but more often as a deliberate strategy to make the porters too frightened to escape in a frontline area far from their home. Porters for operations in Karen State are sometimes brought from areas several days' journey away by truck - as far away as Rangoon, the Irrawaddy Delta, southern Mon or northern Shan states. Porters from different areas or ethnic backgrounds can easily be told things like "If you escape, the Karen will cut your throat".
Operations porters are kept for as long as the operation lasts, or even longer - often 3 months or more, or as some porters have said, "Until you either die or escape". Over the course of a month or two, generally up to half of them will die and up to half of them will escape, so new porters are constantly having to be sent. Any caught trying to escape are either killed or brutally beaten and forced to continue. They must carry loads of ammunition or supplies of 30 to 40 kilos per man and 20 to 30 kilos per woman. They are generally fed one or two handfuls of rice a day with little or nothing else, and are often deprived of water because it would "slow them down". They are generally not given any chance to bathe, and only have the light clothing in which they were captured. They have to sleep in the dirt, often inside pointed and guarded bamboo fences which they are forced to build themselves. Men are generally kept apart from women; women are often dragged off during the night to be gang raped by soldiers or officers. When they get sick, medicine is refused, and when they get too weak to keep up they are beaten or prodded with bayonets. Those who can no longer continue are generally either left behind in the jungle to die, beaten and left behind, kicked down the mountainside, tied up and thrown in the river, beaten to death with rifle butts, shot dead or have their throats cut.
PERMANENT PORTERS
Soldiers need supplies and ammunition whether they are patrolling or not. Villages in all parts of Burma, whether they are near a fighting area or not, receive written orders specifying the number of "permanent porters" they must provide to each SLORC Army camp which is nearby. This is the number of people from that village that must always be at the camp to be at the disposal of the soldiers as porters and messengers. Usually the number is based on village size; for example, a village of 50 households may be required to provide 10 permanent porters to a nearby camp. These 10 people will have to go for a 5, 7, or 10-day shift, taking all their own food, sleeping at the camp, and doing whatever is required of them by the soldiers (including being raped). At the end of this time, their replacements for the next shift must arrive from the village or they will not be released. Treatment of permanent porters tends to be less brutal than operations porters and beatings are rare, partly because the people bring the food and clothing they require so they don't get too weak; also because they usually don't have to march as hard or as far as operations porters, and because they have come "voluntarily" - that is, the soldiers haven't had to catch them at gunpoint. If a village fails to send permanent porters as requested, it will be shelled or burned down, village leaders will be tortured or executed, or the soldiers will simply storm the village and capture many more porters than they had demanded. If there are several army camps in the area, the village will usually be forced to send permanent porters to all of them independently. The villager appointed by SLORC as "Village LORC Chairman" (usually against his will) receives the demands for the porters, and villagers have to take turns as he assigns. If the porters don't go, he will be the first one tortured.
EMERGENCY PORTERS
In addition to "permanent porter" quotas, villages are constantly bombarded with SLORC written orders demanding certain numbers of porters or other short-term labourers to come to the army camp for "emergencies" - short-term jobs such as hauling the monthly rice supply to the local outposts. These people must take their own food and any required tools, and are generally not treated brutally in the course of their labour; however, they are still kept under constant guard at gunpoint, and women are often called for such duties and then raped by night at the army camp. These people also often run out of food, because usually the written order will call them to come for 1 or 2 days but then they will be kept for 3 days to a week or longer. When SLORC wants operations porters, they often demand emergency porters for a day and then keep them and send them to the frontline. As with other demands, any village which fails to send the emergency porters as ordered faces being shelled or burned down and having its elders executed, or the soldiers will simply storm the village and capture many more porters than they had demanded. Villagers have to go by turns as decided by the Village LORC Chairman (see under "Permanent Porters").
PORTERS OF OPPORTUNITY
Upon seeing a few farmers or a family along the road or in the fields, SLORC troops on the move or patrolling will generally grab them, interrogate them roughly and often take them as porters, with the idea that "you can never have too many porters". Sometimes such people will only be kept for a few hours, sometimes for several days or more. Quite often, SLORC troops will accuse them of being rebel sympathizers simply because they were walking along the road or in the forest and will treat them extremely brutally, often ending up by torturing them to death. Young men are the most common victims of this, but they are not the only ones. Otherwise, "porters of opportunity" are generally treated similarly to operations porters.
PORTERING AS PUNISHMENT
In urban or semi-urban areas, police or army units often sweep houses at night for porters as punishment for minor "infringements", such as failure to pay monthly "porter fees" or other protection money to SLORC authorities or army battalions, failure to register your house guests (under SLORC law, any guest you have in your house must be registered with local authorities), or simply because some local official or military officer has a grudge against you. In these cases, the victims are usually sent to the police lockup, then handed over to the local army battalion, then often turned over to battalions who are on their way to the front line. Many of these people end up as operations porters. House-to-house sweeps for "infringements of the law" are also sometimes used as an excuse during wider sweeps for operations porters - in such cases, people are often taken for failing to pay fees which they've already paid, or failing to register houseguests they've already registered. Rural villages which fail to pay money, labour or goods demanded as part of the Tatmadaw's extortion activities are often stormed by a company of troops who open fire on anyone they see running away, including children, then capture everyone who is left behind to be porters.
CONVICT PORTERS
Hundreds of convicts are often taken from Burma's prisons, loaded onto cattle trucks and taken to frontline areas as operations porters. There they are treated at least as brutally as civilian operations porters, and are often kept at the frontline from one operation to the next, indefinitely, until they die or escape. Many of them are taken from the prisons shortly before their sentences are about to expire, then kept at the frontline long after they were supposed to be released from prison. They are kept apart from the civilian porters and under the same amount of guard, and they are readily recognizable in their tattered prison clothes - shirts and longyis [sarongs] of rough burlap-type material, all dirty white or all blue. We have no confirmed reports of political prisoners being used as porters in this way, although it almost certainly has happened. Most of the convicts are "criminals" - but most of those whom we have interviewed have been imprisoned for "crimes" such as being out after curfew, throwing a stone at an army truck, or selling goods in the market without a SLORC licence.
PAID PORTERS
Although SLORC units always collect "porter fees" which are allegedly to hire
porters, porters are never paid by SLORC. However, in villages which are constantly or
occasionally faced with demands for permanent or emergency porters, villagers are usually
too afraid to go and will avoid the labour any way they can. When it comes their turn to
go, they will hire someone to go in their place if possible. Sometimes they can hire
someone else in the village to go in their place, but usually they hire itinerant migrant
workers, usually of Indian descent, who are so poor that they are forced to do anything
they can for a living. Some of these labourers have virtually made a profession out of
hiring themselves out to go in place of villagers. Some of them become very adept at
bribing the soldiers to get better food while portering and to avoid beatings and other
mistreatment. Many of them escape from the soldiers as soon as they get the chance,
although if they are going as a "permanent porter" replacement this will only
cause the army unit to immediately demand another villager from the village responsible.
The hired porters often go as emergency or permanent porters only to find that SLORC is
treating them very brutally or using them as operations porters, and then they try to
escape.
Porters are often taken into frontline battle conditions, especially if they are
carrying ammunition. Most of the frontline areas have no fixed line, but consist of SLORC
troops advancing through areas where they are subject to ambush at any time. In these
areas, a column of porters is often forced to march in front of the troops as human
minesweepers, and many have lost their legs or their lives to mines this way. The SLORC
officers and Non-Commissioned Officers in many units force the porters to switch shirts
with them, hoping that the porters will draw enemy fire while the officers will be seen as
porters and spared. During an ambush or firefight, porters naturally dive for whatever
cover they can find. Sometimes the soldiers allow them to stay there, but sometimes they
order them to stand up and bring ammunition to the point men. There are even cases where
the SLORC soldiers threaten to shoot the porters if they don't get up and keep moving. Any
porters who are killed are just left to rot. The seriously wounded are left to die. Those
who are slightly wounded are usually forced to continue carrying if they can. If they
cannot, some units will leave them or kill them, while others will send them back together
with the wounded soldiers for treatment. The families of the dead are not compensated or
even notified. Whenever SLORC takes porters, they simply "disappear" - the
family never knows what has happened to them. By the time some escape and return home,
their families have already written them off as dead.
Most SLORC Battalions prefer men aged 18 to 40 as porters, because they can carry the
heaviest loads. However, they usually take porters indiscriminately, including boys as
young as 14 and men as old as 70. Usually the young boys and old men are forced to carry
loads almost as heavy as the young men. When they need a large number, they take women
aged 15 through 60 as well. Some Battalions also go out of their way to take women porters
in order to rape them - the soldiers prefer young unmarried girls for this. The women are
forced to carry loads about ¾ as heavy as those carried by the men. They receive similar
treatment in terms of food and sleeping conditions. They are usually beaten less often and
less brutally than the men, but they are still beaten. Worst of all, during rest breaks
and at night they are subject to brutal gang rape by the soldiers and officers. Some die
from the combined effects of rape, beatings and exhaustion. Others return home with
permanent internal damage and no access to doctors, or are too ashamed to seek treatment.
Some return home to find they are pregnant with the child of a hated Burmese soldier. They
secretly take desperate measures to rid themselves of the baby, and some die or inflict
permanent damage on themselves doing so. If the village finds out or if they bear the
child, they face possible ostracism and may have great difficulty finding a husband.
SLORC officials and military units collect "fees" from every family in all villages and towns every month, usually several times a month. The amounts are usually calculated roughly to drain the local population of its entire disposable income and then some. The money is simply stolen by the local military officials, with a percentage often remitted to a SLORC front company ("Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd.") in Rangoon. One of the most common fees is "porter fees" or "fees for government servants' salaries". These fees are allegedly to hire porters, but porters are never paid. However, if you fail to pay any of these fees you will probably be taken as a porter.
During sweeps for operations porters, usually many people get free by paying large
bribes to the military while they are still being held locally, before being sent to the
frontline. These bribes average 1,000 to several thousand Kyat. For example, if a military
unit requires 1,000 porters then they will deliberately capture 3,000. They will then
begin releasing those who can bribe them. Sometimes the amount is fixed high, such as
5,000 Kyat. Sometimes it starts lower, maybe 800 or 1,000 Kyat, and then as the number of
people still being held drops closer to the number of porters needed, the price goes up.
The last group of people released may have to pay 10,000 Kyat or more each. The people who
are left to go to the frontline are always the poor - the farmers, trishaw drivers,
labourers, etc.
Opposition forces also need porters, and many of them conscript porters. Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army has a bad reputation for conscription and treatment of its porters. However, the other opposition groups tend to use something more akin to British Army methods such as taking porters from one village to the next. It is crucial to recognize the difference between SLORC troops, who are hated by the population, and opposition troops, who are generally among family in the villages and depend on the villagers for intelligence and material support. They also conscript porters for periods up to several weeks, and in many areas the people are sick and tired of this labour. Some groups demand money from families who cannot provide a porter when their turn comes up. However, during their time as porters these villagers are fed and accomodated to the same standard as the soldiers (which is low), they are not beaten or otherwise physically abused, and if they are sick or wounded they either receive treatment if it is available or are sent back.
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Many people, including escaped porters themselves, often ask just how SLORC soldiers can treat civilian porters so brutally. The answer lies in the statement we have heard from countless porters: "They just didn't think of us as human beings." It appears that in SLORC's Officer Training School, officers are indoctrinated to think of civilians in general, especially after they have been taken as porters, as simple pack animals there to serve the military. SLORC officers and NCOs always talk to porters using the same lines, almost word for word: "Medicine? This is not your mother's house!"; "You are not our relatives!"; "It is your fate to carry like this." Burmese soldiers who hesitate to capture or beat porters are always yelled at with, "Are these people your fathers? Your brothers-in-law?" The Tatmadaw teaches its soldiers and officers that the Army is their only true blood, their only true family, and that civilians are less than human. This logic is applied most strongly against people of non-Burman ethnic nationalities, but the testimonies of many Burman porters (Burmans are also treated brutally as porters, and are taken in great numbers to be porters in faraway non-Burman areas) show that the key factor here is not ethnic racism, but military vs. civilian racism. In the field, officers enforce this attitude on the rank and file soldiers through a combination of fear and peer pressure - both of which are very strong factors when faced with a population who hates you and porters who want nothing more than to escape.