The Rural Human Rights Situation in Burma

[Footnotes and words in square brackets were not stated in the oral intervention due to time restrictions.]

Mr. Chairman,

Many dictatorial regimes argue that human rights take second place to economic development, that as long as government figures claim some kind of "economic growth" the world should ignore serious and systematic human rights abuses. [In reality, economic growth is meaningless without an improvement in the lives of the people, and there can be no such improvement where systematic human rights abuses prevail.] Some regimes claiming to create peace and economic stability actually carry out abuses which destroy the economic, social and cultural fabric of the country. For several years the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs has been following the situation in Burma, where the ruling military junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC, is such a regime.

SLORC claims to be improving the human rights situation by negotiating military ceasefires with ethnic opposition groups, which it calls "peace". Yet SLORC has secured ceasefires by increasing human rights abuses against ethnic civilians, then refusing to even discuss human rights issues in ceasefire talks. Even after the ceasefires, SLORC continues to commit widespread human rights abuses [extrajudicial executions, arbitrary arrests, detention with torture, and widespread forced labour] against civilians. Since its [1995] ceasefire with the Karenni, SLORC has continued taking Karenni civilians by force to carry munitions and forcing them to pay extortion money. When the Karenni organization protested, SLORC broke the ceasefire with new military attacks. Since the [1995] ceasefire with the Mon, SLORC has been taking Mon civilians for forced labour more than ever before. Every family in the region still has to do labour on projects like the Ye-Tavoy railway, at army camps and as porters. [Thousands of villagers, mainly women, children as young as 8 or 10, and the elderly, are being forced to break rocks and carry dirt for two-week shifts at a time building the Ye-Tavoy railway and the Ye-Tavoy road, unpaid, forced to supply their own food and tools, and beaten by armed soldiers if they try to rest. On returning home, they also have to do forced labour at army camps and as army porters, and they must somehow pay the two to three thousand Kyats of extortion money demanded from every family, every month, by the SLORC army battalions in their area.] New forced labour projects are starting all the time, building roads and military infrastructure. SLORC has sent 15 Army battalions to secure a gas pipeline it is building in joint venture with foreign companies, and these troops are now forcing villagers to build army camps and a pipeline service road [from Hpaungdaw to Kanbauk]. Villagers are fleeing the area as much as they did before the ceasefire, because they cannot subsist there anymore.

Mr. Chairman, how can this be called "peace"? This regime is committing abuses and enslavement to an extent which amounts to making war against its own people to control them. In rural villages throughout the country, anyone who fails to obey orders for forced labour or extortion is subject to arrest, torture, rape, or summary execution by the army. Villages which are difficult for the Army to get to or seen as difficult to control are forced to move at gunpoint to army-controlled sites that act as forced labour camps. In Toungoo and Nyaunglebin Districts, SLORC has destroyed or relocated at least 26 villages since October 1995, systematically destroyed crops and food supplies and executed dozens of villagers at random. In Papun District, up to 100 Karen villages in a 50 by 30 kilometre area have been ordered to move to SLORC Army labour camps since January, where they are being forced to rebuild the [100 kilometre] Papun-Bilin car road for military trucks. [They receive no food or medicine, nor are they allowed to return home to farm their fields, so once their food runs out they starve.] People still found in these villages can be shot on sight, so thousands are fleeing into hiding in the forests. [Some manage to escape to Thailand, but SLORC is actively blocking the escape routes to the border.]

Even in the central plains far from any sign of civil war, SLORC continues to send more Army battalions into rural areas. They confiscate farmland without compensation to build their camps, then force the villagers to build them. The villagers must do rotating shifts of forced labour at the camps [digging trenches, standing as sentries, cooking and cleaning for the soldiers, and acting as messengers], and women are often raped in the process. Everyone in the village has to go as porters, build roads and do other projects for the Army, including women, children and the elderly. Every family has to pay so much extortion each month that they must sell off their livestock and valuables to get the money. If they can’t pay anymore, they must flee the village for fear of arrest. Armed columns demand food and livestock from the village [two to five times a month]. Farmers have their land taken and are then forced to farm it for the Army without compensation. The crops are sold or exported for military profit. Even farmers who still have their land are forced to hand over more than a third of their crop to SLORC for 20 percent of market price, or for nothing. Rice farmers throughout the country are surviving on rice gruel because they do not have enough left to feed their families, and malnutrition and mortality among rural children is staggering. The whole country is in a rice crisis, while SLORC has increased rice exports 400 percent this year to over 1 million tonnes, and is pointing to this as evidence of economic improvement.

This is not improvement, but disaster. SLORC is creating a situation where the rural village, the cornerstone of the society, is no longer viable or sustainable. Villagers in many areas have no choice but to flee to towns or neighbouring countries. The rural villages where 85% of the people live are being stripped to finance a facade of "economic improvement" in the cities.

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, what SLORC is presenting to the world as "peace" and "economic improvement" is really repression of civilians and the systematic rape of rural villages in order to enrich the urban military. We urge the Commission to act on the recommendations in the report of the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar [E/CN.4/1996/65, 5 February 1996], particularly the recommendation for a team of human rights field officers to assist him in his mandate. This is essential given the worsening human rights situation and SLORC’s increasing lack of cooperation with the Rapporteur.