Briefing Notes by the Karen Human
Rights Group
June 29, 1999
[These briefing notes were prepared as a short summary of some of the main human rights issues affecting people in rural eastern Burma. They are included here in case they may be useful to those requiring a quick synopsis of some of the ongoing human rights trends.]
The human rights situation for people in rural villages of eastern Burma continues to worsen, affecting subsistence farmers and poor labourers of all ethnicities, Burman and non-Burman. This is occurring not only in the context of campaigns against resistance forces, but as an overall SPDC strategy of complete subjugation of the population in all areas whether there is fighting or not. In areas where there is no longer any resistance at all, abuses such as executions and rape tend to decrease somewhat, but extortion, looting and the systematic use of forced labour all increase until many villagers find that they can no longer survive in their traditional way of life.
Karen, Karenni and many Shan areas are looked upon by the SPDC as areas of active or potential resistance, and their policy in all such areas (particularly in the last 2-3 years) has been to "drain the ocean so the fish cannot swim"; in other words, undermine the ability of the civilian population to survive until they can no longer support any opposition. This is characterised by mass forced relocations, destruction of villages and the village economy, and completely unsustainable levels of forced labour. The current SPDC plan for consolidating control over areas where there is resistance appears to consist of the following steps: 1) mount a military offensive against the area; 2) forcibly relocate all villages to sites under direct Army control; 3) use the relocated villagers and others as forced labour, portering and building military access roads into their home areas; 4) move more Army units in and use the villagers as forced labour to build bases along the access roads; 5) allow the villagers back to their villages, where they are now under complete military control and can be used as a rotating source of extortion money and forced labour, further consolidating control through "development" projects, forced labour farming for the Army, etc. If resistance attacks still persist or if villagers fail to cooperate at this last stage, retaliation is carried out against villages by executing villager elders, burning houses and other means. The first 2 steps of this strategy can be combined or reversed in order in some cases. Throughout Burma we can see examples where this process is at various stages: in central Shan State and eastern Tenasserim Division, SPDC is working on stages 1 and 2; in Papun District of northern Karen State they are at stage 2, but are destroying villages and shooting villagers on sight because they cannot force them to move; in Dooplaya District of central Karen State, which they just occupied in early 1997, they are implementing stages 3 and 4; while in the western plains of Nyaunglebin District, Thaton District and many other areas they have already reached stage 5. Once at the final stage of control, the Army units are not withdrawn even if there is no opposition activity in the area; instead, the concentration of Army units in all parts of the country is constantly on the increase, and those units which do not have to fight focus all of their time on using villagers for forced labour on roads, railways, dams, new Army camps, farming on confiscated land to grow cash crops for Army profit, logging, digging and tending Army fishpond projects and sugarcane fields, providing materials for brick-baking, hauling goods, etc. The ways which SPDC units have invented to use villagers for forced labour and to extort money from them are countless.
Since September 1998 the SPDC has introduced a new strategy in areas just east of the Sittaung River in eastern Pegu Division. They already essentially control this area despite some small scale resistance activity, but in order to try to bring the population under complete control they introduced the ‘Sa Thon Lon’ execution squads in September 1998. This unit of approximately 200 soldiers is divided into small sections of 5-10 troops each which go from village to village with the self-stated purpose of executing anyone and everyone who has ever had any contact whatsoever with the resistance, even something as minor as paying a tax to the Karen Army 10 or more years ago. They carry lists of people to execute and have already killed anywhere from 50 to well over 100 villagers in a small region since their introduction. They kill brutally, cutting the throats of villagers and often beheading them to display their heads along the pathways as a warning. Their clear intention is to systematically strike terror into the entire population so that no one can even think of having any contact whatsoever with any form of opposition. Their victims have included both Burmans and Karens, and many are now fleeing the area even if they have never had contact with the resistance because the Sa Thon Lon can execute people on the slightest suspicion. This unit is not under control of the local Army and there is even evidence that the local commanders are afraid of them. They are under control of the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence (DDSI) commanded by Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary-1 of the SPDC. Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt has often been labelled a ‘moderate’ by the international community simply because he can speak more coherently than most SPDC Generals; however, a study of his past actions rather than his words shows that the Sa Thon Lon execution squads are entirely consistent with his regular tactics. The most worrying aspect of the Sa Thon Lon phenomenon is that it may be an experiment which the SPDC could spread or move to other regions as a means of psychologically subjugating the population.
The effect of these strategies on rural subsistence farmers is devastating. Anywhere from 1 to 4 million people are internally displaced within the country, over 100,000 are in refugee camps outside the country, while at least a million more (many of whom fit the definition of refugees) are working illegally in neighbouring countries. These people have not fled their villages because of fighting; if there is fighting around their village they just run to the forest for a day or two and then return. They flee because they can no longer survive. Those who are ordered to move to Army sites find that nothing is provided, that they are used for forced labour almost daily and that they eventually have to flee or starve to death. Knowing this from experience, most villagers flee into the hills when ordered to relocate and live in hiding, while SPDC patrols come through to burn their villages and food supplies, uproot their crops and shoot villagers on sight if they find them. This is currently happening to the people of an estimated 1,500 villages in Shan State, 200 villages in Karenni (Kayah) State, 200 villages in northern Karen State and eastern Pegu Division, 50-100 villages in central Karen State, and 100 or more villages in Tenasserim Division.
People in villages which are under complete SPDC control and are not forced to move are also fleeing, even from areas where there is no fighting whatsoever. They flee because they are ordered to do so many forms of forced labour for all of the different Army camps in the area that they can no longer grow their own crops or earn their own living. For example, villagers in an SPDC-controlled village in Karen State are typically forced to send one family member for 3-5 days of forced labour each month as servants and sentries at the Army camp, one week per month of road labour, 5 days to 2 weeks per month of forced labour as porters, 24 hours each week as road sentries, and ad hoc forced labour as messengers and for other purposes. They also have to pay miscellaneous ‘fees’ of 500-1,000 Kyat per family each month to the Army and must regularly supply building materials and food to each nearby Army camp. At the same time they must hand over crop quotas to the Army and the authorities each year either for nothing or for 20-25% of market price; if the crop fails (as it did in both 1997 and 1998 in many areas), they must buy the food in the market to pay the quota or face arrest and confiscation of their land.
Because of all of these demands, most children are pulled out of school as soon as they are big enough to work. Families sell their valuables to pay the fees and pay to avoid forced labour so that they can work in their fields or do day labour to make money. However, there are so many fees that the money does not last long, and many families send small children to do the forced labour so that the adults can still work the fields. Eventually they sell all of their belongings and livestock to pay all of the fees, and when they are still ordered to go for forced labour or pay money they have no option but to flee the village or face arrest, torture and possible summary execution. Trials are not held in rural areas, villagers are simply tied up and taken to Army camps where they are held in mediaeval-style leg stocks or pits in the ground, tortured and interrogated until the Army officer decides what to do with them. They are often held for ransom, held for months under torture without charge, or simply executed without any record existing of their arrest. To avoid this, villagers in areas all over Burma have fled to the towns where they become beggars or cheap labour, to the hills, or to neighbouring countries.
In northern Karen State some villages in conflict areas have tried to appease the SPDC by making their own ‘peace’ agreements; they promise to abide by all SPDC demands and not contact the resistance if their village is not forced to move. They are subsequently labelled ‘peace’ villages, but even in these villages the demands for forced labour, money, food and materials usually become so intense that the village elders cannot keep up with them all. They are then arrested and tortured for failure to comply, houses are sometimes burned and many villagers flee just as though there had never been any agreement.
Most of the SPDC Army units posted to Karen and Karenni areas are not motivated to fight the opposition. If they know an opposition unit is in a particular place they will generally avoid that place, and if ordered to attack they will often deliberately attack the wrong village, burn houses, kill civilians and report it as ‘combat with the enemy’. The officers focus on making as much money for themselves as they can before being rotated out of the area, and there are sometimes turf battles between SPDC units fighting for control of the most lucrative villages. Many of the rank and file soldiers are teenagers who have been conscripted by lottery or coerced into joining the Army at age 14 or 15, while most of the older soldiers would like to get out if they could, but are never allowed to leave unless they bring in 5 or 10 new recruits; to accomplish this they hang around the markets and schools and try to coerce young boys into joining. The desertion rate is high, but many are afraid to desert because the SPDC takes action against the families of deserters and executes anyone caught after deserting. In the Army, officers steal over half of the salaries of the rank and file soldiers in the name of various ‘fees’; they also steal most of the best rations and sell them, then order the soldiers to steal their food from the villages. In the last 2 years, the SPDC has severely cut its deliveries of rations to most field units and has ordered them to either produce food for themselves or take it from the population. This has resulted in increased looting of food from villages as well as increased confiscation of farmland and forced labour as villagers are ordered to grow food for the Army on what used to be their own land.
The rank and file soldiers are also ordered to obtain forced labourers, extortion money, food and materials from the villages for the officers, and are severely punished for any failure to do so; in this way they are drawn into the human rights abuses. In the meantime their officers make as much money as they can during their time in the field. The average village in rural eastern Burma pays 100,000 Kyat or more per month in arbitrary extortion fees to local Army units in cash alone, not counting extortion of crops, food, materials and labour for personal profit of the officers. Looking at all of Burma, this amounts to a drain of several billion Kyat every month on the rural economy. All of this money goes to Army officers and corrupt officials at various levels. The Army officers have few or no expenses while in the field because they can steal everything they need from the villagers, so they send most of this money to their families in the cities. Their families use it to start small and large businesses, thereby financing a façade of ‘economic improvement’ in the cities which is entirely financed by stripping the rural people of their means of survival.
It is important to note that Burma’s economy is almost completely agrarian and that at least 80-85% of Burma’s population are subsistence or small commercial farmers, and these are the people whose way of life is being wiped out. The situation in Rangoon, Mandalay and the major provincial towns is not what it is in the countryside, which is where most people live. The human rights situation in the cities and towns, though bad, is much better than it is in the countryside for several reasons. Firstly, the SPDC is fully aware that uprisings begin in the towns so it deliberately makes fewer demands on townspeople; for example, when they want forced labourers in town they usually truck them in from villages in the nearby countryside. Secondly, the SPDC restricts the movement of diplomats and tourists mainly to the towns and does not want them to see evidence of serious human rights abuses; this is reflected by the misguided statements regularly made by Rangoon-based diplomats to the effect that "forced labour is decreasing" or "the human rights situation appears to be improving". Thirdly, there is a cash economy in the towns and cities so most people find a way to give money rather than face forced labour or arrest.
The SPDC has gained extensive experience in controlling what foreigners in the country can see, in keeping the worst abuses out of the towns which foreigners visit, and in orchestrating trips to rural areas with military intelligence escorts or interpreters after threatening villagers that they will be punished if they do not appear happy. In order to understand the real human rights situation for most people in Burma it is essential to look beyond the cities and towns, to look at the rural villages and the forests full of internally displaced people, and to do so without an SPDC escort.
Extensive detail on all aspects of the human rights situation mentioned in this document as well as photographic evidence and supporting interviews with villagers can be found in reports published regularly by the Karen Human Rights Group (available on this web site), and in reports by the United Nations Special Rapporteur, the International Labour Organisation, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other organisations documenting the situation in Burma.