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III.  Forced Labour and Extortion

Forced labour, military extortion and looting continue to be the abuses affecting the largest number of rural people throughout Burma, and together they are artificially creating desperate poverty and depopulating villages throughout the agrarian societies that make up most of the country’s population. Forced labour and extortion are especially prevalent in regions where the Burmese Army is not occupied fighting armed enemies, and many villagers interviewed by KHRG have fled their villages specifically because of these abuses. Forced labour takes on myriad forms, including labour constructing and maintaining roads, railways, and dams, building and maintaining Army camps, acting as servants and sentries at Army camps, clearing roadsides, standing sentry along military access roads, sweeping roads for landmines, acting as messengers and guides for Army officers, forced labour farming for the Army on confiscated land, forced labour digging fishponds, logging, or baking bricks for the personal profit of Army officers, and many other forms. The forced labourers are never paid except in very few cases in urban areas where the labour can be witnessed by tourists, and villagers are usually forced to provide their own food and tools. In most cases it can only be avoided by paying money, but villagers face such a plethora of demands for forced labour that they end up with no money to pay to avoid it. Children are often sent because otherwise the parents have no time to work for food for the family.

Portering for the military is the most feared form of forced labour. Porters are saddled with heavy loads of munitions and supplies and force-marched through the hills, sometimes into battle situations. They receive little or no food and are often beaten, killed or left behind if they become too weak to carry their loads. As landmines become more and more prevalent throughout southeastern Burma, they are increasingly being forced to march in front of military columns to detonate landmines, particularly in Pa’an District of Karen State. Women and children are sometimes deliberately taken for this purpose. However, even in areas where there is no conflict, porters are taken by SPDC units to carry supplies and munitions in areas where there are no good roads. Usually porters are demanded on rotation from villages and grabbed from their farm fields by passing patrols, but whenever there is a need the Army also rounds up men from public places, such as markets, cinemas and train stations, in provincial towns.

At the same time as providing many forms of forced labour, villagers are also faced with demands from all the Army units in their area for extortion money, food, and building materials. Eventually many find they can no longer pay the money, provide the forced labour and still survive, so they have no option but to flee their villages. As a result, villages are breaking down even in areas far from any armed conflict. For more information, simply see any KHRG report; these abuses are so prevalent that they occur in almost every testimony we collect.

Papun District

In areas of southern Papun District which are at least partly controlled by the SPDC and in relocation sites, all forms of forced labour mentioned above are prevalent. In the northern half of the District where most of the villages have been destroyed, the most prevalent form of forced labour is portering under brutal conditions. Internally displaced villagers sighted by SPDC patrols are shot on sight, or if they are caught alive they are usually taken as porters. The SPDC has pushed a military access road through the northern part of the district since 1997, from Kyauk Kyi to the Thai border at Saw Hta. Villages along the road route were destroyed, and the road was built mainly by bulldozers under heavy military guard. However, villagers from the area are now being forced to do some work on it. For more information on the area, see also "Wholesale Destruction" (KHRG, April 1998), "Information Update #2000-U1" (KHRG, April 2000), and photos in Photo Set 97-B, Photo Set 99-A, and Photo Set 99-B.

Photo #3-1: A glimpse of the road built since 1997 by the SPDC from Kyauk Kyi (north of Rangoon near the Sittaung River) to Pwa Ghaw, Maw Pu and Saw Hta at the Thai border. All villages near the road route in Papun District have been displaced and destroyed, and any displaced villager going near it takes a heavy risk of being shot because it is heavily patrolled. The purpose of the road is to improve military access to Papun District for military occupation, and SPDC units have recently been ordering villagers in the Dta Ko Khay area to gather stones for the road. (For background on this road see "Wholesale Destruction", KHRG April 1998) [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photos #3-2, 3-3, 3-4: U H---, age 51, a trader from a village near Pegu who was heading back from a trading trip to upper Burma but was caught in Toungoo without a train ticket and taken as a porter for SPDC Light Infantry Battalion #366 in Papun District. He escaped in early September 1999. Photos #3-2 and 3-3 show his emaciated condition and the wounds on his shoulders from carrying a heavy basket of military supplies, and photo #3-4 shows the terrible wounds he got on his spine and tailbone from the rubbing of the heavy bamboo basket. [Photos: KHRG researcher]

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Photos #3-5, 3-6, 3-7: Three young men, two aged 19 and the other 15, who were grabbed while travelling at the Toungoo railway station and forced to porter to Papun District. They escaped in September 1999. In photos #3-6 and 3-7, one of them shows scars on his back and legs from carrying and beatings. [Photos: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-8: Villager Saw K--- (35) from Dweh Loh township shows the wounded knee he got while doing forced labour as a porter for SPDC troops. He had to carry heavy loads and wounded soldiers in September 1999, was beaten, got sick, and couldn’t walk when he got home. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Thaton District

The SPDC has firm control over large parts of Thaton District, and in these areas villagers have to do many kinds of forced labour on roads and at Army camps. They are also taken as forced labour porters to carry munitions and supplies to outlying camps, and to go with patrols penetrating into conflict areas. For more information on the region see "Caught in the Middle" (KHRG, September 1999) and photos under Thaton District in Photo Set 99-B.

Photos #3-9, 3-10: Villagers on their way to forced labour clearing the roadsides, Bilin township, November 1999. Note the mattocks (large hoes) being carried by the men in photo #3-10. Written orders are regularly issued by SPDC authorities forcing villagers to clear specified lengths of roadside in order to protect SPDC military units from ambush by opposition forces. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-11: Villagers doing forced labour clearing the roadsides, Bilin Township, November 1999. Every village near the road has to send 2 people per household for this work. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-12: An escaped porter shows some of the scars on his back from carrying heavy loads in a bamboo basket. A resident of Rangoon division, he and 20 others were taken from a police lockup in October 1999 to go as porters with Light Infantry Battalion #355 in Thaton district. He and his friend who escaped described being beaten with wooden poles, fists and army boots. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Pa’an District

Forced labour has been used extensively in recent years to build and maintain a network of military access roads throughout the plains of central and western Pa’an District. In addition, the SPDC has gradually increased its military operations in the Dawna mountains of eastern Pa’an District, and to do this they have been taking more and more porters from the villages in the mountains as well as the plains to the west. This region is possibly the most densely landmined area in all of Burma, and villagers say that more and more of them are being taken as human minesweepers by SPDC patrols. Many villagers have told KHRG that this is now a leading cause of flight and displacement in the region. For more information, see "Beyond All Endurance" (KHRG, December 1999), "Uncertainty, Fear and Flight" (KHRG, November 1998), and photos in Photo Set 99-B and Photo Set 99-A.

Photo #3-13: "Naw Bway" (see Interview #27 in "Beyond All Endurance", KHRG #99-08, December 1999), age 29, with her 4 children. In August 1999, her husband was taken from their village in Mon State and sent to the frontline area in Pa’an District as a porter for the SPDC. Ten days later she had news that he had died. She took her children and spent the next 10 days searching for him, but failed and fled to Thailand. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Dooplaya District

Since occupying much of Dooplaya District in 1997, the SPDC has used villagers for many types of forced labour to build and maintain Army camps and other military infrastructure in the region. At the same time they have built a network of roads into the area to support the establishment of additional military camps. While villagers have been used for much of this forced labour, the regime also brought in hundreds of prison convicts in early 1998 who were forced to do backbreaking labour building roads under brutal conditions. Many of them died, but a group of them escaped at the end of December 1998 and told KHRG their stories. Some of these stories can be found in "Starving Them Out" (KHRG, March 2000, Interviews #37 and 38), along with other information on the situation in the region. See also photos in Photo Set 99-A.

Photos #3-14, 3-15: Convicts from several prisons who escaped Po Yay camp at the end of 1998, where they were brought for forced labour on the Po Yay - Kyo G’Lee road almost a year earlier. During that year, the convicts say that hundreds of their co-labourers died of abuse and deprivation. In the photo, they are still dressed in their prison uniforms.  Note the shackles laying in the foreground in Photo #3-14 (see also Photo #3-17 below).  [Photos: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-16: One convict shows a scar he received in a beating by an SPDC soldier. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-17: The convicts display some of the leg shackles they were forced to wear while working on the road. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Toungoo District

In Toungoo District of far northern Karen State, many of the hill villages have been destroyed and ordered to move to Army-controlled roads, leading villagers to flee into hiding. Along the Army-controlled roads, several villages (known as ‘peace’ villages) have tried to appease the SPDC by complying with all of their demands for forced labour, money, food and materials in return for not having their villages burned. However, these demands are so heavy that most of the villages have found that they simply cannot comply with them all, so they are sometimes punished by having homes burned and elders arrested, leading some of them to flee into the hills as well. For more details on the region see "False Peace" (KHRG, March 1999), Photo Set 99-B and Photo Set 99-A.

Photo #3-18: Five villagers (3 from K--- and 2 from Y---) who were arrested by SPDC Infantry Battalion #xxx troops in October 1999 and held for ransom, purely for purposes of extortion. The other villagers had to pay 163,000 Kyat for their release. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #3-19: An SPDC military officer ordered this village to provide a pig to the local Army camp so they are slaughtering one. Such orders come to villages regularly. Usually the villagers have to pool their own money to compensate the owner of the animal. This particular pig weighs 20 viss [32 kg / 70 lb] and would market for 10,000 Kyat. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Karenni (Kayah) State

As described above (see under ‘Village Destruction and Relocation’), approximately 200 villages throughout the hills of Karenni State have been systematically destroyed by the SLORC/SPDC since 1996, driving thousands of villagers into relocation sites and tens of thousands more into the forests. SPDC columns still patrol these hills, burning whatever the villagers have tried to rebuild and capturing the internally displaced or shooting them on sight. Porters are brought from the towns or captured in the hills for these operations. For background see "Continuing Fear and Hunger" (KHRG, May 1999) and photos in other sections of this set as well as Photo Set 97-A.

[Warning: the above photos are quite graphic.]

Photos #3-20, 3-21: A porter from central Burma who escaped from Light Infantry Battalion #516 when they were going around burning 5 Karenni villages in #2 District of Karenni State in January 2000. He had been tortured in addition to portering - his shoulders had been cut open, his leg mangled and his face cut up. He ran and escaped but collapsed beside the path. He was found by internally displaced villagers in the area who tried to help him, but he couldn’t eat or drink water and he died the next day on January 28^th 2000. The photo was taken 4 days later, by which time his leg had been partly eaten by animals. [Photos: FBR volunteer]