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II.  Detention, Torture, Shootings and Killings

Warning:  Some of the photos in this section are graphic.

In rural Karen areas, villagers are routinely and randomly detained at Army camps and tortured without charge or trial, simply to interrogate them for intelligence, to punish them for failure to comply with orders for forced labour or money, or even to ransom them (see for example Photo #3-18 under ‘Forced Labour and Extortion’ below). Over the years KHRG has documented hundreds of such cases. The methods of torture used are diverse, ranging from beatings with fists, boots, bamboo or iron poles to rolling rifle barrels on the shins, slashing the body with red-hot bayonets, partial suffocation with plastic or nylon bags, water torture, and various forms of psychological torture. Many villagers have died under various combinations of these forms of torture.

Many villagers are detained and tortured because they are caught trying to run from soldiers in order to avoid forced labour as porters. More commonly, whenever SPDC troops see a villager running from them they open fire, and many villagers have been maimed or killed this way. This is particularly true in areas where the SPDC has ordered the forced relocation and destruction of villages. Once the villagers have been ordered to leave, anyone seen in the area is ‘considered as enemy’ and shot or captured on sight. At present, SPDC patrols are moving through areas of central Shan State, Karenni (Kayah) State, Toungoo, Papun, and Nyaunglebin districts, hunting out villagers who are hiding in the forests and shooting some of them on sight. These patrols frequently fire mortar shells into areas of the forest where they think villagers may be hiding, and have also been laying landmines around some of the villages they destroy because they know that the villagers will return to forage for their belongings. In November and December 1999, SPDC troops patrolled the hills of northern Papun District, knowing the villagers would have to come out into the open ground of the hillside rice fields to harvest, and when they spotted groups of villagers harvesting they opened fire on them without warning, wounding and killing quite a few. With the new wave of forced relocations now ongoing in Dooplaya District, shootings are likely to increase there as well. The photos below show only a small sampling of the type of killings and physical abuses which are going on. For further documentation of detention, torture and killings, see the background reports mentioned under each region below.

Papun District

In their campaign to drive out and destroy many of the hill villages in Papun District (see above under ‘Village Destruction and Relocation’), SPDC troops often shell villages without warning before entering to burn them, enter the villages firing small arms, and fire shells into upstream areas where they think villagers may be hiding. Villagers are sometimes hit by all of these forms of fire. Since 1997, SPDC patrols have continuously hunted out villagers in hiding in the forest and have frequently shot them on sight. During the rice harvest of late 1999, these patrols specifically looked for groups of villagers exposed in the open as they tried to harvest rice from the hillside fields, and opened fire on people they saw harvesting. For more information on the situation in the area, see "Wholesale Destruction" (KHRG, April 1998) and "Information Update #2000-U1" (KHRG, April 2000), and photos in Photo Set 97-B, Photo Set 99-A, and Photo Set 99-B. KHRG will soon be releasing a new report on this region.

Photos #2-1, 2-2: Naw L---, age 31, from T--- village, Papun District. She was shot in the mouth when troops from SPDC LIB 363, Major Thein Naing commanding, came to drive people out of her village and opened fire on villagers on September 16^th 1999. At the time of the shooting she was 4 months pregnant. In photo #2-1, her mouth still bore the twine bindings used by medics to hold it together. These had been removed when photo #2-2 was taken, 4 months after the shooting when she was 8 months pregnant. [Photos: KHRG researchers]

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Photo #2-3: Saw D---, shot on sight in late 1999 at Sgho Po Day village in Saw Mu Plaw tract by SPDC troops. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-4: Naw P---, age 11, shows her bullet wound from when she was shot on sight in late 1999 by SPDC troops. In November 1999 she and other villagers from Deh Bo Blaw village, Saw Mu Plaw tract, Lu Thaw township, were carrying their harvested rice in their field near Tee Baw Kee when SPDC troops opened fire on them. Naw P--- saw both her mother (Naw Law Eh) and father (Kyaw Neh Po) fall dead but managed to escape with a bullet wound on her arm. Three people were killed and two others injured. The troops then destroyed the rice and landmined the fields. Later two other villagers were killed by these mines, and the next month another SPDC patrol came and burned all the farmfield huts and the houses in Naw P---’s home village. This photo was taken in early January 2000. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-5: Villager Saw Po Raw, shot on sight by SPDC troops on January 17^th 2000 at Tee Ler Kee village. The bullet entered his belly and came out his back. He managed to get away from the soldiers, but collapsed. Villagers found him and carried him to a medic, but he died the same day. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-6: Saw T---, shot on sight in the leg by SPDC troops some time ago. He still can’t walk properly, but patrols regularly come through his area so he stays in hiding in the jungle in this simple shelter. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-7: Pa K---, 27, from Dweh Loh township. His son Pa Ler Pway, age 7, was shot dead on September 12^th 1999 at 9 a.m. by SPDC troops. Prior to that, all 3 of his other children had died of illness. He and his son were in their hillfield hut when SPDC troops based at Meh Way entered the field, called them out of the hut but then started shooting before they could come out. He jumped out the front of the hut and his son ran out the back, but then his son went back to the hut and Pa K--- went and grabbed him. At that time a bullet hit his son, passed through his side under his arm, came out the other side and hit Pa K--- in the fingers. Pa K--- fled carrying his son and escaped, but his son died at 4 p.m. Note the missing fingers on his right hand. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-8: When they burned Dta Baw Der village in July 1999 (see photos #1-6 and #1-7), the SPDC troops captured 7 male villagers and executed them. This rope was used to tie some of them and is one of the few remaining traces. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photos #2-9, 2-10: On April 26^th 1999, Commander Bo Kyaw Lay of SPDC Infantry Battalion #27 heard that there would be a wedding celebration of a KNLA officer in one of the villages in the Dweh Loh township area. He didn’t know which village, but he guessed it would be Bo Leh village, so he took his troops to the village at 1:30 a.m. and saw a wedding party going on. It wasn’t the KNLA officer’s wedding,which had already happened in a different village one month earlier. However, the troops immediately opened fire on the wedding party, and 5 people were shot dead: villagers Pa Raw (male, 46), Pa Bleh (male, 60), and Pa Naw Seit (male, 48), and 2 other unidentified men (these latter two had reportedly been KNLA soldiers in the past). A 9 year old boy was also wounded (see photos #2-11 and #2-12 below). After the shooting the soldiers stole livestock from the village. Later when villagers approached them, they refused to pay any money toward the funerals. Photos show the wives of Pa Raw and Pa Naw Seit, both of whom were left with several small children and now live in hiding with very little to eat. [Photos: KHRG researcher]

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Photos #2-11, 2-12: Pa T---, the 9 year old boy shot in the buttock during the SPDC attack on the wedding party (see description above). Both of his parents are dead and he lives with his uncle. [Photos: KHRG researcher]

Dooplaya District

The relatively open and level terrain of central Dooplaya District makes it difficult for many villagers to live in hiding, and after the mass SLORC/SPDC offensive against the region in 1997 the destruction and relocation of villages was mainly on a local level involving only a few villages at a time. Most of the physical abuses involved the arbitrary detention, torture and in some cases execution of village elders for purposes of intelligence gathering and as punishment for failure to comply with SPDC orders. However, since November 1999 abuses have rapidly increased and a new wave of forced relocations is now underway throughout Kya In township, so the shooting on sight of villagers may soon become a more common phenomenon here as well. For more information, see "Starving Them Out" (KHRG, March 2000), "Dooplaya Under the SPDC" (KHRG, November 1998) and other previous reports, as well as photos in Photo Set 99-A and Photo Set 97-A.

Photos #2-13, 2-14: A villager in Dooplaya District who tried to flee when an SPDC patrol came to his village in August 1999 but was captured by the troops. They held him for 2 days under interrogation, torturing him by slashing and poking his body with knives, before he escaped and fled to Thailand. Medics who treated him counted at least 70 slash wounds on his upper body, groin, penis and lower body. Photo #2-14 shows wounds on his wrists from being tied the entire time. [Photos: FBR volunteer]

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Photo #2-15: Saw A---, 17. On April 20^th 1999, Column 2 of LIB 106, led by Battalion 2^nd-in-command Myint Zaw, engaged the KNLA near Win Yaw village. As a punishment against the villagers they then fired shells into the village, and one of the shells broke the right calf and penetrated the belly of Saw A---. He is still alive in the photo. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Nyaunglebin District

The situation in the hills of eastern Nyaunglebin District is very similar to that in northern Papun District, with villages being burned and destroyed, villagers living in hiding and being hunted out and shot on sight by SPDC patrols (see above under ‘Papun District’). In western Nyaunglebin District, in the plains near the Sittaung River, the SPDC created execution squads known as the Sa Thon Lon Dam Byan Byaut Kya ("SSS Guerrilla Retaliation Units") in 1998. These units sought out villagers, both Karen and Burman, who had helped the KNU in any way whatsoever no matter how long in the past, and brutally executed many of them as a physical warning to other villagers. According to reports from the region, these units are still executing people, but fewer than before, and are now hiding the bodies of their victims instead of putting their heads on public display as they did in the past. For more information on the Sa Thon Lon and other aspects of the situation in Nyaunglebin District, see "Death Squads and Displacement" (KHRG, May 1999), "Wholesale Destruction" (KHRG, April 1998), and photos in Photo Set 99-A, Photo Set 99-B, and Photo Set 97-B.

Photo #2-16: In Baw Bpee Der area of Nyaunglebin district, a Sa Thon Lon unit tried to kill Saw K--- with knives after accusing him of contact with the KNU, but he escaped and fled to hide in the hills in June 1999. For more details on the Sa Thon Lon, see "Death Squads and Displacement" (KHRG #99-04, May 1999). [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photos #2-17, 2-18: In March 1999, SPDC troops burned N--- village; photo #2-17 shows one of the destroyed houses. The next month they watched for villagers returning to the village to fetch their rice, and shot Saw B--- in the forearm on April 20^th 1999. Photo #2-18 shows him standing amid the ruins of his village. He says his arm still gives him pain. At the same time a man and a woman from the village were shot dead by the troops, commanded by IB 48 Column #2 commander Toh Min. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

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Photo #2-19: Naw M--- and her younger brother from K--- village in Mone township. In March 1999 their village was burned and SPDC troops killed both their elder brother and sister, so they now have to live in hiding and plough and plant paddy to try to survive on their own. [Photo: KHRG researcher]

Karenni (Kayah) State

In 1995 the SLORC military junta made a ceasefire deal with the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP), but then broke it by attacking the KNPP. Since then, the SLORC and SPDC have tried to undermine the KNPP by forcibly relocating and destroying approximately 200 villages which cover the entire map of Karenni (Kayah) State. Thousands of people went to SPDC relocation sites, while others fled into the hills to survive, where they are still fleeing SPDC columns who hunt them out. Since late 1999 the SPDC has increased its efforts to destroy any remaining village structures and food supplies and root out these villagers, and their circumstances are desperate. For further background see "Continuing Fear and Hunger" (KHRG, May 1999) and photos in Photo Set 97-A.

Photo #2-20: Saw L---, an internally displaced villager who was captured by SPDC Light Infantry Battalion #516 troops at Ka Yeh Kee village, #1 township, #2 district, on January 19^th 2000. He was beaten by rifle butts which broke his nose and shot in the leg before being left to die, but survived. [Photo: FBR volunteer]

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Photo #2-21: The wife and children of Saw Da Thee, a Karenni villager who was beaten to death by SPDC troops at Ka Yeh Kee village on January 19^th 2000. [Photo: FBR volunteer]