PHOTOS OF DEAD PORTERS IN THE SALWEEN RIVER

An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
May 1, 1993

On October 6, 1992, the SLORC launched its Saw Hta offensive, sending 4 Battalions of troops down from Karenni (Kayah) State in the north to attack Saw Hta, a Karen village and trading gateway in northern Karen State on the Salween River.  In this area, the Salween forms the border with Thailand.  Saw Hta was quickly overrun, but fighting continued for months as the SLORC tried to take the entire area and push further down the Salween, in order to cut off Karen trading routes, open a new front against Manerplaw and possibly to try to capture sites where they have signed agreements to build dams in cooperation with the Thais.  For this offensive, they kidnapped several thousand Shan farmers from central Shan State, loaded them on trucks like cattle and brought them southward for 5 days and nights (without ever letting them stand up or get off the trucks) to be munitions porters (See related reports).  Some convicts from Mandalay Prison were also brought for this purpose.  As usual, treatment of the porters was horrifically brutal, and hundreads died, while only a few escaped.

Now the fighting has let up in the area, but the SLORC has not sent the porters home.  Instead, they are working very hard to strengthen their new positions so they can be used as a new front against the Manerplaw area.  To this end, the porters are still being forced to carry munitions and supplies from Pah Saung in southern Karenni State to Saw Hta.  The SLORC is also now using them as slaves to build a new road from Pah Saung to Saw Hta.  As they are in a great hurry to finish this road, they are driving the slaves harder than ever, and kidnapping more people wherever they can get them.  Those who become too sick or weak to work hard are killed, and an increasing number of corpses are now floating down the Salween River from Saw Hta to prove it. These photos show two of them.

[Note: Clicking on a photo will provide an enlargement of the photo]

Most of the corpses still have their hands tied behind their backs. Other corpses which have recently come down the river include a decapitated woman, and a man’s corpse with an erectpenis (which indicates death by strangulation).  The corpses which are thrown in the river are probalay only a small percentage of the total number of people being killed.  As many of these people have now been living under such brutal treatment and starvation rations for up to 6 months now, the death rate can only be expected to increase as work on the road continues.