Papun District

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Papun District (named Mudraw in Karen) is bounded by Nyaunglebin District in the northwest, Thaton District in the southwest, and the Salween River and Thailand to the east. Villages in the district which are under direct SPDC control face constant demands for forced labour as porters with columns heading into the hills and as servants at army camps. They must also supply the SPDC military units with food and building materials, and if there is any opposition activity in their area they are threatened with forced relocation. In northern Papun district, where the SPDC has trouble exerting effective control over the small remote hill villages, over 100 villages have been systematically shelled, burned and destroyed since 1997 by SPDC troops trying to eradicate support for Karen resistance in the region (for details see "Wholesale Destruction", KHRG April 1998). About 100 of these were ordered to move, but many of the villages never saw the order because the villagers always flee when SPDC troops approach. In response, the SPDC launched a campaign to simply destroy all villages without warning.

Most villages have already been completely burned and destroyed, but SPDC patrols continue going through the area to burn any trace of villages which still remain, food supplies, and the shelters of villagers who are hiding in the forest. These patrols have reportedly mined and booby-trapped the burned remains of some villages, because they know that villagers are in hiding nearby and that they frequently return to scavenge for food, belongings and materials in the burned ruins of their villages. Villagers sighted in the region are sometimes taken as porters, but are more frequently shot or otherwise executed on sight. The vast majority of villagers are living in small clusters of shelters and lean-to’s hidden deep in the forests and high in the hills, trying to access their old hillside rice fields or to clear small new ones in the hills. These fields have not yielded much, especially with the lack of rain in the 1998 rainy season which killed much of the rice before it could mature. Currently most hill villagers in northern Papun District live in hiding in makeshift shelters deep in the forest. At least every 2-3 months, sometimes as often as every 2 weeks, they have to flee further into the forest when SPDC patrols come near. If their shelters are found they are burned; if not, they can sometimes return to them and continue struggling to survive.

In September 1998, SPDC patrols were sent through Lu Thaw township to destroy rice crops where possible, and much of the crop was cut down with machetes or stomped down by the troops. Villagers in hiding in the forest are living primarily on roots and jungle leaves. Even in areas where SPDC troops seldom arrive, such as Day Pu Noh area, there is almost no rice available because drought destroyed the crop, and villagers are surviving on rice soup, sharing around whatever rice they can find or buy from town. Villagers in this region are much closer to Thailand than those in the other districts mentioned in this report, but most of them do not want to go because of their very close attachment to their land, their extreme fear of landmines and SPDC troops along the escape routes, and their fear of abuse and forced repatriation by Thai troops which they know may await them on arrival at the border.

For more information on the situation in Papun District, see "Wholesale Destruction: The SLORC/SPDC Campaign to Obliterate All Hill Villages in Papun and Eastern Nyaunglebin Districts" (KHRG #98-01, February and April 1998), KHRG Information Update #98-U5: "Continuing Hardships for Villagers in Northern Karen Districts" (15/11/98), and an upcoming KHRG report on the current situation in the district.

Photo #M1:  A cluster of huts where a group of villagers is living in hiding after fleeing SPDC patrols around their villages in Papun District. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photos #M2-M6:  Displaced villagers in hiding in Papun District trying to carry on their lives in basic makeshift shelters. They live for 2 or 3 months in shelters like these, then have to flee SPDC patrols and build new shelters in new locations. In Photo #M2 an unmarried young woman is doing traditional backstrap weaving, while in Photo #M3 another is sorting cotton they have grown for weaving. [Photos: KHRG monitor]

Photo #M7:  A paddy storage barn hidden in the forest in Papun District, after SPDC troops dismantled it and carried off all the rice stored in it in mid-January 1999. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photos #M8-M10:  Villagers in Papun District carrying shingles of thatch roofing which they were ordered to make and deliver to the local SPDC Light Infantry Battalion for army camp construction in February 1999. Villages under SPDC control constantly receive such orders. This type of thatch is made of the leaves of a jungle plant tied with shaved bamboo onto a split bamboo frame. [Photos: KHRG monitor]

Photo #M11:  In 1995 SLORC and DKBA troops forced the people of many villages in Papun District to move to the DKBA’s headquarters at Myaing Gyi Ngu (a.k.a. Khaw Taw) in Pa’an District in order to provide a civilian support base for the DKBA. This photo shows one of several groups of these villagers who have recently fled Myaing Gyi Ngu and arrived back in Papun District. They say that they were not given enough food to survive in Myaing Gyi Ngu but were not allowed to farm either, so they could only survive if they had money to buy additional food. They say that they were only given rice and salt, then the rice ration was severely cut, and recently the food supply was cut altogether so they fled. Many of these people have no homes to go back to because their villages are in areas where SPDC troops now burn everything and shoot everyone on sight. Some say that they would like to flee to refugee camps in Thailand, but the refugee camps will not accept them for fear that some of them may be informers for the DKBA, which has previously carried out armed attacks against the refugee camps. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photos #M12-M16:  On 16 March 1999, Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) militia and All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) soldiers attacked Way Moh camp of SPDC LIB 434. The next morning 30 SPDC troops went to nearby Kler Ko village, beat and interrogated the villagers. They tied up some of them, took them to the camp and ordered the village to move. The following morning (18 March) they returned to the village, and when they saw that no one had moved they burned down most of the houses, rice storage barns and sugarcane fields. They refused to allow the villagers to take their belongings before burning their houses. All of the villagers have now been forced to Way Moh (a.k.a. Ta Gone Dine) village, where they live under other people’s houses or in abandoned huts. They are only allowed to leave the village between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. and have been told that they will be shot on sight if seen outside the village at any other time. These restrictions are making it extremely difficult for them to farm and survive. [Photos: KHRG monitor]