Thaton District

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

Thaton District straddles the border of Karen State and northern Mon State. Being close to the coastal road and railway lines, this district is under quite heavy SPDC control, and the DKBA also has a significant presence in the eastern parts of the district. Only small Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) units can operate in the area, so there is sporadic fighting but the villages have not been destroyed en masse in retaliation as they have been in other areas. When fighting occurs the normal response by SPDC troops is to loot and burn houses in the nearby villages and detain and torture local villagers. Since the beginning of 1999, KHRG has interviewed many villagers from the area who have been detained and tortured in various ways, and their testimonies will appear in a report to be released shortly. The worst case occurred on 7 March 1999, when SPDC troops marched into xxxx village in Thaton township and began firing into the houses at random, killing 6 villagers and wounding 8 others, some seriously. The wounded included girls aged 13, 16 and 17, and a woman who was 9 months pregnant. As a result of such attacks, people in many villages spend much of their time living in hiding in the forests, only returning to their villages when the situation in the area seems quiet and there are no SPDC troops on the move.

These detentions and attacks are accompanied by regular and systematic looting, demands for money and forced labour as porters and at Army camps. The future of villagers in this area will largely depend on the amount of activity conducted by the KNLA; assuming that the KNLA continues to operate there, it is likely that the SPDC will eventually clamp down further on the villagers by conducting further forced relocations.

For more information on the current situation in Thaton District, see "SPDC Orders to Villages: Set 99-B" (KHRG #99-03, 19/4/99), and a KHRG report soon to be released about this region.

Photo #TH1:  Villagers in Thaton District taking sheets of thatch roofing which they were ordered to deliver to the local SPDC Army camp for building purposes at the beginning of 1999. In this case they were ordered to deliver 7 bullock-cart loads, a total of 1,400 sheets of thatch. Production of the sheets is time-consuming: the villagers must collect the thatch leaves and cut bamboo in the forest, then use split bamboo to make frames which are held together with shaved bamboo ties, then the leaves must be flattened, folded and tied onto the frames. SPDC units regularly order thatch from villages and usually only give the villagers 1 to 3 days to deliver. These villagers were paid nothing for the 1,400 sheets of thatch; they received a threatening order in red ink telling them to go to the camp a few days earlier, and when one of them went the officer dictated the demand for thatch. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photo #TH2:  A villager, age 23, in Thaton District who was arrested and detained for 2 days in February 1999 by the local SPDC military because two people who had contact with the KNLA had stopped at his house. During his detention the soldiers punched him, beat him with gun butts, poked him with bayonets, slapped his face with bayonet blades and inserted a bayonet in his mouth and shook it around. He was then forced to pay 3 baskets of rice and a pig to be released. The soldiers also looted his house after his arrest and detained and tortured one of his friends along with him. In the photo his face still shows traces of bruises and swelling from the torture. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photo #TH3:  A villager describes how he was beaten on the ankles and legs during detention by SPDC troops. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photos #TH4-TH7:  Some of the villagers wounded in the shooting in xxxx village, Thaton township, show their wounds several weeks after SPDC troops marched into the village on 7 March 1999 and opened fire at random, killing 6 villagers and wounding 8 others. The wounded included three teenage girls and a pregnant woman. Photo #TH4 shows a small bullet entry wound in the back of one woman’s shoulder, Photo #TH5 a more serious shrapnel wound in a woman’s back, Photo #TH6 the remains of a graze wound on the upper arm, and Photo #TH7 a bullet entry wound on the thigh of a young boy. [Photos: KHRG monitor]

Photo #TH8:  The church in xxxx village, Bilin township, Thaton District. After seeing a KNLA soldier running from the village in September 1998, SPDC troops looted all the houses of the village, then burned the church and some of the houses. [Photo: KHRG monitor]

Photos #TH9-TH10:  Displaced villagers in hiding in the forest in Thaton District. Villagers in Thaton District are regularly arrested and tortured or have their houses burned by SPDC troops in retaliation for KNLA activities in their area, so many now flee into hiding in the forests whenever SPDC troops are around. The man on the left in Photo #TH9 fled into hiding in the forest after being detained and tortured on several occasions by SPDC troops; on the most recent occasion he was forced to lay down while SPDC troops beat him with a coconut shell until it broke. [Photo: KHRG monitor]