KHRG Commentaries

Karen Human Rights Group Commentaries examine general trends and variations brought out by looking at our reports in combination, and relate the human rights issues documented in our reports to the broader domestic and international political situation. Unlike most of our other reports, Commentaries provide critique and do not shy away from controversy - there are no 'sacred cows' here.

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COMMENTARY TITLE	DATE
Safeguarding human rights in a post-ceasefire eastern Burma	Jan 26th, 2012
The ongoing ceasefire negotiations between the Government of Myanmar and the Karen National Union present an important opportunity for bringing lasting peace and improved human rights conditions to local people in eastern Burma. If the ceasefire can end fighting between the two parties, it should end human rights abuses associated with armed conflict. Human rights abuses, however, do not stem only from armed conflict but also from ingrained abusive practices and lack of accountability for perpetrators. In the absence of armed conflict, abuses related to extracting labour, money and resources from villagers and consolidating state control can be expected to continue or even worsen, particularly where there is a correlative increase in industrial, business or development initiatives undertaken without opportunities for genuine local input. Given these concerns, this commentary concludes by presenting recommendations for using the ceasefire negotiations to define monitoring processes that can offer new options for communities already attempting to protect their human rights. Analysis for this commentary was developed in workshops held with staff at KHRG’s administrative office in Thailand and with villagers working with KHRG to document human rights abuses in Mon and Karen states and Bago and Tennaserim divisions.
Supporting local responses to extractive abuse: Commentary on the ND-Burma report 'Hidden Impact'	Sep 6th, 2010
Eighteen years of KHRG field research indicates that regular extractive abuses by the SPDC Army and NSAGs threaten local livelihoods and are a fundamental human rights concern for villagers throughout eastern Burma. These abuses appear to be the product of the established SPDC Army and NSAG practice of supporting military units via extraction of significant material and labour resources from the local civilian population, enforced by implicit or explicit threats of violence. These findings were recently affirmed by ND-Burma, which last week released a report documenting the prevalence and impact of arbitrary taxation for communities across Burma. This commentary is designed to support ND-Burma's report, by offering additional recommendations based upon evidence that civilians have developed and employed a range of strategies for protecting themselves from extractive abuse or its consequences. These responses vary between contexts, and have been formulated based on first-hand awareness of the local dynamics of abuse and potential space for safe response. Seeking to understand, and then support, these local protection efforts should be the starting point for any external actors interested in improving human rights conditions in eastern Burma in both the short and long term.
Don't neglect rural Burma in calling for Suu Kyi's release	Jun 4th, 2009
Following the arrest of the American John Yettaw on May 5th 2009, Burma's pro-democracy icon Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest, moved to Insein Prison and put on trial. The international community has responded to these events with a flurry of attention on Burma not seen since Cyclone Nargis last year. Heads of State, activists and newspaper editors have renewed calls for her immediate release. At the same time, Burma Army operations in Karen State and other rural ethnic areas along with their associated human rights abuses remain ongoing and widespread. Yet once again the situation of abuse in rural Burma has been marginalised in favour of the more high profile political drama in the country's urban settings. In calling, quite rightly, for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the international community must neither neglect the situation of abuse in rural Burma nor miss current opportunities to support those who face this abuse.
Is the SPDC diverting aid on ethnic grounds?	May 14th, 2008
According to recent reports received by KHRG from residents of the Irrawaddy Delta, the SPDC has not only been restricting aid supplies and access by international humanitarian workers, but has also been doing so on the basis of ethnicity. Increasing reports on the military's restrictions and misappropriation of aid supplies necessitate immediate international investigation, as all affected residents of the delta regardless of their ethnicity remain in urgent need humanitarian assistance. The regime's obstructions of humanitarian aid increasingly appear to fall under the criteria of crimes against humanity. In such a case, the responsibility to protect this population falls on the international community
Response to UN statement on KHRG report	Apr 26th, 2007
Following the release on Tuesday April 24th 2007 of KHRG's report Development by Decree: The politics of poverty and control in Karen State, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator's Office released a press statement addressing some of the issues raised in the KHRG report. This KHRG commentary is in the format of a media statement to follow up with the UN response by addressing some of the issues raised by the Office of the Humanitarian Coordinator.
The limits of the new ILO mechanism and potential misrepresentation of forced labour in Burma	Apr 10th, 2007
In late February 2007, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) reached an agreement regarding the implementation of a new mechanism intended to allow individuals to submit complaints of forced labour without fear of retaliation. External observers have reported that this agreement represents a positive step towards effectively addressing forced labour in Burma. However, as this commentary points out, the potential usefulness and effectiveness of the new mechanism is suspect. By outlining some of the ways in which the SPDC actively obstructs villagers from accessing such mechanisms and the inability of the ILO to ensure protection for civilians from retaliation, this commentary warns that the results of this agreement will likely misrepresent the true scale of forced labour in Burma. It further calls for the ILO to publicly acknowledge these limitations, so that the SPDC is unable to use the lack of complaints to deny the existence of forced labour.
KHRG's 300th Report: Cause for Celebration?	Aug 1st, 2006
On July 29th the Karen Human Rights Group released our 300th report. Though this is a milestone for the organisation, we see this as cause for reflection rather than celebration, on how the situation and our work have evolved in the 14 years since our formation in 1992.
Covering up Genocide: Gambari's Betrayal	May 26th, 2006
Just as the international outcry against the SPDC attacks on Karen civilians reached a peak, UN Under-secretary general Ibrahim Gambari visited Rangoon on May 18-20. But instead of demanding an end to the attacks, Gambari focused the discussions on releasing Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and on SPDC opportunities to receive more foreign aid. Since his visit he has embarked on a public relations campaign, claiming the SPDC is "turning a new page" and whipping up media frenzy by suggesting they might release Daw Suu, despite receiving no promise of this. This Commentary argues that the main purpose of his visit was to divert attention away from the Karen offensive so the UN could once again evade its obligation to act when genocide is occurring. Unfortunately it has worked: the Karen situation is once again little more than a media footnote, while all eyes turn to Suu Kyi. Even if she is released the killing of Karen villagers will go on, but will anyone pay attention?
Civilians as Targets	Apr 30th, 2006
This Commentary takes a closer look at the SPDC's ongoing offensive against civilian villages in northern Karen State which has already displaced over 16,000 villagers and shows no sign of abating. Going beyond the images of burned villages and people hiding in the forest, it discusses the offensive's motivating factors, its tactics, why the SPDC is specifically targeting the villagers and how the villagers see their position.
Seeing Through the Smoke of Ceasefires; The Changing Faces of Forced Labour; Whose Suffering Counts?; What KHRG is Doing	Jun 9th, 2005
Drawing upon recent KHRG reports, this Commentary asks the question why the Karen ceasefire is not generating a human rights dividend for Karen villagers, and looks for the answer in the nature of conflict in Burma. It finds the conflict to be much broader than that between armed entities, pitting villagers against the military junta in a daily struggle for control of their lives. The villagers' role in this struggle is too often ignored, both by outside actors who insist on treating villagers as passive bystanders to their own context, and by activists who seek to subjugate everything to the narrow struggle for an elitist Burmese 'democracy'. Double standards are used to further marginalise rural, agrarian, and non-Burman voices, when the real need now is for these voices to be heard more in political processes. The Commentary also discusses forced labour trends in Karen areas, and the new ways KHRG is documenting the human rights situation.
Suu Kyi's release covers up Dooplaya offensive; forced labour and forced recruitment; persecution of Muslims	Sep 26th, 2002
The early May release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest was welcomed around the world with ecstatic phrases like 'new dawn for Burma' and the assumption that political change must be just around the corner. What none of the hundreds of journalists in Rangoon mentioned, however, is that at the very moment of her release SPDC troops were burning civilian villages and massacring Karen villagers in Dooplaya District. A closer look at the chronology shows that the buildup to Suu Kyi's release and the event itself were carefully calculated to provide a smokescreen for a massive increase in human rights abuses in Karen State. The world obliged by closing its eyes to the suffering of the Karen villagers and continued to do so as the offensive proceeded through the months following her release, while Suu Kyi and her NLD party refused to even mention the offensive at all. Meanwhile, SPDC offensives have also been destroying villages in other districts, and forced labour in many areas is worse than ever before. Forced recruitment by SPDC and its allied forces is a growing problem in many regions. The Commentary also raises the systematic persecution of Muslims throughout Burma, and recent SPDC efforts to instigate anti-Muslim riots in order to divert public anger away from its own abuses and corruption.
Playing Games with Political Prisoners; Talks in Rangoon; Forced Labour and the ILO; Look at the people, not the politicians	Oct 21st, 2001
As the much-discussed ‘talks’ in Rangoon between the SPDC military junta and the National League for Democracy (NLD) drag into their second year without a single piece of news about their agenda, a single statement, or a single sign of progress, the international community is trying to find more creative ways of pretending that something positive is happening in Burma. The most popular method at the moment is to point to the SPDC’s releases of a few NLD political prisoners. Little notice is taken of the fact that many of them have only been released on completion of their sentences, or were never charged or sentenced at all. But more importantly, is it logical to commend someone for releasing a political prisoner?
The Talks that Everyone is Talking About; Forced and Convict Labour; A Crumbling Army	Mar 23rd, 2001
It seems the whole world is now talking about the ongoing talks between the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military junta and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD). A European Union delegation says it’s the most significant development in over a decade, the newly-appointed United Nations Special Rapporteur on Burma lauds all the ‘progress’ being made, articles are written everywhere speculating on what is being discussed, while some journalists jump the gun and simply make up stories about what is being discussed. Unanimously, they all proclaim that 'national reconciliation' is in the air.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Oct 17th, 2000
The world is replete with repressive regimes, but even among the most repressive there are few who would try to claim that "there is no problem" in their country. As virtually everyone in the world knows, you cannot hope to solve a problem until you admit that it exists, yet the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) military junta in Burma endlessly persists in facing every problem with nothing but barefaced denial. They don’t even seem to realise how ridiculous they appear to the outside world when they claim that ‘there is no poverty’ in a country ranked among the world’s ten poorest by the United Nations; that ‘women enjoy perfect equal rights’ in a country where sexual abuse by the Army and trafficking in women and girls are huge problems; that ‘the Burmese race is immune to HIV’ in a country with possibly the worst HIV infection rate in east Asia; and that ‘there is no forced labour’ in a country where villagers flee their villages en masse to escape demands to build roads and haul supplies for the Army.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Apr 6th, 2000
Recent months have seen a great deal of activity internationally related to Burma, with Thailand hardening its stance toward refugees and the Non-Governmental Organisations who help them, the United Nations once again condemning Burma for human rights abuses, the International Labour Organisation deciding to take unprecedented steps to press the SPDC to cease forced labour, officials from many countries meeting in South Korea (despite the SPDC’s anger) to discuss what to do about Burma, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Thai Government seriously discussing the possible forced repatriation of Karen and Karenni refugees, multinational corporations challenging American selective purchasing laws in the U.S. Supreme Court, and several other developments. In the meantime, the international media has been in a scramble over a sideshow, all trying to be the first to get an exclusive interview with Johnny Htoo and Saw Luther, the teenage cheroot-smoking leaders of God’s Army in Tenasserim Division.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Dec 21st, 1999
There are now only a few days left in the current millennium, which leads one to think both of the future, of all the hope which it may or may not hold, and of the past, of how much the world has changed in a short thousand years - for that matter, the incredible pace of change just within the past century. From horses to the traffic in Asia’s megacities, from flightless to frequent flyer programs, from the abacus to the computer. Whether these things really reflect progress or not is open to debate (particularly each time your computer crashes), but the fact remains that for many people it is difficult to even imagine living the different pace and style of life of a century ago.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Sep 16th, 1999
9-9-99 is now behind us, and it failed to produce the nationwide uprising in Burma which some people had hoped for. This does not mean that ordinary people in Burma are coming to accept the rule of the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC) military junta, it only means that the regime has been very successful ingraining people with a pathological fear of doing or saying anything, and in creating economic conditions where people have to focus every ounce of their energy simply on surviving from day to day. In this sense, the systematic creation of intense poverty has worked in the regime’s favour. It could prove to be a double-edged sword, and the SPDC would be foolish to sit back on its successful suppression of the 9-9-99 movement. The emotions brought to the surface during this movement may take time to ferment in ordinary people, but they may still come out into the open on a day with no numerical significance, when no one expects it. Just before September 9th, one Burma-based diplomat was quoted in the media saying, "You can’t plan an uprising". That is true, but you also can’t predict one.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	May 25th, 1999
The rainy season appears to be beginning early this year, and as the rains begin many people look back and evaluate the past dry season. Though the period since October/November 1998 has not featured a major military offensive, the situation for rural villagers in eastern Burma has continued to deteriorate and there have been some extremely worrying new developments. In general, the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC) regime has continued to use increased militarisation, forced relocations and tighter controls on villagers as a means of consolidating its control over remote regions, and as a result more and more villagers are becoming internally displaced each month while life becomes even more desperate for those who are already displaced and hiding in the forests. This dry season the SPDC has also added a new weapon to its arsenal which is now terrorising villagers and driving many of them to flight: the ‘Sa Thon Lon Guerrilla Retaliation’ execution squads.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Nov 24th, 1998
There is no doubt that life is currently becoming worse for the vast majority of people in Burma, in both urban and rural areas. In urban areas, people are plagued by high inflation, rapidly increasing prices for basic commodities such as rice and basic foodstuffs, the tumbling value of the Kyat, wages which are not enough to feed oneself, corruption by all arms of the military and civil service, and the ever-present fear of arbitrary arrest for the slightest act or statement that betrays opposition to the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC) junta.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Apr 19th, 1998
In November 1997 the State Law & Order Restoration Council (SLORC) military junta ruling Burma changed its name to the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC). Many theories have been put forward on the reasons for the name change, but regardless of these, the SPDC has proven one thing in its first 6 months of existence: that it is at least as hardline and uncompromising as the SLORC ever was, and that it remains committed to the objectives of crushing all possibility of freedom or dissent, controlling every square inch of the country, and gaining the daily power of life or death over each and every citizen of Burma.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Sep 20th, 1997
The 1997 rainy season is most of the way over. Usually rainy season is a time when military activity decreases due to the difficulty of travelling and operating, when villagers don’t have to do quite as much forced labour for the Army and can try to concentrate on the crucial task of growing the rice crop which will feed their family for the next year. However, as each year passes the rainy season is providing less and less respite for the villagers. First the SLORC Army, which used to withdraw from remote areas in rainy season, began staying there year round. Now they have gone beyond this, and over the past few years several regional offensives have been launched in rainy season.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jul 28th, 1997
For millions of people throughout Burma, this has been the worst year in recent memory. Bolstered by foreign investment, its acceptance into ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and an increasing confidence in its own invincibility, the SLORC (State Law & Order Restoration Council) military junta has increased its repression in every quarter and is no longer even attempting to hide its brutal nature. This year has seen new and stronger attacks on the National League for Democracy and other political opposition throughout the country...
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jul 18th, 1996
The State Law & Order Restoration Council (SLORC) junta ruling Burma is now using mass forced relocations of entire geographic regions as a major element of military strategy. While this is not new to SLORC tactics, they have seldom or never done it to such an extent or so systematically before. The large-scale relocations began in Papun District of Karen State in December 1995 and January 1996, when up to 100 Karen villages were ordered to move within a week or be shot.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	May 26th, 1996
Right now the Karen National Union (KNU) is trying to conduct ceasefire negotiations with the SLORC (State Law & Order Restoration Council) military junta ruling Burma. Though the SLORC claims to be making every effort to bring peace to the country, they are still refusing to even discuss any political or human rights issues, and as a result the talks are making no progress. Many observers feel that the SLORC is not yet interested in a ceasefire, but wants to launch major attacks against the KNU first in order to weaken the KNU so it can be forced to accept what amount to surrender terms.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jan 15th, 1996
Two words which are getting more attention in Burma these days are "national reconciliation". These two words represent something which desperately needs to occur in Burma. They refer to a reconciliation of the different nationalities in the country - in other words, not only a ceasefire but a lasting political solution to the nationwide civil war, a durable political agreement between leaders of all the ethnic groups in Burma, including the Burmans.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Aug 4th, 1995
SLORC continues to show no remorse whatsoever for its continually expanding program of civilian forced labour throughout Burma. Roads, railways, dams, army camps, tourist sites, an international airport, pagodas, schools - virtually everything which is built in rural Burma is now built and maintained with the forced labour of villagers, as well as their money and building materials. Forced labour as porters fuels the SLORC's military campaigns, while forced labour farming land confiscated by the military, digging fishponds, logging and sawing timber for local Battalions fills the pockets of SLORC military officers and SLORC money-laundering front companies such as Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd. Even farming one's own land is more and more becoming a form of forced labour, as SLORC continues to increase rice quotas which farmers must hand over for pitiful prices.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jul 22nd, 1995
Everyone in the world who is interested in Burma, and even many people who aren't, are now talking about the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. But for most of the 40 million rural villagers in Burma, that is all very far away and there are more immediate and important issues to think about - like survival until next week. In Burman areas villagers are starving under the weight of SLORC demands for extortion money. Shan villagers are under increasingly heavy attack by a huge SLORC military force which is burning their villages and taking them as porters (with the tacit consent of the international community, which seems to consider all men, women and children in Shan State villages to be heroin-trafficking fiends).
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	May 9th, 1995
SLORC is now directly involved in planning, preparing, coordinating and executing acts of international terrorism. Its role in the attacks on refugee camps in Thailand cannot be denied, despite all its claims that the attacks are only the work of the DKBA ('Democratic Kayin Buddhist Army'). Eyewitnesses have seen SLORC soldiers participating in almost every attack, while letters and orders from SLORC officers have referred to their 'control' over the DKBA. Furthermore, the latest wave of attacks, which employed several hundred men operating on different parts of the border with mortar support from a SLORC-controlled area on the Burma side of the border, simply could not have been planned and coordinated without direct SLORC involvement.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Feb 5th, 1995
Manerplaw has fallen. The world was caught napping, mainly because it happened faster than anyone could imagine. The main factors were the monk U Thuzana and the ‘Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization’ (DKBO). Apparently the SLORC had been supplying U Thuzana with money and food for some time to set up ‘refuges’ where Buddhist villagers could flee from SLORC abuses, and SLORC suddenly wouldn’t bother them anymore. As a result, the villagers decided U Thuzana had magical powers. Then he began ordering them, other monks and Karen soldiers to rise up against the Karen National Union (KNU). Hundreds of Karen soldiers went to his cause, disgruntled with years of sitting on hilltops to defend Manerplaw with pitifully inadequate supplies by order of KNU leaders who seemed not to care about their needs.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jun 6th, 1994
Just when we think the SLORC already has enough in its inventory of brutality, it amazes us by coming up with even more dirty tricks. Now the regional SLORC commanders have called most of the village heads in Thaton District to a meeting, and informed them that "In the future, for every one of our soldiers who dies we will execute 5 of your villagers." This order appears to have come from Rangoon, and it is a frightening omen of the way SLORC is going. The SLORC's demands for "compensation" from villagers are ever-increasing. Every time they lose a truck to a Karen landmine, they now systematically demand 50,000 Kyat from each of up to 10 or 12 surrounding villages, and 100,000 from the nearest village.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Apr 16th, 1994
On January 28, 1994 SLORC planes passed over the headquarters area of the New Mon State Party and sprayed a yellow powder which covered everything. The New Mon State Party says this has happened before, but the effects are not clear, no proper analysis has ever been done, and no one is quite sure what the SLORC is spraying. Now in the past 8 months in Karen areas hundreds of people have died of a disease like cholera or shigella, which has broken out in two different areas - only days after SLORC planes flew over the areas and dropped mysterious "radiosonde" electronic weather devices.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Feb 23rd, 1994
There has been a lot of attention given to the Karen National Union's recent statement that they are willing to hold talks with SLORC on their own. Despite the fact that the SLORC continues to refuse the most basic requirements to make these talks a reality, such as a neutral venue with foreign observers, many people worldwide are assuming that the talks will occur regardless, and that the SLORC has suddenly miraculously transformed into a responsible entity that wants peace and development. Many people also assume that with "peace talks" in the works, the SLORC must have stopped its human rights abuses. After all, that's what any sane regime would do.
Karen Human Rights Group Commentary	Jan 3rd, 1994
On December 24, 1993, the officers of SLORC No. 301 Burma Regiment ordered the village headmen of Kyo Waing and No Kaneh villages, in Thaton District, to ensure that security is maintained in their respective village tract areas. They were forced to sign papers guaranteeing that if a single bomb explodes or a shot is fired in the entire village tract, they will pay compensation of 50,000 Kyat to SLORC, and if one truck is damaged by a land mine they will pay 100,000 Kyat. What wasn't written on the paper was that these headmen will also pay with their lives and those of several of their villagers.
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