"The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Myanmar?s military rulers, continues to commit grave human rights violations against the Burmese people with impunity. Members of political opposition parties and ethnic minorities alike live in an atmosphere of fear which pervades all areas of the country. Some improvements have been made in the human rights situation, but the SLORC has not instituted more fundamental changes which would provide the population of Myanmar with protection from ongoing and systematic violations of human rights. Amnesty International welcomes these limited improvements, but it believes that the degree and scope of human rights violations in Myanmar continue to warrant serious international concern. In the material which follows, Amnesty International?s concerns in the period from September 1992 until July 1993 are described in detail. Although over 1700 political prisoners have been released since April 1992, hundreds of others are believed to remain imprisoned after unfair trials or are detained without charge or trial. The rights to freedom of expression and assembly are still denied, although the tactics the SLORC uses to restrict them have changed. Because most perceived critics of the military have been silenced and remain behind bars, the SLORC now uses the Military Intelligence Services (MIS) to intimidate and harrass any real or impugned government critics who have been released or who remain at liberty. However, people who openly criticize the SLORC are still being arrested and sentenced to terms of imprisonment after unfair trials, and conditions of detention remain very poor, particularly for students and young people. Gross human rights violations against ethnic minority groups systematically committed by the Myanmar armed forces constitute a pattern of repression and state-sanctioned violence which has been ongoing since at least 1984. The army, known as the tatmadaw, continues to torture, ill-treat, and extrajudicially execute members of ethnic minorities, including the Karen, Mon, Shan, and Kayah groups. Whole villages are subject to being arbitrarily seized as porters or unpaid labourers where they are routinely severely mistreated or even killed by the tatmadaw. Ethnic minorities are also accused of supporting insurgent groups and have been ill-treated and extrajudicially killed on the spot in their villages or fields. For the past two years women and children have been subject to a wide range of human rights violations, including rape and murder, as they have been left behind in their villages after men have fled in the face of tatmadaw abuses..."