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KHRG #96 - 23




	 FORCED RELOCATION IN CENTRAL SHAN STATE

  An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
	  June 25, 1996     /     KHRG #96-23

[PART 3 OF 6 - SEE OTHER POSTINGS FOR OTHER PARTS OF THIS REPORT & APPENDIX]

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				  #7.
NAME:    "Sai Hom"       SEX: M      AGE: 26         Shan Buddhist farmer
ADDRESS: Nam Sang township                           INTERVIEWED: 11/6/96

["Sai Hom" works in Thailand, but went back to Shan State to see his
family in May/June 1996.]

I just got back [to Thailand] 6 days ago.  I went back on May 5th, and I
got back here on June 3rd.  I went to Mong Ton, then crossed the Salween
River and went to Lang Ker, Nam Sang, Laikha, Mong Kung, and then
back down to Kun Hing.  While I was there I saw people moving, carrying
their children, carrying their things.  I saw them walking along the roads,
and living along the roadsides.  It makes you cry - they've lost everything,
and their houses have been burned.  People couldn't take much with them.
You see many people carrying children, and a load on their back too.  I saw
it around Kun Hing ... it's everywhere!  They're all over the place, I can't
list all the places.  They were moving close to the towns.  They're just
living in bamboo huts, I saw the places they're staying in.  They're staying
all packed together.  They don't have any money to build proper houses, so
they have to do that.  I saw soldiers guarding some of these places.  They
looked like camps, many huts.  I saw lots of these places.  In some places
the people beg along the sides of the road.  They hold monk's bowls and just
stand there by the roadside, all day long.  They hope passersby will put
some
rice or money in their bowls.  The children hold out their caps.  I saw
groups
of 30 people or more standing together along the roadsides doing this.  I
saw
it coming out of Nam Sang on the road to Kun Hing.  Also near Ko Lam
[halfway between Nam Sang and Kun Hing], and near Kun Hing.

In Kun Mong the Army came to collect porters and all the men ran away.
So there was a family with only their daughters, and it looked like the
soldiers were going to rape them.  So the headman went to complain, and
while he was away complaining the soldiers raped his daughter.  This
happened about 3 months ago.  It is a famous case, everyone is talking
about it and angry about it.  I heard it from my friends there.  Kun Mong is
about 10 km. from Nam Sang.

I also saw people breaking stones for the railway.  At Lai Kha, just north
of
Lai Kha, for the railway from Lai Kha to Mong Kung.  It's obvious that it's
a railway, because they're making the ground so level.  It's got to be very
smooth, different than a road.  I've seen both road and railway
construction,
and I can tell this is a railway.  My friends said it is a railway.  Many of
my friends are working on it.  There's been an announcement that people have
to make this railway.  I'm not sure how long it's been going on now, about 3
months.  Everyone in this area is being ordered to work on it.  Each house
has to send one person each day.  Every house.  There's no time limit -
every day until it's finished.  My friends are from Lai Kha town.  People
who have been ordered to move are also being forced to work on it.  When
I was there I saw several hundred people together, breaking rocks.  Soldiers
were watching them.  My friends told me that there are beatings.

Q:  How long until it will be finished?
A:  I don't know!  It's taking a long time, because it takes a long time to
make it flat.  It's going to go from Loi Lem to Pang Long, Lai Kha, and
Mong Kung.  They didn't say what it's for.  In Lai Kha, in the morning and
the evening, the loudspeakers announce it every day.  I was in Lai Kha for 4
days.  I heard it when I was there - every morning and every evening, the
loudspeakers say "Make your rice ready, tomorrow morning you're going to
work on the railway."  They say it in Shan.  I didn't have to go because I
was visiting my relatives, but I had to register myself [as a house guest]
and I had to pay 50 Kyat to the section leader.

My uncle was chairman of xxxx village, and he had to move to Kun Hing.  I
visited him.  He hasn't got anything now.  He couldn't bring anything with
him, and he had to leave all his livestock behind.  His house is no good
now, not like before, and he's got 4 children, 3 of them daughters.  My
uncle told me he wants to come to Thailand.  From nearly every house
there are people coming to Thailand now.  He is over 40.  He asked me to
find him work here, but I said I couldn't promise anything.  He hasn't come.
When I came back it was so crowded, especially from Nam Sang to Mong
Ton.  There were 45 people in one truck, and there were 5 trucks coming
together.  Each person had to pay 4,500 Kyat from Nam Sang to the
border.  There are at least 20 checkpoints along the way, so most of that
money just goes to the soldiers.

Q:  Aren't they stopping people?
A:  No, they want Shan people to leave.  They want Burmese people to
come and occupy Shan State, because it is so rich and fertile.  I just wish
people in the world had a satellite camera, so they could look down and see
for themselves how bad it is now around Nam Sang and Kun Hing.
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				  #8.
NAME:    "Sai Yi"          SEX: M     AGE: 31      Shan Buddhist farmer
FAMILY:  Married, 4 children aged 4-13
ADDRESS: Nam Wo village, Nam Sang township         INTERVIEWED: 30/5/96

We left our village on March 16.  Before Water Festival.  All my children
and my wife came along also.  The soldiers ordered us to move between 16
March and 18 March.  The order came on the 16th.  We felt so sad, so we
came to this other country.  We didn't dare get our things out of our house.
As soon as the soldiers ordered us to move we moved immediately.  All the
villagers in the 9 villages of Nong Hi village tract ran away.

The soldiers beat the headman, because the headman asked them not to
force us to move from our village.  There were 20 soldiers.  It was #247
Battalion.  They stay in Nam Sang and Mong Nai area.  One of the soldiers
hit the headman.  They kicked him.  They kicked 3 times, but one time they
missed.  They kicked him in the belly.  They also hit him with a rifle butt.
Then they beat a PNA [Pa'o National Army] member who lives in the
village and said, "We will attack all the Armies, including Aung Thein!"  He
asked the Burmese soldiers not to force the villagers to move.  He is a
soldier the same as them, so they didn't listen.  They beat him a lot but he
wasn't hurt as badly as the headman.  The PNA member said, "Before I
lived in the town, now I live in the village and I understand what happens
in
the village [how the soldiers treat the villagers]".  The headman was hurt,
but he didn't die.  He can still walk slowly, but he cannot run.  He is 40.
His name is Loong Heng Sait.

Our village had nearly 160 houses.  Everyone ran into the forest that night.
The next morning we went to Nam Sang and hired a car to carry our things.
The same happened in Loi Kap village too, and Kun Sai.  I don't know
what's happened in other villages.  Many people from all the villages were
moving that same night at the same time.  They gave the villagers only 3
days to 5 days.  If the villagers couldn't move in that time, they burned
all
the houses in the village.  Many villagers died.  If they go back to get
their things, the soldiers shoot them.  We could not tell whose animals were
whose among those left behind in the village, whose cows, whose pigs.
Each family had at least 50 cattle or buffalos, and they had to leave them.
If a family owned 100 cattle, at least 50 were left behind.  The Burmese
soldiers kill those animals for meat.  We didn't see them looting, because
when the soldiers were in the village we left.  [Another man from the
village added: "The Burmese soldiers took everything that was left in the
houses."]  We lost most of it.  We could only take a few things.  We had
nothing.  We moved to Nam Sang town and we couldn't work there, there
was no way to make a living there so we came here.

They ordered us to move to Kai Long village in Nam Sang township, near
the road.  The Burmese didn't help the villagers to move.  The villagers
have to arrange their own way to survive.  There are no fields there, just
forest.  It is about 3 hours [walking] from our village, so about 8
kilometres.  Some went to Kai Long, some went to Nam Sang - people
went everywhere.  Some went to Wan Haeng - Pa Lur [Wan Haeng, Pa
Lur, and Hai Neng refer to parts of the same village].  They get no help
from the Burmese soldiers.  They make small huts just 1 or 2 armspans [3
yards] wide.  If the Burmese soldiers want porters they come and take
them.  Some don't have enough food.

Even before this the Burmese soldiers made many problems.  They rape the
girls and they take porters.  All the time.  They rape all the time,
everywhere.  It happened to her sister [pointing at "Nang Parng" (also
interviewed in this report), who then said, "I ran away"].  If they meet a
girl, they rape her.  The Shan armies didn't come in the village.  The Pa'O
soldiers [PNA, which has a ceasefire with SLORC] ask money, but just a
small amount - 60 Kyat per year per family, to make sure no bad people
come to the village.

Q:  Why is SLORC ordering the villages to move?
A:  So that the Shan armies will disappear, so all the Shan armies will
surrender to the Burmese.  We are in the border area between PNA and the
Shan armies.  The Shan soldiers are nearby.  They say the villagers support
the Shan armies.

Q:  Did the Burmese say when people could go home to the village?
A:  In 3 years.  I don't know why - some will take 3 years, some will take 6
months.  Burmese Army said that.  I have no plan to go back.  If we go
back it will not be easy to live.  The Burmese are bad.  The Burmese want
to make it so the Shans cannot live there.  The Burmese soldiers didn't help
us.  If they had given us some rice or something, we would not have come
here.  But we had nothing to eat, so we came here.  This child is 7 years
old, this one is 4 years old.  Our whole family came here.  Our family has 4
children.  Now I work for money in other people's fields, day by day.  For
one day, 70 Baht.  Between me and my wife, for one day we can make 140
or 150 Baht [US$6].  In Shan State we had a field and a good house and a
rice mill, altogether worth 300,000 Kyats.  It is still there, we could not
take it with us.
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				  #9.
NAME:    "Nang Parng"      SEX: F    AGE: 24         Shan Buddhist farmer
FAMILY:  Single, father alive, mother dead, four brothers and sisters
ADDRESS: Nam Wo village, Nam Sang township           INTERVIEWED: 30/5/96

I was born in Nong Kok village, Lai Kha Township.  Now my father is in
Lai Kha.  They ordered my village [Nam Wo] to move on the 16th of
March, on the English calendar.  When I left it was Wednesday, three days
afterwards.  On the 20th.  At night, at 9 o'clock.  They came and shot their
guns.  Four Burmese soldiers came to the village.  They stay in Kun Sai.
They were angry, and they said, "We ordered you to move, why haven't
you moved yet?"  The soldiers also beat the headman without even asking
him any questions.

All the villagers ran away.  Some used their bullock carts and some carried
their things.  They took everything they could.  At night we ran into the
forest.  We all ran.  The next day we went back in the village and moved
our belongings for the next 3 days.  I was very sad, because I have a home
but now I could not live at my home.

We started getting out of our village and carried our belongings by car, day
and night.  Still, the things we couldn't bring were left behind.  We did
not
sleep for 3 days and nights.  We had to search for a car to carry our
things.
Cars were difficult to find.  In our village we had a lot of rice in our
rice
barn, but we could not carry it like that.  We had to buy sacks to carry it.
We asked the car to buy the sacks for us, but the driver was not kind to us,
he charged 10,000 Kyats for one trip.  For three days we could not sleep
because we were carrying our things.  If we slept, someone else would steal
our things.  We went from Nam Wo to Nam Sang.  My sister has a house
in Nam Sang.  I stayed with my sister and my brother-in-law.  We could not
work there because it is a new place for us.  We don't know how to get
work there.  Some people are poor, so they came and stayed with us and
we shared food with them.  I stayed there and looked after the children.

I left on May 2nd.  I didn't know what to do there.  My older sister's
friend
lives here [in Thailand] sewing clothes.  She is Chinese.  We are five
brothers and sisters.  Some are in Lai Kha, some are in Nam Sang.  They
cannot work now.  They sell their belongings to make money to live.  If I
had a lot of money I would go to Taunggyi and build a house and open a
shop.  Now I am in [northern] Thailand, I cannot work here.  I will go to
Bangkok to search for work.  [She didn't know how to get to Bangkok, or
how to get past the police.]  If I had money I would go back [to Shan
State], but with no money I cannot go back.  There is no way to go back to
my village.  My village is not like before.
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				  #10.
NAME:    "Sai Leng"   SEX: M    AGE: 28    Shan Buddhist rice & orange
farmer
FAMILY:  Married, 3 children aged 3, 5, and 7, his mother and father
	 also live with them
ADDRESS: Wan Jok village, Mong Kung township         INTERVIEWED: 12/5/96

["Sai Leng" was interviewed in Thailand by an NGO representative who
noted his comments and reported them as follows:]

Wan Jok is 10 miles east of Mong Kung.  There are about 125 households
in the village.  Most villagers are farmers, growing rice and oranges.  One
month ago over 200 SLORC soldiers arrived at the village and camped in
the jungle.  They gave the order for all the villagers to move within 3 days
to a site on the main road just north of Mong Kung, the road which goes to
Tsipaw.  Once the villagers moved they were forbidden by the soldiers to
return, threatened that if they did they would be shot on sight.  The SLORC
said that the village was near "the Shan soldiers" so it had to be moved.

"Sai Leng" has 5 rice fields and 3 small orchards.  He had to abandon them
and bring what possessions and animals his family could carry with them to
the new site.  The new site was totally empty, and he spent the first few
days building a small hut for his family.  Then the SLORC soldiers came to
order the relocated villagers to work on repairing the Mong Kung - Tsipaw
road.  Each week, half of the households had to provide one person each
for a week-long shift on a rotating basis [half the households one week, the
other half the next week].  "Sai Leng" was forced to leave his family to
work on the road for a week.

To get to the road repair site, "Sai Leng" had to walk for four hours.  He
had to take his own food with him.  About 60 people from his village were
working together with him.  In total, about 600 villagers were working at
the
site.  This included both men and women, old people and children as young
as 11.  About 100 soldiers stood guard overseeing the work.  "Sai Leng"
saw one man beaten by a soldier with a stick because he had not asked
permission to go to the toilet.  The soldier beat him so hard that the stick
broke, and the man was so badly hurt that he could not carry on working.

After returning from the work site to his family, "Sai Leng" decided that he
and his wife should travel to Thailand to find work, or else they would not
be able to feed themselves.  They left their children in the care of their
grandparents.  He and his wife travelled by truck down to Mong Ton.
They then travelled to Na Gong Moo, where they had to pay 100 Thai Baht
each to the SLORC soldiers, walked across the border west of the Thai
town of Fang and then travelled south to Chiang Mai.  "Sai Leng" said
about 80 people from his village came at the same time.  On the day he
crossed into Thailand there were 200 other Shan villagers also crossing over
to look for work.

"Sai Leng" said about 10 villages in his area, all east of the Nam Teng
river,
had been ordered to move at the same time as his village.  He said he would
never have come to look for work in Thailand if his village had not been
relocated.  He hopes that in 7 or 8 months' time he and his wife will have
saved up enough to go back and feed their family.  He hopes that his family
will be able to survive in the meantime.
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  - [END OF PART 3 - SEE OTHER POSTINGS FOR PARTS 4 TO 6 AND APPENDIX] -