ATROCITIES IN SHAN STATE

[omg94@xxxxxxxxxx]

APOLOGIES IF THIS HAS BEEN READ BY EVERYONE BEFORE: I AM NEW TO THIS GROUP.
REGARDS,
OWAIN M. GOWER
DEPT. OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS,
UWA,
UK.

* News Release Issued by the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International *
AI INDEX: ASA 16/07/98
15 APRIL 1998

Myanmar: Atrocities worsen in Shan State

Hundreds of people from the Shan ethnic minority have been tortured and
killed by the Burmese army and at least 300,000 people forced to flee their
 homes during the last two years, according to an Amnesty International
delegate who visited the region earlier this year.

     "The vast majority of people we interviewed in Thailand lost relatives
 or friends who were killed by the Tatmadaw (Burmese army)," said Donna
Guest, Amnesty International's Researcher on Myanmar.

     "Their victims include women, children, the elderly and Buddhist
monks. Witnesses described the most horrific methods of killing, including
beating and kicking to death, stabbing, smashing heads in, being burnt
alive, pouring boiling water over the victim's body and shooting."

     In March 1996, in order to stop alleged support for the Shan States
Army, an opposition group fighting the government, the Burmese  authorities
 began massive relocations of Shan civilians. As a result, 1,400 villages
were destroyed and at least 300,000 people lost their homes. Some people
have been relocated three or four times and more than 80,000 people have
fled across the border to Thailand.

     The army usually only warns a village headman that his village is
being relocated a few days in advance of the troops arriving. When soldiers
 do arrive, they often burn houses, steal livestock and food and threaten
to shoot villagers on sight if they do not immediately leave their homes
and most of their possessions behind.

     The Tatmadaw killed at least 300 people in a series of massacres
between mid-June and mid-July last year.  Most were desperate relocated
villagers who returned to their homes to look for food. Women captured and
interrogated by the military have been raped -- sometimes over a period of
days -- and some have died as a result.

     Almost all the villagers interviewed, including women, were forced to
work as porters for the army or on infrastructure projects -- such as road,
 dam and railway construction. Men who were seized and forced to act as
porters described being severely beaten and being deprived of food.

     Because the Burmese government denies access to journalists and
independent monitors, the full scale of the tragedy is difficult to gauge.
 What is clear is that the Shan are being targeted solely because of their
ethnic origin or perceived political beliefs, in contravention of numerous
international human rights standards.


     Amnesty International is calling on the United Nations to press the
State Peace and Development Council (Burmese military government) to grant
unrestricted access to the Special Rapporteur on Myanmar and to pressure
the SPDC to improve its human rights record. It is also calling on the SPDC
 itself to immediately halt all forced portering, forced relocation on
ethnic grounds, and issue clear orders to the army to halt extrajudicial
executions.

     "While ASEAN governments have spent the last few  years talking about
'constructive engagement' bringing about an improvement in human rights,
the Burmese government has continued to subject the Shan people, and indeed
 millions of Burmese of all ethnic groups, to the most horrific human
rights abuses imaginable," said Ms Guest.

     "ASEAN governments last year admitted Myanmar into their regional
grouping, and promised that the human rights situation would improve there.
 Now we are nearly a year on -- just when will the changes begin?"

Background and cases
The population of the Shan State, the largest of the seven ethnic minority
states in Myanmar, is approximately eight million people.  Of these, some
four million are Shan. The Shan people are ethnically related to the Thai,
have a similar language, and also live in southern China and northern
Thailand. Most of them are Theravada Buddhist rice farmers. In pre-colonial
 times, the area that is now the Shan State was ruled by Shan princes who
sometimes owed allegiance to Burman or Thai overlords and were sometimes
independent.  Under British colonial rule, the Shan areas were administered
 separately from the rest of Burma.

     After Burmese independence in 1948 disputes arose between some Shan
political figures and the central administration in Rangoon over the
handling of Shan affairs. In 1958 the first Shan armed opposition group was
 organized, and since then various other groups took up arms.  Since 1989
some of these groups have agreed cease-fires with the SPDC but the SSA has
continued in its armed struggle against the tatmadaw in central Shan State.

     When soldiers arrived to relocate the villagers of  Tard Mork, Sai Tun
 was taking his cattle to the relocation site when he was shot and then
hung up by his feet near the entrance to the village as a warning. Nang
Ing, a 30-year old woman returned to her village to get some rice. She was
captured and gang raped by three soldiers who then poured boiling water
over her.  A few days later she died. Two other villagers were burnt alive
in their house, and another tied with a rope and beaten over the head to
death.

     In Kunhing township, 24-year-old Nang Mai was seized by the soldiers
who raped her repeatedly over five days. She was then covered with pieces
of wood and burned to death.

     On 16 June 1997, 30 villagers returned to their village of Wan Sar Lar
 to retrieve food. On their return, they met soldiers. The troops killed 27
 of them and threw their bodies into a river, burned their oxcarts and
slaughtered their oxen for meat.
 .../ENDS


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