WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION-The SLORC/SPD

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Subject: WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION-The SLORC/SPDC Campaign

--REPOST--

WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION
The SLORC/SPDC Campaign to Obliterate All Hill Villages in Papun and
   Eastern Nyaunglebin Districts

An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
February 15, 1998  (KHRG #98-01)



               [Note: Some details have been omitted or replaced by
?xxxx? for Internet distribution.]

"They were going to burn our houses so they wanted us out of our houses,
and they didn?t give us any chance to
take our possessions. We all ran away. The Burmese took all my things
and destroyed whatever they didn?t want. I
had nothing. When I arrived at another place, some people who saw me
gave me some clothes to wear. I fled and
stayed in the forest. All the villagers stayed in the forest. We had to
sleep on the ground for one or two nights, then
move to another place for one or two nights. We had to run all the time,
every month. We had no chance to build a
hut all through hot season. Sometimes we made a roof out of grass or a
plastic sheet, but we had to sleep on the
ground. It was very hard to cook. We ate rice with some salt and forest
vegetables. We lived like that from March
until July. There were 40 families with us. A lot of people were ill:
diarrhoea, malaria, beriberi, abscesses, stomach
pains and so on. We had no medicine there, we just had to use the roots
of trees. People died of illness, especially
the children - they died of illness and weakness. Where we were staying
I saw over 50 people die of illness. ? Then
we made a hut in our farmfield. We planted our paddy, and we were eating
some that we had grown [the first rice;
some can be harvested as early as October]. But on November 5th, they
[SPDC troops] came and destroyed all of it
before we could finish the harvest. They burned all the paddy we had
already gathered in the rice barn, and they
destroyed all that we hadn?t yet harvested by walking through our fields
like this [she imitated soldiers walking
through the fields, sweeping machetes and rifles back and forth to knock
down the stalks; once knocked down,
the rice is very quickly destroyed by insects and parasites]. We ran
away. After they destroyed our field we
couldn?t get any more rice, we couldn?t do anything, so we lived on rice
soup until the rice we had with us was

gone, and then we came here. If we didn?t come here, they would shoot us
if they saw us." - "Naw Muh Eh", Female,
53, Nya Mu Kwee village, Shwegyin township; fled to Thailand in Dec/97
after 8 months in hiding (Interview #52, 12/97)

Since the beginning of 1996, the State Law & Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) military junta ruling Burma, renamed in
November 1997 as the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC), has
launched campaigns in many parts of Burma to
forcibly move or wipe out all rural villages which are not under the
direct physical control of an Army camp. In
February/March 1997, SLORC began a campaign to forcibly relocate or
obliterate all villages in the hills of Papun District,
northern Karen State, and eastern Nyaunglebin District, straddling the
border of Karen State and Pegu (Bago) Division.
These remote hilly areas are dotted with small Karen villages averaging
10-20 families each, which have always been
difficult or impossible for the Burmese military to control because the
villagers always flee before they arrive. As a result,
SLORC and subsequently SPDC have been carrying out a campaign to
forcibly relocate those villages already close to their
bases, where they can easily round up the population, and to obliterate
all other villages without warning, hunting and killing
on sight any villagers they see there.

The initial wave of village destruction was carried out through March
and April 1997. In June, new waves of patrols were
sent out to burn all remaining signs of habitation and food supplies, to
hunt villagers hiding in the forest, burn them out and
shoot them. Since November 1997, after the end of the rainy season, the
newly-named SPDC regime sent out new patrols
to burn out the hiding villagers again, to drive them off the meagre
rice crops many of them had managed to plant and to
destroy those crops. Through visiting destroyed villages, interviewing
villagers, information compiled by independent
monitors with other organisations, and some KNU field reports, KHRG has
compiled a list of 105 villages ordered to
relocate, 180 villages completely burned and 10 others partially burned.
The population of these villages averages about
100. The shelters where villagers are hiding have also been burned
whenever they are found. These lists are by no means
complete, and right now SPDC patrols continue to burn villages and shoot
villagers in the area. A list of 62 confirmed killings
of villagers by SLORC/SPDC troops is also included in this report,
though the true number is almost certainly at least double
that. Many more have also died of disease and hunger while in hiding.

The main areas targetted are the Bilin (Bu Loh Kloh) and Yunzalin (Bway
Loh Kloh) river valleys and adjacent areas west,
north, and northeast of the town of Papun, as well as eastern Shwegyin
township in Pegu Division. In the beginning
approximately six SLORC Battalions were involved in the operation, and
under SPDC the number has now increased to at
least 10 Battalions; the Battalions are regularly rotated in and out, so
that altogether since the beginning at least 23 different
Battalions have been involved at one time or another. 


Army columns of 50 to 300 men move from village to village. On arrival
near a village, the troops first shell it with mortars
from the adjacent hills, then enter the village firing at anything that
moves and proceed to burn every house, farmfield hut,
and shelter they find in the area. Paddy storage barns [small sheds
raised on posts for storing paddy, which is unhusked
rice; in this report generally referred to as ?rice barns?] are
especially sought out and burned in order to destroy the
villagers? food supply. Any villagers seen in the villages, forests, or
fields are shot on sight with no questions asked. The
troops bring porters with them from Shwegyin, Meh Way, Papun and other
places to carry their munitions, supplies, and the
food and valuables they loot from the villages, but if they need more
porters they take any villagers they catch, and they
have already taken many women and men, some aged over 65, for this.
However, the objective is not to catch villagers, as
in several cases they have surrounded villagers in field huts and then
simply opened fire instead of trying to catch them.
The patrols seem to have no interest in interrogating the villagers,
only in eliminating them. Villages very close to Papun,
Meh Way and Shwegyin have been ordered to move to Army-controlled sites
such as Meh Way and the Shwegyin - Kyauk
Kyi motor road, but the vast majority of villages have been given no
orders whatsoever, they have simply been destroyed.
Most of the villagers in the area say they do not even understand why
this is being done, and that they think SLORC/SPDC
is just trying to wipe out the Karen population. KNLA [Karen National
Liberation Army] troops are not based in any of these
villages, and have never yet been in a village when it was attacked.

The villagers generally hear up to a day in advance that a SLORC/SPDC
column is coming, so they flee further into the hills
and very few of them are sighted by the troops. Once the troops have
destroyed their village and passed on, they survive in
leaf shelters or small huts which they build in the forest and try to
continue taking care of their fields. Those whose paddy
storage barns have not been destroyed generally share out their rice
with those who have no more food. Most are living on
plain rice with some jungle leaf soup, and salt if they are lucky enough
to have any. Almost all livestock has been left behind
and slaughtered by SLORC/SPDC troops, who simply shoot it, eat a small
part and leave the rest to rot. SPDC patrols are
now returning to areas which they previously burned out in order to seek
out and destroy the forest huts where the villagers
are hiding, destroy any remaining rice supplies and shoot any people
they can find.

Every new patrol that comes around forces the villagers to flee yet
again and build new shelters elsewhere. Malaria and
other fevers, diarrhoea, dysentery, and other diseases are widespread
and the villagers have no medicine whatsoever.
Many children and the elderly have already died. The villagers have very
few belongings left and little food. Many of them
managed to plant a limited rice crop in intervals between SLORC/SPDC

patrols and tended it through rainy season. Some
of them have managed to get a partial harvest, but in many areas Army
patrols drove them off their crop at harvest and
other crucial times, so the crop was lost. In some areas, particularly
Shwegyin Township, troops went through the hill fields
burning or knocking down the crop at harvest time. Most villagers in
hiding are now sharing their rice and living on rice
soup, knowing their food cannot last more than one or two more months.
At least 1,500 villagers from the area have
managed to escape to refugee camps in Thailand thus far, but this is
difficult and dangerous because of SPDC camps and
patrols along the way and the landmines placed along many of the paths
by the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).
Many of them have also heard of the abuses against refugees by Thai
authorities. However, if this campaign does not stop
immediately it is certain that many more will attempt to flee to
Thailand.

Just to the north of Papun District, there has also been a steady
increase in troop numbers in eastern Toungoo District.
These troops have just completed construction of a military access road
into the Bu Sah Kee area, which was formerly very
difficult to access, and they have been increasingly clamping down on
the civilian population there. At the same time, SPDC
troops are pushing a military supply road straight across the affected
areas of Shwegyin Township and Papun District, from
Kyauk Kyi in Pegu Division (in the Sittang River valley of central
Burma) directly eastward to Saw Hta on the Salween River,
which forms the border with Thailand. This road is expected to be used
as a springboard for an offensive to secure the
Salween River and the entire region, to block off KNLA supply lines and
the escape routes of refugees and to allow the
establishment of new military camps and further sweeps through the area
to wipe out the Karen civilian population. The
troops have burned and destroyed all villages along the route and have
been constructing the road with bulldozers under
heavy military guard. The troops cannot capture enough villagers in the
area to use them for forced labour on this road, but
the fact that they are using bulldozers instead of bringing in forced
labour from elsewhere makes it apparent that they are in
a hurry to complete it. It was heavily damaged in rainy season, but is
expected to be completed by mid-1998.

This report consists of a detailed breakdown of the campaign to wipe out
the villages, supported by excerpts from KHRG
interviews with villagers in the area and newly arrived refugees in
Thailand which were conducted in June and December
1997. This is followed by an Annex of the full text of many of those
interviews. Photographs of some of the affected areas
have already been released in KHRG Photo Set #97-B of 22/9/97. The
information for this report was gathered by KHRG
through over 60 interviews with villagers in hiding and refugees, visits
to approximately 30 of the destroyed villages and
many hiding-places of villagers. Information was also provided by
several independent human rights monitors working in the

area, and KHRG would like to thank especially Saw D. M. and Saw N. N.
for the information they provided. KNU field
reports radioed in by frontline units were occasionally used to fill in
gaps in the information. In the report we have tried to
keep our descriptive analysis minimal; most of the story is told by the
words of the villagers.