KHRG : COMMENTARY

[TheTruth@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP COMMENTARY

 December 21, 1999 / KHRG #99-C3


"He said, ?A?Mo pay! A?Mo leh saun!? [literally: ?Mother, give! Mother,
a present!?] I asked him, ?What kind of present??, and he came near to
me so I was
afraid. He said ?A?Mo pay! Pay!? and I said, ?Give what??, and I moved
away from him little by little because I was afraid. I told him, ?Go
back. It is dark,
go back.? And I moved away from him. I spoke to him in Karen, but he
spoke to me in Burmese. After I asked him to go back he went back. ? As
for me they
couldn?t rape me, but they did it a lot to my friends and my nieces, so
I couldn?t stay anymore. I was afraid and sometimes our hearts become
cold and
sometimes hot [angry], and we couldn?t sleep until morning. In the night
my heart and hands became cold with fear of them. My husband was not
sleeping
beside me." - Woman aged 42 who fled her village in Pa?an District in
August 1999 ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #21)


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.

Of course, these changes have affected people in some parts of the world
much more than in others. Very few people in Burma have ever flown on a
plane, owned a
car, or touched a computer. One recent media article even commented that
Burma will likely be one of the countries least affected by the Y2K
problem, simply
because there is so little computer-based technology there. For the 85%
or more of Burma?s population who live in farming villages, the crop
cycles, the family
networks and the lifestyle of a century ago would appear much the same
as today - if the SPDC military junta would leave them alone to live
their lives in peace.
Change comes slowly to Burma, and this can be a good thing if a country
is at peace - but when the majority of the people are suffering and
change comes too
slowly in politics or human rights, the effects can be devastating. The
uprisings of 1988 are now 12 years behind us, Ne Win?s dictatorship
began 38 years ago, the
Karen Revolution is finishing its 51st year. How many more years before
concepts like human rights and democracy finally change the face of
Burma so that villagers
can simply live in peace?


"I could support my family if we didn?t need to fear them, and if they
didn?t disturb us. But in this messy situation, I had no time to work."
- Man aged 29
from T?Nay Hsah township, Pa?an District ("Beyond All Endurance",
Interview #24)


Few villagers in Burma have much opportunity to ponder the millennium
when survival becomes more of a struggle each year, when they face
never-ending demands
for forced labour, most of their crops, and all of their money from
soldiers in various different uniforms. KHRG reports throughout 1999
have shown the suffering
and brutality which villagers are still up against, and sadly there is
no sign that the flip of the calendar to the new year is going to change
any of that. Instead, we
are only seeing steadily increasing repression in all districts. The
latest area where villagers have begun to flee their villages en masse
is southeastern Pa?an
District, in central Karen State near the Thai border. The situation in
this region is documented in detail in our most recent report "Beyond
All Endurance: The
Breakup of Karen Villages in Southeastern Pa?an District" (KHRG #99-08,
20/12/99).   [Please note: this report is already available in print
form and will
appear on our website very shortly.]


"They confiscated our fields but forced us to work on those fields for
them. They only sat around and ordered us while we ploughed, sowed, and
transplanted. When we finished the harvest they took all the paddy. They
didn?t give us anything even when we reaped, gathered, winnowed and put
the
paddy in the [milling] machine. We had to go and sell things like oil,
onions, and beans on the other side of the mountain. We bought rice from
them [SPDC
soldiers] with the profit, but they sold us old rice that smelled bad."
- Pwo Karen woman from Kawkareik township ("Beyond All Endurance",
Interview #42)

"For each month our village had to give 14,000 Kyat for each of 2 people
[to not send 2 porters], so we gave them 70,000 Kyat in 3 months. He
took the
money from every village. Our village is only small, he demanded more
from the bigger villages. From Ker Ghaw he collected for 6 people
[porters] at
12,000 Kyat each, 6 people from Tee Wah Blaw, six from Tee Law Thay and
six from Sghaw Ko tract, all at 12,000 each. He just took money, not
people
[he didn?t want the porters]. There are other village tracts too, like
Pah Klu tract, Loh Baw, Meh Pleh Wah and so on as far as Tee Wah Klay
and Day Law
Pya. He also beat people, and a lot of villagers from our village ran
away. ? Sometimes he demanded 10 people or 30 people from each village,
took the
money for that all for himself and then still called for ?loh ah pay?
[forced labour]. He demanded people as well as money. Sometimes when
they were going
to patrol to Meh Pleh and come back he took more than 10 villagers from
our village." - Woman aged 47 from T?Nay Hsah township describing how an
SPDC
commander extorts 316,000 Kyat per month in ?porter fees? alone for
himself from the 5 villages surrounding hers ("Beyond All Endurance",
Interview #2)


For a few years now, the SPDC has been trying to gain full control over
the region of the Dawna Mountains, a steep chain running north-south
parallel to the Thai
border through Pa?an and Dooplaya districts. Last year they destroyed
villages and drove out villagers in the part of the Dawna which lies in
northeastern and central
eastern Pa?an District. This year they are focusing slightly further
south, on T?Nay Hsah township north of the border town of Myawaddy.
Villagers there began
fleeing their villages in mid-1999, saying that SPDC and DKBA troops in
the region were demanding unprecedented amounts of forced labour,
particularly as porters,
and so much in cash fees that almost no one had money to pay anymore.
Anyone who could not pay was forced to do even more forced labour, which
no one dares to
do any more because of the intense fear of a relatively new menace in
the area - landmines.

Since 1995-96, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has relied
increasingly on the use of landmines to make up for its disadvantage in
troop numbers and
shortage of ammunition. The KNLA has become expert at making cheap
landmines out of readily available raw materials, and has been laying
these all over the
Dawna range to protect supply lines and staging areas as well as to kill
and maim SPDC troops, thereby demoralising them and making them afraid
to leave their
base camps. The KNLA mining campaign has been quite successful in its
aims, but the SPDC has responded by laying landmines everywhere
themselves. The SPDC
mainly uses their own ?MM1? and ?MM2? mines, manufactured in Burma in
factories set up for them by the Chinese government. The Democratic
Karen Buddhist
Army (DKBA), never wanting to be left behind, has also begun the
indiscriminate laying of landmines.

The result is a nightmare for the villagers who are trying to scrape out
survival by working their ricefields. The KNLA tells village heads which
pathways they have
mined but not exactly where the mines are, and regardless of this many
villagers are maimed or killed by KNLA mines. The SPDC and DKBA give no
notification
whatsoever, and to make things worse they often deliberately mine
pathways to ricefields and around villages to deter villagers from
producing food which they
believe may be used to feed the KNLA. None of the armies map their
mines. The SPDC and DKBA are increasingly resorting to using villagers
who are doing forced
labour as porters to clear mines by forcing them to march in front of
the soldiers. In many cases they even round up villagers specifically to
force them to march in
front of the columns to detonate any landmines. They often demand women
for this work.


"I portered for them [SPDC troops] when they patrolled the area between
Pah Klu and Ker Ghaw. They guarded us from behind and forced us to go in
front
of them and walk among the landmines. Four of us had to go in front of
them and all of us were villagers. If the landmines were there, they
would have liked
us to die by them. We were afraid to go because we could not see where
the landmines were buried underground. If I went and stepped on a
landmine and
my leg was blown off, how could I earn my living? My family would be
broken-hearted, but I wouldn?t dare to hang myself, even though it would
break my
heart." - Sgaw Karen man from T?Nay Hsah township ("Beyond All
Endurance", Interview #34)


Those who are maimed or killed by landmines while doing forced labour
are either left to die, or sent to hospital but given little or no money
for their expenses. In
most hospitals in Burma the patient must pay all the bills day by day,
and is ejected as soon as s/he runs out of money, even if not yet
healed. KHRG has
interviewed several landmine victims who had this happen to them. For
villagers who step on mines around their villages or while going to and
from their fields
there is even less hope. There are usually no medics or medicines in
their villages, and most die before other villagers can get them to
medical help. Villagers have
also lost many of their cattle to landmines.


"Many villagers? legs have been blown off from stepping on landmines. I
foraged for food until I dared not forage any more. The last time I went
foraging
with other villagers, a girl?s legs were blown off by a landmine and two
of her sisters were hurt. They are over 20 years old and married. One
did not lose
her leg, but the other did. Two of my grandchildren also lost their
legs. About 12 villagers from Ker Ghaw have been injured, and 3 have
died. Kyaw Per
died, he was about 50 years old. Also Lin Noh, who was about 30 years
old, died this year. The villagers don?t know if it is the Burmese or
the KNLA who
plants the landmines. We don?t follow them so we don?t know. One of the
villagers was shooting squirrels near his house and stepped on a
landmine. Now no
one dares to go on the upper side of the pagoda. They plant them near
the village, by the pagoda and monastery, where the villagers go to take
care of
their cattle. When I went to find bamboo shoots there, one cow stepped
on a mine. Boom!! It blew its front leg off, and it died." - Man aged 60
from
southeastern Pa?an District ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #37)


Villagers from eastern Pa?an District speaking to KHRG now speak of
landmines more than almost any other single topic, which was not the
case 2 or 3 years ago
and is still not the case in most other regions. Landmines are becoming
a central issue in their lives, one which has been sufficient to make
many of them finally
give up and flee their villages. Others are fleeing the increase in many
kinds of forced labour, the inability to pay extortion fees any longer,
and in some villages
(particularly the village of Pah Klu in T?Nay Hsah township) the
constant attempts by SPDC soldiers and officers to rape women. For the
remainder, the SPDC has
added another final straw to make them flee - since August they were
notified that all hill villages in southeastern Pa?an District would be
forced to Army-controlled
sites by the end of 1999, and that anyone still remaining in the
villages would be shot on sight. The villages are now emptying out as
villagers flee into the forests
rather than face forced relocation and Army control.


"I couldn?t stay near my place because they are going to stir up our
place. I heard them say that they are going to drive all the villagers
out to the same
place. They didn?t tell us where or when they will drive us out, but
they said that they would. They will gather and force out all of the
villagers that are
living around Meh Pleh Toh. They will block every path that passes or
goes through Meh Pleh Toh until nothing can move, even food and other
things. I heard
that they will make trouble for people who stay in the mountains, that
especially if they see men they will kill them at once. Our village head
alerted us. If
they see them, they will shoot dead all villagers as far as they can
see." - Man aged 29 who fled his village in T?Nay Hsah township in
August 1999 ("Beyond All
Endurance", Interview #24)

"?the villages like Thay Wah Pu and Wah Klu Pu and others are all going
to be forced down to the lower places, maybe to Ko Ko. Then they will
send their
Army to that place so there will be one Army unit to guard every
village. ? we heard it from the Ko Per Baw secretly. They said that 2
Divisions of Burmese
Army troops will come here. A unit of troops will guard each village.
All the villages: Toh Thu Kee, Thay K?Dtee, Loh Baw, Pah Klu, Tee Wah
Klay, and Wah
Klu Pu they will move to a place near Ko Ko, but we don?t know where
exactly because they did not tell us where. Then they will guard us." -
Man aged 60
from T?Nay Hsah township ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #20)


The exodus took on large proportions beginning in August, involving
several thousand villagers. Most fled to their farmfield huts or into
nearby forests, hoping to
survive by holding out until the November harvest. Some found they could
not last that long because there were too many SPDC and DKBA patrols
always on the
lookout for porters and villagers in hiding, so they fled further into
the hills or toward the Thai border. One villager from T?Nay Hsah
township told KHRG that when
the people of his village were finally harvesting in early November, an
SPDC Column arrived in their fields and they had to flee. The Column
stayed for a week, piled
up all the paddy they had already cut and burned it, then laid landmines
around the fields which had not yet been harvested. After they left, two
villagers stepped on
these mines when they tried to complete their harvest. None of the
others now dare to return to their fields.


"The owners were harvesting it, and when they arrived the owners ran.
Then they went and gathered it [the paddy they had already cut] in one
place and
burned it when they were about to leave. They gathered the paddy from
P---?s hill field as well as some paddy from other villages and some
sticky-rice;
they gathered it from 6 hill fields and 4 flat fields, 10 fields
altogether. ? Then they laid landmines around there so the villagers
wouldn?t dare go back.
On the day when we went to check on things, one of us was wounded by a
landmine. ? That morning he wanted to go and tend his hill field and he
asked me
to go with him and check the path. So I went and was checking [with a
stick] along the way, but the landmines were buried beside the path. He
was
following me, he turned and stepped off the path and a landmine
exploded. I turned and looked and saw him running without one foot, and
I called to him,
?Don?t run!?" - Man aged 33 interviewed in hiding in his home area in
late November 1999 ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #1)


>From mid-August and all through September, several hundred families fled
through the steep Dawna hills, through heavy rains and along washed-out
and
treacherous muddy pathways, to reach the Thai border in hopes of
sanctuary. The first 37 families who tried to reach Beh Klaw refugee
camp were admitted, while
others made it to Huay Kaloke (Wangka) refugee camp. However, at the end
of August the Thai Army refused to allow any more new arrivals to go to
the camps,
telling them that they must go back across the border. For weeks the
refugees and the Thai Army played a cat and mouse game, the refugees
crossing the border
for a few days when the Army wasn?t there only to be ordered back into
Burma as soon as their numbers swelled with new arrivals and the Army
returned. Some
managed to make it to the refugee camps but were not allowed to register
there by Thai authorities, while others disappeared into the illegal
labour market. When
one of the groups had been forced back and was camped on the Burmese
side of the border at Tee Ner Hta in early September, SPDC forces
discovered their
location and shelled them and they scattered in all directions. Now
several hundred displaced people are stranded on the Burma side of the
border at Law Thay Hta,
protected only by some KNLA soldiers and KNLA landmines, most of them
wanting to go to refugee camps but refused entry by the Thai Army. For
its part, the Thai
Army denies that it is refusing them entry, knowing full well that
officials of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
and most international
aid agencies are prohibited from stepping across the border to check.


"The [Thai] police. They came just a few days ago and told us, ?You
can?t stay here anymore and you have to go back and stay there.? They
forced us to
move within one day, so people separated into groups and ran. We stayed
on the bank of the river until our Karen leaders here told us to come
back and
build our huts here, and they took care of us. We don?t have new
arrivals from my village because they have all gone to Beh Klaw
[refugee] camp already.
They dared not stay and face all of the demands and torture, so they
fled here, too. Some villagers still stay there because they are working
on their
paddy fields and can?t leave. But after they finish working more
villagers will flee here?Right now we dare to stay here, but if people
send us to the
refugee camp we will go. If the Burmese come and shoot at us, we?ll have
to run to the other side of the river, and when the dry season arrives
[in
November/December] we dare not stay here because we will be afraid of
the Burmese again." - Man aged 36 interviewed in September 1999 while
camped on
the Burma side of the border after being forced back by Thai authorities
("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #7)


Those who have managed to enter Thailand as well as those stranded on
the Burma side of the border and some who are in hiding near their
villages have all told
KHRG that once the harvest period is over, many more will make for the
border. In other words, starting now. This is also the first part of the
dry season, when
SPDC troops increase their movements and begin major operations, making
it much harder for villagers to remain hiding near their villages. Given
that more people
are likely to try to reach the border, there are grave concerns about
their safety if the Thai Army continues to deny entry to new arrivals.
In addition, two
long-standing camps which were adjacent to the border, Huay Kaloke
(Wangka) and Maw Ker, have been closed and moved to a new site at Umpiem
Mai, much
further inside Thailand. Huay Kaloke was a natural arrival point for
many refugees from southeastern Pa?an District, but now if they cross
the border near there
they would have to risk a journey of 50 kilometres to the north to reach
Beh Klaw or 60 kilometres to the southeast to reach Umpiem Mai, and if
they encounter
Thai soldiers or police anywhere along the way they are arrested as
illegal migrants.


"We didn?t bring anything with us when we fled, just only the clothes we
were wearing. I couldn?t bring other things because I had to carry my 3
year old
son. No one knows what the Burmese will do because if they see people in
the mountains they shoot them dead, and if people stay in the village
they force
them to do ?loh ah pay? [forced labour]. We couldn?t do anything. I
think all of the villagers left the village after I left; there were 17
households left and I
think all have fled to the jungle. ? We had to come during the rainy
season so we had many problems on the way. We got sick and had no
medicine and not
enough food. We slept in the mountains for 5 days and arrived at the
Moei River on the 6th day. We stayed at Tee Ner Hta for one day, then
came here." -
Man aged 40 who fled his village in August and managed to get in to a
refugee camp ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #22)


Since early November, being arrested as an illegal migrant in Thailand
often means summary deportation into the hands of SPDC authorities. This
has already
happened to tens of thousands of illegal workers from Burma in Thailand,
many of whom would fit the international definition of refugees. The
Thai government has
been threatening to begin this campaign for over a year now, but they
seem to have decided the time was politically right after a fringe group
of Burmese exiles
launched an armed attack on the Burmese Embassy in Bangkok on October
1st, holding hostages for 24 hours before negotiating a helicopter ride
to the border and
escaping. The attack severely strained the patience of the Thai
government and population with political Burmese exiles in Thailand,
despite the fact that the act
was denounced by many Burmese pro-democracy groups. Their position, that
of the existing and newly arriving refugees, and that of the illegal
workers, has been
seriously undermined by the Embassy attack, which also gave the SPDC a
perfect opportunity to portray pro-democracy groups as terrorists and
raised doubts
throughout the international community about Burmese political exiles.
All of these results were easily foreseeable, making one Karen National
Union (KNU)
representative at the time put forward the theory that the attack may
even have been arranged by the SPDC itself. According to all available
evidence this was not
the case, however, and the attack was simply a badly thought out, if
thought out at all, act of juvenile machismo by a fringe group trying to
make a name for
themselves. The perpetrators owe their lives and those of their hostages
as well as their minor propaganda victory not to their own planning, but
to the Thai
government?s aversion to turning the incident into a bloodbath.

The mass roundups have now tailed off, but the situation for anyone from
Burma in Thailand is still much more tense than previously. Through all
of this,
international pressure brought to bear on the Thai government has had
little or no effect, while UNHCR, the only agency with a specific
mandate to protect the
refugees, appears to have limited their efforts to meeting with the Thai
authorities and asking them not to deport those who request asylum.
Their advice to real
refugees and political activists being deported has been to tell the
Thai immigration officials who arrest them that they are political or
have a reason to fear
persecution. This, of course, can easily backfire if the Thai officials
have been paid off by SPDC officials to hand over political activists,
or if others among the
deportees decide to act as SPDC informers once across the border.
However, the UNHCR has taken no apparent steps to try to screen even a
tiny portion of those
being deported, waiting instead for such refugees to approach their
office in the Thai border town of Mae Sot. Very few have done so, which
is not surprising given
that the office is in a part of town which has been hardest hit by the
roundups, and has a closed gate with a uniformed Thai security guard who
interrogates all who
try to enter. Several refugees have told KHRG they don?t dare approach
the office for these reasons. None of the other foreign agencies working
with refugees have
security guards, and it is difficult to understand from what or whom
this security guard is supposed to protect the UNHCR officers.
Regardless, it displays an
extreme insensitivity to the concerns of refugees if they fail to see
that very, very few refugees would dare approach an office with a
uniformed Thai security
guard. Or perhaps this is precisely the intent.


"If I go back to my village, I?ll have no rice to eat. My children have
been working in the fields, but since there was no rain we didn?t get
enough rice. My
daughter has two small children, and my daughter-in-law also has two
small children who are still breastfeeding. My daughter-in-law is ill in
the hospital.
When we are cured, we would like to stay here as refugees with all our
children, but we don?t have any money to build a house." - Man aged
50-60 who fled to
Thailand earlier in 1999 ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview #45)


For all of those who have found our material useful, who have supported
our work either materially or in spirit, and all who feel concerned for
the forgotten villagers
of Burma, we would like to forward you our best wishes and hopes for the
coming year and the coming millennium. As the new millennium arrives and
you look
toward your own future, please do not forget the hundreds of thousands
of villagers beginning it by laying awake in fear in their villages,
hungry in the forests, or
far from home and uncertain of their future in the refugee camps.
Hopefully you will not have to read these kinds of reports much longer,
and they can all return
home and live in peace.


"It is not easy to go back. It will be many long years before the
situation gets better. I think it will not change for a while. Some
people say that the
situation will become peaceful, but that will not be easy." - Man aged
30 from northeastern Pa?an District ("Beyond All Endurance", Interview
#43)