"Burma?s people go to the polls on May 27, 1990, in the first election to be held in the country in thirty years. However, human rights violations are so widespread and restrictions on political expression so severe as to render impossible a free and fair election. An Asia Watch mission to Burma and Thailand in April 1990 confirmed that the Burmese military authorities continue to engage in a consistent pattern of gross human rights abuses both in the interior and along the border. In Rangoon and other major cities, political dissidents have been jailed or placed under house arrest, torture of political detainees is widespread, martial law remains in effect throughout most of the country, criticism of the military is banned, and hundreds of thousands have been forcibly relocated to outlying areas lacking basic amenities. In its recent offensive against ethnic minority guerrilla forces on the Thai border, the Burmese army has indiscriminately killed or wounded hundreds of civilians and looted or burned homes and private property. Thousands of civilians have been compelled to serve as porters for the army. As such, they are brutally mistreated and are forced to carry supplies or to serve as human mine-sweepers. Porters have been shot or beaten for trying to escape, and those who become exhausted or ill are routinely left to die..."