Burma Related News - July 9, 2000.

The Sunday Times - July 9, 2000.
Runaways tell of Burmese slavery
Michael Sheridan, Myawadi, Burma

Burmese oppression: a brief history
THEIR eyes still have a vacant, traumatised stare. Their words are full of pain and fear. The tale told by these two shattered young men is a horrible one of murder, beatings and virtual slavery as forced labour for the Burmese army in a brutal, hidden war.

Myo Myo Knynt, 27, and his friend Aung Htan Oo, 18, were able to tell their story because they escaped into the jungle after soldiers killed three of their workmates. They ended up in a refugee camp in Thailand, where they were interviewed last week.

Their testimony, together with that of other fugitives, is further evidence that the Burmese junta and its foreign apologists are lying about the regime's use of forced labour in breach of international law.

Burma is facing new political and diplomatic pressure as a result of an unprecedented vote by the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation (ILO) last month to compel the regime to end forced labour. Rangoon has until November 30 to comply or ILO member states, employers' groups and unions worldwide will be asked to review dealings with Burma and to take measures against any company or individual implicated in forced labour.

The regime, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council, sees it as a critical setback. It denies using forced labour. China, Japan, Singapore and others that either support the junta or advocate quiet engagement with it, failed to block the ILO vote.

As Burmese diplomats and their allies were arguing in Geneva that forced labour was either an ancient tradition or a myth, the two young men were living through its awful reality.

Myo Myo Knynt was made to carry packs of landmines. His shoulders still bear livid scars where the straps bit into his flesh. Aung Htan Oo has bruises and scars from beatings.

The two were taken from jail in Mandalay in late May. One was there for brawling, the other accused of stealing a bicycle. They were told if they worked as porters for the army, they would be set free after a month or two. They reached the town of Pa'an by truck, where they found 450 fellow prisoners all waiting to be taken on operations by the 203rd and 204th battalions against rebels from the Karen minority group in the misty Dawna mountains.

Both men said they got only a handful of rice to eat and there was no medicine. Porters fought over food and some died of malaria or exhaustion.

On June 4 they saw three prisoners, accused of trying to escape, being dragged by soldiers up a slope above the jungle path. "We heard six or seven shots," said Aung Htan Oo, "and they told us the prisoners had been killed."

The two friends agreed they had to try to escape. "We knew that if we stayed we would die," said Myo Myo Knynt. A few days later, they ran away.

Barely educated, they had little concept of the Burmese military's 50-year struggle against Karen insurgents. Eventually, they reached the Mae river, which divides Burma from Thailand.

"We got into the water up to our chests and got across. Then we saw the Karen soldiers," said Myo Myo Knynt. They were welcomed and given food, medical treatment and shelter. It was June 7, one week before the ILO vote.

In a village along the river, seven more porters, also convicts from Mandalay, were still hiding last week in fear of Burmese troops, whose positions could be seen in the distance. All told similar stories of beatings, torture and malnutrition.

Some of the worst suffering is inflicted upon Karen villagers in the area, caught between the army and Karen guerrillas. Two mothers, Mu Tu, 30, and Maw Se Thaw, 20, said they were forced to flee with their babies in the night of June 22 from their village of Tamawpakki after soldiers came to pressgang men to work on a road near the border.

"They shot and killed two people who tried to run away," said Maw Se Thaw. "They stole our animals and took six to 10 men away with them. We were so frightened we had to leave."

Accounts of rape, sexual abuse and looting by soldiers are manifold. Many local people have given detailed statements to the Karen Human Rights Group, testifying that some forced labourers are used as human minesweepers to walk in front of Burmese troops. "One porter stepped on a landmine and they shot him," said Naw Lay Wah, a villager, in a statement.

Others told of conscripted villagers being beaten and stabbed to death after they collapsed from exhaustion. Many have described how the porters are fed methamphetamines to curb their appetites and keep them working - a neat combination of the regime's criminal narcotics business and its institutionalised brutality.

The Karen guerrillas boobytrap paths with a few landmines, but the army is known to seed rural land with thousands of the devices. Myo Myo Knynt was carrying packs of MM1 or MM2 antipersonnel mines, which are made in Burma in factories supplied by China, the regime's key foreign backer.

China has exploited the West's policy of using sanctions to isolate the regime. It has turned Burma into a military ally and a commercial market for its merchants.

In Myawadi, a shabby border town, soldiers drive around in new olive-green trucks from the Lijiang factory in China, and carry Chinese-made weapons and ammunition.

Forced labour is now clearly intrinsic to the regime's control of the country. It keeps the army in the field. It is used to build infrastructure. Thai businesses buy logs felled by forced labourers and any company dealing with Rangoon is likely to be involved, even indirectly, in a system contaminated by this modern form of slavery.

Britain and America remain the strongest proponents of sanctions. While China makes no secret of its policy, Singapore has quietly supplied arms and continues to invest there.

Japan tries to balance its commercial interests with efforts to persuade the military to reform. France is suspected by human rights campaigners of profound ambiguity over projects run by the Total energy company.

For the poor, ill-educated folk of rural Burma, such geopolitics are as remote as the Moon, but their own nightmare is a daily reality.

"If I have to look back on my life, this was the very worst time," said Naw Ther Paw, a Karen villager pressed into labour. "My heart was gone."

Burmese oppression: a brief history

1947 National hero Aung San, father of Aung San Suu Kyi, assassinated.

1948 Independence from Britain. Country beset by wars of secession by Karen and Shan minorities.

1962 Military coup led by General Ne Win. Burma closed to outside world.

1987 Students demonstrate.

1988 Protesters massacred, generals seize power.

1990 Aung San Suu Kyi wins election landslide. Army refuses to cede power.

1999 Michael Aris, British husband of Aung San Suu Kyi, dies of cancer, denied a visa to see his wife for the last time.

2000 Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest. Ne Win, 90, still dominates political life.