KHRG Commentary #95-C3

[smith@xxxxxxxxxx]

		    KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP
			   COMMENTARY
	      July 22, 1995     /     KHRG #95-C3

[Some names in this report have been replaced by xxxx or yyyy for
Internet distribution to protect villages from SLORC retaliation.]

"If you don't come, when the Column arrives in your village we
will crush your village into many many pieces.  But I'm not telling
you to come.  That is all."
	-  SLORC written order to a village elder near Thanbyuzayat

"In the afternoon we set out for xxxx.  We had to carry the
soldiers' rucksacks but we hadn't eaten any food, so we were very
tired because they were very heavy.  All the way from this place
near yyyy the soldiers ordered us to run, always run, not walk,
until we reached xxxx, and running it took about 2 hours.
 I saw one woman who had a mouth ulcer, and after we started our
journey it broke and fluid was running out of her mouth and she
was crying.  They called to us and we had to hurry as much as
possible, even if there were many bushes and obstacles, even if
we didn't have slippers on our feet.  Really, this wasn't a pleasant
scene for us, because all we could see was people getting beaten,
and we felt terrible inside.  The headwoman [who had been badly
tortured] couldn't walk, and two people at a time took turns carrying
her.  We'd had no food, and we'd all been beaten."  
	-  Karen woman from Kawkareik area describing part of SLORC's 
	   retaliation because 2 of their soldiers had deserted; 
	   the villagers had already been interrogated under torture 
	   and were also fined 140,000 Kyat later
______________________________________________________________________

Everyone in the world who is interested in Burma, and even many
people who aren't, are now talking about the release of Aung San
Suu Kyi.  But for most of the 40 million rural villagers in Burma,
that is all very far away and there are more immediate and important
issues to think about - like survival until next week.  In Burman
areas villagers are starving under the weight of SLORC demands
for extortion money.  Shan villagers are under increasingly heavy
attack by a huge SLORC military force which is burning their villages
and taking them as porters (with the tacit consent of the international
community, which seems to consider all men, women and children
in Shan State villages to be heroin-trafficking fiends).  SLORC
has broken its ceasefire with the Karenni National Progressive
Party by taking thousands of villagers as porters and sending
several Battalions to invade areas ceded to the Karenni in the
ceasefire deal just 2 months ago.  Several battalions of SLORC
troops have resumed their attacks on Karen areas in Mergui-Tavoy
District's Kaser Doh Township, forcing entire villages to flee.
 Further north in Papun District, SLORC troops have been marauding
villages together with DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army) units,
looting, burning, and terrorizing villagers into relocation camps.
 Refugees spill across the border into Thailand, several thousand
from Karenni, several thousand more try from Shan State but are
blocked by Thai weaponry, and close to a thousand from Papun District,
saying that there are a few thousand more trying to come, hiding
and starving in the jungle, blockaded by walls of SLORC troops.
 In Rangoon, one woman walks out of her house into the street.
 Which is the true reality of Burma?
______________________________________________________________________________
"If anything happens, they summon the elders and abuse and curse
them.  Depending on their mood, they sometimes immerse the elders
in water ... Every day they ask if we have any news to report.
 If we say there is no news but they say there is, then if they
happen to be drunk they beat us and punish us."     
			 -  Karen villager in Nyaunglebin District
______________________________________________________________________________                     

Any villager knows that SLORC has not improved in the least, and
they have been telling us just that.  Our most recent reports
focus mainly on northern and central Karen areas, where SLORC

has been working together with the DKBA.  In Kawkareik Township
of central Karen State (see "SLORC/ DKBA Activities in Kawkareik
Township", #95-23, 10/7/95), SLORC has even been handing over
some degree of local village administration to the DKBA.  However,
this seems to be designed more for appearances than a reflection
of any change in SLORC, whose troops remain in full force very
close to all such villages.  For the villagers, it has only meant
more suffering, forced to bow to two masters instead of one. 
SLORC demands money, DKBA demands money; SLORC loots, DKBA loots;
SLORC threatens, DKBA threatens; SLORC tortures, DKBA tortures;
SLORC kills.  DKBA officers bring monks to the village to convince
the villagers to join - the monks are armed.  Some of them don't
even speak Karen, and the villagers believe they are Burmese officers
in disguise.  Now Christian families in the area, especially if
they are close or distant relatives of KNLA soldiers (as many
are) are being systematically robbed and terrorized by the DKBA
troops.  At least SLORC always had their camp away from the village,
so you could pray for them to leave.  DKBA never leaves.  In some
villages, DKBA collects money or livestock for SLORC, or helps
arrange forced porters.  In some villages, SLORC does the killing
for DKBA.
______________________________________________________________________________
"Pa Nwee spoke at a public meeting.  He said that everything about
Ko Per Baw is good and nothing is bad, therefore we should join
or else they would burn down our houses, our school and our church!"
  -  Karen Christian woman who fled DKBA occupation in Kawkareik area

"The abbot said 'I will give it [petrol] to you, and you can burn
the church down, and then you can also burn my monastery down.
 Because we [Buddhists and Christians] in this village have lived
together since long ago and we live together peacefully, understand
each other and drink the same water from the river.  To burn down
the church and not the monastery would be unfair.'  But the Ko
Per Baw still wanted to do it, so the abbot said 'If you do that,
then I will leave here and go to the town to tell everyone about
everything you did in our village.'"
   -  villager from Kawkareik area on how the Buddhist abbot saved
      the village church from the DKBA
______________________________________________________________________________

Further north in Papun District, the SLORC and DKBA have a different
approach (see "SLORC/ DKBA Activities: Northern Karen Districts",
#95-24, 18/7/95).  They are ordering dozens of villages to move,
some immediately, some at the end of rainy season.  DKBA is ordering
them to move to its headquarters at Khaw Taw Pu (in Burmese, Myaing
Gyi Ngu) so that it can enlarge its civilian support base.  SLORC
is ordering them to move to relocation camps outside its Army
bases surrounding Papun, or to larger villages under SLORC control.
 In some cases, the villagers are told they will then be moved
to Khaw Taw Pu.  SLORC's goal appears to be clearing out the civilian
population between Papun and the Thai border, as part of its Four
Cuts program to cut links between civilians and Karen resistance
forces and also to create a 40-km. wide military-only free-fire
"killing zone" which would block the embarrassing flow of refugees
escaping the country.

For these hill villagers, going to Khaw Taw Pu would mean moving
several days' walk southward out of the hills, onto the plains
where there is no available land.  They know that in Khaw Taw
Pu their sons would be conscripted into the DKBA and they would
most likely be forced to do porter duty for SLORC.  On the other
hand, going to a SLORC relocation camp would only mean perpetual
forced labour and probably eventual starvation.  So the villagers
are refusing to go.  The penalty, from either SLORC or DKBA, is
a burned village, and possible torture or death.  Some villages

have already been burned, so now villagers everywhere have been
fleeing into hiding in the forest, even in mid-rainy season. 
Some 700 or more have made it to the Thai border to become refugees.
 Thousands more want to get there, but are blocked by SLORC troops
or are waiting for the end of rainy season.
______________________________________________________________________________
"The situation of the villagers in my interviewing area is very
critical and serious. Most of them are without rice and they don't
have adequate shelter. Children are malnourished and have no medical
care."           -  Karen human rights monitor in Papun District

"For now we will share what we have.  We have very little but
we can share what we have between us.  If we are rich, we will
be rich together.  While we are poor, we will be poor together."
	  -  village elder from Papun District, after SLORC troops
	     burned down his village in late May 1995
______________________________________________________________________________

At the same time, however, there are ever-increasing signs of
problems between SLORC and the DKBA.  In Papun District the two
groups are often issuing contradictory orders to villages, and
in many cases SLORC has directly and deliberately countermanded
DKBA orders.  The villagers are caught in the middle and have
to flee, fearing retaliation from one side if they do and the
other side if they don't.  To the west in Thaton District, SLORC
commanders have reportedly issued orders to their units not to
operate or camp together with DKBA forces other than taking a
few DKBA soldiers as guides and intelligence operatives.  Instead,
SLORC Battalions are sending out several patrols to "shadow" every
DKBA patrol which moves.  The reasoning given is that DKBA is
proving too difficult to control, and, ironically, that as long
as SLORC troops move together with DKBA the villagers will blame
everything the DKBA does on the SLORC.  KNLA officers in the area
believe that the SLORC is pushing the DKBA to issue orders which
SLORC later countermands, all in order to turn the civilians against
the DKBA.  In Khaw Taw Pu, SLORC has cut the rations provided
to families to 4 pyi of rice per person per month, less than half
what is needed to survive.  DKBA soldiers' salaries have been
slashed, and SLORC no longer provides rations to the DKBA in Khaw
Taw Pu - instead it confiscates these rations from villages in
the area, and makes sure they know where their rice is going.
 Conditions at Khaw Taw Pu are worsening - bamboo is scarce and
people cannot build houses; medicine is nonexistent, and children
are dying.  Many families are trying to leave.

In Khaw Taw Pu, DKBA chairman monk U Thuzana has reportedly been
having doubts about the way things have gone and has told his
troops that SLORC is still their enemy, to look on their presence
among SLORC as an "opportunity" and to keep the "fishing-hook"
(the bitter memories) inside them.  It is unlikely that the SLORC
would commence open warfare against the DKBA, unless the DKBA
starts it.  More likely possibilities are that the SLORC either
want the DKBA to die out into a token, powerless force now that
it has served its main purpose, or that they want to maintain
DKBA as a force but only if they can have virtually full control
over it.  This would require a very serious purge of the DKBA's
"less cooperative" members, in other words those who have political
ideas about Karen autonomy, those who are interested in more than
just getting rich from looting.  There are signs that this purge
may already be happening.  There are many reports claiming that
the DKBA monkhood, especially in Khaw Taw Pu, is heavily infiltrated
with SLORC officers dressed as monks.  There are already many
disappearances of DKBA personnel in Khaw Taw Pu, as well as shootouts
between DKBA members and SLORC which on the surface appear to
be personal quarrels.  In Kawkareik area, there have been several
killings of DKBA by SLORC recently, and in each case the SLORC

troops cover them with a weak excuse such as "We mistook him for
a KNLA soldier".  Pa Nwee, one of the main DKBA leaders in Kawkareik
Township who was viewed as a moderate by the villagers, was called
to a meeting at a nearby SLORC base in mid-June and never came
back, although other DKBA members went to search for him.  Meanwhile
one of his subordinates, Pa Tha Da, who only appeared to be interested
in looting and abusing villagers, was promoted from 2nd Lieutenant
to Captain by SLORC, given a Burmese name, and transferred.
______________________________________________________________________________
"In my opinion, SLORC is trying to destroy the DKBA. ... Now they
can survive because SLORC can use them.  If SLORC cannot use them
anymore, they'll be finished."
	-  KNLA officer commenting on current SLORC / DKBA relations

"U Thuzana told his armed force, 'Enemies are enemies.  SLORC
are not your people.  You have been fighting them but now you
are staying among them.  It is a good opportunity for you - keep
the fishing-hook inside you'."     
		  -  information from a resident of Khaw Taw Pu, 
		     where the DKBA has its headquarters; 
		     U Thuzana is chairman of DKBO/DKBA
______________________________________________________________________________

The villagers are caught in the middle of all of this, and not
only are they suffering horribly under the looting, extortion,
torture, killings, and forced labour, but they are increasingly
confused by the situation and feel psychologically and spiritually
broken.  Many are still trying to escape to Thailand, but SLORC
and DKBA are actively trying to block people from reaching the
border.  Even those who finally make it face a new surprise: the
Thai National Security Council and the Thai Army, having declared
that the situation has "returned to normal" in the areas the refugees
have fled, have now said that they are preparing to commence forced
repatriation of all Karen refugees in January 1996, pending agreement
of the SLORC.  They have made clear that no cross-border aid to
the refugees will be allowed from Thailand once they have been
pushed across the border, and that any agency wishing to help
them should go through Rangoon.  They are also cutting off cross-border
aid to the Mon refugees whom they forcibly repatriated to Halockhani
in September 1994 - aid which they promised as a condition of
the repatriation.  Agencies wishing to help the Mon are also being
told to go through Rangoon.  At the same time, SLORC has clamped
down against independent aid agencies trying to operate in Rangoon.
 The International Committee of the Red Cross is withdrawing from
Burma, citing SLORC's refusal to keep its promise to allow ICRC
access to prisons.  Foreign Non-Government Organizations (NGOs)
which had agreements with SLORC to commence programs in Karenni,
Shan and other areas have now found those agreements cancelled,
or put into limbo while they wait month after month for SLORC
to sign the promised Memorandum of Understanding.  Even agencies
which do not insist on strict monitoring conditions are now being
blackballed by SLORC.  If the Thais forcibly repatriate the Karen,
no aid will be allowed to reach them from either side.  Instead,
they will most likely be sent directly to SLORC labour camps.
 This must be stopped at all costs.

However, a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees
office in Bangkok recently stated that the UNHCR will most likely
cooperate with any Thai forced repatriation.  The UNHCR's logic
is that this act of refoulement is inevitable anyway, so they
might as well cooperate to see if they can make "a bad situation
a little better, like in Bangladesh".  In Bangladesh, according
to reports by independent NGOs, the UNHCR's role has been to lecture
and coerce the refugees into returning, block information from
reaching them, ignore all their appeals, and report to the rest
of the world that the situation is good.  The UNHCR's final decision
on what to do in the event of forced repatriation of Karen refugees
must come from their headquarters in Geneva.  They should be made

aware that the Karen refugees are more aware of their rights than
the Rohingyas in Bangladesh, and that should they try to force
them to Burma they may well have a fight on their hands.
______________________________________________________________________________
"Dare we go back?  If the SLORC and DKBA over there don't disappear,
can we dare go back?"
	 -  Karen woman who recently fled Papun District and became
	    a refugee in Thailand after DKBA and SLORC burned her 
	    village, when asked her opinion about Thai plans to 
	    repatriate refugees
______________________________________________________________________________

As the situation continues to worsen throughout the country, the
hijackers who run Burma have released one of their 45 million
hostages from her house, if not from their control.  Usually once
hijackers release their hostages they are simply carted off to
prison, but instead SLORC is actually being commended and rewarded
from some quarters.  It is true that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's release
is a positive step, but a miniscule one at best.  As she herself
said, "I have been released.  Nothing else has changed."  However,
some things are likely to change - for the worse.  SLORC's silence
since her release has been frightening and ominous, and is reminiscent
of the period from August to September 1988 - when Burmese troops
suddenly disappeared from city streets and the regime went quiet,
only to wait for opposition leaders to come out into the open
so they could be picked off and mowed down when the Army suddenly
hit the streets again with redoubled fury in September.  This
time, SLORC will probably wait for the international media to
get bored and go home first, for economic sanctions bills to die
and for aid money to begin flowing in.  Then they can arrest or
kill anyone they like, so long as they don't touch Suu Kyi herself,
and it will probably never be reported.  But beyond that, it must
be remembered that whenever SLORC makes the tiniest concession
it feels entitled to worsen all of its other forms of repression.
 The day after Suu Kyi was released, SLORC began new and fiercer
attacks against the Karenni and the Karen.  As aid and trade pick
up, so will SLORC's "development projects" - meaning more land
confiscation, forced labour, beatings, starvation and death for
rural villagers.  Though Aung San Suu Kyi may be "free", she is
not free to do anything about that, and under the international
veil of her "freedom" SLORC is almost certain to get away with
it.  The SLORC may have released Aung San Suu Kyi, but how many
people will it enslave, torture and murder as its price for her
release?
______________________________________________________________________________
"The people there are too tired to run away any more, so they
made agreements with the SLORC that if they no longer run away
and they give the SLORC everything they want and nothing to the
KNLA, then the SLORC soldiers will no longer shoot them ..."
	- teacher from Nyaunglebin District on how some villages
	  have made their own 'peace' with SLORC
______________________________________________________________________________

Most of the statements in the wake of Suu Kyi's release have fortunately
made it clear that this is not an end by any means, but only a
beginning.  Governments, activists and Suu Kyi herself have reminded
the world that human rights abuses continue, and that these include
the continued detention of many of Suu Kyi's colleagues, and ... ?
The problem is, that in almost all of the statements there
is no "and ..."  Whatever happened to the rural villagers who
make up at least 90% of Burma's population?  The villagers, both
Burman and non-Burman, who continue to suffer far worse abuses
then their urban counterparts?  The villagers who often speak
nostalgically of the "good old days" before the mid-1970's, when
if they spoke out against the regime they only had to go to prison?
 But a prison term is too much to hope for in the minds of Burma's

rural villagers these days.  If they speak out against the regime,
they know full well that there is one penalty awaiting them -
death.  The only question is whether it will be a slit throat,
a plastic bag over the head, being beaten to death with rifle
butts, burned over a slow fire, or thrown in the river with your
hands tied.  A simple bullet is usually out of the question, and
the word "trial" is something most people have never heard of.
 KHRG is only one of several groups which have been trying to
help wake up the people of the world to the plight of Burma's
rural villagers, and to arm overseas activists with evidence that
there is more to human rights issues in Burma than #56 University
Avenue and Insein Prison.  The statements in the wake of Suu Kyi's
release make us wonder if our message is getting through.  For
example, several times this year our reports have mentioned Maung
Kyaw Pu and Saw Tah Kee, two Karen villagers who were arrested
for no reason and were being held, almost certainly under torture,
at a camp of SLORC's #9 Light Infantry Battalion.  Maung Kyaw
Pu is 55 and has gastritis, and Saw Tah Kee, 30, is physically
handicapped.  They are refugees and have never done anything political.
 They are Prisoners of Conscience, but it is unlikely that they
will ever get international attention.  If they had been Burmese
students arrested for unfurling a banner in Rangoon, international
activists and human rights groups would immediately jump on their
case, but they are not.  Amnesty International reasoned that they
would be safer if their case remained unpublicized.  If there
is a difference between these two refugees and the students in
Rangoon, it is that these two have never even done anything against
SLORC - yet while the students face prison terms, these two men
face summary execution.  In fact, their families now believe they
have been executed.  SLORC will probably never have to answer
for it because it will never be reported in the media and they
will never be confronted with it.  So now it remains our duty
to explain to a wife and a mother who told us their stories why
we simply didn't do enough to save a husband and a son.
______________________________________________________________________________
"In Kawkareik, when they need porters the militia surrounds the
slum area.  Then they arrest the poor.  They never arrest the
rich.  The authorities just go to the rich and demand money, about
2,000 Kyat.  The rich man will never be a porter.  But the poor
and the jobless like us are always afraid of them."
	     - escaped porter, a Muslim day labourer from Kawkareik
______________________________________________________________________________

SLORC benefits from the international focus on the urban human
rights situation alone.  They have the cities under virtually
complete control, so it is easy for them to take measures like
lifting curfews, pulling some soldiers off the streets, or paying
labourers.  None of these things happen in rural areas, but nobody
goes there to check.  These days the SLORC takes far fewer porters
from urban areas - instead they take more from rural areas.  Even
the increased economic prosperity of certain classes of people
in the cities and the urban beautification and "development" projects
are largely being financed with money extorted every week from
rural villages nationwide, then sent in by soldiers to their families
in the cities or to the SLORC's holding corporations by military
officers.  The amount of money stolen from the villages and sent
to the cities can only be guessed at, but it is certainly well
into the millions of Kyat every month.  Of course, for the urban
majority most conditions continue to worsen.  But it is important
for people to start realizing that not only is the rural situation
worsening much faster than the urban situation, but that even
the SLORC's small "concessions" to people in the urban areas are
being carried out at the expense, both financial and in terms
of repression, of the rural people.  And as long as the world
continues to cling to her every word, the one person who most
urgently needs to be aware of this is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
______________________________________________________________________________

"Come in person and pay month 7/94 for July.  Mr. xxxx, come and
pay month 8/94 for August.  You need to pay month 9/94 for September.
 The Army Column is now demanding month 10/94 for October.  You
are one month overdue.  Come quickly and pay.  Quickly prepare
yourself and come."
	     -  typical SLORC written order demanding extortion money,
		Thanbyuzayat area, southern Karen State

"Now the people who gather food from the hills are forbidden to
go there by the SLORC soldiers, so they can't get enough to live.
 Also this year there was a flood and all the paddy was killed.
 So it is not easy to survive.  Moreover, every week 6 villagers
have to go to do sentry duty.  If they can't go they have to go
and pay 300 Kyats to Major Kyaw Kyaw at LIB #351.  Now they are
also taking porters by force.  If you can't go you have to pay
them 2,000 Kyats.  If you can't pay, you have to go as a porter,
and when you return 3 to 5 months later you suffer from diseases.
 Among those who return to the village some are crippled.  Some
die from exhaustion, and some have lost their legs.  Two people
from the village lost their legs this way, and the rest who come
back are too feeble to live normal lives anymore."   
   -  Karen villager describing rural life in Nyaunglebin District

"If only we can be free of this bad regime.  In the future we
want to live like our ancestors, our families together with our
whole village - we want to be able to work our fields, free in
our hearts and in our bodies.  This is my longing and my hope."
			  - Karen villager, Nyaunglebin District
______________________________________________________________________________

			   - [end report] -