KHRG Report March 16, 1996

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Date: Mon, 18 Mar 1996 08:42:11 -0800 (PST)


		 ROAD CONSTRUCTION IN PA'AN DISTRICT

	An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
		 March 16, 1996     /     KHRG #96-12


SLORC has been initiating more and more projects nationwide to build 
hundreds of roads with forced labour, primarily with the idea that more 
roads mean better military access to the countryside, which in turn means 
more effective military control over the population.  Though in some cases 
they receive foreign money to build these roads, they prefer to keep the 
money and order out thousands of villagers to do forced labour for 
nothing.  The same villagers are also forced to pay "fees" for the road 
construction as though it is for their benefit.  Heavy machinery is very 
rarely used; SLORC prefers to use the manual labour of thousands of 
villagers.

Right now dozens of new roads are being built under these conditions in 
Karen State, while existing roads are being upgraded to all-season roads 
wide enough to transport heavy military equipment into border areas.  In 
the north, the 100-km. Papun-Bilin car road is reportedly being gravelled 
and tarred by villagers who have been driven into labour camps, and 
similar work is occurring on the 100-km. road from Thanbyuzayat to 
Three Pagodas Pass in the south.  In Pa'an District of central Karen State, 
new networks of roads "wide enough for two military trucks side by side" 
are being built with forced labour to give the military better access to 
areas near Kawmoora where Karen forces still operate.  Work started in 
December 1995 to build a paved road from Pa'an eastward to Pain Kyone, 
then southward to Bee T'Ka, most likely intended to continue 
southeastward to Nabu and Kawkareik and/or southward to Kyone Doh, 
for a total length of 60-100 km.  Since January, another paved road is 
being built southward from Pa'an about 50 km. to Shwe Taw, possibly 
intended to continue to Moulmein or Mudon.  Villagers have heard that 
SLORC may be receiving foreign money for this road (most likely from the 
Japanese government).

The accounts below give information gathered from villagers in the area 
regarding construction of the Pa'an - Shwe Taw and Pa'an - Bee T'Ka 
roads.  The name of the villager interviewed has been changed, and some 
other details have been omitted to protect the villagers concerned.
_____________________________________________________________________________

NAME:    "Saw Tamla Htoo"    SEX: M    AGE: 63     Karen Buddhist farmer
ADDRESS: xxxx village, Pa'an Township              INTERVIEWED: Feb/96

The Pa'an to Shwe Taw road construction started in January 1996.  It is 
about 35 miles long, a two hour trip by car.  Maybe this road is going to go 
to Moulmein.  For construction they are only using the villagers who live 
around the area.  The Ma Wa Ta [Township LORC] and Ya Wa Ta 
[Village LORC] arrange the villagers.  On the road they have policemen as 
guards, not soldiers.  The policemen do not beat us.

The embankment is 4 1/2 feet high and the width has to be wide enough for 
4 cars side by side [i.e. wide enough for 2-lane traffic of heavy military 
equipment].  The villagers have to dig the ground and carry it to make the 
embankment.  Each family in the whole area has to send one person for 
construction labour.  The authorities do not set the working hours, they just 
assign the amount of embankment that must be done each day; for each day 
it is 10 feet by 10 feet by 4 1/2 feet high.  I left on February 20th, but I 
think this road construction will take months.  They said the road will be 
tarred, and that the villagers will have to pay money for crushing and laying 
gravel.

Thousands of villagers have to work there - old people as old as me, and 
women and children, because each family must send one person, no matter 
who, to the work site.  People from some villages which are far from the 
construction have to carry their food and supplies and sleep along the road.  
There are no holidays.  Villagers who cannot go for the work have to hire 
another person to go by paying them 100 Kyats per day, or they must give 
100 Kyats per day to the operators of the backhoes from the construction 
department.  There are 3 backhoes along the road.

The road goes along plains and valleys, not in the hills, so some villagers 
have lost their fields, gardens, houses and rice paddies for the road.  The 
villages which have suffered the most are Kaw Palaung, Mu Ka Wah, Taw 
Gyi, Wah Su and K'Taw Meh.  I heard that this road is connected to the 
Asia Highway, and that 4 countries are supporting the project.  [This is 
unconfirmed; however, much of the aid money recently awarded to 
SLORC by the Japanese government was identified as being for 
"development" projects in Karen State, which certainly includes forced-
labour road projects for expanded SLORC military access to the region.]
_____________________________________________________________________________

[The following report was written by an independent human rights monitor 
after interviewing villagers who had fled other road construction 
in the area, with some clarifications added by KHRG.]

The SLORC is currently ordering people to construct roads which are 
intended to connect Pa'an to Bee T'Ka via Pain Kyone (Karen name Dta 
Greh), Kyeh Toe Ray, and Ye Bu.  The ultimate aim is apparently to 
continue the road to Kawkareik to the southeast and Kyone Doh to the 
south. Roads are also being constructed linking local villages to these 
roads.

Since December 1995 SLORC has been demanding one person per household in the 
area to do road construction labour continuously, regardless of the number of 
people in the household.  People also continue to be taken as military 
porters, on average 5 to 10 people per village at all times (on a rotating 
basis).  The roads are all being built to a specification 
that they must accomodate "two Army trucks side by side".  Earth 
embankments must be built and compacted for these roads.  On hillsides or 
ridges the embankment is to be only one foot high, but across fields and 
plains it is being built up to 7 feet high, and wide drainage channels must 
also be dug along both sides in order to minimize the impact of monsoon 
flooding.  These drainage channels must be waist deep in many places.  In 
particular, between Pa'an and Pain Kyone a great deal of work is required 
to protect the road from flooding.  In some areas where the embankment 
has already been finished, villagers have been ordered to go to dry riverbeds 
to dig out rock and gravel, load it onto oxcarts and take it to lay the road 
surface.  The villagers feel that SLORC will push the labour very hard in 
order to surface as much of the road as possible with gravel before rainy 
season.

According to a village source, the Battalions active around Pain Kyone are 
Light Infantry Battalions 338 and 339 and Infantry Battalion 28.  Villagers 
are demanded from villages close to the road routes as well as villages 
further away.  Usually, the military columns send the demands as written 
orders to village elders, who must then send the specified number of 
villagers or face possible arrest and torture.  Work assignments are given to 
villages requiring 50 feet of embankment to be completed every 3 days.  If 
the work is not finished on time, the village is fined 3,000 Kyat for each 50 
feet of embankment not done.  Generally every household has to send one 
person, and if no one from a family can go then they must give enough 
money to the village elders so that someone else can be hired to go in their 
place.  A villager from near Pain Kyone who had gone for one 3-day shift 
said that as the end of the third day approached his village had not yet 
finished their assigned length of embankment, so they had to continue 
working well after nightfall because they were afraid that if the work were 
inspected the next day they would have to pay a heavy penalty.

Villagers are also forced to go to road construction sites far from their 
villages, closer to Pa'an or Bee T'Ka, up to a day's walk from their homes.  
No transport is ever arranged for them, and in these cases people must take 
all their food and utensils for a standard 10-day work period (the 10 days 
does not include travel time to and from the site).  One person per 
household is called for this work, and those who cannot go must pay 150 
Kyat for each day missed, either to the military or to the village elders 
supervising at the worksite.  One villager said that as his village has 300 
houses, they generally have to send about 300 people and they are sometimes 
joined at the worksite by one or two hundred others from other villages.  
A village elder must lead the group to a designated gathering point or 
military officer, as specified in the written order.  On the southern parts 
of the road most of the work is being supervised by village heads under 
order of the military, but further north (closer to Pa'an), not only is the 
work much harder because of high embankments and drainage ditches, but 
all work is conducted under close watch by armed soldiers.  Because of this 
people prefer to pay money rather than go to this part of the road if 
possible.  Many people in the villages are not able to speak Burmese very 
well and are afraid they will be abused by the soldiers if they cannot 
understand or obey orders quickly and efficiently [throughout Karen areas 
many villagers are beaten and even killed because of this].

Villagers in the area have no idea of the schedule for overall completion of 
this work.  Between Pain Kyone and Bee T'Ka, most of the route has been 
cleared but much of the hard labour building the embankment and digging 
drainage ditches remains to be done.  All of this is done by the manual 
labour of villagers, not by machines.  The military has stated very clearly 
that if there are any problems with the road when it is inspected or used, 
the villagers will be called out to rebuild it; the villagers interviewed 
were unaware whether the Army also threatened to punish the elders in this 
case.  [When other forced labour projects collapse after completion, villages 
are often punished with heavy fines, torture of elders, and being forced to 
redo the work under more brutal conditions than previously; SLORC constantly 
has problems with its roads and railway lines collapsing in the first rains, 
due to incompetent engineering and the use of unwilling forced labour.]   
Some villagers are now fleeing the area and trying to reach the refugee 
camps in Thailand because of the forced labour and the difficulty it is 
causing in trying to support their families in the area.

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