KHRG: The Situation of Children in

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Date: Tue, 21 May 1996 08:03:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: KHRG: The Situation of Children in Burma

THE SITUATION OF CHILDREN IN BURMA

Summary by the Karen Human Rights Group
May 1, 1996

[This report was prepared as a submission to the UN Committee which is 
reviewing SLORC's observance of the Convention on Rights of the Child, 
which SLORC ratified in 1991.  Under the terms of the Convention,  
SLORC was required to submit a report to the Committee in 1993, but did 
not do so until September 1995.  Their case comes before the Committee 
in Oct. 1996 or Jan. 1997.  This report was submitted together with a 140-
page Annex of excerpts from KHRG reports relating to children.  It is 
reproduced here for general use.]

This summary is intended for consideration by the United Nations 
Committee on the Rights of the Child.  It has been prepared partly in 
response to the report filed by the State Law & Order Restoration Council 
(SLORC), Burma's ruling military junta.  It does not contain a paragraph-
by-paragraph analysis of SLORC's report, but instead attempts to 
summarize some of the worst problems facing Burma's children today and 
point out some of the most glaring fallacies in the SLORC report.  All of 
the observations and quotations included here are taken from our 4 years of 
living among and interviewing villagers, refugees and the internally 
displaced.

In Burma the Tatmadaw (Army) exercises absolute power of life and death 
over every civilian, including children.  Soldiers act with complete impunity, 
particularly in rural areas, and are not answerable to any laws which exist 
on paper in Rangoon.  Children are often shot on sight in free-fire zones, 
tortured or executed as "suspected rebels", used for forced labour, forcibly 
conscripted into the Army and otherwise subject to direct abuse.  They also 
suffer from the destruction of the village environment and the economy 
under SLORC policies, which are leading to widespread malnutrition and 
the death of children, the lack of educational opportunities, and other 
factors which rob them of a childhood.


Forced Labour

The most prevalent form of human rights abuse in Burma today is forced 
labour, including military forced labour (such as portering military supplies, 
standing sentry, building and maintaining Army camps, and going as human 
minesweepers), infrastructure forced labour (building and maintaining 
military supply roads, railways, hydro dams, etc.), forced labour growing 
cash crops and logging for the military, and many other kinds of labour.  
There is a common misconception that portering and other military forced 
labour only occurs in conflict areas, but in reality portering happens in 
rural areas nationwide wherever there are no roads, and military camp labour 
occurs everywhere, as SLORC continues to send more battalions into every 
part of the country to control the population.

Children are used for many kinds of forced labour by the Army.  Usually as 
soon as a child is large enough to carry a basket or break a rock, he or she 
must go for labour with the adults.  The youngest children taken for road 
and railway building are usually aged 8 or 10, while the youngest taken for 
heavy portering duties are usually 12-year-old boys and 14-year-old girls.  
As one 17-year-old girl recently told us, "I've had to go since 5 years ago, 
when I was 12 years old.  We had to go anytime they ordered, because if 
we didn't they would come and catch us.  As I grew older they noticed, so 
they gave me heavier and heavier loads.  I've carried weapons, bullets, 5 big 
shells...".  Conditions for porters are brutal, including forced marches over 
mountains with heavy loads, given only handfuls of rice per day or forced 
to bring their own food, being beaten for going too slowly and left to die if 
they get sick or weak.  The smaller children are generally given lighter 
loads, but they are still sometimes beaten and they are also sent in front of 
the military column with the others as human minesweepers and shields.  In 
one typical case in January 1995, Naw Sah Mu, a 15-year-old girl from 
Papun District in Karen State, stepped on a landmine while portering and 
had her right leg blown off, while her 16-year-old girlfriend Zaw Zaw Oo 
was hit in the face by the shrapnel and blinded.  Many children die after 
they get back home from diseases contracted while portering combined with 
exhaustion.

SLORC battalions generally prefer male porters because they can carry 
heavier loads, but some battalions deliberately demand or capture women 
porters in order to rape them at night.  SLORC soldiers generally select 
young unmarried girls under 18 for rape.  We have interviewed 15-year-old 
girls who have been taken as porters, forced to carry 15-20 kg. loads all day 
and then raped at gunpoint by one or more soldiers every night for a whole 
month.  On returning home, some discover they are pregnant and attempt 
to abort using primitive methods, sometimes dying in the process.  The girls 
fear that if the village learns that she has been raped, no one will want to 
marry her.

Women and men with small infants also have to go as porters.  In some 
cases, a woman can be seen carrying a baby on her chest and a heavy load 
of mortar shells on her back.  In other cases, the soldiers order her to 
leave the infant behind in the village, where she must hope the other 
villagers will take care of it.  Many of these infants are still 
breastfeeding.

Women with infants must also go for rotating shifts (usually 3 to 7 days) 
building and maintaining Army camps, cooking, cleaning and doing errands 
for the soldiers, and standing sentry.  These labour assignments are rotated 
by family, so if a family's turn comes and there are no able-bodied adults, a 
child must go.  Young girls who go are often raped by soldiers at the camp.  
In conflict areas, able-bodied men are often afraid to go because the soldiers 
often accuse able-bodied men of being rebels and torture or execute them, 
so a woman or child is sent instead.  Along military supply roads in conflict 
areas, women and children are often ordered out every morning to sweep 
the road to expose any vehicle landmines.  Sometimes the soldiers will then 
force a large number of children to climb on board an Army truck or 
bullock cart and pass slowly along the road (the soldiers know that the 
villagers support opposition groups, so they hope that the villagers will then 
tell the opposition not to lay any mines in fear for their children).

Forced labour on roads, railways and other infrastructure is becoming ever 
more prevalent as SLORC pushes its "development" agenda.  On these 
projects, SLORC usually sends written orders to villages demanding a quota 
of one or more labourers per household for shifts of one or two weeks; 
usually a family's turn will occur once per month on each project in their 
area (this is in addition to all other forced labour as porters and at army 
camps).  They receive no pay and have to take all their own food and tools.  
Children often go because their parents must stay home to work the fields 
and get food for the family.  No excuses are accepted; even if the parents 
are sick or if the household consists of a grandmother caring for her 
orphaned grandchild, someone must go or a replacement must be hired.  
On many projects, the Army assigns each village or family a specific work 
quota each time rather than a time period, so parents take along their 
children in order to finish the work assignment as quickly as possible so 
they can return home.  On major projects such as the Ye-Tavoy railway line 
in southern Burma, families must send someone for 2-week shifts every 
month, and children as young as 8 or 10 make up a large part of the labour 
force - particularly in rainy season, because then the parents must work in 
the ricefields.  Rainy season is also when railway labour is the most brutal, 
and mud embankments collapse killing the workers.


Forced Conscription

Before 1988 the Tatmadaw was mainly a volunteer force, but the public 
feeling against the Army combined with SLORC's drive to increase it to a 
force of 500,000 have led it to obtain most of its recruits now through 
conscription or coercion.  Most Townships are assigned a quota, usually 
amounting to one or two recruits from each village and town quarter per 
month.  If Township or village authorities cannot provide the quota, they 
face being imprisoned or conscripted themselves, regardless of their age, so 
they will take anyone to fill the numbers, young or old.  Usually, boys aged 
14 to 16 are drawn in the village quota lotteries.  Once drawn, if their 
family cannot pay a huge sum of money they have no choice but to go.  
The family is often further coerced into cooperating by being told they will 
be free of forced labour duties if the Army gets their son.  Army officers 
and Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) are also offered cash rewards of 
500 Kyats for any recruits they bring in, and they usually target the 
youngest possible boys (age 13 or 14) because these boys are the easiest to 
coerce.  Many young deserters have told us of how they were approached 
in the market or on the way home from school when they were 13 or 14 by 
soldiers or NCOs and offered the chance of adventure, a happy-go-lucky 
life, a snappy uniform, a gun, and the high-sounding sum of 750 Kyats per 
month.  All they had to do to get it was follow the soldier to the recruiting 
centre.  Usually they are also told to lie and say that they are 18 when 
asked by the recruiting officer.  It is obvious by looking at most of these 
boys that they are well under 18, but the recruiting officers never even try 
to check.  The boy's family often doesn't even hear what has happened to 
their son for a year or more.  In many cases, the boy and/or his parents are 
illiterate, so he cannot even write to tell them, and once at the frontline 
rank-and-file soldiers do not get home leave.

Some young boys still volunteer on their own initiative for various reasons:  
being a soldier is the only job opportunity for most poor people in Burma 
today, and the only way the boys think they can help support their family 
instead of being a burden; the attraction of the soldiering life; the promise 
of freedom from forced labour for his family; or in many cases, because a 
family member has been beaten, tortured or arrested by SLORC, and the 
boy hopes if he becomes a soldier it won't happen again.  Their are also 
reports of SLORC battalions taking orphans or unclaimed small children, 
making them cadets and using them as company mascots and errand-boys 
until they are age 13 or so, then using them as soldiers.  Karen townspeople 
from the Irrawaddy Delta claim that in 1993 SLORC organized "shooting 
tournaments" for the youth, then during one of the tournaments suddenly 
took away many of the boys to join the Army.  Parents who protested were 
threatened.  In northern Burma, since 1993 SLORC has been encouraging 
parents to enroll their children in a youth organization called Ye Nyunt by 
telling them that all members will get access to basic and higher education; 
but once enrolled, many of the boys have been taken away to join the 
Army.  We also have reports of Ye Nyunt operating in central Karen State, 
and that SLORC is using its rehabilitation "training schools" as a source of 
young army recruits..

Once in the Army the boy is gone, with little or no contact.  The family 
usually still has to provide forced labour.  Most of the boy's pay is stolen 
by his officers every month, and out of the rest he even has to buy his own 
uniforms.  The officers sell off the good rations and medicines and send 
him into the villages to loot his own food.  They also order him to round up 
villagers for forced labour, and he faces beatings and other punishments if 
he fails to bring back the specified numbers.  He is ordered to get his 
civilian porters and their burdens to the destination by an impossible 
deadline, forcing him to beat them or be beaten himself, and he is gradually 
drawn into the web of human rights abuses.  Newspapers and shortwave 
radio are forbidden, and any letters home are tightly censored; if he writes 
complaining about the Army, he is beaten with a cane or tied to a post in 
the hot sun all day without water.  In battle situations, boy soldiers are 
often forced to drink alcohol or take drugs such as amphetamines or 
'myin say' (a combination of amphetamines, caffeine, and opiates which makes 
them mindless, sleepless and aggressive).  Leave is refused even with good 
reason, and when the enlistment time is up after 5 years, the boy is 
generally told he cannot leave and automatically re-enlisted.


Education and Religion

SLORC uses schools as a means of imposing discipline and control.  Many 
people in remote villages need their children to help the family or are afraid 
to send their children far away to a SLORC school, so they try to set up 
their own primary school in the village.  SLORC authorities always order 
these schools to be dismantled.  Schools near conflict areas with teach in 
ethnic languages are the first targets to be attacked and burned by SLORC 
troops.  Even SLORC-run schools near conflict areas are often shut down 
because every time Tatamadaw columns come near the teachers flee for 
fear of being taken as porters.  Sometimes middle and high schools are 
surrounded while in session as an easy source of young porters for the 
Tatmadaw.  

When SLORC says it has spent money setting up schools, most or all of 
this money is actually extorted out of the local population.  In situations 
like this they often extort 2 or 3 times the amount they need and turn a 
profit.  In SLORC schools, all teaching must be in Burmese, no other languages 
are taught or allowed to be spoken.  Non-Burman children grow up illiterate 
in their own languages and ignorant of their own literature and culture.  A 
SLORC committee under Col. Pe Thein, Minister for Public Relations and 
Psychological Warfare, has rewritten the history books.  Paragraph 118(b) 
of SLORC's report to the Committee states, "Although there is no written 
curriculum in their languages, the nationalities have the right to pursue 
their own literature."  However, publishing literature or periodicals in non-
Burman languages is extremely difficult and undergoes the strictest 
censorship.  Paragraph 118(b) goes on, "The University of National Races 
in Ywathitkyi is producing teachers of various nationalities to promote the 
spread of education in the border areas".  In fact, this University takes 
people from the border areas but trains them to teach the strictly Burman 
SLORC curriculum, not their own languages and cultures.  A significant 
proportion of the training is focussed on political indoctrination.  
Furthermore, all schoolteachers in Burma must periodically go to SLORC 
"refresher courses" where they are issued uniforms and military boots and 
forced to do military parade drill, shout  slogans, and sit through political 
indoctrination lectures.  Anyone who "fails" the course loses their teaching 
job.  As a further method of controlling schoolchildren, teachers and 
parents must sign forms promising to keep their children from doing or 
saying anything against the State; if the child does anything, the parents 
and teachers are then subject to arrest.

The Annex to this report contains a recent interview with a schoolteacher 
describing the school situation, as well as of several written orders sent to 
civilians by the Tatmadaw aimed at suppressing teaching of Mon language 
and literature in monasteries and aimed at suppressing formation of Karen 
Youth Organizations in villages.

For the most part there is freedom of religion in Burma, but Muslims are 
generally denied citizenship and are heavily targetted for portering and other 
forced labour.  In areas such as Chin and Arakan States and Sagaing 
Division, the Army is actively demolishing Christian sites and graveyards 
and replacing them with pagodas.  In Tan Ta Lan Township of Chin State, 
SLORC issued an order encouraging parents to send their Chin Christian 
children for free education in 1994, then took at least 9 of these children 
and initiated them as Buddhist novices at Kaba Aye monastery in central 
Burma, holding them incommunicado from their parents.



Breakdown of the Village

Children in Burma are suffering severely and often dying because of the 
destruction of social structures such as the family and the village under 
SLORC policies.  In conflict areas, SLORC has a policy called "4 Cuts", 
meaning to cut off all food, funds, recruits and communications from ethnic 
opposition organizations by attacking the civilian populations who support 
them.  Whenever SLORC forces come under attack by opposition forces, 
they respond with military attacks against undefended civilian villages.  In 
Taungoo District of Karen State, SLORC troops are now systematically 
burning crops and food supplies in order to drive villagers out of the hills 
into military-controlled roadside sites.  Many farmers and their children 
have been shot on sight with assault rifles and grenade launchers since 
October 1995 when seen in their fields.  The people of at least 26 villages 
have fled into hiding in the hills with whatever rice they can carry.  Further 
south in Papun District approximately 100 Karen hill villages have been 
ordered to move to labour camps to build car roads.  In order to strengthen 
its control over the hills and block refugee escape routes to Thailand, 
SLORC has declared the entire region a free-fire zone where adults and 
children can be shot on sight.  In the labour camps, no food, medicine or 
education is provided and families must find some way to avoid starvation.  
Rather than go to the labour camps, 10,000 to 30,000 people have fled into 
hiding in the hills.  Children cannot grow up in such an environment.  
Malnutrition is rampant and many are dying of treatable diseases.  Anyone 
caught trying to take medicine into such areas faces execution for 
"supplying the rebels".  Medics who penetrate these areas from Thailand 
say that 50% of children die before age 5, and about 20% of women die 
before age 40 leaving orphaned children.  In all conflict areas, families are 
constantly having to flee SLORC troops.  Education becomes an 
impossibility, and families become scattered.  Parents are taken away as 
porters or "suspected rebels" never to be seen again.  SLORC claims to be 
improving things through military ceasefires in some parts of the country, 
but once a ceasefire is in place more SLORC troops are sent to establish 
control, forced labour increases and people continue to flee.

Even in non-conflict areas (both Burman and non-Burman), SLORC is 
increasing military concentrations to control the civilian population.  An 
average rural village has to serve at least 3 nearby military camps.  This 
includes rotating shifts as porters, doing labour at military camps and on 
infrastructure development projects.  On average, one family member will 
be absent at some form of forced labour half to two-thirds of the time.  
Children are often sent so the parents can still produce food, or parents go 
and their children are left alone to support their younger siblings.  
Extortion money must also be paid to every military unit in the area, to the 
point where families have no more livestock or valuables and must flee 
because they cannot pay.  Even in many non-conflict areas  20% or more of the 
population have fled their villages to become internally displaced.  The 
Army forces farmers to hand over about one third of their entire crop for 
nothing or for one-fifth of market price, and families are left without 
enough to survive.  The Army sells much of this rice for export, while 
Burma suffers a rice crisis.  Rice prices have doubled since last year in 
many areas.  Serious malnutrition now afflicts a high proportion of children 
even in the urban areas.  Children are being pulled out of school because 
families need all the free hands they can get to survive the spiralling 
commodity prices.  In urban areas some families are sending their smallest 
children into the streets to beg, while many families in rural areas are 
handing their children over to procurers in return for down-payments of 
5,000 Kyat or more.  They are promised that the child will get a good job in 
Thailand or elsewhere, but the children generally end up sold into bonded 
labour at Thai brothels or factory sweatshops.

        
Refugees

Fleeing the forced labour and other abuses, many children with or without 
their families end up as refugees in neighbouring countries, where they are 
generally classified as illegal immigrants and subject to arrest, imprisonment 
and deportation at any time with no protection from international agencies.  
In the unofficial refugee camps in Thailand where about 100,000 people 
live, Thai authorities tightly restrict aid going into the camps to make sure 
it is at bare subsistence level as a way of pressuring the refugees to go 
back - in particular, no educational aid beyond a few pens and notebooks is 
allowed, so it is very difficult for the refugees to get a proper education 
for their children.  Many refugees, including thousands of unaccompanied 
children, avoid the camps and instead go to Thai  cities where they end up 
as low-paid or unpaid construction, sweatshop or sex labourers.  Many of 
them are regularly arrested, robbed and raped by Thai police.  Thailand's 
Immigration Detention Centres, which are set up like high-security prisons, 
are full of parents with infants and unaccompanied children of all ages from 
5 to 18.  They are maltreated, underfed, robbed if they have anything, and 
the girls over 13 are often taken from the cells by the police guards to be 
raped overnight.  They are held up to 3 months or more if they cannot pay, 
then "deported" to the border, from where they usually sneak back into 
Thailand and the cycle begins all over again.


Some Comments on SLORC's Report to the Committee

Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, Secretary-1 of SLORC and head of Military 
Intelligence (whose wife leads SLORC's "NGO" for mothers and children), 
was quoted in 1992 as saying that under military rule in Burma there was 
essentially "no law at all".  It is an apt quote, because it reflects the 
small value SLORC places on written laws.  The junta, however, has become 
quite adept at writing laws to impress the international community which it 
has no intention of putting into practice.  It is common to hear SLORC 
quoting its own laws that porters must be paid, that they are never to be 
taken into battle, that compensation must be paid if they are hurt, that 
women must never be taken, etc., but this has no connection with SLORC 
practice.  The "Child Law" appears to be a similar exercise.  The Child Law 
is full of expressions such as "Every child has the right to freedom of 
speech and expression in accordance with the law", "Every child shall have 
the right to citizenship in accordance with the provisions of the existing 
law", "Every child has the right to participate in organizations relating to 
the child, social organizations or religious organizations permitted under 
the law" (emphasis added in all 3 quotes), etc.  Even if one makes the 
unrealistic assumption that SLORC obeys its own laws, SLORC has made 
the Child Law subservient to its other laws and has thereby made it 
meaningless.

For example, in guaranteeing children "freedom and speech and expression 
in accordance with the law" (Paragraph 61), SLORC neglects to mention 
that "the law" dictates heavy punishments for anyone saying or writing 
anything which can be construed as negative towards the State or the 
Defence Forces.  Twenty-year prison sentences have been given this year to 
young people simply for handing out leaflets.  In an attempt to imply that 
children are guaranteed freedom of association, the report states that 
children can join organizations "permitted under the law" (Par. 67), then 
goes on to clarify that this means only "registered" organizations (Par. 68).  
It does not mention that any gathering of 5 or more people is illegal, that 
families must register all houseguests (including children) or face 
imprisonment or portering, or that association with "illegal" (i.e. 
unregistered) organizations is punishable by multi-year prison sentences 
with hard labour under Article 17/1.  (See also the Annex to this report, 
which includes SLORC orders to villages threatening "severe action" if they 
try to form an illegal youth organization.)  Special Rapporteur Yozo Yokota 
stated in his report (E/CN.4/1996/65, 5 Feb. 1996) that "more than 15 
individuals who were exercising their rights to freedom of expression and 
association were arrested in the course of 1995 on a combination of charges 
under these laws, including such charges as writing and distributing 'illegal 
leaflets, spreading false information injurious to the State and contact with 
illegal organizations'" (Par. 174).  The actual number was much higher, 
particularly in rural areas to which the Rapporteur has no access.

Regarding the Sports Festivals and other events which are organized as a 
"national task" (Par. 68(c)), it is important to note that all money for 
putting on these festivals is extorted out of the local population by the 
military, along with forced labour to set them up.  Villagers have told us 
that this is a real burden to them.  In the report SLORC often claims to have 
spent certain amounts on hospitals and other community facilities.  In fact, 
most or all of this money is usually extorted from each family in the local 
community by the Army, threatening them with eviction or arrest if they fail 
to pay their share.  In many cases, if 100,000 Kyat is required the local 
Battalions will use it as an excuse to extort 300,000, then keep 200,000 for 
themselves.  Any civilians who attempt to object are arrested.  In the 
footnotes, SLORC converts the amounts spent into US dollars using a rate 
of 6.5 Kyat to the US dollar, whereas the actual market rate is 125 Kyat to 
the US dollar.  While several billion US dollars per annum are spent on the 
military, little or nothing is spent on social welfare.

Paragraph 60(b) states that "every child shall have the right to citizenship 
in accordance with the provisions of the existing law".  However, the Special 
Rapporteur notes in his report that "Most of the Muslim population of 
Rakhine State are not entitled to citizenship under the existing 
naturalization regulations and most of them are not even registered as 
so-called foreign residents" (Par. 163).

Paragraph 49(a) states that "Students of primary and middle schools have 
the privilege of free tuition.  Textbooks and stationery are distributed by 
the State."  In reality middle school students must pay school fees of at 
least 15 Kyats per month, and though primary school "tuition" is free, 
parents must pay "maintenance fees", "table and bench fees", broom, waterpot 
and drinking-cup fees, fees for "Parent-Teacher Association", "sporting fees", 
etc., to the local-level SLORC authorities or their children cannot attend 
school.  The fees are payable for each child attending school, and vary with 
the Standard (higher fees for higher Standard levels).  In many rural areas 
the parents must also pool their money to pay the teachers' and headmaster's 
salaries.  Students must also pay for their textbooks, stationery and 
materials.  Textbooks are extremely expensive and generally only available 
on the black market.

Paragraph 47(e) states that "all children of Myanmar irrespective of religion 
have equal rights to education", while Paragraph 62(a) claims that children 
have the "right to access to literature".  Under the Printers' and Publishers' 
Act, all literature must be censored by SLORC and possession of other 
literature, even by children, is punishable by imprisonment.  Ethnically non-
Burman children are routinely denied their right to education in their own 
languages and cultures, while SLORC rigidly controls the curriculum and 
the teachers in its education system.  Details on this subject are provided 
under 'Education' above.  

The general credibility of SLORC's report can be best judged by Paragraph 
31, Family Reunification, which summarily states, "Myanmar has neither 
problems of war refugees nor problems of separation of families caused by 
war."  Coming from a country which has been at civil war since 1948, with 
close to 500,000 refugees who have fled to camps in neighbouring 
countries, at least 1 million more refugees in neighbouring countries but not 
in camps, thousands in exile worldwide, and two to three million internally 
displaced people, this statement is more than just absurd - it is criminal.

It is important to note that most of the "domestic NGOs" referred to by 
SLORC are in fact set up and run by SLORC either directly or indirectly.  
In particular, the "Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association" is run 
by the wife of Lt. Gen. Khin Nyunt, SLORC Secretary-1 and head of 
Military Intelligence.  It is used as a public relations arm of SLORC and to 
raise foreign money for SLORC Border Area projects, which usually have a 
political aim of increasing military control in the border areas.  The Union 
Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) is not an NGO at all, but 
a political organization which SLORC formed in 1993 as an artificial "mass 
support" organization on the model of the pre-1988 BSPP (Burma Socialist 
Programme Party).  The USDA gets members through SLORC-organized 
forced-attendance mass rallies, through threatening people who do not join 
with loss of privileges and offering perks to those who join.  To date, the 
USDA's main role has been to hold mass rallies expressing "unanimous 
public support" for SLORC's National Convention drafting a military-run 
Constitution.  There is even speculation that SLORC may turn USDA into 
a political party once their Constitution is finished.

- [END] -