KHRG #98-06 Part 3/5 (Karenni)

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                   A STRUGGLE JUST TO SURVIVE

          Update on the Current Situation in Karenni


    An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
              June 12, 1998     /     KHRG #98-06

*** PART 3 OF 5 - SEE OTHER POSTINGS FOR OTHER PARTS OF THIS REPORT ***

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                     Interviews and Field Reports

                                  #1.
NAME:    "Klaw Reh"     SEX: M   AGE: 50      Kayah Animist farmer
FAMILY:  Widower, 9 children but 6 of them already died, 
         3 surviving children aged 1-15
ADDRESS: Daw Kraw Aw village (#72), Shadaw township   INTERVIEWED: 29/4/98

["Klaw Reh" was interviewed in a refugee camp in Thailand.]

Q:  When did you arrive here?
A:  I don't know the date, but since then we've been given rice two times 
[meaning he's been there one or two months].  We came because the 
SLORC burned all our houses and our barns and they killed all our 
animals.  We didn't have any house so we couldn't stay anywhere.  We had 
no food and we didn't want to die.  I am too old, I can't resist the SLORC.

Q:  When and how was your village ordered to move?
A:  June 1996 - they sent a letter.  When we arrived there [at Shadaw 
relocation site] they just gave us very little food and the rice was not
good.  
We had to work for them two or three times a week, for the whole day 
each time.  We couldn't enjoy our food [i.e. they did not have enough and 
they were too tired and depressed to enjoy the bad food they had].  We 
saw a lot of people dying when we stayed in the relocation place.  We 
couldn't bear it, that is why we escaped from there; but not all of us,
only 
some.  Some still stay in the relocation site.

Q:  Was there a clinic in Shadaw?
A:  Yes, but they didn't treat us very well.  I saw a woman there who died 
when her baby was only 6 days old.  They would inject one ampoule of 
medicine into two or three people.  We didn't need to pay money for the 
injection, but if we paid money we could go to the medic's house and be 
properly healed.

Q:  How long did you stay in Shadaw?
A:  Two months.  I stayed there but we didn't have enough food, and then 
the Burmese told us to go back to our village to bring back some food.  
When we went back to our old village we never tried to go back to the 
relocation place, we just tried to hide in the forest.  The Burmese called
the 
people who escaped to come back to the relocation site, but after we 
escaped we didn't want to go back.  When we were hiding there, if the 
Burmese ever saw some smoke [from a cookfire] they fired mortar shells 
at it.  I was afraid because I saw many people killed by the Burmese, and 
we were afraid we would also be killed.  We didn't have enough food to 
resist them.

I decided that if I died everything would be over and that would be better 
than going back, because life is very bad in the relocation site.  We
didn't 
have any chance to work for ourselves, we just worked for the Burmese.  
Then the Burmese sent a letter again to the people who had escaped, 
calling us back to the relocation site.

When we stayed [in hiding] in our village, SLORC soldiers came and 
when they found villagers they shot at them.  We posted people as sentries,

so when the SLORC were coming we always ran out of the village.  We 
saw people shot at by the Burmese, but they didn't die because we knew 
they were coming.  They look on the villagers as Karenni soldiers so they 
just kill them.  They killed many people.  We were really lucky to survive 
this long.  I'm very, very lucky.  If I was not lucky I would have been 
killed.

Q:  How did you survive in the forest?
A:  The village was already burned down [by the time they returned from 
Shadaw];  the trees, the bamboo and the grass had already grown in the 
village.  We had some food because we had hidden it in the forest or in 
caves, but it took one or two hours to go and find the food.  They had 
burned all our houses and our barns, so if we hadn't hidden our food it 
would have been very difficult.  Just then my wife died, leaving me with 
our small 8-month-old baby.  I didn't have any milk to give to my baby.  I 
just gave him water.  If I had stayed there longer we would have died, so 
we fled from there.

Q:  Did the people get sick while they were hiding?
A:  How wouldn't they get sick?  And we couldn't go anywhere to find 
medicine.  But only my wife died.  She died of diarrhoea.   Her name was 
Pru Meh.  When we lived in Shadaw it was worse - at least one person in 
each family died of disease there.

Q:  How many people were hiding with you?
A:  People from Daw Ei Po, Daw Leh Da, and Daw Ei She, those three 
villages, but divided into groups of three families in three different
places.  
There were about 15 or 16 people.  There were also a blind single woman 
and a very old woman who were left behind there [when they fled to 
Thailand].  There were also four families near D--- village and two 
families near A---.  In D--- one family had seven people but one of them 
died.  He didn't have any sickness, but when we arrived from Shadaw he 
just died.

Q:  Did you see soldiers when you were hiding?
A:  Yes, we saw them but only from a distance.  We came out from the 
places where we were hiding and watched them.  We always watched 
when they were around because if we saw them coming our way then we'd 
have to run away from the place where we were hiding.  When they found 
out where we were hiding we had to move, then when they found out our 
new place we had to move again.  We had to move at least four or five 
times.  But they didn't find us, because if they had found us they would 
have killed us.  The Burmese patrolled around Daw Tama and Daw Bo 
Loh.  They never made camps, they just came for a while and left.  They 
came patrolling once a week, every week.  I think they were Battalions 72 
and 54, but I'm not sure.  They were the soldiers who guard the Lawpita 
Dam [near Loikaw].  #72 is based in Lawpita and #54 in Loikaw.

Q:  How long did it take you to come here [to the refugee camp]?
A:  Six days because we had to avoid the Army, but if we could have 
come directly it would have been 4 days.  It is very difficult to come here

because Burmese soldiers block the border, but we had to try to pass.  I 
came with a lot of people - one family from Daw Kraw Aw and two 
families from Daw Leh Da.  If someone is lucky he can pass, if he is not 
he will die.  I was afraid, very afraid that we would be killed.  While I
was 
coming here my mind was right outside of my body [an expression for 
extreme fear].  But we were lucky and we didn't die.  

Q:  Do you think one day you will be able to go back?
A:  Yes, of course we would like to go back.  Now we get rice from 
others, but we only receive it once a month so if they stop giving it what 
will we do?  If we stayed in our own land we could plant and grow enough 
food for ourselves for the whole year.

Q:  After you left Shadaw relocation site did you hear anything about the 
situation there?
A:  At the beginning they were given rice there, but later they didn't get 
enough rice so they had to work.  For one day's work they can get 8 
milktins of rice [about 2 kg/3 lb] and 14 Kyats.  If a family has more than

five people this is not enough to eat for a day, so the people who still
live 
in that place have to steal whatever they can find to eat, and this is a 
problem.
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                                  #2.
NAME:    "Nyi Reh"      SEX: M   AGE: 26      Kayah Christian farmer
FAMILY:  Married, 2 children aged 1 and 3
ADDRESS: Daw Leh Da village (#73), Loikaw township    INTERVIEWED: 6/5/98

["Nyi Reh" lived in Nwa La Bo relocation site north of Loikaw for almost 
2 years before fleeing to the Thai border, where he arrived at the 
beginning of April 1998.]

Q:  Why did you come here?
A:  The SLORC Army ordered my village to relocate so I left my village 
two years ago.  I stayed for two years in Nwa La Bo consolidation village 
[relocation site], Loikaw township.  Then I fled from there together with a

friend.

Q:  How many houses are there at Nwa La Bo?
A:  There are about 130 houses in Nwa La Bo.  Ten villages were 
relocated there:  Thirida, Daw Mu Leh, Daw Leh Da, Daw Sar Si, Daw 
Klay, Ku Lay and Daw Lar Leh villages.  [Villages in this area were not 
forced to relocate in the initial relocations because they were spared by a

SLORC agreement with the KNPLF ceasefire group; however, SLORC 
subsequently cancelled the agreement and relocated them anyway.]  They 
didn't give enough food for the villagers.  Before they gave one pyi [about

2 kg of rice] each and we could eat for three days with that.  Then they 
gave one pyi a week for one person.  They gave a bit of salt but they
didn't 
give oil, beans or soap.  They gave only rice and salt.  But they gave us a

chance to find some more rice - they would let us farm outside the camp, 
but we had to pay for a ticket to get out.  Each ticket costs 50 Kyats. 
Then 
if they heard any strange news, for example news that the rebels were 
close by, they wouldn't allow us out.  So we couldn't go out to the fields 
and the paddy crop was destroyed.  We could also buy rice but it was very 
expensive: 100 Kyats for one pyi.  At first they had checkpoints but not 
any longer, and they never built a fence around the camp, so it was
actually 
easy to go out and come in.

Q:  Was there a hospital there?
A:  They had a hospital but if you didn't give them money they wouldn't 
treat you.  Some people died because they wouldn't treat them.  In two 
years I saw three patients die, one old man and two children.  They got 
sick and they died.

Q:  Did you have a chance to worship in Nwa La Bo?
A:  They built a Buddhist monastery but they didn't give permission to 
build a Christian church so we couldn't build one, and the Christians had 
no chance to worship [many Karenni are Roman Catholic].  The Army 
also destroyed the Christian church in my village because of the [local 
SLORC] chairman Hla Win.  Now is not a chairman anymore, he joined 
the Military Intelligence.  But they do have a school in Nwa La Bo.

Q:  Did you have to do any work for the SPDC?
A:  Sometimes they forced us to do forced labour in the Army plantation 
between Nwa La Bo village and Chet Kae village over one hour's walk 
away.  Infantry Battalion #54 came and took us on trucks.  They forced us 
to carry things, dig the earth and do other things.  They forced us to do
that 
three or four times a month.  The soldiers said that they were planting 
vegetables for the refugees [the people in the relocation sites] but we 
never got any of them.

Q:  Did they arrest [SLORC] soldiers who ran away?
A:  Yes, they arrested their soldiers who escaped, but they didn't arrest 
those who left the KNPP as long as they joined the KNDA, the ones with 
the dragon badges.  They forced them [the ex-KNPP soldiers] as well as 
villagers to become KNDA.  If the villagers obeyed and became KNDA 
they didn't arrest them, but if they wouldn't become KNDA they arrested 
them and sent them to prison.  [SLORC/SPDC demands some kind of 
quota of KNDA recruits from among the villagers.]  I joined the KNDA 
because they came and forced me to become KNDA.  If my father had 
been staying with us I wouldn't have gone [one man from their house had 
to go, so his father would have gone].  But only my mother and my sister 
were staying in our house, so I had to go because I was afraid for them.  
When I stayed with the KNDA I didn't do anything for them.  I just stayed 
in the Army camp beside Daw Leh Ku village, between Tee Ku Leh and 
Daw Leh Ku.  They gave me an AK [AK47 assault rifle], and I had to 
carry that.  Before I went there I'd heard that there were four hundred 
soldiers in the KNDA, but when I arrived there I saw only a hundred.  The 
Burmese control them completely.  Wherever they go the Burmese follow 
them.

Q:  How did you flee from Nwa La Bo?
A:  I fled Nwa La Bo at night, I don't know what time it was.  I fled 
suddenly, and my wife and children didn't come with me.  I fled with one 
friend.  I fled to D---, then to K--- and then across to this place.  It
took me 
less than one month to come here, sixteen or seventeen days.  I saw them 
[SPDC soldiers] but I ran away when I saw them.  They didn't catch us 
and they didn't shoot at me.

Q:  What is the difference between Nwa La Bo camp and the refugee 
camp?
A:  In Loikaw, at Nwa La Bo, they didn't give enough rice, but in the 
refugee camp we get rice, oil, salt, chillies, beans, blankets, mosquito
nets, 
mats, and treatment for sick people.  So now I will stay here and work.  
My wife and my two children will arrive soon.  They will arrive here with 
other people from Nwa La Bo.  I will build a house and stay with my 
family.  I don't want to go back to Loikaw, I will stay here.
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                                 #3.
NAME:    "Saw Kler"         SEX: M   AGE: 20+      Karenni
ADDRESS: Mawchi town, southern Karenni             INTERVIEWED: 27/4/98

Q:  What is the situation in Mawchi?
A:  Mawchi is so poor that people have nothing to eat.  Some villagers 
there may have money, but even if you have money you can't buy anything 
and you can't buy as much as you want.  You can't get as much rice as you 
want to keep in your home.  For example, you can't store enough rice in 
your home for one month, just for three days.  You must keep the rest in 
the church and go to get some of it every three days.  This is your own 
rice.  They don't allow the villagers to keep all their belongings in their

own homes, because they accuse the villagers of supporting the Karenni 
army and giving food to the Karenni Army.  Even in Mawchi.  Mawchi is 
very big you know; I'm from Mawchi.  There are many churches in 
Mawchi, and there is also a mine.  If you are in Loikaw, the capital, you 
can buy rice and you can eat it there, but you can't bring rice from 
Rangoon to Mawchi [the SPDC won't allow it], you can't bring rice from 
Loikaw to Mawchi or to or from the areas to the east.

Q:  Are the relocation sites still there, or have they been closed and
moved 
to other places?
A:  No, nothing like that.  Shadaw and Ywathit [relocation sites] are still

running but Ywathit is very small compared to Shadaw.  Mawchi also 
stays.  Right now there is no road construction right in Mawchi [town] but 
the people who live in the relocation sites like Shadaw or Mawchi are 
forced to work for the military every day.  The situation of the people in 
the relocation sites is going from bad to worse because they said they have

no food in the camp.  They receive very little food from the SPDC and it is

not enough for everybody.  Some are starving to death.  Many people die 
of sickness, especially in the rainy season from malaria and diarrhoea.  
They are also forced to work for the military doing things like carrying 
water, cutting bamboo, making fences and collecting firewood for the 
Army.  Especially in the Second District, the Army goes to fight almost 
every week so the people are forced to carry their supplies and 
ammunition, and many people die as porters at the frontline.  Now a lot of 
people who stay in the relocation sites are forced to be militia too, but
not 
only people in the relocation sites have to do that.  People from other 
villages are forced to do that too.

The road from Mawchi to Toungoo is 96 miles long.  There was an old 
road there but they haven't used this road for many years now.  So far they

have done 12 miles from Mawchi.  Villagers were forced to work there 
from 6 in the morning to 5 in the evening with only a one hour break.  
About 3 months ago 11 women and 90 men were doing forced labour 
carrying things on the road 12 miles from Mawchi.  They spent the night 
there and were attacked by the KNPP, and then they stopped work on the 
road [temporarily].
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                                  #4.

["Paw Lweh", a village headwoman who had just escaped from Mawchi 
relocation site, stated the following in an interview on 15/5/98.] 

We refugees from Mawchi [those staying in the relocation site], especially 
the women, we had to be afraid whenever we went to find vegetables in 
the forest that we might be threatened and raped by Burmese soldiers.  We 
were sad and had pity on our friends who had to face that.  The villagers
at 
Mawchi have to carry things for them as porters, both men and women, 
old and young.  They beat the porters and threaten them.  I felt very sorry

for all of my villagers when I saw their situation like that.  

They didn't give us enough rice.  There was not enough water for all of us 
at Mawchi.  Especially in the hot season we had to go very far to fetch 
water.  Some people got diarrhoea due to the unclean water.  We received 
no health care.  The Burmese who called us there ought to have given us 
health care, but they never do that.  There was a pharmacy but the
villagers 
could not buy the medicines because they were very expensive.  Some 
seriously ill people died because the cars [public transport on small 
trucks] only ran sometimes.  If we saw a car we tried to send the seriously

ill people to the hospital in town.  

If you look at the shelters [in the relocation site] you can see that they
are 
very small and not properly built, because it was not easy for the people
to 
go and cut trees and bamboo.  The Burmese who called us there ought to 
supply us with water, food and health care, but they never take care of us.
 
I hope the behaviour of the Burmese will change soon.  I hope they will 
give the people a chance to live freely and in peace.
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                                   #5.
NAME:    "Sai Long"         SEX: M   AGE: 30       Shan Buddhist
FAMILY:  Married, 3 children aged 5-9
ADDRESS: xxxx village, Loikaw township             INTERVIEWED: 1/5/98

["Sai Long" was arrested in 1994 for carrying opium and sentenced to 10 
years.  While serving his sentence in Loikaw jail, he was taken as a porter

early this year for SPDC troops patrolling Karenni areas and eventually 
escaped.]

Q:  When did you arrive here [a refugee camp]?
A:  I arrived here on the 5th of April.  I came here because the SPDC 
forced me to be a porter.  First I was a prisoner in Loikaw jail, then they

took me out of jail  and forced me to be a porter.  

Q:  Why were you in jail?
A:  I went to prison because of drugs.  I didn't want to carry opium and I 
never used it, but I had to think of how I could earn a living.  They gave 
me money to carry opium.  A Chinese paid me 500 Kyats for each piece, 
and I carried eight pieces.  I have no idea where it came from.  I carried
it 
from Lwae Neh to Mae Aw, then from Mae Aw to Ho Murng.  They didn't 
sell it in Karenni State, they were selling it to Khun Sa and they 
transported it there [Ho Murng was Khun Sa's headquarters].  I was 
arrested on April 9th 1994 by LIB #530 because I hadn't paid them the 
money.  If you pay them money they don't arrest you.  [The SLORC/SPDC 
charges a tax on those who independently produce or transport opium and 
heroin, and if you don't pay it you are arrested.]  I think you have to pay

at least a hundred thousand Kyats, but the amount depends on how many 
pieces you have.  The more you carry, the more you have to pay them.  
They arrested four people.  I had a trial.  I got a ten-year sentence and I

stayed for four years of it.  At first I had to stay in shackles for one
and a 
half years.  My serial number there was xxxx.

Q:  How was the life in jail?
A:  They gave us one messtin lid of rice to eat twice a day.  We had 
enough water to drink but we could only take a bath once every five or six 
days.  The rooms we stayed in, some were big and some were small.  Sixty 
or seventy people were staying in each small room.  A room for sixty was 
the same size as this room [about 3x6 metres or yards] so we had to sleep 
on our side [all pressed together side by side].  We went outside every day

for one or two hours.  We had to go to the fields to grow vegetables for
the 
jailers.  We didn't get to eat those vegetables though, and they beat some 
prisoners for trying to steal vegetables.  U Mya Thein was in charge of the

prison.

Q:  What about diseases?
A:  There were many kinds of disease.  Some had fever, some had skin 
disease, some dysentery and some diarrhoea.  Some prisoners had money 
and when they were sick they bought themselves medicine and took it.  If 
people had no money they stayed sick, they couldn't get medicine.  I saw 
people die.  I don't remember how many people died, but it was more than 
twenty during these four years.  They died because they had fever, 
diarrhoea and dysentery.  I don't remember their names, most of them were 
old men.  One of them was in for stealing a bicycle.

Q:  When you stayed in prison were there any women prisoners?
A:  Yes, there were 30 women.  The men had enough problems [in jail], 
and the women had even more problems.  There were also children in jail.  
Many, many children were in the women's jail.  Some were born in jail 
and some were brought as prisoners.  Two children were born in the jail, 
even though there is no hospital in Loikaw jail.

Q:  How did you become a porter?
A:  They forced me to become a porter.  I had to be a porter for eight
days.  
First we went to Shadaw by car.  At first I had to carry big shells.  The 
length was like this and the diameter was like that [he indicated 81mm 
shells, which weigh 3 to 4 kilograms / 7 to 10 pounds each].  I also had to

carry rice and bullets.  It was very heavy.  The soldiers didn't even carry

their own [personal] bags, we had to carry them.  They carried only guns 
and equipment.  There were thirty people carrying but no villagers [all 
were prisoners].  In my group there were no women but I saw older 
people, three or four people who were 40 or 45 years old.  I also saw 
young people, fifteen or sixteen years old.  The soldiers were from #250 
[Battalion, based in Loikaw] and #421 [Light Infantry Battalion, based in 
Shan State].  There were over one hundred soldiers from each Battalion.  
Our group had thirty porters for over one hundred soldiers, but I don't 
know how many porters the other group had.  They didn't give us even one 
coin for that.  We didn't even get enough food.  We got just a few handfuls

of rice, the same as in prison.  We didn't have enough water, we had to 
find whatever water we could and we couldn't ever take a bath.

Q:  Did the soldiers beat anybody?
A:  Yes, but they didn't beat me, they beat Aik Htun.  He was 25 years old 
and he was a prisoner.  He was beaten by a three-star Captain from 
Battalion #250 because he couldn't climb the mountain.  Actually he could 
climb the mountain, but the soldiers followed him and beat him from 
behind because he could not carry quickly enough.  They beat him on the 
back and on the head with a bamboo stick.  He was wounded and bleeding 
a lot.  I tried to heal him for one day [before he ran away himself].  They

forced him to carry again but he could not carry anymore, and when he 
couldn't carry the soldiers beat him again.  When we fled he wasn't dead 
yet but maybe he died after that.  They also beat another man, Saw Ee.  
They beat him on his back because he couldn't carry anymore, because he 
didn't get enough food and he was sick.

Q:  When you were carrying for the Army did you see any villagers?
A:  No, there were no villages left and I didn't see any fighting.

Q:  How did you escape?
A:  We fled down the hillside when they [the soldiers] were a little bit
far 
from me.  Two of us fled together, but the other didn't come here with me. 

It took me over one month to come here.  We stayed on the hillsides with 
the Karenni [soldiers].  They treated us with medicines because I got 
malaria the day that we fled, that night when we were sleeping [on the 
bare ground with no blanket].

Q:  What do you hope for now?
A:  I will do work, any kind of work.  But I want to go back and see my 
children.  I have 3 children; the eldest was five in 1994, and the youngest

wasn't even one year old at that time [he hasn't seen them since his 
arrest].

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- [END OF PART 3 - SEE SUBSEQUENT POSTINGS FOR PARTS 4 AND 5] -