KHRG Report: Photos of Dead Porters

[strider@xxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: KHRG Report: Photos of Dead Porters in the Salween River

Status: R

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      AN INDEPENDENT REPORT BY THE KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP

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           PHOTOS_OF_DEAD_PORTERS_IN_THE_SALWEEN_RIVER
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                           May 1, 1993
Filename: may1_93.fo2

Copies of the photos are available on request, although these may
require a significant time.  Contributions are welcome.  

Karen Human Rights Group
Box 22
Mae Sot, Tak 63110
Thailand

(Email for the KHRG sent to strider@xxxxxxxxxxx will be forwarded
to them)

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On October 6, 1992, the SLORC launched its Saw Hta offensive,
sending 4 Battalions of troops down from Karenni (Kayah) State in
the north to attack Saw Hta, a Karen village and trading gateway in
northern Karen State on the Salween River.  In this area, the
Salween forms the border with Thailand.  Saw Hta was quickly
overrun, but fighting continued for months as the SLORC tried to
take the entire area and push further down the Salween, in order to
cut off Karen trading routes, open a new front against Manerplaw
and possibly to try to capture sites where they have signed
agreements to build dams in cooperation with the Thais.  For this
offensive, they kidnapped several thousand Shan farmers from
central Shan State, loaded them on trucks like cattle and brought
them southward for 5 days and nights (without ever letting them
stand up or get off the trucks) to be munitions porters (See
related reports).  Some convicts from Mandalay Prison were also
brought for this purpose.  As usual, treatment of the porters was
horrifically brutal, and hundreds died, while only a few escaped.

Now the fighting has let up in the area, but the SLORC has not sent
the porters home.  Instead, they are working very hard to
strengthen their new positions so they can be used as a new front
against the Manerplaw area.  To this end, the porters are still
being forced to carry munitions and supplies from Pah Saung in
southern Karenni State to Saw Hta.  The SLORC is also now using
them as slaves to build a new road from Pah Saung to Saw Hta.  As
they are in a great hurry to finish this road, they are driving the
slaves harder than ever, and kidnapping more people wherever they
can get them.  Those who become too sick or weak to work hard are
killed, and an increasing number of corpses are now floating down
the Salween River from Saw Hta to prove it.  These photos (Nos. C-3
and C-4) show two of them.

Most of the corpses still have their hands tied behind their backs. 
Other corpses which have recently come down the river include a
decapitated woman, and a man's corpse with an erect penis (which
indicates death by strangulation).  The corpses which are thrown in
the river are probably only a small percentage of the total number
of people being killed.  As many of these people have now been
living under such brutal treatment and starvation rations for up to
6 months now, the death rate can only be expected to increase as
work on the road continues.


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Karen Human Rights Group
Box 22
Mae Sot, Tak 63110
Thailand

(Email for the KHRG sent to strider@xxxxxxxxxxx will be forwarded
to them)