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KHRG Report: Escaped SLORC Munition



Subject: KHRG Report: Escaped SLORC Munitions Porter

Status: R

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     AN INDEPENDENT REPORT BY THE KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP
________________________________________________________________

         REPORT_BY_AN_ESCAPED_SLORC_MUNITIONS_PORTER
      (Including details on conditions in Mandalay Prison)
________________________________________________________________  

                  Manerplaw, November 13, 1992

Filename: nov13_92
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


The following account was given through an interview in Burmese
with a porter recently escaped from the SLORC's current offensive
in the northern Karen area of Saw Hta.  He was serving a criminal
sentence in Mandalay Prison when he was taken to Saw Hta as a
munitions porter, so his description includes details of his arrest
and imprisonment, conditions in Mandalay Prison, and his life as a
porter.  At the time of the interview he was still suffering from
an open gash on the back of his head inflicted by a beating with a
G3 rifle butt.  On arrival, he also had severe bruises on his back
caused by other rifle butt beatings.

His name has been altered and several details of his address and
arrest have been omitted in order to protect his family from SLORC
retaliation.
_________________________________________________________________

Name:       Myint Aung       Sex: M      Age: 24
Address:    Lashio Township, Northern Shan State
Nationality/Religion: Burmese Muslim
Occupation: Truck driver's assistant
Family:     Single, lives with his parents, brothers and sisters

My boss had made a deal with a businessman in Mandalay to take a
few of the hides from his cows and buffalos to sell near the China
border, but along the way the SLORC police caught us and said we
were breaking the law against selling hides.  The SLORC has a law
that says everyone must buy a license if they want to own a cow or
buffalo.  How much it costs depends on how much money you have. 
Bursinessmen have to pay a lot for each cow or buffalo they have,
but for poor villagers there is no way they can pay to buy a
licence, so really all the cows and buffalos owned by villagers are
illegal, according to the SLORC.  Then when you kill one of your
animals you must sell the hide to the SLORC at their fixed price so
they can control the hide business.  The black market price is much
higher, but if you sell a hide to anyone but the SLORC you can go
to prison.  In Burma they'll even send you to prison if you sell a
bag of peanuts to somebody else illegally.

The police wanted to arrest my boss because he was the driver, but
he has a wife and children to take care of, so I went in his place. 
The police took me to Mandalay Prison, and locked me up there for
4 months while they "investigated the case".  They always use this
trick to delay things, so they can get as much money as possible
from a prisoner's family.  I was lucky in prison - I was never
beaten because my parents paid them money.  My parents had to pay
many times, 200 Kyat each time.

After 4 months they took me to court in a prisoner truck.  It was
a truck with a narrow window all around with bars.  It was very
crowded, with many of us packed standing inside, and each of our
hands tied to the two prisoners beside us.  At the court I was
sentenced to one and a half years by a man appointed by the SLORC,
although he wasn't a soldier.  I just had to stand and listen in
the court room.  The police were in the court and they had seen the
hides.  Because they had this evidence against me, they gave me no
chance to say anything.  If you say anything maybe you'll get an
even longer sentence.  In the court, you're a criminal, so it's
your job to just be quiet and go to jail.

Then they took me back to Mandalay Prison, and that's when my
sentence began.  In the prison I was luckier than most of the
prisoners.  If you can't pay money they give you all the rotten
jobs, like polishing the floor with coconut husks.  But my boss
paid the warden 2000 Kyat so I got jobs that weren't so bad.  The
work you get always depends on how much you can pay.  Everything
about your life in the prison depends on how much you can pay the
guards and the warden.

I was kept with 200 prisoners in a cell about 50 feet by 30 feet. 
It was very crowded.  The cell had walls of bars and a concrete
floor, and was divided into two levels by a wooden platform.  The
new inmates have to sleep underneath on sleeping mats on the
concrete floor, unless they can pay the guards for a place to sleep
on top.  At 7 a.m. they opened the cell and we were taken out for
morning work.  They assigned each of us a job as we went out, like
working in the prison garden or cleaning the toilets.  Then at 10
o'clock we got food.  At 10 o'clock we could also take a bath in
the prison courtyard.  We each had 2 shabby prison shirts and
longyis [sarongs] to wear, so we could rinse one out when we had a
bath.  At 12 o'clock they locked us back up in the cell.  Then in
the afternoon we had to work again.

We were fed one bowl of rice in the morning and one bowl in the
evening.  In the morning it came with some very watery yellow bean
soup, and in the evening with an index-finger size lump of terrible
quality fishpaste.  The food was never enough but we couldn't ask
for more, so we were always hungry.

There was some drinking water in the cell, but it hadn't been
boiled.  If you wanted to drink you had to call out to the guard,
"This is Maung Myint Aung, I'm thirsty, I want to drink".  You can
only drink if he calls back that it's okay.  You have to do the
same before you can go to the toilet or do anything.  Anyone who
forgot these rules was tortured and beaten on the back with sticks
by the guards.  There are many rules like this they teach you when
you come to prison.  When talking to a guard you must stand with
your legs tight together and your longyi tucked between them, your
head bowed and your hands folded in front of your crotch.  You must
always walk that way too.  And if a guard tells you to sit
crosslegged, you had better sit with your legs exactly as he says. 
Anytime anyone broke any of these rules he was beaten severely with
sticks.  I saw it every day.

The toilets in the cell were terrible.  They were just 4 pots, and
after using one we had to go empty it in a big hole in the
courtyard.  When the hole was full we had to fill it in and dig
another.  There was no water at all at the toilet, and no paper of
any kind is allowed in the prison for any reason.  So after using
a pot we h.oj on
                  SLORC_RAPE_IN_THATON_DISTRICT

             Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
                   Manerplaw, February 1, 1993


The following account was given by a Karen refugee who arrived in
the Karen Revolutionary Area in late December 1992 with her husband
and children, having left their  home village in Thaton District
due to increased SLORC activity there.  Her name has been changed
and the name of her village deliberately omitted in order to
protect her relatives.

Name:        Naw Wah Lay Htoo        Sex: F        Age: 38
Nationality: Karen       Address: Pa'an Township, Thaton District
Family:      Married with 4 children aged 10, 7, 5, and 6 months

My story happened in November when we were still living in our
village.  We were very afraid of the Burmese, especially because we
women and children were all alone in the village.  All the men had
left the village to hide from the SLORC, because every time the
SLORC sees village men in the area they take them straight away to
the frontline to be porters.  The SLORC troops at De Kaw Po camp
also send orders for our men to go as porters often, and if you
don't go you have to pay 1500 Kyat each time.

One night last November, after dark when all the children were
already asleep, more than 60 SLORC soldiers from 99 Division came
through our village.  I heard many soldiers pass my house.  My two
eldest children were sleeping at their grandmother's house, and I
was alone with my two smallest children.  I had a small lamp
burning because I was very afraid.  I thought maybe some soldiers
had gone underneath my house.  Then one soldier came straight into
my house, and he put out the light right away so I couldn't see his
face.  The soldier said to me, "Mother, where is Father?", meaning
my husband.  I said, "He's at the farm".  The soldier sounded not
too old, and he stank of alcohol.  Then he asked, "Has your husband
gone to join the Karen Army?"  I said no, he's a farmer and just
works at our farm.  Then the soldier told me to lay down.  He said
"Lay down, Mother".  I refused, so he pushed me and I fell on my
children.  They started crying, and the soldier jumped on me and
started to wrestle with me.  Then he put his rifle barrel against
my face - it felt so cold and made me so afraid I can't tell you. 
He put the barrel against my chest and pushed me down again.  He
grabbed my throat and said "If you shout I'll choke you!" and tried
to slap me but I turned my face away.  So he took his gun and held
it against one side of my face, and pulled out his knife and held
it against the other side, and said "If you fight or cry or shout,
I'll kill you".

My sarong had already come apart while we were fighting.  He raped
me, and I couldn't even scream.  My children started crying very
loudly so the neighbours must have heard, but they were all too
afraid to come and help because soldiers were in all of their
houses too, cooking their food to eat and stealing their things.

After he raped me he said "You mustn't tell anyone anything or I'll
kill you.  You and you children must just be quiet.  Go to sleep
quietly." Then he left, and I lit the light and we went to my
mother-in-law's house.  I told her what happened.  I was angry at
her and said "Why didn't you come?  You heard my children crying". 
She said they couldn't because some soldiers were in their house
too and were going into their bedroom and stealing their things. 
I told her I was very afraid my husband wouldn't understand and
would be angry at me, but she tried to calm me by saying he would
understand.

[Her husband, Saw Eh Plah, age 39, adds:  "I can't be angry with
her but I'm furious at the Army.  It makes me want to fight them."]

I didn't hear that any other women in the village were raped that
night, but the soldiers went into many houses, cooked people's food
and stole all their belongings.  The next day we heard that the
same group of soldiers had met 3 farmers from Baw De Ploh village
who were bringing rice home  from their field on a cart.  The
soldiers took them and killed all 3 of them outside Tee May Baw
village.  We don't know why, all we know is that one of the
farmer's names was Pa Khay.  Those soldiers were from a camp in
Bilin Township.  We hadn't seen them before.

After I was raped we only t give me a bandage until evening.  The
wound still hasn't healed, even now.

Most of the times when they beat porters they used their rifle
butts.  I didn't see them kill anyone, but some were beaten
unconscious and left behind.  I saw the soldiers leave behind 30 or
40 men like this, and I'm sure they're dead because the soldiers
left them beaten unconscious, alone, with nothing.

By the time our group arrived in Saw Hta the SLORC soldiers were
already there.  They'd killed and eaten all the animals the
villagers had left behind.  We only got a few of the vegetables
that were still left.  I was in Saw Hta for more than 10 days
working for the soldiers.  Two times I had to carry wounded
soldiers back to the 54 Battalion position at Peh Hta.  It was a 15
hour walk from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., carrying them over mountains and
across rivers with guards watching us all the way.  Once I saw 29
wounded soldiers the porters had to carry, together with 14 others
who could walk by themselves.

I only saw one battle, and the porters had to go forward with the
soldiers.  Ten porters were wounded, and were carried back with the
wounded soldiers.  I saw some other porters try to escape, but they
were caught and beaten much worse than I was ever beaten.  They
might have died from the beating, but I didn't see.  Then once when
the soldiers asked me to carry something, I said I had to go to the
toilet, went into the bushes and ran away.  It was 4 in the
afternoon and that night I ended up sleeping on the riverbank.  I
wasn't even afraid of being shot if the SLORC soldiers saw me or of
drowning in the river, because after all that time being abused I
felt like even death would be better than taking any more.  The
next morning I tied 4 bamboos together with my longyi and floated
across the Salween River.  Later I found a Karen soldier, who gave
me food and brought me here.  For me, staying here is like being in
heaven compared to before.  The SLORC is terrible, but the Karen
people are good - they saved my life, and they don't even know me. 
For now I don't even want to go back, because the SLORC would only
arrest me again.

I think about my family, though.  The prison guard told them I was
going as a porter, but they must think I'm dead by now.  Mostly I
worry about my sisters, that one of them could marry a soldier. 
That would be terrible - my whole family hates the SLORC. 
Everybody hates the Army.


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

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