KHRG Commentary; April 94

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KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP COMMENTARY
April 16, 1994


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       A REPORT BY THE KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP

The Karen Human Rights Group is a small and independent organization
operating out of Manerplaw, headquarters of the Karen National Union (KNU)
and Burma's democratic forces.

Although the KHRG relies on the logistical support of the Karen National
Union, the group is independent and apolitical and focuses on human rights
abuses in Karen regions.  Whenever possible, abuses against other ethnic
peoples in Burma are also reported.

Karen Human Rights Group
PO Box 22
Mae Sot, Tak 63110
Thailand
(email sent to the KHRG at strider@xxxxxxxxxxx will be forwarded)


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On January 28, 1994 SLORC planes passed over the headquarters
area of the New Mon State Party and sprayed a yellow powder which
covered everything.  The New Mon State Party says this has happened
before, but the effects are not clear, no proper analysis has
ever been done, and no one is quite sure what the SLORC is spraying.
 Now in the past 8 months in Karen areas hundreds of people have
died of a disease like cholera or shigella, which has broken out
in two different areas - only days after SLORC planes flew over
the areas and dropped mysterious "radiosonde" electronic weather
devices.  [For details, see "Is the SLORC Using Bacteriological
Warfare?", KHRG 15/3/94].  Nothing is certain, but more evidence
is forthcoming.  What is the SLORC doing?  At least one of the
Karen disease areas, in Thaton District, is the same area where
SLORC's notorious 99 Division has been unsuccessfully using terror
for the past 2 years to drive the entire civilian population either
into camps or out of the area.  The disease is now helping that
to happen.  For the moment, the situation still presents more
questions than answers, such as if there is no connection between
the air drops and the disease, then why is the SLORC dropping
strange devices in an area which they do not even control?  If
no one else can answer these questions, then the SLORC should
- and it may be up to foreign governments to make them do so.

With respect to other things, the main word becoming more and
more common in reports coming in from all areas is SLAVERY.  This
has rapidly become the main source of despair and destitution
for Karen, Karenni, Mon, Tavoyan, Burman and others alike, as
almost every one of them now shakes his or her head and asks us,
"How can we survive any more in our village?  We have to do so
much work for them, we don't even have time to work to support
our own families anymore."  Some claim that there is a "tradition
of community labour" in Burma.  True, in many areas there is a
tradition of villagers gathering together to do small projects
for their village - but definitely not for any faraway King, and
absolutely not for that King's army.  This is a myth propagated
by Ne Win, the old but still active dictator.  The SLORC is becoming
completely systematic in its slavery, at army camps, on roads,
railways and other development projects, on "SLORC farms", and
so on.  As people from Karenni State are reporting, every SLORC
Battalion and Regiment now confiscates all the best farmland in
their base area, then forces the displaced farmers and others
to do all the farmwork for them.  All the profits go to the local
military, with a cut going to the higher authorities, of course
[see "Human Rights in Northern Karenni State",KHRG 10/4/94, &
"SLORC Abuses in Hlaing Bwe Area", KHRG 16/3/94].  Best of all,
SLORC can then present all these infrastructure and land confiscation
projects to foreign diplomats as "community income generation"
or "regional development projects"!  The saddest point of all
is that these lies are increasingly being believed by UN representatives
and diplomats ensconced in their Rangoon villas, as well as by
many of the governments which they represent and Non-Government
Organisations contemplating entering Burma.  Anyone who thinks
the SLORC is suddenly going to allow any kind of "development"
which benefits civilians or that SLORC ceasefires will improve
things for the people in the long term should look again, and
this time spend some time listening to the voices of the people
who are Burma - the villagers.  Not the SLORC or their flunkies,
not the people who plan the projects but the people who are forced
to work on them.

One of the SLORC's worst mass slavery "development" projects at
the moment is the Ye-Tavoy railway, involving almost every family
between Ye in Mon State and Tavoy in Tenasserim (Taninthari) Division,
tens of thousands of people altogether [see "The Ye-Tavoy Railway",
KHRG 13/4/94].  The Mon, Karen, Tavoyan and Burman villagers trying
to flee the slavery, beatings, disease and death that this 110-mile
railway holds for them are caught in a cruel vice:  the SLORC
on one side, and the Thais on the other.  Many of the railway
refugees were arriving at the Thai border in the area of Pa Yaw
refugee camp - so the SLORC has sent in fresh troops to block
off that route of escape.  Now most of them are split into two
streams.  One is heading north, to cross into Thailand together
with the thousands of urban economic refugees now crossing around
Three Pagodas Pass, where money-hungry Thais await to cart them
off to virtual slavery in Bangkok's sweatshops and brothels. 
These people, impossible to count, usually end up in Thailand's
brutal Immigration Detention Centres, where they are stripped
of all belongings, beaten and raped, and then piled onto open
trucks and sent back into SLORC hands at the border.  The other
stream is heading south, coming to the border around Nat Ei Taung
and Da Now See, where the Thai Army is already in the process
of forcibly repatriating all the refugees in their territory.
 Camps have been burned down and refugees deliberately driven
into brutally inhospitable, overcrowded and inaccessible sites
just across the border from SLORC camps   Now heavily armed Thai
troops are storming camps by surprise, waving their weapons and
shouting false threats that there will be no more rice supply,
trying to intimidate the refugees back across the border.  A senior
Thai Intelligence officer told us in Da Now See, "My main job
is to stop any more refugees trying to cross.  We're expecting
a lot of them, first from this railway and then from the gas pipeline."
 The gas pipeline, another one of SLORC's upcoming slavery projects,
is financed by French oil giant Total, Unocal and Texaco of the
USA, and Thailand's government oil company.  Ten new SLORC Battalions,
#401 thru 410, have been sent to the route of the proposed pipeline
to "secure" the area.

The refugees say they cannot and will not go back to SLORC.  The
Thais say they must.  Some of the refugees say they would die
first, and if the SLORC and the Thais have their way, perhaps
they will.  So where is the famous United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, the UNHCR, which is supposed to protect refugees?
 One Mon refugee representative says "They were here, they looked
around and we explained the situation to them."  That was 2 or
3 months ago - and now?  "We haven't heard anything back from
them", he says.  Other Mon representatives were more outspoken,
even to the point of writing an open letter urging the UNHCR to
take action and risking arrest by publicly protesting the UNHCR's
lack of action in front of UN offices in Bangkok.  The UNHCR's
response:  absolute silence - not even an acknowledgement letter.

The UNHCR has always refused to acknowledge the existence of ethnic
refugees from Burma in Thailand for its own political reasons.
 In the crisis the refugees are now facing, as one diplomat in
Bangkok put it, "The UNHCR is going to need a lot of pushing to
do anything.  They've got a sweet deal with SLORC on the Bangladesh
border, and they don't want to mess that up by doing anything
for refugees on this side."  Who is the UNHCR supposed to be working
for, refugees or SLORC?  Their absolute refusal to do anything
at all to prevent a possible mass forced repatriation and the
resulting human disaster is nothing short of criminal.  If Commissioner
Sadako Ogata, once a UN Special Rapporteur on Burma herself, doesn't
care about the lives of 100,000 refugees from Burma in Thailand,
then she should be sacked and replaced with someone who does.
 Unfortunately, she would have to be sacked by the UN Secretary-General,
the very same Boutros Boutros-Ghali who was told to intervene
in Burma by the General Assembly almost 5 months ago and hasn't
even uttered a word about Burma since.  If the UN High Commissioner
for Refugees isn't answerable to refugees and the UN Secretary-General
isn't answerable to the United Nations, then their job descriptions