KHRG Report

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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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KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP COMMENTARY
June 6, 1994

Just when we think the SLORC already has enough in its inventory
of brutality, it amazes us by coming up with even more dirty tricks.
 Now the regional SLORC commanders have called most of the village
heads in Thaton District to a meeting, and informed them that
"In the future, for every one of our soldiers who dies we will
execute 5 of your villagers."  This order appears to have come
from Rangoon, and it is a frightening omen of the way SLORC is
going.  The SLORC's demands for "compensation" from villagers
are ever-increasing.  Every time they lose a truck to a Karen
landmine, they now systematically demand 50,000 Kyat from each
of up to 10 or 12 surrounding villages, and 100,000 from the nearest
village.  One written order from 42 Infantry Battalion states
that the next time a truck explodes, they will demand 1 million
Kyat, which must be paid within 7 days or all surrounding villages
will be burned down - and from then on, villagers will be forced
to ride along on all SLORC trucks.  Along with the existing heavy
burdens of "porter fees" and food looting, villagers are now forced
to pay "taxes" on every farm field and on many of their tools
such as woodcutting saws.  In many villages, every time they boil
their sugarcane into jaggery, the SLORC then either comes and
confiscates it or "buys" it from them, then forces them to "buy"
it back at a much higher price.  Soldiers no longer eat their
own rations - they force the villagers to buy them at inflated
prices, then loot food back from the villagers.

Southwestern command has issued orders to all villages that villagers
are no longer allowed to cut, carry, saw, buy, sell or own wood
or timber.  Later the same month, the same office then sent orders
to the same villages demanding 75 tons of hardwood logs from each
village, to be cut and transported to a specified site on the
riverbank by the villagers, who say that the SLORC then floats
them down the river and sells them.  SLORC camps are now also
demanding 5 tons of cut and bundled firewood at a time from each
village, which they then transport to city markets and sell for
profit.  Any village which fails to deliver on such orders may
well receive the dreaded bullet, charcoal, and chillies in an
envelope from the SLORC camp.  One SLORC officer recently explained
this cryptic message to a confused villager as follows: "Oh, it's
very easy - the bullet means we'll kill all you villagers, the
charcoal means we'll burn down the whole village and the chillie
means we'll cook all your animals into curry.  If we set your
village on fire then everyone in your village will have to flee,
and everything you leave in the village becomes ours.  The only
thing I forgot was to put an onion in together with the chillie."
 [For more detail on all of these, see the enclosed reports.]

This is development, SLORC style.  As one villager recently shook
her head and told us, "They don't come here to fight their enemies
- they only come here to oppress us and do business".  If you
read the villagers' stories, one thing you'll notice is that they
almost never talk about fighting.  This is because right now there
is little actual fighting going on - yet the villagers talk about
things being "worse than ever before" as the SLORC increases all
its human rights abuses.  If anything, the decrease in fighting
actually seems to be giving the SLORC the chance to conduct ever
more serious repression against the villagers.  There is a lesson
in this for anyone who holds out hope that a "ceasefire" as proposed
by SLORC will improve life for the villagers in any way.  If this
is not enough evidence, just remember that after the 1991 Pa'O
ceasefire, the number of Pa'O displaced people and refugees tripled
as the SLORC consolidated its control over Pa'O areas.

In fact, despite the typically exaggerated media reports, no ceasefire
talks at all have yet occurred between the Karen National Union

and SLORC.  There have only been a few meetings of advance representatives,
and these have only focussed on trying to agree to hold talks
in the first place.  So far they have failed and no talks have
occurred, mainly because the SLORC refuses to negotiate in a neutral
country with outside observers.

However, the Thai Government is already acting as though all is
well in Burma - while thousands continue to flee abuses like those
mentioned above, the Thai Government has now blockaded the entire
border against new refugees of any nationality.  To repeat, no
new refugees are being allowed to come across the border anywhere,
for any reason.  In the north, where Shan villagers are fleeing
across the border to avoid being taken as slave porters for SLORC
troops fighting Khun Sa, Thai troops are driving them back across
the border into the hands of SLORC at gunpoint.  At all Karen
refugee camps, Thai authorities have threatened camp leaders not
to accept any new arrivals or face serious consequences, and the
Thai military has been ordered to force back anyone caught coming
across the border.  A new "displaced persons" camp has had to
be formed on the Burma side of the border at Klay Muh Hta, 100
km. north of Mae Sot.  Already close to 4,000 people fleeing slave
labour, killings, torture and extortion in the Hlaing Bwe area
have arrived there within the past two months and more are arriving
daily, blocked from crossing the border into the safety of Thailand.
 More such camps will almost certainly have to be set up along
the border soon, and their situation is extremely precarious -
not only do they face the possibility of punitive offensives from
SLORC troops, but they have trouble getting aid of any kind. 
While Klay Muh Hta has secured limited foreign aid so far, this
will soon be outstripped by the need.  Many NGOs (Non-Government
Organisations) and most foreign governments who give aid in the
refugee camps in Thailand refuse to help displaced people on the
Burma side of the border.  The Australian Government, for example,
has flatly refused to give aid through anyone inside Burma except
SLORC, a policy which plays directly into the hands of the Thais
when they tell the Karen National Union that all Karen refugees
will starve unless the KNU surrenders to SLORC.

But the Thais have gone even further.  Thai Defence Minister Vijit
Sookmark has already begun negotiating with SLORC the forcible
repatriation of all Karen refugees in Thailand [see Bangkok Post,
 27/4/94].  SLORC reportedly agreed to take them back "if they
were proven to be Burmese nationals."  There are now at least
70,000 such refugees in the camps, most of whom have fled not
battles, but SLORC's systematic terrorism of civilians.  The SLORC
announced in 1992 that "There are no refugees in the border areas,
only insurgents in the disguise of refugees."  SLORC considers
all refugees as "traitors" and the "families of insurgents". 
Now it has agreed to open a special border checkpoint to take
them all.  If this happens, the Karen refugees would be herded
to the border by armed Thai troops, then handed to SLORC troops
who wood herd them off to SLORC's labour camps, prisons, and to
the frontline as military porters and human minesweepers.  Any
suspected of any past opposition activity would be executed, and
most attractive young girls would be quickly sold back across
the border to Thai brothel owners.  In other words, what the Thai
government is now negotiating is the mass murder and enslavement
of refugees.

Vijit said this would "ease the burden of Thailand's having to
take care of them".  One thing must be made very clear:  Thailand
has never "cared for" these refugees.  The Thai government gives
them nothing, and even blocks foreign aid offered for education
and other services.  All food and other aid is provided by overseas
NGOs, who must buy their supplies from Thai businesses at market
price, and many of the refugee camps even have to pay rent for

the land they're on.  Thailand's "burden" only consists of making
mountains of money selling relief supplies to NGOs, exploiting
the refugees as near-slave labour at one-quarter the price of
Thai labour (and after the job even these wages are often refused
them), and arresting and ransoming refugees whenever Thai police
want some whisky money.

To date the reaction, or rather lack of any reaction, to this
developing mass crime against humanity by foreign governments
and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has been disgusting
and criminal.  They clearly plan to wait until it is all a fait
accompli, then issue some feeble protest.  This cannot be tolerated.
 Furthermore, it is urgent that all those working to free Burma
now target all their diplomatic and political actions, boycotts,
embargoes and condemnations directly against the Thai government
as well as SLORC.  They are fast becoming accomplices to all of
SLORC's crimes.