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KHRG #98-07 Part 1 of 2 (Ho Murng)




                   THE SITUATION AROUND HO MURNG

        An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group
                June 13, 1998     /     KHRG #98-07

*** PART 1 OF 2 - SEE SUBSEQUENT POSTING FOR PART 2 OF THIS REPORT ***


In January 1996 well-known drug warlord Khun Sa officially surrendered 
to the State Law & Order Restoration Council (SLORC) military junta 
ruling Burma, ending his leadership of the Merng Tai Army (MTA).  Khun 
Sa moved to Rangoon, where he is now a successful businessman, and the 
MTA ceased to exist, though a large portion of it became the Shan United 
Revolutionary Army (SURA) under commander Yord Serk.  The SURA has 
since become part of the new Shan State Army (SSA) alliance and is now 
actively fighting a guerrilla war against the State Peace & Development 
Council (SPDC), which is what the SLORC now calls itself.

The headquarters of Khun Sa and the MTA was at Ho Murng (often 
spelled Ho Mong), a remote village in southwestern Shan State near the 
Thai border which had grown to the size of a small town under the MTA's 
influence.  Immediately following the surrender of the MTA, SLORC 
troops moved in and occupied Ho Murng.  Up until that time villagers 
from the area say they had lived fairly peacefully, most of them farming 
rice and sesame.  Some opium farming existed, but Khun Sa bought most 
of his raw opium from other areas for refinement into heroin.  According 
to the villagers, when SLORC first occupied Ho Murng there was little 
change for the first few months, but after that life in the area changed 
entirely.  Once the SLORC Battalions had firmly installed themselves in 
the area they began making heavy demands on villagers for money, 
livestock, alcohol and other goods, as well as forced labour.  Villagers 
were forced to tear down empty houses and  to help the troops build Army 
camps, and now they are being used as forced labour breaking and 
carrying stones to pave one of several roads being worked on in the area.  
This road goes from Ho Murng towards Lang Kher, a town about 80 
kilometres further north where the SPDC operations command for the 
area is located.

Forced labour and other abuses in the area have become such a heavy 
burden on the villagers that several villages have almost completely 
emptied out, with most of the villagers fleeing to Thailand.  The situation

only got worse when fighting broke out between the SPDC and the SSA in 
the area earlier this year.  In March 1998, a group of several hundred 
villagers from the Ho Murng area fled and arrived at Pang Yon in 
Thailand.  SPDC troops crossed the border and threatened to attack them, 
so the Thai Army had to move into the area and eventually many of the 
refugees were moved out of the area and into an existing Karenni refugee 
camp.  According to the refugees, the SPDC troops contacted them and 
tried to convince them to go back, most likely because they need villagers 
in the Ho Murng area to do forced labour and to provide loot and 
extortion money for the SPDC officers.  To convince the villagers to go 
back, the SPDC troops told them they would help them to begin growing 
opium so that they could make a lot of money.  Most of these villagers had 
never grown opium before, and they all refused.

Villagers, porters who have been through the area and SPDC deserters 
have reported that many new opium fields have been created near Ho 
Murng since the SLORC/SPDC occupation of the area, particularly in late 
1997 and early 1998.  For several years now farmers from Shan State 
have stated that anyone in SLORC/SPDC-held areas is free to grow and 
transport opium as long as they pay the required tax to the local military.
 
Those who are arrested are simply those who have not paid the taxes.  
Occasionally people who have paid the taxes are also arrested, most likely 
when local Battalions receive orders from above to produce a certain 
number of arrests within a certain time frame so that the junta can show 
impressive statistics to some international aid donor.  Even when this 
happens it is never the key people who are arrested, just the small farmers

or itinerant labourers who are carrying the opium to make a living.  
People from Ho Murng area now claim that some of the opium fields have 
been set up by the Army, that villagers are forced to do labour in these 
fields, and that much of the buying, selling and transportation of opium in

the area is done by SPDC officers.  It appears that the SPDC Battalions 
also control almost all of the business producing and selling Ya Ma 
(known as 'crazy medicine' or 'horse medicine'; 'myin say' in Burmese), an 
amphetamine-type drug popular in Burma and Thailand.  One villager 
from near Ho Murng claims that since the SLORC/SPDC occupation of 
Ho Murng the price of Ya Ma has dropped from 50 or 100 Baht per tablet 
to 10 Baht, and that SPDC troops tightly guard the Ya Ma factories.

As this report is being printed, SPDC representatives are attending a 
United Nations conference on drugs in New York in order to plead for 
money to combat drug production.  The United Nations International 
Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) is claiming that by working with the 
SPDC and providing them with tens of millions of dollars they can 
completely eradicate opium cultivation in Burma within 10 years, despite 
the fact that experienced US drug agents in Thailand have stated that 
during 30 years in Thailand, even with the help of a cooperative 
government, they have still only managed to cut 70 percent of Thailand's 
drug production - which was never more than a small fraction of what 
Burma's production is today.  The SPDC and the UNDCP say that the first 
priority in order to reduce drug production in Shan State is to construct 
all-season roads into all the remotest areas of the state, so that farmers 
can get crops to market in the rainy season as part of the crop
substitution 
programs.  Large sums of aid money are supposed to be needed to build 
these all-season roads.  In fact, very few crops in Burma are harvested in 
rainy season, they are harvested before or after rainy season.  And as one 
villager points out in this report, even if the SPDC has a budget to build
a 
road they generally keep it and use villagers for forced labour instead.  
Another villager adds that even Khun Sa used bulldozers and backhoes, 
but the SPDC prefers to use villagers.  When the villagers flee, the SPDC 
suggests to them that if the human rights abuses are making life too hard 
for them, they could always come back and survive as opium growers.  
When villagers do so because they have no other choice, the SPDC can 
then point to the rising opium production as a reason to receive even more 
international anti-drug aid.  

However, the money-driven bureaucracies mandated to fight drug 
production go on acting as though they believe there is no connection 
between human rights and fighting drugs.  The villagers interviewed in 
this report could tell them otherwise.  Even the mere discussion of 
implementing crop substitution programs in Shan State, where the 
SLORC/SPDC has systematically destroyed over 1,400 villages and 
forcibly relocated over 300,000 people since 1996, sounds absurd to Shan 
farmers who have already been driven off their land by human rights 
abuses.  [For details of the mass forced relocation program in Shan State 
see the reports "Killing the Shan" (KHRG #98-03, 23/5/98), and 
"Dispossessed" (Shan Human Rights Foundation, April 1998).]  
However, when the governments of the world get together to decide how to 
'help' people, the voices of those people are often the last thing they
want 
to hear.

This report consists of Interviews #1 and #2 with refugees from the Ho 
Murng area, Interview #3 with human rights monitors documenting the 
situation in that area, and Interview #4 with a Shan villager from Karenni 
(Kayah) State who was imprisoned for carrying opium in 1994.  The 
names of those interviewed have been changed and some details omitted 
where necessary to protect people.  All interviews were conducted by 
KHRG in April and May 1998.
____________________________________________________________________________
_

                        Index of Interviews

Note:  Names which have been changed are shown in quotes. 

 # Pg.  Name         Sex Age  Subject

 1  4  "Sai Heng"      M 30   Rice and sesame farmer from near 
        Ho Murng talks about SLORC/SPDC forced labour since 
        arrival in 1996, looting, extortion, beatings, 
        tying up villagers, forced labour carrying 
        rocks to pave the Ho Murng - Lang Kher road, 
        forced labour of women and children, rape, 
        flight of many villagers in the area, SPDC attempt 
        to get them back by telling them to grow opium, 
        SLORC/SPDC soldiers and officers including 
        operations commander buying and selling opium, 
        controlling production of Ya Ma and selling it 
        in Thailand, SPDC troops making new opium fields and 
        forcing villagers to work them

 2  7  "Loong Kham"    M 43   Rice and sesame farmer from near 
        Ho Murng talks about forced labour breaking rocks 
        on the road, forced labour of women and children, 
        forced labour getting building materials for Army camps, 
        flight to Thailand, steadily increasing repression 
        of villagers near Ho Murng

 3  9  M.T.            M      Human rights monitors discussing 
       "Htun Kyi"      M      information villagers from the 
        Ho Murng area have told them about SPDC involvement 
        in opium production

 4  9  "Sai Long"      M 30   Shan man who was arrested in 1994 
        while carrying opium to Khun Sa's area because his 
        employer had not paid the Army tax to transport opium, 
        served 4 years of his sentence in Loikaw before being 
        taken as a porter and escaping

____________________________________________________________________________
__

                          Abbreviations

SPDC   State Peace & Development Council, military junta ruling Burma
SLORC  State Law & Order Restoration Council, former name of the 
       SPDC until Nov. 1997
SURA   Shan United Revolutionary Army, formed by former MTA 
       commander Yord Serk after the MTA surrender; main group 
       which is fighting SLORC/SPDC.  In September 1997 allied 
       itself with SSA and SSNA to form 'new' SSA.
SSA    Shan State Army, which had a ceasefire with SLORC/SPDC.  
       In September 1997 allied itself with SURA and SSNA to form 
       'new' SSA.
SSNA   Shan State Nationalities Army, which has a ceasefire with 
       SLORC/SPDC.  In September 1997 allied itself with SURA 
       and SSA to form 'new' SSA.
MTA    Merng Tai Army, commanded by Khun Sa, surrendered to SLORC 
       in 1996.
IB     Infantry Battalion (SLORC/SPDC), usually about 500 soldiers 
       fighting strength
LIB    Light Infantry Battalion (SLORC/SPDC), usually about 500
       soldiers fighting strength
Kyat   Burmese currency; US$1=6 Kyat at official rate, 200+ Kyat
       at current market rate
Baht   Thai currency; US$1= approximately 36 Baht at time of printing
____________________________________________________________________________
_

                             Interviews

                                 #1.
NAME:    "Sai Heng"      SEX: M   AGE: 30        Shan Buddhist farmer
FAMILY:  Married, 2 children aged 1 and 4
ADDRESS: Nong Yao village, Ho Murng township     INTERVIEWED: 29/4/98

["Sai Heng" farms rice and sesame in his village near Khun Sa's former 
headquarters at Ho Murng.  He recently fled to Thailand.]

Q:  Where are you from?
A:  We are originally from Nong Yao village close to Ho Murng, then we 
moved to Pang Yon [a place in Thailand where many new Shan refugees 
took temporary refuge].  We arrived at Pang Yon the second week of the 
fourth month [in March by the Shan calendar] and we stayed there more 
than 20 days.  Sorry I don't remember exactly, but we fled our village
after 
the celebration of Union Day [February 12th].  Nong Yao is two hours' 
walk from Ho Murng, north of Ho Murng.  There is a road to get to the 
village but the road is quite old. 

Q:  Why did you flee from your village?
A:  Because we were oppressed by the Burmese soldiers so we could not 
live there any longer.  That is why we moved.  And I want to say how they 
oppressed us.  Very often they forced us to carry stones to pave the road, 
so we didn't have time to earn our own living.  We didn't have any chance 
to work in our farms because they were forcing us to carry rocks all the 
time.  We couldn't stand it anymore so we had to escape that situation.  
When we refused to go [to forced labour] we were tied and beaten.  Even 
our village headman was seized and beaten.  That is why we could not stay 
at all, and finally the village became empty of its people.  Nobody dared
to 
stay.  Besides, all our chickens, cooking oil, rice, our pigs, our
chillies, 
even our pots and dishes, whatever they [SPDC soldiers] saw they took it 
away by force.  They ate our food and our livestock, and even though we 
begged them not to do it they just tied up the owners and then killed their

cattle, pigs and chickens.  Then they ate them while they drank alcohol.  
Even worse, even after we had nothing left to give them we were supposed 
to go and buy things from other villages to give to them.  When we went to 
the other villages to buy the things that they asked for, sometimes the 
house owner was not there and the neighbours said, "Oh, the owner of this 
house is not here, he went to the jungle to become a revolutionary".  Then 
when we went back and told the soldiers that the person wasn't there, they 
went and broke open the lock and took all the house owner's belongings.

Q:  What kinds of labour did you have to do?
A:  Mainly carrying rocks to build the road.  We could make only two trips 
in one whole day.  They were forcing us to work on the road from Ho 
Murng to Nam Lin to Pang Kong [at the bank of the Salween River] to Tai 
Yoi Mu.  This road is heading to Lang Kher.  The other roads [on which 
people have to work] go from Ho Murng to Mai Kai and from Ho Murng 
to Hok.  Even when the villagers had to work on those roads they [the 
SPDC officers] would ask for a budget from their headquarters and they 
would keep that money only for themselves.

Q:  In your village, how many people had to do this work each day?
A:  More than 30, one person from each house had to go to work for them 
every day.  If we only had two or three people in the house and we couldn't

go to work for them, we had to give them money, a hundred Kyats a day.  
If we didn't have any money, we had to give them alcohol or chickens 
instead.  If we had no chickens we had to give them beef, not the whole 
cow, but we had to kill a cow and give them some of the beef [this is a 
serious burden on a family because cattle are a major form of savings - 
once killed the meat must be used quickly or dried, as people have no 
access to refrigeration].

Q:  Did the SLORC give you any food while you were working?
A:  How could they feed us, they even stole the rice we brought with us!  
We had to bring our own lunch with us and then they took and ate our 
lunch.  So we were hungry, we missed our lunch, and when that made us 
feel exhausted they beat us!  Sometimes instead of stealing our rice they 
exchanged our good sticky-rice with their Burmese rice, saying that it was 
sticky-rice but it was not [glutinous rice, which is preferred by villagers
in 
this area].  The soldiers wanted to have the villagers' sticky-rice.  Some 
stole the sticky-rice from the villagers and then the people who had no
rice 
became weak and they got beaten by the Burmese - and the Burmese said, 
"Oh, you are very lazy".  If someone was working slowly he got beaten, 
because the soldiers were guarding us; but no one died.  Women and 
children were working there also.  They preferred men but if there were no 
men the women were obliged to go.  If there were no adults then children 
had to go.  When the parents got sick the children had to go for them.  
They were teenagers, fourteen and older.  The youngest children had to 
carry half of what the adults carried.

Q:  Did the Army come to your village very often?
A:  They came and camped in the village for a few days, then they went 
and camped for a while in every village around there.  In Nam Kuyt they 
caused problems.  There were three women who were on their way to buy 
things to eat in Ho Murng, and they met some Burmese troops in Nong 
Laeng.  The soldiers said "Come, we have rice", and they made the three 
women go into their camp, and then they raped those three women.  After 
that they gave them one pyi of rice each [about 2 kg/4.4 lb] and they said 
"You don't have to pay for this rice".  They were from Nam Kuyt, not our 
village.  I don't know the names of the women, they were Pa'O and we live 
five miles away from them.

Q:  What about the other villages around?
A:  The other villages also had the same problems as we did.  The first 
village is Lon Yao, the second is Ho Kit, the third is Nong Ai, the fourth 
Myo Yat, and the fifth Mayk Houng; all of these villages are totally empty 
now because they [the soldiers] did as I have explained.  They started 
emptying out two  months ago.  They treated us badly and we could not 
stand this kind of oppression.  Whenever we couldn't give them what they 
asked for we were supposed to give them money.

When the soldiers realised that we had all moved to the border of Thailand 
they sent someone to tell us, "Come back, all of you come back, come and 
work in your opium fields again.  When you grow it we will buy all that 
you produce, and we will pay you the same price that you could get from 
others."  That is what they said.  They were three battalions, #525 [LIB], 
#332 [LIB] and #99 [IB] from Murng Pan and Lang Kher.  We answered, 
"No we don't want to come back."  We didn't even farm opium before.  I 
farmed rice and sesame.  We told them that we don't want to farm opium 
and that we won't go back.

Q:  Isn't it forbidden to cultivate opium?
A:  When the Burmese soldiers arrived in that area [in 1996, after Khun 
Sa's surrender] it was full of people, but later there were fewer and fewer

people because of their oppression.  They didn't like that [they need 
villagers for forced labour and as a source of loot and extortion money].  
They tried to find out why the villagers left their villages.  They were 
wondering, "Why did people leave after we arrived?"  So finally they tried 
to make us go back home by telling us that if we did, we would be allowed 
to cultivate opium.  They said, "If you farm opium you will earn good 
money, you will have money and gold, you will do good business.  If you 
don't know where to sell it we will buy it, but we'll collect a tax." 

Look, when Khun Sa was there it was said that Khun Sa was an opium 
warlord but we never saw this kind of thing happening around our village.  
But now, since Khun Sa surrendered, the price of Ya Ma has gone down to 
10 Baht per tablet ['crazy medicine', known in Burmese as 'myin say'; an 
amphetamine-type drug that makes you aggressive and stupid, common in 
Burma and Thailand], and the Burmese soldiers carry their opium and 
their Ya Ma along with them from place to place.  They even come and 
sell it in Thailand, in Mai Kai On and Mai Kai Long villages.  Before I'd 
never even heard about these kind of things, but now I've seen it myself.

Q:  Do you know if there is a place where they produce Ya Ma in your 
area?
A:  Only the Burmese [soldiers] produce Ya Ma and it is forbidden to go 
to the factories where they make it.  It is forbidden and the places are 
guarded by soldiers.  They make the Ya Ma outside the villages.  In our 
area the man who transports the opium drives a 4-wheel drive truck [small 
pickup truck].  No matter what checkpoints he has to pass by he is never 
checked, and he has all kinds of equipment for transforming opium [into 
heroin] in his 4-wheel drive truck.  He is an operations commander ['byu 
ha mu'; strategic commander].  He buys the rough opium with gold, he 
buys one and a half viss [2.4 kg/5.2 lb; i.e. he buys about this much on 
each trip].  I don't know his name but he is from that same regional 
command, from Lang Kher.  Now he's already moved, but the other units 
also do it the same way.  Now only the Burmese do that business, the Shan 
and Pa'O don't do it.  In Ho Murng there is a lot of Ya Ma, plenty!  The 
sellers and the buyers are both Burmese.  The Burmese soldiers just put on 
their mufti [civilian clothes] and then they sell the stuff from village to

village as far as Mai Kai Long [in Thailand].  They go there not only to 
sell Ya Ma, they sell opium as well.  They sold what they seized from the 
opium merchants after Khun Sa surrendered.  After that they made their 
own fields at Gong Sarng and Gong Mai Houng and they forced the 
villagers there to work for them.

Q:  Would you say that there are more opium fields now than before Khun 
Sa surrendered?
A:  In Khun Sa days people were talking all the time about opium, but I 
had never seen it.  I didn't even know what it looked like.  But now, since

the Burmese came to rule the area we've had the chance to see what 
opium, Ya Ma, and also heroin are.  But we don't buy it, we don't use it.  
We just saw it when they came to deal in it.  Before when Khun Sa was 
there, we just heard people mention opium and we saw opium in pictures, 
as though it were some kind of vegetable.  [Khun Sa bought most of his 
opium from other areas before refining it into heroin; see the interview 
below with "Sai Long", who was arrested while transporting opium into 
Khun Sa's area.] 

Q:  Is the situation getting worse this year?  Why did you decide to flee 
only now?
A:  In Khun Sa's days, before he surrendered to the Burmese troops, we 
didn't have to be porters, we didn't have to pay money to the soldiers and 
we were not forced to work for them; but after the Burmese soldiers 
started ruling our area life only remained peaceful for about three months.
 
After that, the situation started getting worse and worse until the land 
became empty [of people].

Q:  Didn't you flee because of fighting between the SPDC and the SSA?
A:  No.  I think if the Burmese soldiers stay there I won't go back to my 
home, but when we achieve freedom I will go back.  When we are living 
in Thailand we can't cut trees in the forest like at home [to build a
house], 
and it is hard to survive.  At home we can farm and cultivate, we can do 
small business there, but here we don't see anything we can do, so when 
the Burmese have gone we would love to go back.  If it is not possible to 
go back we don't have any idea what we'll do.
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      - [END OF PART 1 - SEE SUBSEQUENT POSTING FOR PART 2 OF 2] -