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FORCED LABOR TO TAKE PRECIOUS OBJEC



Subject: FORCED LABOR TO TAKE PRECIOUS OBJECTS AND BUILD MUSEUM IN BURMA

FORCED LABOR TO TAKE PRECIOUS OBJECTS AND BUILD MUSEUM IN BURMA

INTERVIEW OF ARAKANESE REFUGEE IN BANGLEDESH

(Arakan State, Burma)
The construction of a Buddha museum is now going on in Sittwe and SLORC
soldiers are using forced
labour of the people from the quarters of Sittwe town, including
children, old women, young girls, and men
from all walks of life. They force them to work for them. Even at night,
SLORC don't let people go home.
They demand that the people complete the work. They let some of the
attractive young girls go home only
after midnight. Now the people are feeling afflicted to see this
happening. I have worked there myself
three times. The first time was on 10 September 1995. Each family has to
work one day at a time. All the
families of Sittwe have to work one day each by turns. This project
started in 1991, in Ma Gya Myai
quarter of Sittwe. It is quite big, spread over a wide area. They are
building it on paddy fields. Some fields
were owned by villagers and they were moved from there. The army
forcibly occupied that land and
relocated the villagers somewhere. Part of these fields was also owned
by an orphanage. The orphanage
got no compensation, because SLORC has no regulation for compensation.

SLORC is trying to collect and find all the ancient Buddha images and
gather them in this museum. Then
later they will take them all to Rangoon. That is the reason why they
are building this museum. The
government is trying to collect all the Buddha images and other ancient
objects from all over Arakan State
and they have already made a list of all our ancient precious objects in
all the monasteries. 

The people don't like this museum. Now it is almost finished. It is a
two storey building. They still have to
start building the partitions to make separate rooms. The roof is
already finished as well as the external
walls. Only the people from Sittwe township have to do the work.
Everybody has to go - Rakhines,
Muslims, Hindus, Christians. In each quarter SLORC orders some families
for one day and people have to
rotate turn by turn. They take 200 to 300 people per day. It has gone on
continuously since 1991. They
never interrupted the construction work.


Everyone has to work at least 3 times a month. Before September my
younger brother always went for
our family. When I went I had to carry sand, bricks and wooden planks.
One group of soldiers were there
to supervise the work, from Battalion #20, Western Command. When I was
working there, I saw soldiers
throwing stones at people who were taking a rest for a little while.
They also hit them with a cane stick,
kicked them and scolded them rudely. But I was not beaten up. Some
people were badly hurt. One woman
was having a smoke and sat down. A soldier brutally took the cigarette
out of her mouth and kicked her in
her belly with his army boots. Then he hit her with a cane stick. She
fell down and lost consciousness. It
must have been internal injuries, because she was not bleeding. She was
17 years old.

Some old women had to come to work instead of their sons and daughters.
They were scolded by the
soldiers without any respect: "Why are you coming here? You are useless!
Where are your sons and
daughters?" These old women were like the soldiers' mothers but the
soldiers didn't pay any respect to
them. [Reverence for elders and parents is a cornerstone of society in
Burma.] There are many women,
more women than men, at the labour because many men are doing their
business work, so their wives
have to substitute for them. There were some pregnant women working, but
not in an advanced stage of
pregnancy. Some women came with their babies. There were children 7 or 8
years old working there too,
and old people about 60 years old. There were many young girls, some
were students. The soldiers
ordered the most attractive ones to stay as late as midnight. Normally
the work continues until 6 pm but
they ordered these girls to do overtime. You can easily imagine why they
kept them! But if they were
raped, they wouldn't reveal it because of our society.

If a family was absent, they have to pay 200 Kyats for one day. This is
extortion. We have to work from 8
am to 6 pm. For lunch we could take a break for half an hour. We had to
bring our own food, and we got
no pay. They never even promised anything. SLORC allowed us to use
tools. The tools were provided by
the army. The army brought all the building materials. To carry bricks
and sand they are using people's
trucks, not their own.

All over Arakan state, forced labour is going on: road construction,
building of military camps, etc. For
example, in remote areas people depend on their cultivation but they
have to go all the time to work in
military camps or at road construction. They have no time to do their
own cultivation. They have to crush
stones, cut bamboo, cut iron bars for building purposes and they have to
be porters for the army without
any pay.

They are building a highway between Sittwe and Rangoon. The people from
Sittwe have to build the part
of the highway in Sittwe area. Those who are living in other townships
have to do the part in their own
township. I worked on this highway myself, in July 1995. We had to build
the road embankment [because
the land is low-lying, all roads in Arakan must be built on
embankments]. First we had to dig the ground

nearby, then carry it and build the embankment. The embankment is 2 or 3
feet high. Each section of town
has to finish an assigned length of the embankment. After it is
finished, they can go home. I worked there
only once, for 7 days. It was too far from my house, so I had to stay
there at night. It was 7 miles from
home. I went there on foot.

When we stayed at night, we had to build a shelter. Some heavily drunk
soldiers came there, entered the
shelters and made troubles for the girls and to their relatives who were
trying to protect them. They
started to quarrel, kick, punch, and hit people with their rifle butts.
The soldiers always went and got
alcohol in the nearby villages. They came back drunk and then did
whatever they wanted: they kicked,
they beat, they punched whomever they wanted. Many different Battalions
are in charge there. In Sittwe
Township alone, there are 20 battalions.

That highway goes through the paddy fields owned by people. They get no
compensation. This project
started after SLORC seized power [1988]. It will never been finished. It
will take forever because what
they finish during the dry season is completely destroyed in the rainy
season. SLORC have started many
such projects of road building: Kyauk Pru to Rangoon, Sittwe to Maungdaw
via Amumaw. Also Kyauk Taw
to Buthidaung and Sittwe to Rathidaung. All since 1988.

They also catch porters in Sittwe, as they do throughout the country.
They order the quarter leader to
provide a certain number of people. If people can't go, they have to pay
1,000 Kyats. I never went as a
porter because I gave money. I don't know where they take them, probably
to the frontline. There is no
time limit - most of the time they are gone for two or three months.
Some never came back. Some came
back suffering seriously from malaria and other illnesses. We also
learned that they shot the ones who
tried to escape. Maung Soe and Maung Gong from my quarter never came
back. That was in 1991.

In Nga Pi Kyan village, Pauktaw township, some people had a shrimp farm
but the SLORC soldiers
confiscated it and started their own shrimp project there under the name
"Military Welfare Farm". Near the
Kaladan river, in Pu Na Kyan township, soldiers came and caught people
to build embankments for a
shrimp project. [In Arakan there are two types of shrimp farms: one kind
in the river near the sea where
stone barrages are built to divide the areas for the shrimps and another
kind, along the river, where
ponds are dug divided by earth embankments and using irrigation from the
river.] They use people to dig
ponds and build embankments. Most of the men of that area fled to
Sittwe. In the absence of men, the
soldiers took old women, girls and pregnant women. One pregnant woman
was forcibly taken and she
gave birth at the worksite at the shrimp farm. That happened at mid-day,
in March 1993. They started
these projects in 1989. There are many shrimp farms like this in the
coastal area, including Sittwe
Township.

In Sittwe Town there are Infantry Battalions #263, 264, etc. I don't
remember all the battalion numbers
because there are so many. The people have to work at their camps, and

not only to build the camps.
They also take people from the villages to look after their cows. The
cows and buffalos belong to the
people, but they demand that the villagers give their cattle and
buffalos, and then order the villagers to
look after their own cattle and buffalos in the camp compound. The
soldiers get the milk and the meat to
eat and to sell to the market. The soldiers even sold some cows at the
roadside on the way to their camp.
And the villagers have to build shelters and bring food for the cows.
Some people have a paddy field near
the military camp and their fields are now completely occupied by the
military. On top of that, these
villagers have to plough the field and harvest the paddy for the
soldiers. After that, the soldiers sell it all at
the market. This is happening everywhere in Arakan.

Sittwe, the capital of Arakan, is also the capital of the military.
There is actually no trade. It is all in the
hands of the army. All kinds of businesses are in the hands of the
military in Sittwe. In Ranbay townhip,
Inn township, Mra Bun township, the soldiers give orders for firewood
from there and the villagers have to
cut it and send it to Sittwe. They use this wood for baking bricks.

Also, the boat owners have to get permission to go anywhere. The army
always takes their boats. They
forcibly take the boats and check the boat authorisation documents. Even
if there are 150 boats, they
never get tired of checking. The army has a list of all the boat owners,
and they give orders directly to
them to carry sand or things, or even for their personal use. Whenever
they need, they take them. And
the people have to provide the fuel themselves. In Sittwe, fuel is
called "army oil".

When we look at the scene of Sittwe, we first see a green military
uniform in the street. We can only see
people in green military uniform. Of course we are afraid of them. And
not only in the streets, on the
buses, in the boats, in the cars, there are soldiers everywhere. That's
why we call Sittwe a military town.

"Development" means road construction. The people have to give money and
labour for that although they
are not willing. People are starving more than before. In Sittwe, they
also ordered families who have a
house on the streetfront to build a brick house surrounded by a brick
wall and a pavement with their own
money. If they fail to do so, they have to move. Then, the soldiers
build a brick house on these people's
land and sell it. The people even have to build the pavement with their
own money although the pavement
is public and belongs to the government. On the waterside, all the
houses were completely destroyed by
SLORC. Now it is a wasteland and the people had to move out of town.
SLORC said: "When the
foreigners visit this area and travel down the river, this is not
beautiful for their sight. These houses are
too ugly."

The army built a hotel called "Sittwe Hotel" at the seaside for tourism
year ["Visit Myanmar Year 1996"].
They used forced labour to build it. It is a SLORC hotel. The hotel
contractor is the son of former trade
minister Kyaw Ba but he didn't pay the workers [Gen. Kyaw Ba is now

Minister of Tourism, responsible
for preparing "Visit Myanmar Year 1996"]. That hotel is medium-size. It
is a 3-storey building.

I haven't been to Ngapali for the last three years [Ngapali on the
Arakan coast is promoted as one of
Burma's two main beach resorts]. There were coconut plantations
belonging to the people. The military
occupied them and built bungalows on them, bungalows for the army and
for the officers, and also Gen.
Ne Win's bungalows [Gen. Ne Win was absolute dictator of Burma from
1962-88, then he created
SLORC]. They also built bungalows for recreation for disabled military
men and for tourists. The coconut
plantations were along the seaside, up to Kyat Taw. There is also a
small island there. This island is
named "Gen. Ne Win's island". It is only for his family and they
cultivated pearls. This is his pearl
business. His sons and daughters and their in-laws are staying there and
it is the family business centre.
No one is allowed to enter that area. It is surrounded by soldiers.
Previously it was controlled by the
Department of Pearls and Fisheries. Now they control it themselves. On
the way from Ngapali to Gaw, the
son of Gen. Than Shwe [current Chairman of SLORC] built a hotel in 1994.
He used forced labour for the
construction too. In Sittwe, the son of Gen. Than Shwe also forced the
people to build barrages for a
shrimp project in the Sittwe-Ong Dine river.

The army is now fishing in the sea with the people's boats and with the
boats that they seized from the
Thai fishermen [trawlers seized from Thai companies illegally fishing in
Burma's waters]. People have no
more space to fish in the sea. We are dependent on fishing from the sea.
But people can't go because
the army is taking their boats all the time. One Australian company
[joint venture] started their business in
Sittwe. The company name was Thin Di Aung. They brought in all the
fishing equipment, boats, nets, etc.
to catch fish and shrimp, to pack them and send them to Australia. But
they were not able to fish or send
any fish to Australia. Although they got SLORC permission, they were not
allowed to fish in the sea [by
the Army]. They were there for one year without any business activities.
Their fishing trawlers became all
rusty and then they left.

Now in Arakan it is very difficult economically. After I left, because
of me, my family had to go to the
military camp for investigation and torture. When I was there, my wife
did sewing and tailoring to survive.
But I don't know about her present condition. I was not the only person
oppressed by SLORC. It is all the
people from Burma. We suffer so much because of forced labour. Until
they have to resign from power,
they will torture the people.

[Notes: According to other sources from Arakan, the Buddha museum in
Sittwe is now known as the
"Dukkha Museum", which means "Museum of Suffering". At the museum
construction site in September
1995, a 14-year-old girl named Ma Ni Ni was repeatedly raped by soldiers
until she lost consciousness
and died. She was a 9th Standard student at State High School #1 in
Sittwe.]