The BurmaNet News: March 31, 1999

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The BurmaNet News: March 31, 1999
Issue #1240

Noted in Passing: "This latest act of inhumanity will reinforce the
dictators' pariah status and, one can hope, hasten their demise." - see
WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL 

HEADLINES:
==========
KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP: FALSE PEACE 
THE NATION: KAREN REJECT GOVERNMENT OFFER 
SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: REGIME "CUT OFF CALLS" 
WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL 
REUTERS: SUU KYI PARTY BLASTS GOVERNMENT 
THE STRAITS TIMES: ASEAN'S MYANMAR POLICY "LONG TERM" 
RADIO FREE BURMA: CONDOLENCE 
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KAREN HUMAN RIGHTS GROUP: FALSE PEACE 
25 March, 1999 from khrg@xxxxxxxxx
 
Increasing SPDC Military Repression in Toungoo District of Northern Karen
State

An Independent Report by the Karen Human Rights Group, KHRG #99-02

Following are part of the Preface and the Introduction / Executive Summary
of this report.  For those wishing to see the entire report, please see the
KHRG website at :  http://metalab.unc.edu/freeburma/humanrights/khrg/archive/

[Some details have been omitted or replaced by 'xxxx' for Internet
distribution.]

This report describes the current situation for rural Karen villagers in
Toungoo District (known in Karen as Taw Oo), which is the northernmost
region of Karen State in Burma.  The western part of the district forms
part of the Sittaung River valley in Pegu (Bago) Division, and this region
is strongly controlled by the State Peace & Development Council (SPDC)
military junta which rules Burma.  Further east, the District is made up of
steep and forested hills penetrated by only one or two roads and dotted
with small Karen villages; in this region the SPDC is struggling to
strengthen its control in the face of armed resistance by the Karen
National Liberation Army (KNLA).  In the strongly SPDC-controlled areas,
the villagers suffer from constant demands for forced labour and money from
all of the SPDC military units based there, and from the constant threat of
punishments should their village fail to comply with any order of the
military.  In the eastern hills, many villages have been forcibly relocated
and partly burned as part of the SPDC's program of attempting to undermine
the resistance by attacking the civilian villagers.  Here people are
suffering all forms of serious human rights abuses committed by SPDC
troops, including random killings, burning of homes, the systematic
destruction of crops and food supplies, forced labour, looting and extortion.

In order to produce this report, KHRG human rights monitors have
interviewed villagers in the SPDC-controlled areas, the hill villages, and
the relocation sites, as well as those hiding in the forests and some who
fled to Thailand to become refugees.  Their testimonies are augmented by
incident reports gathered by KHRG human rights monitors and Karen relief
workers in the region, and by SPDC order documents which have been sent to
village elders.  To see more order documents and photos which relate to the
abuses documented in this report, readers should see the KHRG report "SPDC
Orders to Villages: Set 99-A" (KHRG #99-01, 10/2/99) and KHRG Photo Set
99-A (March 1, 1999).  These are both available on the KHRG website
(http://metalab.unc.edu/freeburma/humanrights/khrg/archive/).


This report consists of several parts: this preface, an introduction and
executive summary, a detailed description of the situation including quotes
from interviews, and finally the full text of most of the interviews and
field reports upon which the report is based.

Introduction / Executive Summary

Toungoo District (named Taw Oo in Karen) forms the northern tip of Karen
State, sandwiched between Karenni State to the east, Shan State to the
north, and Pegu Division to the west.  The vast majority of villagers in
this region are Karen.  Many live in small, difficult to access villages in
the very steep and forested hills covering most of the district.  Further
west, the hills let off into the gentler terrain of the Sittaung River
valley near Toungoo town.

For two to three years now the villagers in the western plain of the
district have faced heavy burdens of forced labour on roads, army camps and
the Pa Thee dam project, while some of their villages just east of Toungoo
town were forcibly relocated to make way for the dam.  Things have been
even worse for the hill villagers in the east of the district, as over the
past two to three years the SLORC/SPDC has steadily increased its troop
presence in this previously inaccessible area.  Several villages in the
region were destroyed to force the people to move to SLORC/SPDC-controlled
areas, and villagers throughout the hills of Tantabin (Taw Ta Tu) township
were forced to build a road from Baw Ga Li Gyi (Kler Lah) to Bu Sah Kee,
opening up much of southeastern Toungoo District to the SPDC Army.  Several
Army camps were subsequently established along this road, at Kaw Thay Der,
Naw Soe, Si Kheh Der and Bu Sah Kee.  The new road is not passable during
rainy season, so villagers have to do forced labour as porters carrying
supplies to and from all of these Army camps, then they have to do forced
labour rebuilding the road after every rainy season.  They also face
regular demands for Army camp labour from these units, and suffer from
regular looting and extortion of money.

Battalions operating in the area include SPDC Infantry Battalions (IB) #26,
30, and 48, and Light Infantry Battalions (LIB) #535 and 707, all under the
Southern Regional Command, and LIB #234 from the Western Regional Command.
Their troops rotate every 4 months, and the Battalions are regularly
changed; IB 39 was there in 1998 but was replaced by IB 48. There is one
Strategic Command (usually consisting of 3 Battalions) from the Na Pa Ka,
which is the Western Regional Command based in Arakan (Rakhine) State of
western Burma, and there have been reports of troops from the Rangoon
Military Command in the area as well.  The Karen National Liberation Army
(KNLA) is active in the hill areas of most of the district, performing
guerrilla operations, harassment and ambush of SPDC columns.  The
Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) and other SPDC proxy armies are not
present in the region.

Like in other areas, the SPDC forces try to undermine the KNLA activities
by targetting the villagers.  Most villages which do not have an SPDC camp
and are not along vehicle roads have been ordered to relocate; more than 10
villages have been ordered to move to Baw Ga Li Gyi (Kler Lah) alone since
the beginning of 1998.  Rather than move as ordered, most people still stay
in their villages or the surrounding forests, dodging the SPDC patrols
which come through the area.  Those who moved as ordered were provided with
nothing at the relocation sites and could only build small bamboo huts in
which to live.  Unable to farm or earn a living and with no support, many
of them have fled back to the forests around their villages.  People found
hiding in areas around the outlying villages and villages which are
perceived as uncooperative have been treated brutally. Villagers found in
their fields in outlying areas are either grabbed to be porters, shot dead
or brutally executed and robbed on the spot.  On 17 January 1999 troops
from IB 48 opened fire on a group of villagers sitting talking in their
betelnut plantation near Wah Paw Pu, wounding two and then executing them
with a bullet in the head.  On 16 January 1999 an SPDC column shot dead a
16-year-old boy and knifed to death a 60-year-old man on finding them
tending cardamom near Htee Hsah Bper village, and after killing them
brutally mutilated the bodies by cutting off the boy's arm and carving off
all the flesh on the old man's face with a knife.  In mid-1998 an SPDC
column was ambushed by KNLA troops near xxxx village [a 'Peace' village]
and responded by going into the village, calling out all the villagers,
beating some and killing their livestock in front of them while taunting
them to say anything.  Hsaw Wah Der village has been ordered to move to
Kler Lah since several years ago but has never obeyed, so in May 1998 the
church and all of the best houses in the village (those with wooden
construction and metal roofing) were burned.  This village has been burned
many times over the years.  Now some of the villagers have fled to Toungoo
town, while others live in hiding in the forest, dodging passing SPDC
columns.  Three years ago the villagers of Bu Sah Kee settled in the forest
away from their village for fear of SLORC abuses, and they are still
growing their hillside rice crops but fleeing further into the hills
whenever SLORC/SPDC patrols come close.  In response, troops from Infantry
Battalion #26 went through their fields in September 1998 before the
harvest, pulling up and cutting down their rice plants.  All rice supplies
found in outlying areas by SPDC troops are either confiscated or destroyed.


As a result villagers of Hsaw Wah Der, Bu Sah Kee, Klay Soe Kee and many
other outlying villages are now all displaced, living in their farmfield
huts or the forests outside their villages and dodging SPDC controls which
come through the area.  They survive by trying to grow cash crops such as
cardamom and betelnut, then travel to SPDC-controlled villages to sell it
and buy rice.  The trip to the SPDC-controlled villages is dangerous; some
have been killed or taken as porters when they encounter SPDC patrols on
the way, and others have been arrested and tortured on arrival in the big
villages.  However, even more villagers could find themselves in these
circumstances as the SPDC continues to clamp down on the area.

Larger villages along the vehicle roads, such as Kler Lah (Baw Ga Li Gyi),
Kaw Thay Der (Yay Tho Gyi) and Naw Soe, are under tight SPDC control and
have Army bases adjacent to the village.  These villages are known as
'Nyein Chan Yay' ('Peace') villages, in reference to an informal agreement
existing between the village elders and the local military that they will
cooperate with all SPDC demands and in return will not be forced to
relocate or have their houses burned.  The leaders of these villages
receive constant demands for 'porter fees' and other forms of extortion
money, food and materials.  The Army also sends regular demands for
porters, and to avoid sending people on long-term frontline portering duty
the villages have to pool their money and pay labour agents to hire
itinerant labourers from Toungoo town to fill the Army's demands.  However,
even after paying all this money the villagers regularly have to go for ad
hoc forced labour portering Army rations to outlying camps; women often do
this forced labour because the men fear that they will be held for several
months if they go.  The villages also have to provide rotating forced
labourers for Army camp labour and as messengers.  All vehicles
transporting goods or passengers to and from Toungoo have to pay bribes to
all of the SPDC checkpoints along the way.  This causes the price of rice
to be 1,000 Kyat more per sack in Kler Lah than it is in Toungoo, and has
also led to a shortage of transport because some drivers have left to find
work elsewhere.  Villages which are slow in complying with demands for
money and forced labour are threatened with having their people and
vehicles prohibited from travelling to Toungoo, or with having their homes
burned, despite their designation as 'Peace' villages.

People in the 'Peace' villages have also had to do forced labour clearing
the route for a new road from Toungoo to Mawchi, over 100 kilometres to the
southeast in southern Karenni (Kayah) State.  A road already exists from
Toungoo to Kler Lah, and they are now continuing this road towards Mawchi
along the route of an old pre-war road.  Much of the actual road
construction is being done with bulldozers, but villagers have been forced
to do all the initial clearing of the road route by hand.  Many farmers
with fields along the route could not plant a crop in 1998 for fear of
being taken for additional forced labour by the soldiers along the road.
Construction is still ongoing and is far from complete, and there have been
reports that construction is also ongoing from the Mawchi end of the road
using the forced labour of Karenni villagers.


- [END OF SUMMARY - FOR FULL REPORT SEE THE KHRG WEBSITE] - 

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THE NATION: KAREN REJECT GOVERNMENT OFFER
30 March, 1999 

The Karen National Union (KNU), which is fighting for an autonomous Karen
state, yesterday spurned the latest ceasefire call from Burma's military
government.

KNU president General Bo Mya said the group would instead step up its
nearly half-century-old armed struggle against the government until Rangoon
held tripartite peace talks with him and national pro-democracy leader Aung
San Suu Kyi.

"We will not give up our struggle until the government agrees to hold
political negotiations with us and Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for
Democracy (NLD) party," he said.

Bo Mya spoke to reporters at his jungle hideout in eastern Burma on the
bank of the Moei River, which marks the border with Thailand

Burma's premier, Senior General Than Shwe, urged rebel groups on Saturday
to enter into a truce with the government at a parade marking the country's
54th Armed Forces Day.

The KNU has been fighting for an autonomous state since 1949 from bases
along the Thai-Burma border. Several rounds of peace talks with the
government have failed. 

****************************************************************

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD: REGIME "CUT OFF PARTING CALLS BY SUU KYI" 
30 March, 1999 by Craig Skehan 

Burmese authorities cut telephone calls between the democracy leader Ms
Aung San Suu Kyi and her dying husband, the British academic Dr Michael
Aris, in the weeks before his death, a family friend says.

"It was very nasty indeed," the friend said.

"They not only cut off calls from her home in Rangoon, they must have
followed her when she went to phone from other people's homes, including
the residences of foreign diplomats.

"She would be on the line for only one or two minutes, then it would go
dead. They kept doing that in the days immediately before Michael's death."

The family friend said Ms Suu Kyi burst into tears several times.

[ ... ]

Ms Suu Kyi said yesterday that she would not be travelling to Britain for
the funeral because she feared Burma's military regime would not allow her
to return to Rangoon.

However, on Friday she will make offerings, including food and cloth, to
Buddhist monks as part of rituals to mark the passing of a week since Dr
Aris died of cancer.

It is fitting that Dr Aris will be given traditional Buddhist rites for it
is the religion which he loved as well as studied and wrote about.

The foreign policy spokesman for the All Burma Students' Democratic Front,
Mr Aung Naing Oo, said Buddhist precepts held that a person's soul did not
leave the Earth until seven days after his or her death.

"By making offerings, we share merit with the deceased. That means he can
enjoy heavenly peace."

Dr Aris was fascinated by the philosophy, practice and history of Buddhism,
particularly the forms it has taken in remote parts of the Himalayas.

The Burmese say it is a sin to deny a dying person his or her last wish.

However, despite the odium of doing so, the military regime refused to
buckle to concerted international diplomatic pressure to grant Dr Aris a visa.


The National League for Democracy justice spokesman, Thein Oo, said in
Bangkok yesterday that the way Ms Suu Kyi had carried on, despite her
husband's death, enhanced the esteem in which she was held.

"She refused to go to see Michael because she had to stay with her fellow
Burmese.

"Everybody is suffering because of the military regime and she is suffering
painfully. But she knows that one day we will win."

Thein Oo said news of Dr Aris's death was filtering out to the Burmese
public, including through foreign shortwave radio broadcasts, despite a
dearth of coverage in the officially controlled media.

A spokesman for the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer,
said it was very disappointing that Dr Aris was refused permission to visit
Burma before his death.

Mr Downer hoped that even if Ms Suu Kyi did not go to Britain, her sons,
Alexander and Kim, in their 20s, would be allowed to visit Burma.

"There are compassionate grounds for that to be done, if that is what they
choose to do," the spokesman said.
 
****************************************************************

WASHINGTON POST: EDITORIAL 
29 March, 1999 

Every now and then a single, sad event can pierce the fog of everyday
distractions and illuminate, for all of us, the true nature of something or
someone that has been in plain sight all along. Such a moment is provided
by the untimely death Saturday of Michael Aris, 53, an honorable and
respected Oxford University professor of Tibetan studies. The instructive
event was the refusal by Burma's dictators to provide a visa to Mr. Aris to
visit his wife before he died. What is illuminated is the heartlessness,
the sheer brutal stupidity, of that nation's military rulers.

Of course, for the 48 million people who have the misfortune to be ruled by
Burma's junta, as well as for their friends around the world, this is not a
revelation. Any number of people could testify to the evil of the regime:
the families of students shot dead for taking part in peaceful
demonstrations; the admirers of the Belgian honorary consul who died in
jail for the crime of owning a facsimile machine; the thousands of
political prisoners who have suffered, or suffer today, in the notorious
Insein Prison; the tens of thousands of innocent peasants who have been
pressed into slave labor.

But the names of most of those victims, both unwitting and courageously
witting, never will be known to most of us. We do know, however, the name
of Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr. Aris's wife -- widow, now -- and the rightful
ruler of Burma. She and Mr. Aris met as students at Oxford long ago; they
raised two sons, both now in their twenties; they held fast to a loving
marriage against long odds. As devoted a wife and mother as she was, Aung
San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace laureate, felt she owed more to her country and
the cause of democracy, and her husband supported her in that to the end.

Her National League for Democracy overwhelmingly won a parliamentary
election in 1990, even though Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest at
that time. The generals refused to honor the people's will, and they have
kept Aung San Suu Kyi more or less locked up ever since. Their fondest wish
is for her to leave the country, because they fear her integrity and
popularity, but she will not give them that satisfaction. So they punished
her by refusing to allow her husband or sons to visit her.


When Mr. Aris knew he was dying of cancer, he asked once more for a visa,
without publicity, without any wish to cause embarrassment or score
political points. He simply wished to see his wife, from whom he had been
barred for three years, one more time. Even this, the thugs who have turned
all of Burma into a prison would not allow. And so he died without having
seen her. "I feel so fortunate to have had such a wonderful husband, who
has always given me the understanding I needed," Aung San Suu Kyi said in a
statement devoid of politics. "Nothing can take that away from me."

Through their corruption and repressiveness, Burma's rulers have isolated
themselves from the world. Only a few profit-seekers -- Unocal of the
United States, Total of France, arms merchants of China and Singapore, drug
dealers throughout the world -- engage in commerce with them. This latest
act of inhumanity will reinforce the dictators' pariah status and, one can
hope, hasten their demise.

****************************************************************

REUTERS: SUU KYI PARTY BLASTS MYANMAR GOVERNMENT ON VISA ISSUE 
29 March, 1999 by Sutin Wannabovorn 

BANGKOK, March 29 (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
will not go to England for the funeral of her late husband Michael Aris
despite a government offer to allow her to return to Myanmar, a confidant
said on Monday.

Suu Kyi was worried she may not be allowed to return and has already begun
performing Buddhist rites for her late husband in Yangon, said Tin Oo, vice
president of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

"Even though she is a devout Buddhist, she is definitely not leaving Yangon
to perform rites for her husband there. She is performing Buddhist rites
for him here. On the seventh day on Friday she will hold a major ceremony
in her house," he told Reuters in a telephone interview from Yangon.

Suu Kyi herself was unavailable for comment as her telephone is
inaccessible from abroad.

But the NLD issued a statement late on Monday criticising the military
government for agreeing to allow her to go to her husband's funeral but
placing some restrictions on her at the same time.

"It was restricted that her visit was meant only for carrying out social
and family affairs and nothing to do with politics," it said.

"It is entirely improper to restrict such a world famous Nobel Prize
laureate and democracy leader. Issuing the announcement mentioning the
offer to travel even after the secretary (Suu Kyi) had said she would not
go is insincere," it added.

Aris, an Oxford academic, died on his 53rd birthday on Saturday of prostate
cancer.

On Friday, the government said it would allow Suu Kyi to return to Yangon
if she went to England to see her terminally ill husband provided she did
not politicise the visit. But Suu Kyi had rejected the offer, the
government said.

Analysts noted she had rejected the offer because she feared the military
might not honour its pledge and might take action against her NLD party if
she was absent from the country.

On Sunday, the government again offered her assistance to go to England for
the funeral, but this time did not repeat its guarantee she could return
after the trip.


Suu Kyi on Saturday paid a warm tribute to her late husband in a statement
to Yangon diplomats.

"I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband who has always given me
the understanding I needed. Nothing can take that away from me," the
statement said.

Tin Oo said condolence books had been opened at her lakeside residence at
University Avenue and at the NLD party headquarters in the capital. But
people who had come to sign the book were being photographed and asked to
identify themselves, the NLD said.

Asked how Suu Kyi was taking her husband's death, he said: "She is quite
alright now but as a human being she is very much filled with regret and
very sad about the death of her husband."

"Aung San Suu Kyi said she is very proud of her husband who has understood
her cause until the last minute. She is also proud of her sons who
sympathise with her and understand her," he added.

Myanmar has refused to grant Aris a visa to visit Suu Kyi the past three
years, the latest refusal coming just shortly before his death.

Philippine President Joseph Estrada said on Monday that Myanmar had lost a
chance to build confidence by not allowing Aris to visit Suu Kyi in Myanmar.

"Before Dr Aris' death, the Philippines had been quietly making
representations with the government of Myanmar for the issuance of a visa
to Dr Aris as a compassionate and humanitarian gesture," Estrada said in a
presidential palace news release.

"We regret that Dr Aris' wish to visit his wife, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom
he had not seen for years, was not fulfilled," he added.

The Philippines and Myanmar are both members of the Association of South
East Asian Nations.

****************************************************************

THE STRAITS TIMES: ASEAN'S MYANMAR POLICY "LONG TERM" 
30 March, 1999 by Edward Tang 

IT IS DICTATED MORE BY MYANMAR'S DOMESTIC INTERESTS AND LESS BY EXTERNAL
FACTORS, DPM LEE SAYS IN AN INTERVIEW. HE VISITS THE COUNTRY TODAY 

BANGKOK -- Asean's constructive engagement policy towards Myanmar is a
longterm process that is dictated primarily by the domestic interests of
that country and less by external factors.

Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said this to Thai journalists in an
interview in Singapore last week, in which he also urged Thailand to
persevere with economic reforms.

The interview was published yesterday in several newspapers, including The
Nation and The Bangkok Post, on the eve of his departure for an official
visit to Myanmar.

He is making his first visit to that country today at the invitation of
Lieutenant-General Khin Nyunt, Secretary 1 of the State Peace and
Development Council.

He leaves Yangon tomorrow for a three-day visit to Thailand as guest of
Deputy Prime Minister Korn Dabbaransi.

The Nation quoted him as saying: "If more trade links and investments are
established, probably their perspective will shift. They may see that
things should evolve to secure a more sustainable long-term position." He
was referring to Yangon's military rulers. He added: "But this will not
happen soon."

External factors, including Asean, would be an influencing factor, but not
a decisive factor, he said.


"We have to make our own decisions. If you take the view that somebody
else has a veto and we can't proceed, then we are not masters of our own
house," he said, referring to pressure from the European Union to exclude
Myanmar from the Asean-EU ministerial meeting which was to have been held
in Berlin today, but was cancelled after the two regional groupings could
not reach an agreement.

The EU does not want Myanmar to be represented at the meeting because of
what it views as a gross violation of human rights by its government. On
Singapore's relations Thailand, which he last visited in 1992, he said ties
had progressed rapidly in recent years, particularly in the aftermath of
the Asian crisis, which hit Thailand first. There have been a series of
high-level exchanges, including Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and Prime
Minister Goh Chok Tong visiting Thailand in the last two years, and the
visit of Thai Princess Maha Chakri Srindhorn to Singapore this year.

Both countries had established an enhanced partnership programme covering
cooperation between the civil services, armed forces and academic circles.

"Thai-Singapore relations were a lot less complicated than Singapore's
relations with Malaysia and Indonesia," he said, adding that the close ties
were nurtured by the common understanding that both sides had in
cooperating on regional issues. On the Thai economy, he encouraged Thai
leaders to persevere in reforms, which had already made progress in some
areas.

"It is not for me to advise the government on what they need to do because
they know what to do, and I wish them the best. They have a very difficult
job but I hope they persist with reforms. They have made good progress, but
some reforms are very difficult," he said.

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RADIO FREE BURMA: CONDOLENCE 
29 March, 1999 from rfb@xxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Friends,

Please read the Saya U Thaung's article, "Condolence,"  on Radio Free Burma
web page. Just read or print in Burmese. News and Information on RFB page
can be freely distributed for the Burmese Democratic movement.

Radio Free Burma, http://www.fast.net.au/rfb

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