Inside Burma: Fear and Repression

Guardian

May 23, 2006

16,000 forced from homes as generals try to annihilate resistance

John Aglionby in Ei Tu Hta

As soon as Sayc Pler Paw saw her brother's body, she knew that everyone in her village would have to abandon their homes and flee to the relative safety of the surrounding jungle-covered hills.

"I found him in the family's vegetable plot," she said. "He had been shot in the bottom, the navel, badly beaten in the back of the neck and forehead and then shot in the face."

Ms Sayc Pler Paw, an ethnic Karen, has no doubt that the perpetrators were the Burmese army. And she knew the meaning of her brother's brutal death.

"Only the [army] could have done this and the fact that he had been killed meant they were coming to attack us," she said, clutching her three-year-old daughter, Snowda Sayc. "From what we'd heard, they no longer ask questions when they come into villages. They just shoot all the men, rape many of the women and then kill them too. We could not wait to face them."

After years of barely noticed and largely piecemeal operations against the Karen National Union (KNU), the ethnic minority's resistance movement, Burma's junta has launched its biggest offensive in Karen state since 1997. The army's operations are seen as a bid to annihilate the largest of the half-dozen ethnic minority fighting forces ranged against it.

Since seizing power in 1962, the military has turned Burma into one of the most repressed and reclusive nations on earth. The only time the generals allowed an election, in 1990, they were soundly defeated by the National League for Democracy, led by Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. She was never allowed to take office and since then the repression has increased dramatically. Forced labour is common, Ms Suu Kyi is among the estimated 1,300 political prisoners and all democratic institutions have been emasculated.

As the economy has collapsed and international demands for change have mounted, the junta's paranoia has also risen markedly. Last year it moved the capital from Rangoon to a purpose-built, heavily fortified city near Pyinmana, deep in the jungle.

The junta's information minister, Brigadier Kyaw Hsan, admitted last week that the army is attempting to "clear up" the last of the KNU "terrorist'" resistance, and recent media reports have labelled events in remote eastern Burma as a war or conflict.

Resistance

But in fact the under-equipped, poorly trained forces of the Burmese army are refusing to take on the several thousand-strong Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), which has perfected its guerrilla tactics over 57 years of resistance. The forces are instead trying to eliminate the KNLA by starving it of money, food and recruits through the systematic razing of all Karen villages in the predominantly highland areas they do not control.

Fewer than 100 civilians have been killed since the offensive began in November because as soon as villagers are tipped off about an attack, they flee. This year the operation has spread, and recently the number of destroyed villages has climbed to more than 60, with more than 16,000 people on the run, according to reports from advocacy groups such as the Free Burma Rangers and the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG).

Aid groups say tens of thousands of civilians are under imminent threat because the junta appears to be forgoing its usual withdrawal for the monsoon season, which has just begun. "Our sources tell us the [army] are now transporting more food rations, ammunition and reinforcements to the frontlines," said Gilbert Shu of the Karen Office of Relief and Development. "It's clear they're preparing to fight on an even bigger scale than before, despite the weather."

The Guardian met Ms Sayc Pler Paw in Ei Tu Hta, a camp by the Thai border where more than 800 Karen civilians have sought refuge. The terrain surrounding the camp is thick forest covering steep-sided hills. Paths through the vegetation are rare; the fact that all relief supplies are carried in by people wading up a stream from the Salween river that divides Burma and Thailand is indicative of the arduous conditions the villagers have had to endure to reach the camp.

The suffering the Karen have endured is etched on the refugees' faces, particularly the children. Many wonder around aimlessly or just pass the time in their huts with their few belongings neatly stacked so as to be ready to be grabbed if an attack seems imminent. Most wear donated clothes, with the preponderance of T-shirts from foreign towns and organisations testament to the Karen's global support network.

Virtually everyone has similar tales of flight and a fear-filled journey, sometimes lasting weeks, through the jungle. The camp has an air of developing permanence. More than 150 five-by-four-metre bamboo and thatch huts have been built, complete with ceramic squat lavatories nearby; makeshift water purification centres have been established, a clinic has been built and the camp authorities are distributing seeds.

"We have to act like this to give the people some hope," said camp secretary Saw Bee. "But the reality is we cannot guarantee the security despite having some KNLA fighters here as guards. We have nowhere else to go. This is the end of the line for us if we want to stay in our homeland."

No one the Guardian met could explain why the junta is launching such a big offensive now. One contributing factor is almost certainly the junta's desire to expel the KNU, which has been largely respecting a verbal ceasefire agreed in 2004, from areas where it wants to build big dams.

A more likely answer, according to Kevin Malseed of KHRG, is that this is just the expansion of a continuing trend. "These operations have been going on for the last 10 years," he said. "People just weren't paying attention. They have never been not happening."

It is not just the Karen coming under mounting pressure. The National League for Democracy, the party led by Ms Suu Kyi, is also suffering. More than 50 key members were recently forced to resign and the government described Ms Suu Kyi and the party, viewed internationally as the country's legitimate government, as "irrelevant".

Pressure

International pressure against the generals is mounting. The UN security council discussed Burma for the first time last December, and seems likely to do so again soon, and parliamentarians from around the world - including Britain - have demanded that their governments take a firmer line against Rangoon. Last week the Burmese allowed the first visit by a UN envoy in two years, although many believe it was intended as a diversion from its repression of opposition groups. And the UN is constrained by China and Russia's refusal to act against Burma.

Pado Manh Sha, the KNU general secretary, believes the junta will only respond to pressure from its biggest trading partners, China and India. "We've sent delegates to China and India to lobby," he said. "We've been told to expect a policy review but nothing has happened."

Meanwhile, back in the Burmese jungle, the waiting and praying goes on as the population at Ei Tu Hta swells every day.

"So many people are out in the jungle but they can't survive there for long," Mr Saw Bee said. "And more and more villagers are fleeing as the SPDC [the junta] continue their attacks. So I'm sure we're going to see more and more people coming here. The frightening thing is that will make us a much more tempting target. We're in a no-win situation."

Backstory

A year after Burma won independence from Britain in 1948, the Karen National Union (KNU) took up arms for a homeland in the eastern Karen state through its Karen National Liberation Army. Its estimated force of up to 6,000 is the largest fighting Burma's military dictatorship, which has ruled since 1962. More than 1 million people from Karen's population of 7 million have fled since 1988, many into Thailand, and more than 2 million endure forced labour and extortion. Civilian support for the KNU is strong but more as a means to resist Burma's junta than out of a desire for independence.

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