IV. SITUATION OF THOSE FROM BURMA'S SHAN STATE

As this report goes to press, other groups, including those from Shan State, were also at risk. The Shan in particular were subject to arrest and deportation as illegal migrants, in part because the Thai authorities refused to allow the establishment of camps along the border. But given the low-level military conflict which has continued to take place in Shan State and the government's program of massive forced relocations and other abuses, there was no reason to believe that the Shan, or any other ethnic group on the Thai/Burmese border, would be in any less danger of persecution than their Karen counterparts.

Human Rights Violations by the Burmese Military

In March 1996, in an attempt to cut off all support to rebel Shan groups, the Burmese army began a program to relocate some 100,000 people from over 600 villages in central Shan State to forty-five main relocation sites. The villagers were usually given three to five days notice to move after which the villages were declared "free fire zones." The relocation sites, which all had major military compounds, were often one day's walk away from the villages and nothing was provided for them once they arrived. Many of the villagers in the relocation sites were then forced to work for the army on various projects without pay.32 Then in early 1997, the government began to move people fromthese sites into towns. Relocations were also reported in new areas, including Murng Pan and Murng Ton, east of the Salween River. As a result of these forced relocations, at least 60,000 Shan have entered Thailand during 1996 and 1997 thus far.

In the Shan State, three Shan groups have cease-fires with the SLORC: the Shan State Army (SSA), the Shan State National Army (SSNA) and the best known, Khun Sa's Mong Tai Army (MTA).33 The SSNA cease-fire, which began in mid-1995, is "unofficial" in that no formal talks have taken place. In addition, the United Wa State Party (UWSP) and the Lahu Democratic Front (LDF) are also present in southern Shan State, both of which also have cease-fire agreements. 34 The only group still currently fighting the government is the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), which claims to have 3,000 to 4,000 men under arms. Though they had asked for peace talks in February 1996, the request was denied. Until January 1996, much of the area, and routes through it, was controlled by the Burmese government and groups which had cease-fires with the government. However, after Khun Sa's surrender in January 1996, the newly re-formed SURA troops attempted to move out of the old MTA and to join up with the SSNA or SSA. The relocations in 1996 and 1997 have followed the path of the SURA soldiers, but with this plethora of different armed groups, as well as the operations of the Burmese army, local Shan and other ethnic groups living in Shan State have frequently been the victims of abuse by all sides.

In June 1997, Human Rights Watch/Asia interviewed a sixty-two-year-old man who had been in Thailand for thirteen days, having fled from Kun Hing township in central Shan State. He was married with three children, two sons and a daughter, and worked as a farmer. He lived in Keng Kham, a village to which a number of other villages had been forcibly relocated in 1996. He said that on April 20, 1997, over one hundred government troops came into his village and stayed for three nights, sleeping at the monastery. They told the villagers that they would have to move but did not specify when. In mid-May 1997, some SLORC soldiers returned and told the villagers they had three days in which to move to Kun Hing town. They threatened to burn down the village if the villagers did not move. He said the villagers took as much with them as they could and left. People fled in different directions, as those who did not have relatives in Kun Hing did not want to go there.

He and his family went to an island in the Nam Pang River, a half an hour walk away from Keng Kham, with two other families:

After ten days, about fifty SLORC troops landed on the island. We did not see them coming. They started shooting at us and we scattered. My two sons jumped into the river. My wife was somewhere else on the island collecting vegetables. My daughter and I tried to hide behind a tree. She was very frightened and started to run. She was shot in the back by one of the soldiers. A man from one of the other families on the island was also shot. I and another man were then captured by the soldiers and taken off the island.

He was then taken to a place in the forest where he was tied to a tree:

They asked me for two guns. I said 'I have no guns, I am only a farmer.' Five of them then beat and kicked me using their hands and boots. My face was covered with a plastic sheet so it was very hardto breath. That night was terrible. They took all my clothes away and left me tied to the tree in a standing position the whole night. During the night if one of the soldiers heard me make a noise he came over and punched me.

After three nights (after the first night he was tied, clothed, to a tree in a position which allowed him to sleep), he was taken to Wan Tong village. He said it was deserted. He was not questioned further at this village and after two days, he was released. He went back to the island:

My daughter was still alive but was suffering greatly. My family told me that after my daughter had been shot, she was thrown into the river by the soldiers. She floated some way down the river but then got hooked on something and managed to crawl out onto the river bank, where my sons found her unconscious. She died five days after I returned to the island. She was eighteen years old. After we buried her, we left the island and walked to the Salween river. We then traveled by raft down the river to a point from where we were able to go by truck to Thailand.

A sixty-five-year-old man also from Keng Kham said that SLORC troops came to his village in April and May 1997 and told the villagers that they had to move to Kun Hing. He had fled to the Salween River together with other villagers from Keng Kham. Every few days, they sent someone to Keng Kham to see what the government was doing there in order to assess the possibility of returning. He learned that the soldiers had taken the food and the harvest the villagers had left behind, and destroyed what they could not take with them.

A twenty-five-year-old man from Wan It village in Ke See township said that in late February 1996, SLORC soldiers told the village headman that the villagers had to move to Murng Nawng. A week later, over one hundred SLORC soldiers came to the village and said the residents had two days to move, as the village would be burned down. He said that the soldiers took two pigs, five chickens and 8,000 kyat from him, and more money and animals from other villagers. He continued,

I went to Murng Nawng on my ox cart but I could not take everything. We had to stay near to a SLORC army camp. No one stayed in the village as some soldiers were checking that everyone left. The huts in the relocation site were small shacks like the huts I have seen in construction sites in Thailand. When we arrived at Murng Nawng we had to dig bunkers near the army camp for the soldiers. Every week they would come and order us to do things. We had to dig ditches, place a fence around the army camp, clean the army camp, clear the sides of the road, guard the road to watch for Shan rebels and repair roads.

He said he worked for the army about ten days a month. However, he was able to sneak out of the camp and work in his fields near Wan It so he had a rice harvest to feed himself and his family. After about a year, he and his family left the relocation site. They did not dare go back to their village but built a hut nearby in the forest. Others from the relocation site gradually moved to the forest around the village until there was virtually no one left in the relocation site in Murng Nawng. However, after a short time, SLORC soldiers came to the forest to take them back to Murng Nawng. The soldiers started searching the area and a lot of people ran away. During this time, he was picking some fruit with his ten-year-old brother in the forest when some soldiers came across them. He managed to escape the soldiers, but his brother was caught and as he looked back, he witnessed them hitting his brother over the head. He was eventually captured and had to go back to Murng Nawng, but this time to a different relocation site situated very close to the Burmese army base. The soldiers made it clear that if the villagers were seen in their fields around the village, they would be shot on sight. He said that it was impossible to survive at the relocation site without being able to go to his fields, he and his family could not adequately feed themselves. He sold everything he had to get money to buy food but after four months he, along with about thirty others from the site, left for Thailand.

The Shan have also frequently suffered abuses as the different armed factions move through their villages. The villagers have no choice but to cooperate with all the armed groups, and often face retaliation for doing so. InNovember 1996 a fifty-five-year-old Shan villager from Keng Dawng village tract told Human Rights Watch/Asia how part of his village had been razed by the Burmese army in February that year. He said that some Shan soldiers came through the village one day, and they were followed the next day by 200 Burmese. It was the night of a Buddhist festival, and the village was full of people:

The soldiers accused us of helping the Shan soldiers, but we told them they were from the SSNA, a group which has a cease-fire. The Burmese just took all the gifts, food and money which had been gathered for the festival and after three hours in the village, they set half of the houses alight. They said we were all lying. The soldiers stayed in my half of the village for another day, and we had to give them all food and they stayed in our houses. I heard that the next day, they went on to Wan Yawn and burnt eight houses there, too.

In other areas, where armed groups which have cease-fires with the Burmese army are based, the villagers do not enjoy the fruits of peace, but rather find themselves having to provide labor for all sides. Promises to develop the region which were made as part of the cease-fire deals have not been realized. A Lahu villager from the Hopaing village tract in southern Shan State described how his village was surrounded by army camps from the UWSP and the Burmese military:

There are four Wa camps, they have been there since 1992 and 1993, then in January 1996 the SLORC came and forced us villagers to build a camp for them, also just outside the village. Each Wa camp has about ten soldiers and their families, the SLORC have twenty men. The villagers have to work, unpaid, in each camp, cutting wood, gathering water, tending the vegetable patches. We also have to work as porters for both the Wa and Burmese, though the Wa don't take us so often. Sometimes there is tension between the Wa and SLORC soldiers, and we villagers are caught in the middle. Really we don't dare to live there any more. We have got nothing from the cease-fire -- the SLORC ordered us to build a middle school, which we did, but they have not sent any books or teachers.

A Lahu man from Loikaw-Mu village tract, which is within the UWSP-controlled area, arrived in Thailand in July 1996. He described how his fifteen-year-old son had been killed by SLORC soldiers after he had been taken to work as a porter in May 1996:

They came and took my son at 8 p.m. with seven other lads from the village. The next day he had to carry the soldiers' things to X village, just four hours walk away. My friends in X told me that when they got there, the soldiers ordered my son to start cooking rice for their meal, but he didn't understand Burmese. My son and two other boys were just shot on the spot because they couldn't understand the orders. I arrived at X just an hour later and was shown his body.

Treatment of Shan Refugees by the Royal Thai Government

Following the launch of the Burmese government's relocation program in central Shan State in March 1996, an estimated 20,000 people had fled into Thailand by the end of June that year.35 Since then, 40,000 more at least have fled into Thailand. However, the response of the Royal Thai government was not to establish refugee camps where these refugees could receive humanitarian assistance, but to allow them to enter the country as illegal migrants. Those who flee to Thailand from Shan State are therefore not only at severe risk of being exploited and cheated by unscrupulous employers, agents and traffickers, with no protection or remedy against such treatment, but also live in constant fear of arrest for illegal entry into Thailand, the punishment for which is a one-month prison sentence, a fine of 2,000 baht and subsequent deportation to Burma.

Many who have fled from Shan State work on construction sites in towns such at Chiang Mai or Bangkok, and because of their illegal status receive lower wages than Thai laborers. Workers and their families often live in corrugated iron or bamboo shacks at the construction site. In one such site, south of Chiang Mai, visited by a researcher from Human Rights Watch/Asia in June 1997, it was observed that members of several families were frequently living crowded together in one shack.

In early March 1997, around 430 people from four villages in Shan State fled to Mae Hong Son Province in Thailand. The villages, Ma-O, Nong Long, Long Jik and Mae Gerd, are situated northeast of Ho Murng in Shan state, the former headquarters of the MTA. They fled because SLORC troops had come into their villages and accused them of harboring ex-MTA fighters. Some of the villagers were beaten, some were forcibly taken by the army to act as porters, and the soldiers stole pigs and chickens from the villages. As a result of this, the villagers fled to Thailand and established four new settlements just across the border, dividing themselves according to their old villages. The new settlements were called Mai Kai Luang, Mai Kai Orn, Pangyon and Long Jik.

Soon after their arrival, Thai authorities visited the refugees but did not at that stage say they would have to return to Burma. However, on May 30, 1997 Thailand Times newspaper reported that it had been decided at a meeting at the provincial office on May 26, 1997 that this group would be pushed back into Burma on the basis that they were not fleeing fighting.36 A group of around 150 people, including personnel from the Border Patrol Police, the armed Rangers, officials from the provincial office and local volunteers, were sent to repatriate the refugees. The 430 refugees were escorted to the border to ensure they crossed back into Burma. This constitutes refoulement, as they had sought refuge in Thailand on account of a well-founded fear of persecution by the Burmese government based on their real or perceived political opinions.

32 Shan Human Rights Foundation, "Uprooting the Shan: SLORC's Forced Relocation Program in Central Shan State" (Thailand: Shan Human Rights Foundation, December 1996). 33 The SSA was formed in 1964, led by Sao Hso Hten: it entered into a cease-fire agreement with the government in September 1989. The SSNA was formed by Kurn Yod, a former senior military strategist with the MTA, when he broke away from Khun Sa with around 2,000 men in 1995. SURA was formed in January 1996 by Maj. Yot Serk with other former MTA soldiers who opposed Khun Sa's agreement to surrender. For further information on the politics of the Shan State, see Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948 (Colorado:Westview Press, 1995). 34 The UWSP, LDF and SSA are represented at the government-sponsored constitutional assembly, the National Convention. 35 See Shan Human Rights Foundation, "Uprooting the Shan," pp. 39. 36 Thailand Times, May 30, 1997.