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IV. Internal Displacement

Internally displaced persons are persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border.⁷³

The U.N. Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, from which the above definition of an IDP is taken, provide an authoritative restatement of existing international human rights, humanitarian and refugee law as it relates to the protection of internally displaced persons. The Guiding Principles address all phases of displacement: providing protection against arbitrary displacement; ensuring protection and assistance during displacement; and, establishing guarantees for safe return, resettlement, or reintegration. By drawing heavily on existing law and standards, the Guiding Principles are intended to provide practical guidance to governments, the U.N., and other intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations in their work with IDPs.

Crucially, the Guiding Principles make no assumptions about whether return, staying put, or resettlement in a new home is the preferable solution for the person concerned. Rather, principles 28-30 emphasize that the authorities must provide IDPs with objective, accurate information and include them in the decision-making processes that lead to their voluntary return or resettlement, or to remaining in the place where they sought refuge.

In practice there is often no clear line as to when a displaced person is no longer considered to be displaced.

Why they are displaced

Forced displacement is a military strategy that depopulates ethnic minority areas and denies insurgents a civilian support base. Forced displacement is prohibited by international humanitarian law: Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions, reflective of customary law, provides that no displacement shall be ordered for reasons related to the conflict, unless civilians must move for their own security or a clear military imperative. Should such displacements have to be carried out, all possible measures must be taken so that the civilian population obtains satisfactory conditions of shelter, hygiene, medical, safety, and nutrition.⁷⁴

In Burma the most common causes of displacement include military operations and direct attacks, human rights abuses, land and crop confiscation––often in the context of state-sponsored development projects––and the placement of landmines in otherwise usable land. Traditionally, Burma’s ethnic nationality groups, most of which live in the hills, have responded to oppression by moving further up into the hills. But the strategy of organized flight became less viable as borders became more clearly demarcated and patrolled between the 1950s and 1980s. As insurgent groups lost territory to the Tatmadaw in the 1990s, displaced people could no longer move further into rebel-controlled “liberated zones” behind the front lines of conflict.

All Karen IDPs interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported that there was often fighting in or near the villages they fled, mostly between the KNLA and Tatmadaw; sometimes between the KNLA and DKBA. Villagers fled when they heard that the Tatmadaw had arrived near their villages. Such evacuations were usually organized by KNLA troops. As most informants had good reason to fear the Tatmadaw, they considered this to be a protective service, allowing them to escape in advance of army patrols.

Sometimes people fled due to forced labor and porterage, arbitrary taxation and looting, the destruction of crops and housing, and other human rights abuses experienced over an extended period of time. These cases of people fleeing when a situation became intolerable, due to a series of abuses, illustrate the impact of militarization, chronic insecurity, and counter-insurgency activity on local economies and livelihoods.

Developmental displacement is also now alarmingly common. Forced relocation commonly makes way for––and is conducted to provide forced labor on––road building and other infrastructure projects.⁷⁵ Roads bring a cash economy with them, and add value to land––thus sometimes motivating further expropriation.

Communities have also been forcibly displaced without compensation for other kinds of development projects, including the construction of mines⁷⁶, irrigation systems⁷⁷, and natural gas and oil extraction facilities. In March 1997 the Tatmadaw and DKBA forced villagers to move to Mae Wei relocation site, in southwest Papun District, prior to intensive logging activities.⁷⁸ The planned construction of a series of large hydroelectric dams is of similar concern in Karen State. In November 2004 Karen Rivers Watch (KRW), a coalition of Karen NGOs, reported that three-quarters of the 85 villages in the vicinity of the planned dam sites had been forcibly relocated since 1995, displacing tens of thousands of civilians.⁷⁹ Similar cases can be found across the country, in which ethnic nationality villages were forcibly relocated by the military prior to major infrastructure projects. As KRW noted, “the regime is using ‘development’ to justify its subjugation and militarization of the ethnic-controlled areas…and mask the root causes of civil war in Burma.”⁸⁰

In May 1989 the SLORC initiated a new Border Areas Development Program, ostensibly aimed at improving conditions in the ethnic minority borderlands.⁸¹ Despite SPDC claims to have spent U.S.$43 million since 1993⁸² building 7,865 kilometers of roads, 763 bridges, 767 schools, fifty-four hospitals, thirty-two rural health care centers, and eighty-one dispensaries in border areas⁸³, the program has done little to alleviate poverty⁸⁴ and primarily served to consolidate military control over the rural population. The program has facilitated the militarization of border areas, bringing remote, previously semi-autonomous regions under centralized state control.

In several cases, “development projects” have in fact induced displacement. In Kachin State, since the ceasefires the government has built roads and bridges on confiscated land, using forced labor. In December 2003 in Mon State, 1,400 houses in three wards of Moulmein were ordered to relocate so that a railway bridge could be built across the Salween River to Martaban (on completion, this will be the longest bridge in Burma). Householders were given one month’s notice to move. Some received nothing, while others received limited compensation (at 70 percent of the calculated value of their property), as well as plots of land at a new (relocation) site in Pat-kin Ward, east of the city. The authorities have forced other Moulmein residents to re-model their houses and streets, according to a standard model.⁸⁵

Forced displacement, termed as unlawful forced evictions, has been condemned under international law. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1993 concluded that “forced evictions are a gross violation of human rights.”⁸⁶ The term “forced evictions” has been defined by the U.N. Committee on Economic, Cultural, and Social Rights “as the permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and/or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection.”⁸⁷

Forced eviction, except where carried out in accordance with the law and in conformity with international due process standards, not only violates the right to adequate housing, but may also result in violations of other rights, such the rights to security of the person and to one’s home.⁸⁸ International law does allow for government exercise of eminent domain under appropriate circumstances. The Economic and Social Rights Committee urged states to ensure that, prior to any evictions, particularly those involving large groups, all feasible alternatives are explored in consultation with affected persons, with a view to avoiding, or at least minimizing, the use of force. Those facing eviction orders must have legal remedies available. And states should see to it that those evicted have a right to adequate compensation for any property affected.⁸⁹

Increasingly restricted access to land causes repeated forced migration. In a few cases, Karen IDPs moved in order to find better land for swidden rice farming. Under normal circumstances, this form of cultivation is rotational within traditionally-recognized village farmlands; not shifting or pioneering cultivation into new territory at the expense of old-growth forests. Although Karen villages do occasionally relocate to better land, this is traditionally done in a manner that many claim does not undermine environmental sustainability. However, armed conflict in these areas do undermine traditional and sustainable forms of agriculture, forcing IDPs to adopt more nomadic forms of subsistence.

Moreover, CBOs working inside the country also report that Tatmadaw battalions encroach upon and confiscate land to construct garrisons and produce food crops for government troops. Communities may be relocated shortly before harvest time, following which soldiers seize their crops.⁹⁰ Confiscated land is also sold or leased to private agri-companies.⁹¹ Regardless of the purpose, the confiscation clearly contributes to displacement.

How displacement happens

The relocation process usually begins with a Tatmadaw column issuing a relocation order. Previously, this was likely to have been a written document, constituting evidence of state-sanctioned abuse. However, relocation orders are more likely to be issued verbally, often at a meeting of village headmen. Villagers are usually given between zero-seven days warning to leave their homes. Sometimes they are told to move to a designated relocation site, but villagers are not told where to go, just to vacate their homes. As Cusano notes, often “people assume a subtly defiant wait-and-see attitude…[and] ignore the first notice.”⁹² When the soldiers return, they usually enforce their orders with vigor.

Human Rights Watch has received a video, shot between February 11-14, 2004, in Nyaunglebin District that includes interviews with people in and from Neh Tohvillage, Nyaunglebin District (Mone Township), who were in the process of being relocated. When the video was made, some people had left Neh Toh already, while others are seen taking down parts of their houses and moving out––on foot, by bicycle and on bullock cart. Footage of the village––and its big church and good houses––is followed by testimony describing how, ten days earlier, villagers received an order from a Tatmadaw Light Infantry Battalion to move to a relocation site, three miles from the nearest Tatmadaw base. They were not told why they had to move.⁹³

The process began on October 1, 2003, when Tatmadaw Battalion 599, commanded by Major Win Tway, ordered the village to relocate to Ten Kwee, on the Kyauk Gyi-Mone road on fourteen acres of farmland confiscated from local villagers. The deadline for relocation was January 19, 2004, but no villagers moved. On February 2, 2004, the order was repeated and villagers were told to move within two days. Some people emptied their houses and rice barns and proceeded to the new site by bullock cart. The villagers had to build temporary bamboo and leaf lean-to shelters at Ten Kwee. They were not allowed to stay with relatives in nearby villages, nor allowed to forage locally for roofing or building materials.

The new site is in the rice fields, with no shelter. People are beginning to build bamboo lean-tos. Informants describe conditions and restrictions at the relocation site and the forced labor and taxes demanded by the Tatmadaw. Those who have moved there now suffer various health problems because they lack food and clean water and must sleep on the ground. They have no access to schools.

The Tatmadaw burned the empty houses at Neh Toh, leaving only the Baptist and Catholic churches standing. Adding insult to injury, the villagers also were later forced to “donate” 200,000 Kyat (over U.S.$200) to Battalion 599.

Often, the relocation area is declared a free-fire zone. Houses, animals and crops are looted and destroyed, and people are raped or shot. Villagers in armed conflict zones are usually prepared to flee at short notice. Karen IDPs typically move as one or two families together; in other cases, whole villages move but split up to avoid Tatmadaw patrols. Most have bundles of possessions ready to move quickly, and have often prepared secret rice stores, hidden in the jungle, though the military often searches for and destroys these.

Previous surveys have estimated that IDP households in hiding had to move three to four times per year, although the number of displacement incidents has declined significantly since the announcement in December 2003 of a ceasefire between the KNU and SPDC.⁹⁴

When fleeing, displaced Karens reported they could only move on foot. They hid in the jungle and walked only at night, even in the rain. They carried small pots, pans and rice to cook with on the way, and sometimes some clothes. Often they were afraid of lighting a fire, fearing it would attract Tatmadaw attention. As a Karen woman, interviewed in 2003, said:

It was the rainy season, and we fled for hours to reach the hiding place in the jungle, because the SPDC and KNLA were fighting. When we got there we were so tired, but too scared to light the fire for cooking or to warm ourselves, so we went to sleep without food, under the trees. We didn’t care, and weren’t scared of leaches any more. If our baby cried, we put a piece of cloth in his mouth to stop him crying.⁹⁵

Some people hide in the forest for few days during the immediate displacement crisis, and then return to their village. Tatmadaw columns often return repeatedly to cleared areas, to ensure that they are not re-settled. In the event the military does not return, some villagers will return to re-build their burnt and looted homes and rice barns.

While some IDPs migrate and resettle elsewhere––in temporary jungle settlements, in nearby towns or villages, or as refugees in Thailand––others attempt to hide in the jungle for up to several years. Displaced villagers in hiding are targeted and subjected to human rights abuses, including extra-judicial killing, on suspicion of being rebel supporters. Their temporary shelters, often little more than bamboo lean-tos, are scattered in remote locations, to avoid Tatmadaw patrols. They clear small areas of jungle to grow rice, tapioca, yams, and other vegetables, forage for supplementary food, and fish in the streams.⁹⁶ When they run out of rice, they often resort to drinking the much less nutritious boiled rice soup,⁹⁷ though the communities in hiding are known for sharing resources and especially food with each other.⁹⁸ They are also at times able to communicate with family and friends in relocation sites and other government-controlled areas, which sometimes allows them to gain access to food and other items.

Patterns of forced relocation

In mid-2004 the TBBC and partner groups detected “a significant decrease in the number of villages forcibly relocated since the mid-late 1990s … [due to the Tatmadaw’s] consolidating rather than expanding areas of control.”⁹⁹ In reality, consolidating control means placing IDPs in Tatmadaw-run relocation sites. These are found across central and southern Shan State, in Karenni, Karen and Mon States and Tenasserim Division, as well as in parts of central Burma. The TBBC recorded one hundred government-controlled relocation sites in Karen areas, and the overall site population in those areas is probably in excess of 125,000 people. For the purpose of analysis, these sites may be divided into Relocation Centers and Relocation Villages, which vary with respect to the degree of Tatmadaw control.

The distinction between different types of relocation sites and organic settlements in Burma is rather arbitrary, particularly in an historical context where some villages in the hills relocate periodically for socio-economic reasons, such as to gain access to new land. Furthermore, it is by no means clear when a relocated settlement stops being a relocation site. Most villages in eastern Burma have experienced displacement at some time over the fast half-century, in the context of a protracted civil war and wider state-society conflict. In many cases, people have rebuilt their lives and integrated in new settlements.

Nevertheless, classic style Relocation Centers and Relocation Villages still exist in many areas. The state or Tatmadaw sometimes provide a few weeks or few months supply of rice to new arrivals in Relocation Centers, although this has often been taken from other villagers’ granaries. In many cases, the government also provides limited education and health services, as it does in much of rural Burma. Access to schools and markets––and protection from further bouts of relocation afforded by residence in relocation sites––explains the reluctance of some residents to leave, even when conditions allow.¹⁰⁰

Relocation Centers

Relocation Centers are designated, constructed settlements rather than “natural” villages. Typically found in lowland areas near infrastructure projects and Tatmadaw bases,¹⁰¹ the residents of these centers usually come from a dozen or more outlying villages after they are forced to move by the Tatmadaw.

Relocation is usually difficult because new arrivals have no money or possessions and cannot find regular paid work. In addition, many Relocation Centers require residents to hand over their remaining rice stocks to the local authorities, which then ration these back to villagers. Even in sites where residents retain control over their own food stocks, these are likely to be insufficient for subsistence, due to regular looting by the Tatmadaw, restricted access to agricultural land¹⁰², and poor soil quality. Unless the new arrivals have money or relatives in the area, they often cannot acquire any land at Relocation Centers. As a result, food is often quite expensive and there are appear to be high rates of chronic malnutrition in Relocation Centers.

Access to water, clinics, medicines, and other social services remain minimal or non-existent. IDPs––even though destitute––are likely to be charged for any medicines available. Large numbers of people are reported to have died of treatable illness, and suicides are apparently also common. While the Relocation Centers do afford some access to state-funded schools and buildings, teachers and books are often in short supply. In addition, school fees are typically charged, and, as is the case in the rest of government-controlled Burma, ethnic nationality children may not study their own languages in school.

People living in Relocation Centers are liable to various––official and unofficial––taxes, and are also often subject to extensive bouts of forced labor on state-sponsored projects, such as roads. Such depredations leave families with little time and human resources to devote to their own survival. In some cases, the amount of labor demanded is so great as to occupy entire families full-time. The only alternative is to pay others to go on their behalf, which most cannot afford.

Relocation Center residents would obviously rather not be displaced again, and therefore many opt to stay in the centers, even after departure becomes an option. Some stay because there are greater market and work opportunities than in their original isolated villages.¹⁰³ Conditions at some sites––typically those that have been established for longer periods of time––are better than others. In some cases, there are schools, some paid work, and communities are able to reestablish their lives. In such cases, residence is often no longer, or not entirely, a product of coercion, and it is debatable whether such new villages should still be considered relocation sites.

However, the lack of food and extremely difficult conditions eventually drive large numbers of residents to flee. In many cases, as in Karenni State in 1999-2002, authorities turn a blind eye to these departures and IDPs are able to return to––and attempt to rebuild––their old villages. In others, such as Tenasserim Division in the same period, departing Relocation Center residents cannot go back to their villages and they join the IDP population hiding in the jungle, among whom are likely to be fellow-villagers who fled following the original relocation orders and chose to take their chances in the hills. Many of these people are subject to further rounds of forcible relocation. A few make it to the uncertain refuge of neighboring Thailand.

Relocation Villages

In addition to Relocation Centers, the SPDC has also used pre-existing settlements as “Relocation Villages.” These are found across large swaths of rural Burma, and in some areas, such as the Tenasserim Division, they are the only villages remaining. The occupants of these villages usually include people who have not been displaced from the area, people moved from nearby hamlets, and IDPs from other previously relocated villages.

Relocation Villages are smaller than Relocation Centers, and more difficult to document and map. They may be situated in areas firmly controlled by government forces, with Tatmadaw bases nearby, but are sometimes also found in brown areas, where insurgent forces have some operational capacity. Residents are in general subject to less strict control than those of the big Relocation Centers. While the Tatmadaw controls entry and exit, and residents are often forced into labor, they do usually have some opportunity to tend their farms due to greater geographical proximity to their former homes. Some Relocation Villages have schools, though most do not. In some areas, Relocation Villages are allowed to remain in situ––households are moved from the periphery to the centre of the relocation village–if they pledge not to have contact with insurgent forces. The Tatmadaw frequently warns such villages that, if any fighting should occur in the area, they will be forced to move.

However, Relocation Village inhabitants suffer the same problems with respect to land confiscation, overcrowding, and disease. A forty-seven-year-old farmer described conditions at one such site:

We had a bamboo house at Plaw Lah Hay Relocation Site, but it was difficult to get enough good bamboo, because we were not allowed out of the Relocation Site. The Burma Army soldiers gave us two pots for cooking, but the rest of our household goods we had to find for ourselves. We had to sell our rice and betel nut crops, which was very difficult. Our family struggled to support ourselves. All the time, the Burma Army took porters and watchmen, and stole our few possessions.¹⁰⁴

Consequences of displacement

The forty-six Karen interviewed by Human Rights Watch had experienced an average of approximately thirty displacement episodes per person. Following recent major displacement crises in northern Karen State––in 1995, 1997 and 2000––they had moved on average over three times a year.¹⁰⁵

The consequences of repeated displacement are grim and will not be easily remedied in the short term. According to the TBBC, “1 percent of the internally displaced population had been killed or wounded by military assault during the past two years alone.”¹⁰⁶ And not only does displacement––even into Relocation Centers or Villages––often fail to mean an end to human rights violations for IDPs, but it is also extremely difficult for them to achieve security with respect to food, land, and livelihood. The displacement also leaves large tracts of the countryside unable to resist predatory development projects and greater state control.

Displaced parents often leave their children in the care of churches or monasteries in larger villages or towns. Although such circumstances allow for education and greater security, it also leads to family break-ups. The practice is generally discouraged by development agencies’ best practice guidelines unless the families can remain in contact.However, in the context of protracted armed conflict and repeated displacement in Karen State, such responses may be the only way of providing children with some security, and minimal access to education.

Areas to which IDPs flee are not necessarily safer. KST is a fifty-three-year-old Pwo Karen woman from Ka Law Gaw Village, Dooplaya District, near the Thai-Burma border (Tak Province). KST told Human Rights Watch she “cannot remember” exactly how many times she has been either forcibly relocated, chose to flee the fighting, or moved because of forced labor duties, but said she has been displaced “over one hundred times” in her life. Human Rights Watch interviewed her days after she fled SPDC attacks on her village with her husband and two young children she cares for. She stayed along the border for two nights, sleeping in the open, before coming into Thailand the following day. The interview was cut short due to a loud explosion nearby, which Karen authorities said was SPDC artillery in the vicinity of Ka Law Gaw village.

Tatmadaw restrictions on movement, ranging from denial of access to farms to mining of farmland¹⁰⁷, undermine food security. Swidden farmers return to their former fallow fields too soon, before the soil has regained its fertility, or have no choice but to clear entirely near swaths of forest. Villagers are essentially forced into harvesting forest products “at unsustainable rates in order to earn enough money to purchase food and other necessities. These factors have contributed to large scale clear-cutting in many areas and a range of environmental problems.”¹⁰⁸

Sustainable livelihoods in these areas are particularly vulnerable to conflict, militarization, and displacement. Among other problems, these factors make it difficult for villagers to tend their fields, and guard against pests such as rats and wild pigs––all factors that further undermine food security. According to the CIDKP, upland farmers in hiding are generally able to harvest only 40 to 50 percent of their crop for the year.¹⁰⁹

In addition, the conflict cuts the long-established links between lowland traders, and Karen and other hill peoples, denying both communities markets for their respective goods. Tatmadaw and DKBA blockades in these areas also cause prices for rice and other goods to sharply rise as market access is curtailed. Rice prices in Nyaunglebin District reportedly rose by 25 percent in 2003, to 5,000 Kyat per tine (U.S.$5 per kg.).¹¹⁰ In many conflict-affected areas “it is only possible for villagers in hiding to access traders if they can send a message to the towns and KNU can arrange a temporary and unofficial ‘jungle market.’”¹¹¹ As a result, three-quarters of IDPs surveyed by TBBC and partner groups in 2004 had suffered food shortages for at least one month in the previous year, while 20 percent had access to sufficient food for less than three months.¹¹²

IDPs also have virtually no access to health care. The IDP population tends to be disproportionately made up of children, elderly people, widows, orphans, and the disabled¹¹³––in other words, particularly vulnerable groups with already-low life expectancies.¹¹⁴ Child mortality and malnutrition rates among IDPs are “double Burma’s national baseline data and comparable to those recorded amongst internally displaced populations in the Horn of Africa.”¹¹⁵ IDPs interviewed by Human Rights Watch reported their most common ailments as malaria and fever, chicken pox, and serious gastrointestinal problems like diarrhea and dysentery. None of the interviewees had heard of HIV/AIDS.

Access to education is limited for IDPs, particularly beyond the primary level.¹¹⁶ The SPDC claims a national literacy rate of 90 percent, but researchers in Karen State estimated the rate at about 72 percent.¹¹⁷ In most villages where Human Rights Watch interviewees had lived – whether temporary or established settlements – there were no schools. However, many informants reported sending their children to schools in nearby towns and villages, and sometimes to the refugee camps in Thailand, where there are fifty-seven schools for about thirty-six thousand students. A network of some 720 community schools exists across Karen areas of Burma, including six high schools in KNU liberated zones.¹¹⁸ But many of these schools consist of little more than a few bamboo benches under the trees, lack books, pencils, and paper, and are frequently displaced or destroyed. In partnership with local teachers and self-help organizations, the KNU Education Department (KED) attempts to standardize the curriculum and examinations within this massively under-funded system, which still enjoys close links with schools in the refugee camps.¹¹⁹

When these circumstances threaten IDPs’ ability to survive, many attempt to flee to neighboring countries. Most Karen refugees (and many of the more than one million Burmese migrant workers) in Thailand have previously spent several months or years as IDPs in Burma. Since the mid-late 1990s, the journey to Thailand has become increasingly difficult and dangerous, due to the prevalence of landmines, and because the Tatmadaw (and Thai military) has sealed the border.