Human rights violation in Burma

SLAVERY

Two practices in today's Burma amount to slavery. In order to conduct operations against ethnic minorities in the border areas, the Burmese military needs large numbers of people to carry ammunition and other equipment on long marches through the jungle. It obtains porters by kidnapping citizens from the streets, buses, and work places of the cities. The army also obtains porters among ethnic minorities themselves. In one April 1990 military campaign involving 700 Burmese soldiers, there were an estimated 1,000 porters forced to carry arms and ammunition. Forced portering is one way to punish and demoralize villagers suspected of supporting ethnic insurgencies. The military will take children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the sick if it cannot find enough able men. Urban or rural, Burman or minority, once they have been conscripted, all porters are treated the same. They are tied together and forced to carry heavy loads of ammunition or food. Treatment is most often severe, including a near-starvation diet and beatings. Those who cannot keep up are abandoned or summarily executed. These human mules are seldom if ever compensated for their labor. Involuntary porters are often used as human minesweepers and as human shields in battle. Amnesty International's August 1991 report, Myanmar: Continuing Killings and Ill-Treatment of Minority Peoples, documents the current extent of these practices: "The largest number of testimonies gathered by Amnesty International during its research in June and July 1991 referred to deliberate killings and incidents of ill-treatment--sometimes resulting in death--of members of ethnic and religious minorities seized as porters or to clear mines." Forced labor contravenes Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and ILO Convention 29, which Burma has ratified. Another form of slavery in Burma today involves teenage women, most of them from ethnic minorities living on the Burmese side of the border between Burma and Thailand. They are kidnapped or deceived by brothel gangs which sell them into servitude to supply Thailand's burgeoning sex economy. Once caught, the young women (or children--some are as young as ten or eleven) are kept imprisoned and become a commodity. They run a very high risk of contracting AIDS. A Bangkok brothel was raided in March 1991. All nineteen prostitutes were Burmese; seventeen of them tested positive for the AIDS virus. Increasing numbers of people are being victimized in this way. Some of these shanghaied women end up being sold overseas in an international slave market to prostitution rings in countries like Japan, Singapore, Germany, and Australia. Security officials, both police and military, in both Burma and Thailand are either actively involved in the brothel gangs or profit by taking bribes from them.