REFUGEES

For decades, wave after wave of Burmese refugees have fled war and oppression in their native land to seek uncertain exile in neighboring countries. The toll in human suffering is incalculable, and the continual mass migrations have created serious regional disruptions and tensions. As of early 1998, nearly 300,000 Burmese were refugees in Thailand, Bangladesh, and India. Attacks by Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council (until November 1997 the State Law and Order Restoration Council or SLORC), continue to drive people from their homes. Ever greater numbers of Burmese — as many as one million — are “internal refugees,” chased from their homes by army attacks and forced relocations aimed at either cutting local links to armed opposition groups or seizing their lands for state-run farming or logging.

Burma’s peoples are victim to some of the world’s worst and most consistent human rights abuses. The United Nations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other groups have produced numerous reports detailing a litany of gruesome violations. Political opponents of the army junta are murdered, tortured, or jailed for years under harsh conditions. Villagers are press-ganged as forced laborers or as porters in combat zones. In rural areas, summary executions, rape, and robbery by soldiers are routine and unpunished. Clearly, Burmese fleeing to exile fulfill the international legal definition of a refugee as someone who has “a well-founded fear of persecution” in their homeland.

After the bloody suppression of the 1988 pro-democracy movement, thousands of students and political activists evaded army round-ups and escaped to Thailand and India. Some returned to Burmese territory to take up arms against the regime. Others made their way to third countries and are still active in the democracy movement from exile. But many more have been forced to remain in camps near the Burmese frontier, often under very difficult conditions.

Ethnic minority peoples, comprising about 40% of Burma’s population, are special targets for abuse. Their indigenous lands along Burma’s frontiers have for decades been consumed by rebellions that have flared and simmered in a quest for autonomy or independence. The army, dominated by the majority Burman ethnic group, has exacerbated tensions and fanned resistance through heavy-handed and often savage responses to opposition activities. The army’s “Four Cuts” strategy is designed to deny armed opposition groups access to food, money, information, and recruits. It is often enforced through mass relocations and widespread destruction of communities, accompanied by killings and other brutality.

Muslim people in southwestern Burma are special targets for repression. There, repeated military campaigns have included desecration and destruction of mosques and systematic rape. A major army campaign in 1991 drove a quarter million Rohingya people from their homes into neighboring Bangladesh. Most have returned with promises of safety, but over 20,000 today remain in camps in Bangladesh. They are joined every day by new refugees, even as the UN and Bangladesh government press the refugees to return home. Violent clashes broke out in two refugee camps in 1997 and 1998 as refugees protested against forced repatriation to Burma, where they warn they still face severe military persecution.

The Burmese junta uses religion as a weapon to divide people along the Thai frontier as well, where there is a sizable Christian minority. In 1995, the army encouraged a small group of Karen Buddhists to join them in taking up arms against Christians of the same ethnic group who are opposed to the Rangoon regime. The attacks have driven thousands of people across the border to Thailand. Burmese government-supported militia have continued to mount raids even across the international boundary, destroying refugee camps and killing or kidnapping civilians. These cross-border incursions have raised tensions with Thailand and the potential for regional unrest.

Forced relocations and displacement of people within Burma is another serious problem. Major army assaults in 1997 and early 1998 forced tens of thousands of Karen, Mon, and Shan people to abandon their villages and either flee to exile or move into army-controlled “strategic hamlets.” The military junta, with no accountability to the population, has also imposed massive relocations of people in ethnic Burman majority urban and rural areas. Some people have been chased from their homes to allow for logging operations or the creation of state farms. Entire communities have been forced to move to new “satellite towns” that often lack services or communications and are sometimes located on disease-prone and infertile lands. Localized protests against such actions have been reported, but Burma’s civilian population is basically defenseless against the regime’s well-armed and fast-growing army.