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Villagers from southern Ye flee to avoid human rights violation by the Burma Army
DEFENSELESS VILLAGERS ATTACKED: NO CHANCE OF ESCAPE
(By Hongsar and Banyear Toay: August 3, 2004)
Civilians from southern Mon State seeking refuge at a Mon refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border claimed they were tortured and sexually harassed by the Burmese Army soldiers.
“Burmese soldiers scurry about in the jungle looking for insurgents and often target villagers when they come across any; they often stay overnight at the village demanding protection and force young women to sit together with them and guard the area during the night,” Ms. Mi Charn (not real name) said during an interview. She fled to the border area in July and is now seeking refuge in Thailand.
Often they harass the people, for example, a mother of a pretty girl was punished to cook food for the soldiers because she told the soldiers to not bother her daughter and to stay away from her. The mother was worried of sexual harassment, said the women who traveled along with ten other people from the same village. Young girls and women are targets of the BA, especially in the ethnic areas, a disturbing tactic and trend used by the military with impunity.
“The SPDC soldiers also threaten and intimidate young single men by pointing guns at them, after, they routinely search and stay at the houses of beautiful women,” Mr. Nai Soe from the same group said.
Young men in the village cannot see their girlfriends at nighttime for fear of torture, beating and portering by the BA, said a young man from the group. (Visiting girls at night is an old Mon tradition of courting and is still practiced in the rural areas)
The witnesses say the SPDC soldiers of Battalion No. 273 led by Khin Kyaw Soe killed two villagers. Nai Kun Pha, the former secretary of the village and Nai Pha Dot were both accused as supporting the Mon guerillas, after shouting at them they were taken outside of their village and shot dead in cold blood.
When the villagers asked about their headmen, the SPDC soldiers said the two were shot dead, but Colonel Soe said they were jailed in Moulmein, the capital of Mon State.
The villagers later found the dead bodies in a dug out hole, the group said. Some men in the group recognized the dead men as their headmen who had been taken by the soldiers.
Later on, the men in the village were ordered to stand by and wait for hours until the SPDC called for them to porter for the soldiers to crackdown on Mon guerillas.
“We were forced to porter about once a week in rotating system since last year to date,” said the group. They all had experienced portering by the BA.
They receive no treatment of any kind and are often beaten and left alone to die in the jungle if they collapse. They are provided with no medicine, no rest time, and have no mosquito nets, an important item in a malaria infested jungle. Some of porters, not having enough strength to carry stuff for the battalion often break their hands and legs lugging heavy equipment and most will later contract malaria, which is lethal without the assistance of drugs, the group said.
They say that the main reason they leave their village is they cannot go and work on their farms and plantations. They need to farm food to survive; there is no other way to survive without farming.
“We were allowed only once in two weeks to go to our farm and plantations,” Mr. Nai Soe Mon said.
According to a young student Nai Lwe Mon, age 17, he left the school because there is no income in his family and decided to go to work in Thailand to support his family like so many thousands of other Mon.
The army also tortured a Buddhist monk in the village, accused as a rebel supporter. He was strung upside down from a tree, his legs were bound and then he was tied to the branches of a tree, his head hanging just above the ground while the soldiers beat him.
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