Pubdate: Sat, 08 Aug 1998 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Page: A 12 Contact: Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Author: Sandy Barron Chronicle Foreign Service TALES OF TERROR EMERGE FROM VICTIMS Rape, torture murder are its instruments Bangkok "The Burmese military ... know there's no way people will like them, so they rule by fear." - - CHRISTOPHER BRUTON, Economic consultant in Bangkok As riot troops man strategic positions in tense Rangoon for today's 10th anniversary of the Burmese military's fierce suppression of a pro-democracy uprising, human rights groups say that the army is committing fresh atrocities at an alarming rate. Villagers in eastern Burmese states bordering Thailand are being killed, tortured and raped as the ruling military junta seeks to consolidate its control throughout the country, according to numerous eyewitness reports. A full decade after the army shot thousands of protesters in Rangoon and around the country and later refused to recognize a landslide election victory by pro democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the regime's reliance on terror shows no signs of a letup. Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, is recovering from dehydration and fever after recently spending six days marooned in her car on a country road when the ruling State Peace and Development Council prevented her from visiting supporters. Appalling Cruelty A few hundred miles north of the capital in lush, jungled Shan and Kayah states, traumatized villagers are fleeing from the army to the Thai border bearing stories of appalling cruelty. They come from towns and villages as close as 20 miles from the Shan capital of Taunggi, which the government promotes as a tourist center, along with the nearby, picturesque Inle Lake. The Shan Human Rights Foundation (SHRF), a nongovernmental organization formed in the early '90s and based in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai, has issued a number of detailed reports documenting the atrocities and forced relocations. Witnesses recently gave these accounts to SHRF workers: 0 On June 27, soldiers from the Burmese army's Light Infantry Battalion 246 shot dead 13 villagers in Kaeng Tawn; seven children and two women were among the victims. 0 Twenty-six farmers were gunned down on June 2 near Murng-Kerng. In One refugee brought a photograph of Nang Zar Hawn, a 14 year-old girl who was allegedly raped, killed and burned by an army major near Lai-Kha. 0 Nang Nan, the wife of farmer Sai Phim, found her husband buried at the steps of their home near Kaeng Tun with his head above the ground, after being shot by troops. Pippa Curwen, & British researcher for the SHRF who has taken some of the refugees' testimony, said, "Yesterday I interviewed a 19-year-old man who had rope marks across his arms." Electric Shocks "He said he had been captured and tortured by troops; he was beaten, a green plastic sheet was tied around his head and water poured in so he couldn't breathe, and he was given electric shocks on his cheeks." Hundreds of extrajudicial killings, many of them preceded by torture, have been documented by the SHRF. The reports come on the heels of a warning in April by Amnesty~ International that hundreds of thousands of farming families&. from more than 1,400 villages in Shan state were in grave danger after being forced to relocate t( miserable camps without adequate( food or medicine. The dire conditions tions in the camps force people t( forage in the f orests or to try t( return to their abandoned villages where they are vulnerable to be ing shot on sight by soldiers. Escapees from the camps say that men, women and children alike are routinely forced to construct army buildings, build roads and carry supplies for soldiers. They add that diseases causing diarrhea are rife. "I decided that if I died, everything would be over and that would be better than going back to the camp, because life is very bad there," said Klaw Reh, 50, a Shan farmer who escaped and fled to Thailand with three children in April after his wife died in the Shadaw relocation camp. Lucrative Narcotics Trade The military's campaigns in Shan, Kayah and Karen states have increased in intensity since 1996. Burma experts say that the goal has been twofold: To undermine any lingering support for the region's depleted ethnic resistance groups and, from the Junta's perspective, to bring "peace and development" to the border areas. Increasingly, the regime's concept of "development" is being extended to grabbing control of the lucrative narcotics trade, analysts say. Burma is one of the world's largest suppliers of heroin. Large parts of resource-rich Shan state were outside Rangoon's reach before it cut a deal with top opium warlord Khun Sa in 1996. Khun Sa, whose extradition was fervently sought by the United States, reportedly agreed to disband his private army, give up the drug trade and submit to a form of house arrest. In turn, the junta guaranteed his safety and apparently allowed him to use his billions to pursue legitimate business opportunities - - sometimes in Partnership with the regime. Christopher Bruton, chief of Dataconsult, a consulting company in Bangkok with extensive experience in Burma, said: "The Burmese economy is continuing to deteriorate, and the narcotics business is about all the government has left to get money, To control harvesting and processing of opium does require more continuous control in rural areas." Rape as a Tool of Terror The junta vehemently denies involvement in the drug trade. But farmers who fled to Thailand re. Port that troops around Ho Murng, Khun Sa's former stronghold, are )ordering villagers to grow opium. The refugees add that soldiers control factories that make "Ya Ma," a type of amphetamine that has flooded Thailand. One of the most disturbing of lie military's practices is the systematic use of rape as a tool of terror, the human rights groups say. In a March report issued by Earthrights International, an in ternational organization based in Thailand and Washington, D.C lawyer Betsy Apple wrote: "Women are raped in their villages and during flight. They are subjected to rape and other sexual abuse as they engage in forced labor ... for the Burmese army. They are coerced into marrying. soldiers and forced to provide sexual services under the cloak of so-called legitimate marriage." Fear of sexual attack as well torture or killing helps ensure the army's control of the civilian pop lation, the report adds. Earthrights suggests that the brutalized culture within th 400,000-strong army, where so ldiers, many of them conscripts, are often underage, underpaid, illiterate and ill-treated by superiors, helps create the conditions for widespread rape. The attacks are often of uncom monbarbarity. The Amnesty report on condi tions in Shan state documented a attack on Nang Ing, 30, from Lai ha township. She was trying to re turn to her village to fetch rice when soldiers raped her and the poured boiling water over he body. She died a few days later. Burned to Death Nang Mai from Kunting town ship was raped over a series of days in a deserted village, then "covered with wood and burned to death," according to testimony given to Amnesty. Villagers interviewed by the SHRF said that 9-year-old Pweh K Tall MU was raped by soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 423 at Ku Baw Deh village in April. The ethnic groups believe that forced marriages and sexual liaisons are part of an attempt by the junta to "Burmanize" them. "We have seen documents circulated a few years ago indicating that soldiers would get extra money for marrying ethnic women," said Mon activist Kasaw Mon. Asked to speculate on what the military hoped to gain from such repression, consultant Bruton said: "Their reactions are not what you might expect. In some places, if you are unpopular, you try to get people to like you. "The Burmese military sees no point in that; they know there's no way people will like them, so they rule by fear. That's been the case for a very long time." For their part, military spokesmen routinely deny the atrocities and accuse ethnic groups of spreading disinformation. "There are no human rights abuses," Brigadier General Maung Mating, a top junta official, said earlier this year. The regime called Amnesty's April report "a fabrication." - --- Checked-by: Melodi Cornett