The policy of constructive engagement to change the Burmese government's ways has its supporters and detractors, pitting governments and companies against activists. Richard Humphries examines the harsh effects on the people caught literally in the middle-- the Karen ethnic group on the Thai-Burmese border.

"After they entered the camp, we couldn't go back to get our belongings, so they burnt our houses and our belongings too. We just ran for our lives without anything. My sister and I didn't know where to go. One shell exploded behind the monastery. Many shells exploded inside the camp. I can't say exactly how many but some exploded so close to me, so close I thought I must have been hit."

That terrifying account was given by "Ma Htway" (not her real name) a 20-year ethnic Karen Muslim woman, an April 29, 1995, to representatives of the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG). Her refugee camp at Baw Noh, in Thailand and some 130 km north of the Thai town of Mae Sot, had been attacked and largely destroyed the day before. The "they" that Ma Htway referred to were primarily members of a breakaway Karen faction, the Democratic Kayin Buddhist Organization (DKBO), whose defection from the largely Christian-led Karen National Union, and subsequent alliance with the Burmese army (also known as the Tatmadaw) last December, ostensibly on religious grounds, had allowed the Burmese army to score significant gains in its 45-year old civil war with Burma's ethnic Karen minority. Some of the attackers were probably Burmese army regulars because they did not speak or understand Karen, and because non-speaking Karen attackers wearing Burmese army insignia had been seen in similar attacks on camps along the border. The shells were Burmese, coming from the nearby army camp along the Moei River, the border between Burma and Thailand, at a point opposite the Thai village of Mae Ta Waw. Ironically, the small Karen security complement in Baw Noh had been disarmed by Thai forces the day before, in an attempt to appease Burmese sentiment.

The attacks on the camps were among the many human rights violations investigated since 1992 by the KHRG, a small but active monitoring and advocacy organization, which was based at the Karen resistance stronghold of Manerplaw until that base fell on January 27, 1995. Founded by a young Canadian volunteer, the Group continues to operate along the Thai-Burma border, conducting interviews, collecting information, and translating Burmese documents. The KHRG provides authentic raw material for other advocacy groups and journalists, who report on Burmese human rights violations, to use.

Refugee camps are not normally happy places. Especially when located in unsympathetic countries, they are more of a dead end, uncertain refuges where victims of war and oppression find limited sanctuary and try to piece together a semblance of their past lives, and perhaps dream about either going back or moving on. "Could you please sponsor my daughter to America?", one of the camp leaders at Baw Noh would inquire of American visitors. Still, the camp at Baw Noh, home to roughly 7000 Karen refugees, was not without its attractions. The area is lush and fertile; the visual atmosphere was of a highland tropical preserve, surrounded by small hills. Karen women in their longyis and colorful white (if unmarried) and red (if married) homespun blouses could be seen doing the washing in the small stream that crossed the camp. Children laughed and sang in the school yard at the entrance to the camp. Houses were basic but adequate, were made of bamboo and were constructed in rows with signs on each residence listing by sex the number of refugees living inside. All this is gone now. Both the school and the camp's hospital were destroyed in the attack, and the refugees have been moved to another larger camp some 50 km away, supposedly for their protection, but just as likely as a precursor to the refugees', of whom there are over 90,000, forced repatriation to Burma.

One might ask-why should people who had fled their country because of fear and oppression, and were not even safe in their present sanctuary, be subjected to threats of forced repatriation? The answer could be that they are at the cutting edge-in the true sense of the word cut-of the policy of constructive engagement practiced by many Southeast Asian countries towards Rangoon. The threat of repatriation is real. In the April 20th edition of the Bangkok Post, the Thai army chief, General Wimol Wongwanich, was reported to have said "If we were not afraid of being criticized by the world community on humanitarian grounds and if it would not give the country problems, then this army chief would take only one week to push them all out, regardless of how many hundreds of thousands of Karen were now in the country. I used to do this with over 40,000 Cambodian refugees. If we were able to do the same with Karens, I would finish the task in just one week." Thailand does not want the refugees, the DKBO needs people to control, and Burma does not like this inconvenient and internationally accessible reminder of its brutal policies.

Apologists for constructive engagement are now pointing to the recent release, on July 10, of the pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi as the fulfillment of their policies. It is still too early to tell why she was let go after six years of house arrest without trial, and also too early to tell what course Burmese politics will now take, though attacks on the minorities along the country's borders have continued. Suu Kyi herself has injected a strong note of caution to potential investors and aid donors, urging, at a July 14 news conference, that they await genuine reconciliation and real moves toward democracy before proceeding. She stated, "I have been released, that's all. Nothing else has changed." Observers have noted that Nelson Mandela, to whom Aung San Suu Kyi has often been compared, continued to insist on tough economic measures against South Africa for two to three years after his release there. For its part, the Burmese government was reminding its people that it fully intended to retain power, insisting in the July 15th issue of the government-run newspaper "New Light of Myanmar" that the army "brings peace of mind, security, and tranquillity to the people."

Several countries, particularly in Asia, have for several years promoted and engaged in economic ties with Rangoon, whatever the state of human rights in Burma. Western companies, such as France's Total and America's Unocal, have also participated in projects benefiting the generals and, as critics charge, (Toronto Star, June 23), leading to the forcible conscription of civilians for labor in the border area. Unocal's outgoing chairman, Richard Stegemeier, summed up the moral ambivalence of his company's involvement in a recent statement "We are by necessity apolitical. It's not only smart business, but it's often required by law and certainly by our contracts" (Houston Chronicle, May 23).

Indeed, the language used by Unocal, and that used by Asian proponents of constructive engagement has a hollow ring to it. In Thailand, Burma is often described publicly as an old friend ("Thailand and Burma have a long history of close and warm relations"-Therdpong Chaiyaniat of the Democratic Party), that needs coddling ("Constructive engagement is the only way to win Rangoon's trust"--ex-Thai Foreign Minister Krasae Chanawongse, Thai Nation, May 5), despite a history of disputes and a very real mutual dislike. The Thai fear of upsetting Burma's powerful military is matched by Burmese contempt for Thai prowess. A common element is greed, though even here Burma gets the upper hand, raising the stakes to keep the Thais off balance. In Mae Sot, Thailand is financing the entire $3 million cost of the building of a "Friendship" bridge over the Moei River to the Burmese town of Myawaddy, a project meant to cement those supposedly warm ties and to promote economic development of the type that constructive engagement apologists assert will ease Slorc's (for State Law and Order Restoration Council-as the Burmese government is called) transition toward more sociability and "integration into the region". Nonetheless, on June 5th Slorc construction minister U Khin Maung Yin ordered a halt to construction, suggesting that Thai construction and dumping of soil was somehow encroaching on Burmese sovereignty (but conveniently ignoring Burmese attacks into Thailand), and leaflets urging Burmese traders to boycott Thai products began to appear in the area. What Rangoon wants is Thailand's complete cooperation vis-a-vis Rangoon's border policy of suppression. The tactic of biting the hand that feeds will probably work. The then Thai Defense Minister Gen. Vijit Sookmark, expressed confidence that the dispute could be resolved (Bangkok Post, June 25, 1995).

Burma's language of justification suffers from a lack of sophistication but this is only to be expected. Other countries in the region have developed the art of silencing their critics with such things as lawsuits, but Burma has used sharper and more lethal instruments to this effect, so the language it has employed has had a stunted development and has verged from the bizarre to the blunt in the army-dominated official media. Forced labor camps are referred to as "labor contribution camps" where people happily donate their services to the army and are reluctant to leave when their work period ends. The Mon minority ends its revolt, not because of Burma's overwhelming military might, nor because of severe Thai pressure, but because of "the noble desire and sincere attitude of the State Law and Order Restoration Council".

Refugee aid workers in Thailand also receive Burmese scrutiny. An official from one group, the Burmese Border Consortium, was described by the "New Light of Myanmar" as, "...like some sly tiger" that would grab for the tail of its victim instead of for the neck. Slorc Foreign Minister Ohn Gyaw was reported by the Associated Press (June 11) as having recently stated that the Western concept of human rights "is not to the requirement of the Asian perception" and certainly differs from how Slorc sees it should be.

While Slorc may have learned this response, however poorly stated, from its friends and investors in the region, the language it uses in the border area to villagers is not couched in the same level of ambiguity. Orders signed by Burmese army column commanders this year have been smuggled out of the country. One issued to newly occupied Karen villages (names withheld to avoid retaliation) states, "If the army camp calls you, come. If the army asks your help, help... There is a patient army. There is an impatient army. Choose which you like." Another informs certain villages that they should "Continuously comply with the following...as soon as you have received this letter to collect people from villages [for labor]..." and that if enough people don't go, "responsibility for that will fall on whoever doesn't go." (KHRG report, May 1, 1995).

Elsewhere the same brutal pattern continues. Some 100 km south of Mae Sot, and about a 15 km drive along dirt roads inside Burma lies the Karen village of Mawkee. A quiet place, Mawkee consisted of a number ofa number of scattered houses, of the traditional bamboo raised-platform type. Last Christmas the villagers were hard at work constructing a new hospital of bamboo and wood. "We've been working for two days, in three more we'll be finished", said one villager confidently. A five-person team consisting of Burmese and Karen medical trainees had just arrived from Dr. Cynthia Maung's well-known refugee clinic in Mae Sot to bring health care to an area which until then hadn't seen much fighting. Following the fall of the Karen strongholds at Manerplaw and Kawmoora early this year, the Karen leadership also moved to the area and the Tatmadaw began to attack these backwaters, attracted as well by the timber-extraction possibilities nearby. Mawkee was captured in April, and many more refugees crossed the border into Thailand. Among these new refugees were some not indigenous to the area, but people who had been seized by the Tatmadaw to act as forced labor or, if you want to take the Burmese army's perspective on this, "labor contributors". The words of one "Min Htoo" (not his real name), a Burman Buddhist and port laborer from Moulmein are instructive, "I was arrested in Moulmein on March 9. I was arrested by #104 Battalion soldiers. We carried supplies like rice and ammunition to Mawkee... They ordered us to dig bunkers and trenches around their camp... My hands were torn open, so one day I told them I could not do it that day. Then a soldier beat me again and again, at least 10 times. I saw porters beaten every day..."

The people along the border are not benefiting from the constructive engagement investment flowing into Burma. The hotels being built in anticipation of the 1996 Visit Myanmar year are not for them. These people may well be in Burma in 1996, not as tourists but as frightened villagers, "constructively" compelled to return. An elderly Buddhist Karen widow from Baw Noh, whose house was also burned in the raid, best expressed the refugees' real sentiments when interviewed by the KHRG, "I will say the truth. While we were staying in Burma, the Burmese were oppressing us in many ways. That's why we fled to Thailand, and while we are staying in Thailand we thank our [refugee] leaders very much for the way they try their best to look after us. We don't want to go back to Burma to be oppressed and suffer so much pain. We want to stay here. (RH)"