Freedom in the World 1998 - Burma

1998 Scores

Status: Not Free
Freedom Rating: 7.0
Civil Liberties: 7
Political Rights: 7

Overview

Ten years after crushing pro-democracy demonstrations, in 1998 the military remained firmly in control of Burma behind a younger and more savvy, but equally brutal, generation of officers.

Following the Japanese occupation in World War II, Burma achieved independence from Britain in 1948. The army overthrew an elected government in 1962 amidst an economic crisis and insurgencies by ethnic rebel groups. During the next 26 years, General Ne Win's military rule impoverished what had been one of Southeast Asia's richest countries. In 1988, an estimated 3,000 people were killed in an army crackdown on massive, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. Army leaders General Saw Maung and Brigadier General Khin Nyunt created the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to rule the country.

In 1990, in the first free elections in three decades, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won 392 of the 485 parliamentary seats. The SLORC refused to cede power and jailed hundreds of NLD members. In 1992, it implemented superficial liberalizations, including the replacement of hardliner Saw Maung with General Than Shwe as prime minister and junta leader. In 1993, however, the limits of the reforms became apparent as a sham constitutional convention drafted guidelines granting the military 25 percent of seats in a future parliament and formalizing its leading role in politics. Since then, the convention has met sporadically. In 1995, the SLORC released Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD leader and the country's preeminent pro-democracy campaigner, after six years of house arrest. The generals have rejected the 1992 Nobel Laureate's calls for a dialogue on democratic reform. Authorities quelled student demonstrations in 1996 by closing universities and detaining scores of people.

In November 1997, the SLORC reconstituted itself as the 19-member State Peace and Development Council, elevated relatively junior commanders, and sidelined at least 14 of the 21 SLORC members. By early 1998, the junta had also removed numerous corrupt ministers in an apparent effort to improve its international image, attract foreign investment, and promote an end to U.S.-led sanctions. Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, the intelligence chief and formally one of the junta's top five members, continues to be the regime's strongman. In April, the regime reportedly detained nearly 250 lawyers, Buddhist monks, and student leaders in an intensified crackdown. It also reportedly sentenced six pro-democracy activists to death after claiming that they had been caught with explosives.

In May, the NLD called for the parliament elected in 1990 to be convened by August. The military responded by ordering NLD members of parliament outside of Rangoon to report to local authorities twice a day. In July, the NLD reported that the junta had detained 79 elected representatives for defying the restrictions. In August, riot police reportedly arrested dozens of anti-junta protesters at Rangoon University, although in September, authorities allowed thousands of students to hold rare protests at two other universities in Rangoon.

The ethnic minorities that comprise more than one-third of Burma's population have been fighting for autonomy from the Burman-dominated central government since the late 1940s. Since 1989, the SLORC has co-opted 15 ethnic rebel armies with ceasefire deals that allow them to maintain their weapons and territory. Many warlords have become drug traffickers and have helped to make Burma one of the world's largest heroin exporters while pouring the proceeds into Rangoon real estate and other business ventures. In recent years, the country's dry season has seen intense fighting between the army and the predominantly-Christian Karen National Union (KNU), the largest active insurgency. In 1997 and 1998, regular troops and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a pro-regime militia of KNU defectors, attacked Karen refugee camps inside Thailand and destroyed homes.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Burma is effectively a garrison state ruled by one of the most repressive regimes in the world. The junta controls the judiciary, and the rule of law is nonexistent. The SLORC has imprisoned or driven into exile most of its vocal opponents; severely restricted freedoms of speech, press, association and other fundamental rights; and used a tightly controlled mass movement, the Union Solidarity Development Association, to monitor forced labor quotas, report on citizens, and intimidate opponents. The army is responsible for arbitrary beatings and killings of civilians; the forced, unpaid use of civilians as porters, laborers, and human mine sweepers under brutal conditions, with soldiers sometimes killing weakened porters or executing those who resist; summary executions of civilians who refuse to provide food or money to military units; arrests of civilians as alleged insurgents or insurgent sympathizers; and widespread incidents of rape. In April, the UN Special Rapporteur for Burma said that, based on well-documented reports, "extrajudicial, summary, or arbitrary executions, the practice of torture, portering, and forced labor continue to occur in Myanmar, particularly in the context of development programs and of counterinsurgency operations in minority-dominated regions."

Gross human rights violations during counterinsurgency operations against ethnic rebel groups have driven more than 100,000 mainly Karen, Karenni, Shan, and Mon refugees into Thailand. In January, Danish doctors who examined 200 Burmese refugees in Thailand reported that two-thirds were victims of rape and other abuses. Fighting has internally displaced thousands of other ethnic minorities. The Burmese army also forcibly relocates ethnic minority villagers as part of its military strategy, generally without providing food or shelter at the new sites. In April, Amnesty International reported that, since 1996, the army has forcibly relocated at least 300,000 villagers as part of its counterinsurgency operations against the Shan States Army in Shan state. Soldiers have burned homes, killed hundreds of Shan civilians, and subjected others to beatings, rape, and forced porterage and other labor. Amnesty International also reported that armed opposition groups have committed killings and other abuses against ethnic Burmans in Shan state. Ethnic Chin communities on the western border also face forced labor and other abuses.

Since 1994, most of the 250,000 Muslim Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh in 1991 and 1992 to escape extrajudicial executions, rape, religious persecution, and other abuses in northern Arakan state have returned to Burma. Nevertheless, the Rohingyas have not received increased protection, and, in 1996 and 1997, thousands sought asylum in Bangladesh to escape forced labor, porterage, arbitrary taxation, land confiscation, and other hardships. The Rohingya refugee issue occurs in the context of the xenophobic regime's broader persecution of the Muslim minority. Human Rights Watch/Asia has noted that the 1982 Citizenship Act was designed to deny citizenship to the Rohingyas and make them ineligible for basic social, educational, and health services. In 1997, soldiers fighting the KNU in Karen state also leveled mosques and forcibly expelled Muslims from their homes.

Since the early 1990s, the junta has increasingly used forced labor for building roads, railways, and other infrastructure projects and military facilities. The laborers toil under harsh conditions and receive no compensation. There are credible reports that the army is using civilian porters and forced labor while protecting the construction of a foreign-financed pipeline that will transport offshore natural gas across Burma's southern peninsula to Thailand. The army is also using forced labor for roads and a railway line that will cross the pipeline.

The junta is equally brutal towards dissidents. In April, opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi estimated that there are between 1,000 and 2,000 political prisoners in Burmese jails. In May, the Financial Times published a study that found that 78 NLD parliamentarians elected in 1990 have spent time in prison, with one jailed for three years for illegal possession of foreign currency after a search of his house found his toddler playing with two Singaporean coins. Twenty more are in exile, and 112 have either resigned or have been disqualified. In April, the junta jailed San San, an elderly elected NLD member of parliament, for 25 years under the Official Secrets Act after she criticized the regime in a BBC interview. The junta has used numerous broadly drawn laws to criminalize peaceful pro-democracy activities such as distributing pamphlets and distributing, viewing, or smuggling videotapes of Suu Kyi's public addresses. For example, Decree 5/96 of 1996 authorizes jail terms of five to 25 years for aiding activities that "adversely affect the national interest." Prison conditions are abysmal, torture of both political prisoners and common criminals is routine, and, in recent years, several NLD members have died in prison.

The press is tightly controlled, there are no independent publications or broadcast services, and, according to the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres, since 1988 the regime has incarcerated at least 14 journalists, seven of whom are currently imprisoned and two of whom have died in jail. In 1996, the government subjected unauthorized Internet use to lengthy jail terms. Decree 5/96 also authorizes the Home Ministry to ban any organization that violates a law against public gatherings of five or more people. The Directorate of Defense Services Intelligence arbitrarily searches homes, intercepts mail, and monitors telephone conversations. In 1997, the Far Eastern Economic Review reported that the regime had opened a high technology information warfare center capable of intercepting telephone, fax, e-mail, and radio communications. Universities are closely monitored and have largely remained closed since late 1996.

Thousands of Burmese women and girls, many from ethnic minority groups, have been forcibly sent to Thailand by criminal gangs for prostitution. The army forcibly recruits children and routinely uses child porters. Authorities closely monitor monasteries and interfere in Buddhist religious affairs. The regime continues to hold many of the 300 monks arrested during a violent 1990 crackdown on monasteries. Reports in 1997 suggested that 16 monks have died in prison. Trade unions, collective bargaining, and strikes are illegal. The junta's severe economic mismanagement is exacerbated by pervasive official corruption and the army's arbitrary levies on peasants.