Burma in chains: U.S. companies profit from slavery.

• Author: Miller, Brad
• Position: Myanmar human rights

The Border Area Development Program is close to reaching the goals set forth under the Master Plan," drones a wax-like figure on the television news. It is her mouth that moves, but it is the numbing propaganda of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Burma's repressive military regime, that seeps from the TV. The "news" is supplemented with film footage of the army, training amid staged explosions and folk music. The SLORC-controlled television stations and newspapers--the only news sources the government allows--say the border regions are being developed to "strengthen unity and friendship among national brethren."

But on the border, in the homeland of the Karen. Mon, and other ethnic minorities, there is no folk music soundtrack as the army drives out the tribal people to clear a path for foreign investment.

Padauk and pyinkado trees rise out of the jungle and disappear into the fog more than 100 feet above the ground. Below, in a clearing, two Mon refugees hold onto a pale pink pig, his head on a stump. The screaming starts when they smash his skull with a sledgehammer. The pig doesn't die, but runs into the jungle, followed by some growling dogs and laughing Mon. More screams float from the jungle, and then it is quiet, as four Mon emerge from the fog, carrying the pig, one man holding each pink leg.

Later, twelve men and two women gather in a large hut. They are among the 700 refugees who have arrived at this border camp within the last two months, adding to the 2,000-plus people already here. The recent arrivals left their homes and walked for four days across the mountains. Some did not make it. They were shot by the Burmese army, called the Tatmadaw. The government troops had been forcing them to work on the Ye-Tavoy railroad, an extension of the "Death Railway" constructed by the Japanese army during World War II.

To build the "New Death Railway," the Tatmadaw takes one person per Mon and Tavoyan household, often holding them in guarded labor camps. If a family can't provide someone to work, it must pay a fine. The workers are not paid, and are not given food. Sometimes they must rent their construction tools. They are given neither medicine nor rest if they are sick. If they stop working, the soldiers beat them. Some work in chains for twenty-four hours straight. Young and old, women and men are treated alike,

One man in his mid-thirties was arrested for being a suspected rebel and put in wooden stocks for four days, beaten, and then forced to work for six months.

Another man fled after his twenty-one-year-old cousin, a mother of two, was tied to a pole and raped by three Tatmadaw soldiers. They poked her with a bayonet and then raped her again. Then they took all her belongings, including her earrings.

A sixty-year-old woman had to pay the SLORC because her family could not provide a worker. When she ran out of money, she had to leave. Only forty-five of ninety families were left in her village. The rest had fled their homes and farms.

The Karen and other rebel groups living in Burma's border region have been battling the government since 1948. After a generation of murders, disappearances, and starvation, National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi led students and monks in massive, nonviolent demonstrations in 1988. The protests ended as 10,000 people were shot down in the streets and thousands more were detained and tortured.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council seized control of the government and changed the country's name to Myanmar, imposed martial law, and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house...