Refugees and Internally Displaced People (IDPs)

There are 160,000 officially recognised refugees in camps along the Thai-Burma border, 20,000 in Bangladesh, 50,000 in Northeast India and 12,000 in temporary jungle settlements in Malaysia. In addition, there are thousands of Shan refugees in illegal refugee camps on the Thai border. The Shan people are a Burmese ethnic group. However, the Shan are not recognised as a people by the Burmese government. They are stateless people, they have no official papers, which in effect means that they don’t exist. When they cross into Thailand, they are not recognised as official refugees and are pushed back across the border into Burma, pushed back into areas of heavy fighting, pushed back into the hands of the Burmese military.

There are over half a million internally displaced people within Burma, most of these are along the Thai-Burma border. More than 75,000 Burmese have been displaced for hydroelectric dam projects. Whole villages are displaced when the government uses the land on the banks of major rivers such as the Salween River, to build infrastructure and hydroelectric power stations. They rarely, if ever, are compensated for the loss of their homes, land and livelihood.

   Many more have been displaced due to actions of the military, such as;

• Unlawful confiscation of land -  where land is taken for use as military camps, for growing opium, for mining, for energy projects and sometimes for no reason at all

• Forced labour – people often move to escape forced labour, often entire villages are forced to work building roads, military camps, or tourist lodgings, almost always without pay. They are also forced to work as porters for the military and are used as human minesweepers, clearing landmines.

• Child soldiers – children and families flee in an attempt to avoid being taken as child soldiers. Burma has the highest number of child soldiers in the world. In 2002 70,000 children were serving as soldiers in the Burmese army. The majority of these children were forcibly taken from their families.

• Gender based violence – the Burmese people are subjected to gender based violence by the military, particularly in the Shan state where the number of military bases has increased hugely in the last few years. Rape is used as a weapon of war, villagers who protest against the military’s actions are subjected to torture, murder is commonplace – during the past 10 years, the Shan Human Rights Foundation has reported the summary execution of almost 1,900 civilians in the Shan State alone.