Misery Spirals in Burma As Junta Targets Minorities

CAMP EITUTA, Burma -- In a burgeoning encampment here on Burma's eastern frontier, Hay Nay Tha, a 30-year-old mother of three, awakens in the darkness most nights to the sound of her children's screams.

"They keep having nightmares about our journey here," she said.

That journey, Hay recalled, began when she was four months pregnant and government soldiers torched her village and forced local farmers off their land. It ended four weeks later, after her husband died of malaria en route to this camp. She and her children arrived here this summer dehydrated and exhausted. Hay soon went into early labor with a stillborn son.

"To be honest," the copper-skinned woman said, shyly gazing down at her hands, "I am having nightmares, too."

Nightmares of all kinds are rife in this camp, where new clusters of villagers arrive almost daily, a consequence of Burma's largest military offensive against its own people in more than a decade, according to aid groups and Western diplomats. The offensive has targeted minorities such as Hay, a member of the restive Karen ethnic group, which has long maintained a measure of autonomy.

According to estimates by relief groups, Burmese forces have burned down more than 200 civilian villages here in Karen state, destroyed crops and placed land mines along key jungle passages to prevent refugees from returning to their home villages. Dozens of people have died, and at least 20,000 civilians have been displaced over the past eight to 10 months.

"What is now going on in Burma are crimes against humanity," said Sunai Phasuk, head Burma consultant for New York-based Human Rights Watch. "The military government has significantly stepped up their systemic policy of violence against the ethnic Karen with this offensive. We're talking about a mounting disaster."

Burma's military leaders have historically been secretive about their actions. But observers say they are attempting to build a broad security cordon around their new capital near the inland city of Pyinmana, located only a few miles from the border of Karen state. The result has been an extraordinary use of force to clear out existing villages in the area.

Since seizing control of the country in 1988, Burma's military junta has taken a series of harsh measures to secure its grip on power, and over the past several months, it has appeared to step up its arrests of opposition figures. Win Ko, a leading member of the National League for Democracy, was arrested last month and sentenced to three years in prison after staging a petition drive to free political prisoners. The party's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, remains under house arrest.

Observers say the junta has reserved its most brutal treatment for Burma's eastern ethnic groups, including the Karenni, the Shan and the Mon, as well as the Karen, the largest minority in the region.

A fiercely independent group of approximately 3 million people, the Karen speak a separate language from most Burmese, use their own ancient writing system and have traditionally opposed the military junta. Two decades of sporadic government campaigns have already driven hundreds of thousands of Karen and other refugees into neighboring Thailand, where at least 150,000 now live in official camps and an estimated 1.5 million dwell illegally.

Although the military has long fought the Karen National Liberation Army -- a seasoned militia of about 10,000, armed with aging assault rifles -- it has mostly seemed content to stage small, periodic sieges against mountain strongholds in Karen state's northwest. These sieges have typically taken place only during Southeast Asia's dry seasons.