Myanmar troublesA secretive junta with an armed fist

Myanmar's military junta handed power to a nominally civilian government in March 2011, but the new leadership is dominated by the same people that have controlled the secretive country for almost two decades.

• Ethnic minority villages targeted
• Children used as soldiers
• Democracy activists jailed

The government's crackdowns on political opposition and ethnic minorities have driven large numbers to seek refuge in neighbouring countries and displaced an estimated half a million people in eastern Myanmar.

Large numbers have been forced to abandon their villages in the east, and many have fled across the border.

Myanmar's secretive government became increasingly severe since the late 1980s, jailing hundreds of students, intellectuals and opponents.

Democracy campaigner and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Aung San Suu Kyi has spent years under house arrest. She is currently free from detention. Her National League for Democracy party won elections in 1990 but has never been allowed to take power.

Much of the world has imposed sanctions on the country previously known as Burma for its poor human rights record and for not stamping out a thriving drugs trade.

In 2007, a protest against rising fuel prices turned into a full-blown democracy movement. Street marches led by Buddhist monks presented the biggest challenge to the junta's supremacy in nearly two decades. An unknown number of protesters were killed and thousands arrested in an army crackdown.

Aid workers say that restrictions imposed by the junta, including limits on travel, hinder their ability to help.

In May 2008, a massive cyclone hit the country’s Irrawaddy Delta, killing nearly 140,000 and affecting over 2 million people. See AlertNet’s Myanmar cyclone briefing.

Myanmar's rulers have cracked down hard on political opposition and ethnic minorities.

The military junta, which was in power from the 1960s, made way for a nominally civilian government in March 2011 - but the same people dominate the new government.

The country was once known as the rice bowl of Asia with good health and education systems and plenty of natural resources. Now it has some of the worst health indicators in the region and poverty is widespread.

The U.S. State Department says Myanmar, called Burma until the regime changed its name in 1989, is one of the world's worst human rights violators. Hundreds of opponents have been jailed and put under house arrest, including Nobel Peace Prize-winner and democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi. She was released in November 2010.

Insurgency

The government has waged war on ethnic groups, especially those in the border states in the east and west.

The world's longest-running civil wars are in the Karen and Karenni homelands in eastern Myanmar, where armed insurgents have fought the government for over 60 years.

The military pursues a "Four Cuts" counter-insurgency strategy, in which it tries to defeat armed ethnic groups by denying them access to food, funds, recruits and information from other insurgent groups.

Human rights advocates, journalists and residents accuse government soldiers of killing villagers, raping women and girls, stealing food, destroying homes and possessions, using slave labour and being involved in the drugs trade.

Human Rights Watch accuses the government of ethnic cleansing, destroying the villages of minority groups, not just in areas of active ethnic insurgency but also in areas targeted for infrastructure development. Minorities affected include the Shan, Mon, Karen, Palaung, Chin, Karenni (a sub-tribe of the Karen) and Rohingya.

Ethnic insurgents also perpetrate abuses, and use civilians in their territories to supply them with food, porters, soldiers and information.

The government has agreed ceasefires with several ethnic armed groups that had fought against the generals, although some have broken down as the government intensified its pressure on minorities. When the junta demanded in June 2009 that these groups turn into government-controlled Border Guard Forces, several splintered over disagreements on whether to go along with the order.

Displacement

Across the country, conflict and government repression have forced millions of people to flee their homes. Many have been displaced for decades, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) says.

At least 446,000 people are internally displaced in the east of the country, IDMC says. However, it is difficult to estimate numbers because displacement is impossible to measure in areas under government control, IDMC says.

Hundreds of thousands have crossed into Thailand since 1984, risking minefields and army patrols to get there. About 140,000 live in camps along the Thai-Myanmar border, and up to 1.5 million are living in poverty as economic migrants, International Rescue Committee (IRC) says.

Large numbers of people have also fled to Bangladesh, India and Malaysia. They face a host of hardships as asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, including social and economic discrimination.

People are forced from their homes for three main reasons: armed conflict, military occupation and loss of livelihoods, Forced Migration Review said in 2008.

They flee armed conflict not just because of fighting and counter-insurgency operations, but also because of human rights abuses and economic hardship. This occurs mainly in the states of Karen, Mon, Karenni, Shan and Chin, and the divisions of Sagaing and Tenasserim.

When the military or other armed group occupies an area it may confiscate land, sometimes to extract natural resources and sometimes to build infrastructure. The military also taxes people heavily, forces them into labour and perpetrates other abuses. This kind of displacement occurs in all the border states and several urban areas.

The third reason for displacement - loss of livelihoods - is caused by poor government policies and practices, limited availability of productive land, and lack of education and health services.

In the west of the predominantly Buddhist country, the Muslim Rohingya people and other minority groups along the borders with Bangladesh and India suffer discrimination and forced relocation. It is impossible to estimate the numbers affected, but thousands of Rohingya have been displaced in schemes to resettle the urban poor and build large-scale infrastructure projects.

Child soldiers and forced labour

The military has recruited tens of thousands of boys into the national army, typically by force, coercion or intimidation, according to a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Child soldiers have reported being made to participate in human rights violations against civilians, including summary executions.

A smaller number are conscripted into rebel groups.

Hundreds of thousands of villagers in conflict areas are also forced to "porter" for military operations, as well as build army bases and infrastructure projects including roads, bridges, railways and dams, human rights advocates say.

Those who refuse to work for free are often threatened with prosecution, or forced to pay instead of working. Rights groups say people are often shot or beaten to death if they do not carry out their duties correctly, and anyone found to have made what the government deems "false complaints" to the International Labour Organisation faces prosecution.

Rights organisations say the "tatmadaw" - as the army is called in Burmese - puts much of the burden on ethnic minorities, and is especially harsh on women and children.

"Girls as young as five years old have been made to perform forced labour duties, and women have been forced to serve and otherwise entertain troops against their will," Amnesty International says.

The military also forces convicts to serve as porters and uses them as human shields in the country’s war zones, HRW says.

Hunger and disease

Myanmar produces a surplus of rice and maize, yet many of its people do not have enough to eat. About a third of children under five years old are underweight, according to the U.N. Development Programme.

The government places restrictions on the movement of people and goods, especially in the border states.

The ruling junta forces rice farmers to sell to the government at cheap prices and refuses to contemplate relaxing restrictions on free movement and trade that would allow a proper market to emerge.

The country's rice crops were decimated when Cyclone Nargis ploughed through the Irrawaddy Delta in May 2008, killing tens of thousands and leaving 2.4 million destitute. See AlertNet's Myanmar Cyclone briefing for more.

Myanmar's health statistics are some of the worst in the region and the government spends only a tiny proportion of its GDP on healthcare, one of the lowest rates in the world, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) says.

Malaria is one of Myanmar's biggest killers because people do not have access to suitable healthcare. The country has one of the highest HIV rates in Asia, and the minority who receive anti-retroviral drug treatment depend on aid agencies for the drugs.

Tuberculosis (TB) rates are also high, and treatment is often interrupted because drugs are not always available. This can lead to the development of drug resistant TB. Highly drug resistant strains of malaria have been found along the Thai-Myanmar border, and medical experts are concerned this will spread and cause a major setback in the global fight against the disease.

The country's worst health statistics are among the internally displaced ethnic minorities of eastern Myanmar, the Thailand-based Back Pack Health Worker Team says. Many die of malaria, diarrhoea and respiratory infections. The rate of women dying as a result of pregnancy or childbirth is one of the highest in the world. Hunger and malnutrition are widespread.

In September 2006 the Back Pack Health Worker Team released a rare systematic health survey of the region closed to the outside world. Here are a few of the figures:

• 221 out of every 1,000 children die before the age of five
• An average of 1,100 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 births
• 15 percent of children are either moderately or severely malnourished
• 12 percent of the region's internally displaced have malaria
• A third of families reported at least one member being subjected to forced labour in the year before

Pressure on aid workers

Despite the country's need for humanitarian assistance, aid agencies say constraints imposed by the government make it difficult for them to operate.

Those frustrations turned to outrage in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 when the military junta refused to accept a major international relief effort. It was three weeks before Myanmar agreed to admit international aid workers, albeit under tight restrictions.

With the exception of the Irrawaddy Delta, devastated by Nargis, humanitarian access remains tightly controlled, IDMC says.

Myanmar receives relatively few donations from donor governments because of the government's dismal human rights record.

Clampdown on political activists

The government does not permit freedom of expression, assembly and association. It bans almost all opposition political activity and persecutes democracy and human rights activists. Most offices of pro-democracy and ethnic nationality political parties remain closed. Hundreds of political prisoners - students, intellectuals and opponents of the junta - are in overflowing jails or under house arrest.

In 1988, student protests resulted in a crackdown by the military government and proved the making of opposition leader Suu Kyi, the daughter of nationalist leader General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, the year before independence from Britain.

With Suu Kyi at its helm, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won hands down in parliamentary elections in 1990, but the military leadership refused to allow the new legislature to convene and imprisoned many activists.

Suu Kyi went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Now in her sixties, she has spent much of her life since 1989 under house arrest. She was released in November 2010.

Though her followers continue to be persecuted and she herself has been assaulted by the junta's supporters, Suu Kyi's party continues to call for reconciliation rather than violent protest.

Much of the West has imposed sanctions on Myanmar for its poor human rights record and for failing to stamp out a thriving drugs trade. The U.N. drug agency said in its 2011 survey that eastern Myanmar was one of the world's biggest drug producing centres, and production rose in 2010.  

Despite Western displeasure, Myanmar has enjoyed the guarded acceptance of its neighbours and has increasingly close ties with China, North Korea and Russia.

In autumn 2007, the regime drew condemnation from around the world for its harsh response to pro-democracy protests initiated by the country's Buddhist monks.

When tens of thousands took to the streets of Yangon, the military cracked down, beating and detaining protesters. The authorities put the number of deaths at 10. The United Nation's special rapporteur for Myanmar said at least 31 people had died but activists estimated the real toll at over 70.

Most of the monks who led the campaign disappeared, and their monasteries were left empty or barricaded by the military. The government also temporarily shut down the country's internet and mobile phone connections, making it harder for the outside world to find out what was going on.

The junta admitted rounding up nearly 3,000 people, but announced at the end of 2007 that all but 80 had been released. However, Amnesty International said in 2008 that at least 700 people picked up during and after the protests remained behind bars - in addition to an estimated 1,150 people already in jail for their political or religious beliefs.

The crisis, dubbed the Saffron Revolution after the colour of the monks' robes, had parallels with the 1988 pro-democracy uprising when 3,000 people died in an army crackdown.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been denied access to prisons in Myanmar since late 2005.

Constitutional referendum

On May 10, 2008, Myanmar held a referendum on a new constitution that was a key step in the junta's "roadmap to democracy" culminating in multi-party elections in November 2010. Western governments dismissed the constitution and the roadmap as a blueprint for the army to legitimise its grip on power.

Under the constitution, a quarter of the seats in the lower house, the senate, and the seven state and seven regional assemblies are reserved for serving military officers, appointed by the armed forces chief.

Myanmar's NLD opposition called for people to vote "No" to the constitution, which also gives the army control of key ministries and the right to suspend the constitution at will. The junta said more than 92 percent of the ballots cast were in favour of the charter.

In the lead-up to the 2010 elections - the country's first in two decades - the junta clamped down on political activists. Suu Kyi and other political prisoners were not allowed to run.

The NLD was effectively dissolved after failing to register for the polls because of what it said were "unjust and unfair" electoral rules and the junta's refusal to release thousands of political detainees.

The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), closely aligned with junta supremo Than Shwe, won the election by a landslide after a vote denounced by pro-democracy parties as rigged to preserve authoritarian rule.

In March 2011, the new parliament approved the dissolution of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) – the military junta's official name – to make way for a nominally civilian government. It marked the end of 49 years of direct military rule.

Former SPDC members took posts as president, vice-president, parliament speakers, cabinet ministers or chief ministers of most of the country's 14 regions.

In 2005, the junta moved Myanmar's capital to a new city being built from scratch some 320 km (200 miles) north of the old capital Yangon. Naypyitaw, which means Abode of Kings, is a sprawl of lavish government buildings, palaces, mansions and hotels.

Analysts say the city must have cost billions of dollars, drawing criticism from aid groups over the priorities of a country facing chronic poverty and crumbling infrastructure.