Author Description

"For decades the Burmese army has forced civilians to risk life and limb serving as porters in barbaric conditions during military operations against rebel armed groups. Among those taken to do this often deadly work, for indefinite periods and without compensation, are common criminals serving time in Burma's prisons and labor camps. Based on 58 interviews with convict porter survivors who escaped the Burmese army in 2010 and 2011, Dead Men Walking details the harsh treatment prisoners are forced to endure on military operations. Escaped convict porters described how the authorities selected them in a seemingly random fashion from prison and transferred them to army units fighting ethnic armed groups on the front lines. Soldiers force them to carry huge loads of supplies and munitions in mountainous terrain, giving them little food and no medical care. Often they are used as 'human shields,' put in front of columns of troops facing ambush or sent first through heavily mined areas. The wounded are left to die; those who try to escape are frequently executed, beaten, or tortured. The use of convict porters is not an isolated, local, or rogue practice employed by some units or commanders, but has been credibly documented since as early as 1992, and has been reported in other conflict zones of Burma. As this report makes clear, serious abuses that amount to war crimes are being committed in Burma with the involvement or knowledge of high-level civilian and military officials. Officers and soldiers commit atrocities with impunity. The use of convict porters on the front line is only one of the brutal counterinsurgency practices Burmese officials have used against ethnic minority populations since Burma's independence in 1948. These abuses have led to growing calls for the establishment of a United Nations commission of inquiry into longstanding allegations of violations of international humanitarian and human rights law by all parties to the armed conflicts in Burma"--P