Other forms of forced labour

Other forms of forced labour

As widely documented in many human rights reports, the Burmese military continues to use conscripted unpaid labour for a variety of tasks, particularly in the rural areas. Common tasks include road-building, building and cleaning of military barracks, guarding roads and village, and working on military plantations.

Five of the rape incidents documented in this report took place while women were being forced to carry out such tasks for the military. One of the incidents involved 40 women in April 2001 forced by SPDC LIB 332 and LIB 520 to build a road for 9-10 days. At night the women were kept separately from the men. They were then singled out at gunpoint and raped by the troops. 

Another incident, in May 2001, took place in an SPDC military camp:

The local camp commander ordered fifteen women from Nam Kat village to come to the military camp to clean the camp's guard house. When the fifteen women entered the camp, the captain assigned fourteen women to clean the bedrooms of the other captains, ordering her to clean his room. As she entered the room to begin cleaning, a captain followed her, closing the door behind him. He grabbed at her, and she screamed " The captain is raping me!". (case 147)