“I thought I would die if I stayed. Either the soldiers would kill me or I would be blown up by a mine. I knew I had to escape.” 

By Phil Thornton in Bangkok

Aung is a small man, barely out of his teens. In this small concrete room, he shifts continually in his seat, trying to find a comfortable position for his bruised body and heavy heart. 

Aung’s talk is full of half-spoken questions. Will he be sent back to Burma? Would that be a de facto death sentence? Will his family be in danger if he testifies about the mental and physical abuse he suffered from Burmese soldiers? 

Most of all, Aung is haunted by the memory of the 15 days he spent carrying mortar shells up mine-strewn mountains. He says he was also used as a human mine detector. He can still hear the sounds of people being torn apart by explosions.

Forced military service

Aung is not his real name. He asked to keep his identity secret to protect himself and his family from prosecution by the Burmese government. 

His journey to the frontline started in December, when the Burmese army came to the jail where he was a prisoner. He was serving a 12-month sentence for fighting with his neighbour over who could make charcoal from a fallen tree. 

Aung drops his head and mutters that not being able to be with his wife when she gave birth to their son added misery to his sentence.

“She was eight months pregnant when I was put in jail,” he says. “I miss them so much, I’ve never seen or held my baby son.”

Aung had a month of his sentence to finish when soldiers took him from prison.

“The guards told us we were going to the front line to serve as porters for the army,” Aung says. “No one volunteered. Our names were on a list, we had no choice.” 

Aung says he was with at least 800 other convicts on the journey to the mountainous state of Karen. 

Poor infrastructure makes it difficult for the army to get supplies to troops who are fighting in the region. According to numerous international and regional humanitarian groups, the Burmese army presses civilian and convicts into working on the frontlines.

Human mine detectors

People are forced to do carrying and construction work. According to a 2007 Human Rights Watch report, they are also used as human mine detectors, walking ahead of soldiers to trigger hidden landmines.

“When a mine exploded, I saw the body blown skywards,” Aung says. “There were noise, screams and lots of blood. They threatened to beat us for stopping, but we didn’t care, we just fell.” 

Aung says, over his 15 days as a porter, he saw both convicts and soldiers killed and wounded. 

“I thought I would die if I stayed; either the soldiers would kill me or I would be blown up by a mine,” he says. “I knew I had to escape.” 

Aung said he knew he had to leave, when he was told on January 15 that he would be carrying mortar shells to the frontline the next day. 

“I knew there would be many mines and lots of fighting, I didn’t want to die. We made a plan to escape into the jungle and get across the river to Thailand.”

Burmese soldiers almost caught up to Aung before he made it over Thai border. The soldiers fired across the border and shot Aung in the arm. The next day, a Thai soldier took Aung to hospital. 

Now resting in a bare concrete room on the Thai-Burma border, Aung talks about his uncertain future.

"I want to see my baby; I can't go back to my village. I'll try to stay and get a job in Thailand."

Widespread abuses

Burmese refugee camps in Thailand are awash in similar stories. People talk about being beaten, tortured, underfed, and forced to sweep for landmines. 

The humanitarian organization, Free Burma Rangers, reported in 2008 that army operations in Karen used 2,200 convict porters. More than 265 of those people have been reported as dead; many were executed. 

Bo Kyi is secretary of the Burmese Association Assisting Political Prisoners. He says there are 109 convict labour camps in Burma.

“Animals are treated better than prisoners in Burma,” Kyi says. “All prisoners, irrespective of their crimes, should be treated as humans.”

Various international and domestic organizations have built up substantial documentary evidence of these abuses. They are calling for a commission of inquiry into Burma’s human rights abuses.

The Burmese government denies

In a March 2010 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the special rapporteur for Myanmar outlined a “pattern of gross and systematic violation of human rights which has been in place for many years” and called for a commission of inquiry into international crimes.

So far, no inquiry is underway. U Wunna Maung, the Burmese ambassador to the United Nations, said in 2010 that there were “no crimes against humanity in Myanmar... There was no need to conduct investigations in Myanmar since there were no human rights violations there.”   

When the United Nations Human Rights Council examined Burma’s human rights record, Burma’s delegation again denied any human rights violations.

While these questions circle through meeting rooms around the world, Aung is busy with basic matters of survival.

His future options are limited. Like many of the escaped convicts, he is an illegal migrant in Thailand, but fears that he'll be killed if he returns to Burma. Aung says that the desperately wants to see his baby and wife. He says that he will look for work and try to find a safe way for his family to be together again.