All events · Empires Unmade

Burma's Four Cuts Strategy and Forced Relocation in the Ethnic States

1968–2005 · East & Southeast Asia

Displacement Sexual Violence

Displaced

600,000

Documentation comes from Amnesty International, the Karen Human Rights Group and the Shan Human Rights Foundation, which recorded the emptying of more than 1,400 villages in central Shan State in 1996-98 alone, displacing over 300,000 people, and comparable operations in Karenni and Karen areas. Surveys by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium put the total displaced in eastern Burma at roughly 500,000-600,000 by the mid-2000s, counting people in relocation sites, in hiding and in ceasefire areas.

Share of the population affected

9.1%

of the population of Burma's Shan, Karen (Kayin), Karenni (Kayah) and Mon states, 1983

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What happened

From the late 1960s the Burmese armed forces applied the pya ley pya or Four Cuts doctrine, aiming to sever insurgents from food, funds, intelligence and recruits by clearing the civilian population out of contested areas. Villages were given days or hours to move to sites beside army posts and roads; those who stayed or returned to their fields were treated as insurgents. The largest single operation, in central Shan State in 1996-98, emptied more than 1,400 villages and displaced over 300,000 people, documented in detail by the Karen Human Rights Group and Amnesty International, with extrajudicial killings of villagers found outside the relocation sites. Relocated populations were used for portering, road building and camp construction. In 1998 an International Labour Organization Commission of Inquiry found that forced labour was imposed in Myanmar widely and systematically in violation of Convention No. 29, a formal finding that led to unprecedented ILO measures against a member state. Myanmar's government rejected the reports as fabrications; the displacement fed the border camp population that the atlas covers separately.

Parties

The Burmese army emptied villages in the Shan, Karen, Karenni and Mon states to separate insurgents from the population, and used the displaced as forced labour

Disputed

Myanmar's government denied the relocations and the forced-labour findings; the scale rests on cross-border documentation by human-rights organisations rather than on any official data.

The denominator

Burma's 1983 census — the only national count between 1973 and 2014, falling near the midpoint of the campaign — recorded roughly 3.72 million in Shan State, 1.06 million in Kayin, 0.17 million in Kayah and 1.68 million in Mon State, about 6.6 million in total. Census coverage in contested areas was incomplete, so the true figure is somewhat higher.

The 600,000 accumulates relocations over nearly four decades, and villages were often moved more than once, so the numerator counts displacement events rather than distinct people.

Where the baseline comes from

Four Cuts — Wikipediaopen-edited
Myanmar — Wikipediaopen-edited

On the death toll

No overall toll exists. Human-rights organisations documented hundreds of individual killings of villagers found outside relocation sites in Shan State in 1997-98, and deaths from disease, hunger and portering in the relocation areas, but no systematic count was possible in a closed conflict zone.

Documented forms of violence

Forced LabourSummary ExecutionDestruction of PropertySexual Violence

The ILO Commission of Inquiry, Amnesty International and the Karen and Shan human-rights groups documented forced labour, killings of villagers, village burning and rape by soldiers.

Formal findings

International Labour Organization Commission of Inquiry (1998) — Found that forced labour was imposed on the civilian population of Myanmar widely and systematically, in violation of the Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), including in connection with forced relocation — source