Country: Myanmar

Group: Shan

Finalized Date: 12/11/2020

Team: Ethan Pelland (lead), Johanna McCombs, Ann Thomas

Content Warning: forced labor, lethal violence, forced displacement, trafficking, violence against women

Approximate Time Period: 1947-present

The Shan, a collection of 33 different ethnic groups, grouped based on their geographic proximity in the Chinese-Myanmar border region, have faced widespread forced labor due to the longstanding civil conflict in the Shan State Region of Myanmar. The Shan have historically faced an environment of repression, forced labor and lethal violence implemented by the Myanmar Military and Shan Ethnic Militias (Amnesty, 2019). The roots of the present situation can be found in 1962, when a collection of militias in the Shan State region began an insurgency to achieve independence for the Shan, which had been promised by the 1947 Constitution. The brutal counter-insurgency campaign launched by the Myanmar military, which is ongoing in the present day, has indiscriminately targeted Shan civilians. The Shan are forcibly relocated from their homes, used for slave labor as porters, and extrajudicially detained and executed by state security forces (Amnesty, 2019). These practices are also employed by militant groups in the region, albeit less commonly. In recent decades, drug syndicates and militias have expanded criminal and human trafficking activities in the region as well (Crisis Group, 2019). Myanmar’s police forces have dubbed the Shan State region, as the epicenter of the nation’s human trafficking epidemic, which has seen a significant number of Shan women trafficked into neighbouring China and Thailand (Tai, 2017). The data quality used in this analysis has a value of 3, since there is a sizable amount of information regarding both the present and past forced labour situation facing the Shan in Myanmar.

Sources

  1. Amnesty International. (2019). Caught in the Middle Abuses Against Civilians Amid Conflict in Myanmar’s Northern Shan State Retrieved from https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/ASA1611422019ENGLISH.PDF
  2. Crisis Group. (2019, January 17). Fire and Ice: Conflict and Drugs in Myanmar’s Shan State Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/299-fire-and-ice-conflict-and-drugs-myanmars-shan-state
  3. Tai, Y. (2017, September 05). Shan State remains a human trafficking hotspot, police say. Retrieved December 11, 2020, from https://www.bnionline.net/en/news/shan-state/item/3457-shan-state-remains-a-human-trafficking-hotspot-police-say.html