BANGKOK, July 13 (UPI) -- Convicts who serve as porters for the military in Myanmar are nothing more than "disposable pack-mules," Human Rights Watch said in a 70-page report.
Human Rights Watch, in a joint report with the Karen Human Rights Group accuses, the military in Myanmar of torturing, executing and using convicted prisoners as human shields. The report called on the military to stopping forcing prisoners to serve as porters who are systematically worked to death.
In an interview with the United Nations' humanitarian news agency IRIN, David Mathieson, the report's co-author at Human Rights Watch, said the military forces the porters to walk ahead of them to draw fire from opposition forces and to trip land mines.
Both groups said human rights abuses against prisoners aren't isolated events. Authorities in the country have admitted to some abuses but denied using prisoners as human shields.
Elaine Pearson, deputy director of Asian affairs at Human Rights Watch, said the authorities in Myanmar are bringing cruelty to a new level.
"Convict porters are the ... army's disposable human pack-mules, lugging supplies through heavily mined battlefields," she said in a statement.
The organizations in their report call for a commission led by the United Nations to investigate violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in Myanmar.
