The strategy is aimed at undermining insurgent organisations by targeting their civilian support base. There are four cuts, designed to undermine the rebels' supply of recruits, and to cut off their access to intelligence, food and finances (the undeclared fifth cut is said to be the insurgents’ decapitation). The policy is aimed at turning 'black' rebel-held areas into 'brown' (contested, or free-fire) zones, and thence into 'white' zones, securely controlled by government forces. The idea is, as a Burmese proverb has it, ‘to drain the sea, in order to kill the fish'.

Under the Four Cuts policy, Tatmadaw units issue orders to villages in ‘brown’ and ‘black zones, to relocate to government-controlled areas, usually with little or no warning. The policy has at times amounted to a form of ethnic cleansing, as those villagers who do not move to relocation sites have experienced gross violations of their human rights (including murder) and vast areas of the Burmese countryside have been depopulated. Those who do move to the government’s ‘new villages’ often face acute shortages of medicines and other necessities, and frequently have to work unpaid for the military.

Since the 1980s, the Tatmadaw has implemented the Four Cuts in combination with a massively increased nation-wide use of forced labour. In July 1998 an International Labour Organisation Commission of Inquiry reported that the government and military “treat the civilian population as an unlimited pool of unpaid forced labourers and servants at their disposal." The report went on to describe “a saga of untold misery and suffering, oppression and exploitation of large sections of the population." Those affected included large numbers of women, children and the elderly. Workers were usually not provided with food and rarely received any payment or medical treatment. Those perceived by their guards as “unwilling, slow, or unable to comply with a demand for forced labour" were subject to “physical abuse, beatings, torture, rape and murder." Across large parts of Burma, only those villagers able to pay off local Tatmadaw commanders could avoid extensive periods of forced labour and forced portering.[3] Those villagers unable to meet the on-going demands for forced labour and arbitrary taxation are often forced to leave their villages, and either join the IDP population in hiding in the jungle, or resettle elsewhere.

Burma’s IDPs - who may also be victims of ‘development induced displacement', having fled their homes as a result of the construction of dams and other infrastructure projects - have very limited access to even the most basic assistance or protection. Indeed, it is only relatively recently that they have begun to attract the attention of NGOs and other international observers.

Abstracted from Burmese Border Consortium (now TBBC) report, September 2002 'Internally Displaced People and Relocation Sites in Eastern Burma.