Myanmar's military junta, which has been in power since the 1960s, has cracked down hard on political opposition and ethnic minorities.

Hundreds of opponents have been jailed and vast numbers of villagers have been driven from their homes. The U.S. State Department says Myanmar, widely known as Burma, is one of the world's worst human rights violators.

Myanmar's democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but the world spotlight has rarely shone on the deep humanitarian crisis faced by the country's ethnic minorities.

The ruling junta - which goes by the official name of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) - wages war on various ethnic groups. Human rights advocates, journalists and residents accuse government soldiers of raping women and girls, stealing food, destroying homes and possessions, using slave labour and being involved in the drugs trade.

Human Rights Watch accuses the junta of ethnic cleansing. It says the SPDC has destroyed the villages of minority groups, not just in areas of active ethnic insurgency but also in areas targeted for infrastructure development.

Across the country, conflict and government repression have forced an estimated 3 million people to migrate within and outside Myanmar.

These include more than 500,000 people who are internally displaced in the east of the country, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (2008). The largest displacement is among the Karen, Karenni, Shan and Mon ethnic groups.

Hundreds of thousands have crossed into Thailand. In 2007, more than 140,000 Myanmar refugees were living in nine border camps, according to the U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR). Many of them have been there for up to 20 years, having risked minefields and army patrols to get there.

Large numbers of people have also fled to Bangladesh, India and Malaysia. They face a host of hardships as asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, including social and economic discrimination.

The most affected minority is the Karen, a mainly Christian people. In 2006, Myanmar launched its biggest offensive in a decade, causing Karen villagers to flee closer to the Thai border. Observers said the military action appeared to be related to large dam-building projects and the junta's relocation of the administrative capital from Yangon to Naypyidaw, in the jungle north of Yangon.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees says people have been beheaded and villages torched, and calls the Karen people "one of the most ignored groups in one of the most difficult humanitarian emergencies".

The Karen bear the brunt of the army's "Four Cuts" counter-insurgency strategy, in which it tries to defeat armed ethnic groups by denying them access to food, funds, recruits and information from other insurgent groups.

The Karen National Union is the largest of the groups, and has been battling the Yangon government for 50 years in one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.

The government has agreed ceasefires with 17 other ethnic armed groups that had been fighting against the generals, although several have broken down as the government intensifies its pressure on minorities. The Karen National Union has never signed a ceasefire.

In the west of the predominantly Buddhist country, the Muslim Rohingya people and other minority groups along the borders with Bangladesh and India suffer discrimination and forced relocation. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been displaced in schemes to resettle the urban poor and build large-scale infrastructure projects.

The government allows for no freedom of expression, assembly and association. It bans almost all opposition political activity and persecutes democracy and human rights activists. Most offices of pro-democracy and ethnic nationality political parties remain closed. Hundreds of political prisoners - students, intellectuals and opponents of the junta - are in overflowing jails.

In 1988, student protests resulted in a crackdown by the military government and proved the making of opposition leader Suu Kyi, the daughter of nationalist leader General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, the year before independence from Britain.

With Suu Kyi at its helm, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) won hands down in parliamentary elections in 1990, but the military leadership refused to allow the new legislature to convene and imprisoned many activists.

Suu Kyi went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, but she is now in her sixties and has spent much of her life since 1989 under house arrest.

Though her followers continue to be persecuted and she herself has been assaulted by the junta's supporters, Suu Kyi's party continues to call for reconciliation rather than violent protest.

Much of the West has imposed sanctions on Myanmar for its poor human rights record and for failing to stamp out a thriving drugs trade. The U.N. drug agency said in its survey of 2007 that eastern Myanmar was one of the world's biggest drug producing centres, although production has decreased over the last decade.

Despite Western displeasure, Myanmar has enjoyed the guarded acceptance of its neighbours and has increasingly close ties with China, North Korea and Russia.

In autumn 2007, the regime drew condemnation from around the world for its harsh response to pro-democracy protests initiated by the country's Buddhist monks.

When tens of thousands took to the streets of Yangon, the military cracked down, beating and detaining protesters. The authorities put the number of deaths at 10. The U.N.'s special rapporteur for Myanmar said at least 31 people had died but activists estimated the real toll at over 70. Most of the monks who led the campaign disappeared, and their monasteries were left empty or barricaded by the military. The government also temporarily shut down the country's internet and mobile phone connections, making it even hard for the outside world to find out what was going on.

The junta admitted rounding up nearly 3,000 people, but announced at the end of 2007 that all but 80 had been released. However, Amnesty International said in 2008 that at least 700 people picked up during and after the protests remained behind bars - in addition to an estimated 1,150 people already in jail for their political or religious beliefs. At least 40 people, including seven monks, have been given prison sentences for taking part in the 2007 protests, according to Amnesty.

The crisis, dubbed the Saffron Revolution after the colour of the monks' robes, had parallels with the 1988 pro-democracy uprising when 3,000 people died in an army crackdown.

On May 10, Myanmar held a referendum on a new constitution that is a key step in the junta's "roadmap to democracy" meant to culminate in multi-party elections in 2010. Western governments dismiss the constitution and the roadmap as a blueprint for the army to legitimise its grip on power.

Myanmar's NLD opposition called for people to vote "No" to the constitution which gives the army 25 percent of seats in parliament, control of key ministries and the right to suspend the constitution at will.

The junta said more than 92 percent of the ballots cast were in favour of the charter.

Shortly before the vote a massive cyclone hit the country, killing tens of thousands and leaving 2.4 million destitute. See Myanmar Cyclone for more on this.

The constitutional referendum was postponed in areas hit by the cyclone until May 24.
Myanmar has recruited tens of thousands of boys into its national army, typically by force, coercion or intimidation, according to a 2008 report by Human Rights Watch. Child recruits have reported being forced to participate in human rights violations against civilians, including summary executions.

A smaller number are conscripted into rebel groups.

Hundreds of thousands of villagers in conflict-ridden areas are also forced to "porter" for military operations, build army bases and raise money for military and infrastructure projects, human rights advocates say.

Rights organisations say the tatmadaw - as the army is called in Burmese - puts much of the burden on ethnic minorities, and is especially harsh on women and children.

"Girls as young as five years old have been made to perform forced labour duties, and women have been forced to serve and otherwise entertain troops against their will," Amnesty says.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is highly critical of Myanmar's labour practices, and there appears to be a direct correlation between forced labour and military activities in ethnic areas.

"Ethnic minority civilians are forced to work on a variety of infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, and railways. Construction and maintenance of roads is by far the most common form of forced labour," Amnesty says.

Those who refuse to work for free are often threatened with prosecution, or forced to pay instead of working. Rights groups say people are often shot or beaten to death if they do not carry out their duties correctly, and anyone found to have made what the government deems "false complaints" to the ILO faces prosecution.

Myanmar has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in Asia. The U.N. Development Programme calls the epidemic "explosive" and says it could be "a major contributor to the erosion of the well-being of the populace".

"AIDS deaths will constitute a major, if not the major, cause of death in young adults during the coming decade," the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) says.

Myanmar is home to an estimated 360,000 people living with HIV or AIDS, according to UNAIDS statistics. That's about 1.3 percent of the population. Which is a little less than Thailand, where 1.4 percent of the population is HIV-positive, but well above China's rate of 0.1 percent and India's of 0.9 percent.

Among infections where the form of transmission is known, about two-thirds are via heterosexual sex, around 25 percent by intravenous drug use and the rest through blood transfusions and mother-to-child transmission, UNAIDS says.

The HIV rate is far higher among the army, and on the rise, according to the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The spectre of bird flu also looms. The Food and Agriculture Organisation says fellow Asian states ought to pressure the junta to deal with the bird flu epidemic, which not only threatens Myanmar but its neighbours. Experts say if the virus is not contained it could mutate into a human strain and cause a global pandemic.

The ethnic minorities of eastern Myanmar have some of the worst health conditions in the world as a result of years of civil war and abuse by the junta.

In September 2006 the Thailand-based Back Pack Health Worker Team released the first systematic health survey of the region closed to the outside world. Here are a few of the figures:

221 out of every 1,000 children die before the age of five

An average of 1,100 women die in childbirth for every 100,000 births

15 percent of children are either moderately or severely malnourished

12 percent of the region's internally displaced have malaria

A third of families reported at least one member being subjected to forced labour in the year before

According to aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres, the government spent just $0.70 per person on healthcare in 2007.

PRESSURE ON AID WORKERS

About 5 million people do not have enough to eat in Myanmar, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), which also estimates a third of under-fives are underweight and 10 percent are "wasted", or acutely malnourished. Child mortality rates of 106 per 1,000 are among the worst in Asia.

"In a food surplus country like Myanmar, nobody should be going hungry, but millions are," WFP Regional Director Tony Banbury said in late 2007.

According to Banbury, the ruling junta continues to force rice farmers to sell to the government at below market prices and refuses to contemplate relaxing restrictions on free movement and trade that would allow a proper market to emerge.

But despite the country's need for humanitarian assistance, aid agencies say constraints imposed by the government make it difficult for them to operate.

Those frustrations turned to outrage in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008 when the military junta refused to accept a major international relief effort.

Myanmar receives relatively small amounts of help from donor governments. Britain, one of its biggest donors, gives less than $18 million a year, a tiny proportion of what it sends to other countries.

Japan, another key donor, cut some aid to Myanmar following the killing of a Japanese photographer in the 2007 crackdown on pro-democracy protests. It had already suspended much of its aid following the detention of pro-democracy activist Suu Kyi in 2003, but has continued to fund emergency health projects.

WFP aid operations, which go directly to the needy and not through the government, are budgeted to cost $51 million for 2007-09. However, $35 million pledged by donors has yet to materialise.

"The world now is saying how concerned it is about the people of Myanmar," Banbury said. "But so far ... we have not seen that turn into donations."

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