Ye-Tavoy (Yay-Dawei) Railway

   A project initiated by the State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1993 to link the railhead at Ye (Yay) in Mon State with Tavoy (Dawei), the capital of Tenasserim (Tanintharyi) Division. Its purpose was to facilitate transportation links with Burma's resource rich but undeveloped southern region. Construction involved the forced relocation and forced labor of mostly Mon and Karen (Kayin) residents; by the mid-1990s, as many as 300,000 local people were drafted annually to do uncompensated labor on the project, which critics called the "Second Railway of Death." Many fled and became refugees on the Thai-Burma border.

   See also Human Rights in Burma; Thai-Burma Railway.