In this document, Amnesty International outlines its findings and concerns with regard to ethnic minorities living in parts of the Mon, Shan and Kayin States, and in the Tanintharyi Division. This information is based on interviews with refugees in Thailand during February 2001. The interviewees, almost all of whom are subsistence farmers, fled from their homes because of demands for forced labour and arbitrary taxation, torture and ill-treatment during portering, and the extrajudicial executions of friends and associates.