"You could hear the clanking of the chains long before you saw them. Then around the corner would come a party of 20 men, joined in leg-chains, pushed along by armed guards. "The shocking thing was that no one blinked. Forced labour seemed so much a part of everyday life that people never even raised their heads."
Burma used to be the land of the Road to Mandalay, where for years the British ruled the roost and sent over generations of colonial administrators and officials such as George Orwell. But today Burma is a pariah among nations, its military regime widely indicted for human rights abuses, corruption and involvement in the drugs trade.
It is also the country where St Bernard shirts were being manufactured in a military factory for Dunnes Stores until the company, embarrassed by media revelations, ended the contracts this week.
Trocaire works with Burmese refugees in camps along the Thai border and has collected many testimonies of the abuse the refugees suffered at the hands of the army. Annette Honan went to Burma with a colleague to see for herself how things were.
"Every aspect of life there is controlled by the military. They own factories, run the media, decide where you can go, and own the best land," she says. "You even have to have their permission to own a telephone, fax or television." Last year, the Danish consul died in mysterious circumstances in jail after being arrested for having an illegal fax.
Ms Honan travelled in provinces marked by unrest and heavy military activity. "In one village, they told us the army had come the night before to relocate 500 local people. In these cases, they usually clear the village and then raze it to the ground."
In Rangoon, the large Western-style hotels built in anticipation of a tourist boom, are largely empty. The university is closed since protests were held there last year, and many of the secondary schools have failed to reopen.
There are few visible Irish links; Guinness distributes in the country but has no brewery there, according to Ms Honan. Some Western companies, led by Pepsi, Levi Strauss and Heineken, have pulled out.
Although support is still strong for the democratically elected President, Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains under house arrest, Ms Honan found the Burmese people submissive and resigned to continuing military rule.
Ireland should take a lead within the European Union to press for tougher sanctions, she says. Dunnes Stores should be actively monitoring the conditions under which its products are manufactured. And other firms should investigate whether they too have links with Burma.
