Karen and Burmese armies clash

The Burmese military government has begun to systematically attack the Karen National Liberation Army, according to the Karen National Union General Secretary Mahn Sha.

“Fighting between State Peace and Development Council soldiers and us [KNU] is happening right now in Karen State.”
Mahn Sha claims the fighting was started by the Burmese army, and these latest skirmishes come in spite of a fragile ceasefire agreed to informally in January 2004.
“We didn’t want to fight them [SPDC troops], but they attacked our soldiers.”
Mahn Sha says fighting broke out in early May when Burmese soldiers attacked the KNLA’s 7th battalion headquarters and frontline positions in Pa-an District. “The fighting killed three of our soldiers and we lost six weapons.”
Mahn Sha named the SPDC units who attacked as battalions 701, 703 and 709, under Division 44 command.
“They burnt down our battalion headquarters, a front line office and arrested two villagers,” he said. “The Burmese army claims they were KNLA soldiers, but they were civilians.”
The KNLA has also had to deal with attacks from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a Karen militia group aligned with the regime. Mahn Sha said KNLA soldiers in 7th Brigade on May 14 killed five DKBA soldiers from special battalion 999 based in Ko Ko village, close to Myawaddy. A DKBA source said the group now wants revenge for the deaths.[Editors note: see article below. A source close to the DKBA claims the two villagers were handed over to the DKBA after the 999 Special Battalion commander Lt. Col. Maung Chit Htoo intervened. They were apparantly sent to Myaing Gyi Ngu].
Mahn Sha said fighting between the KNLA and the Burmese army has now spread to almost all KNU-controlled territory in Karen State.
The fighting broke out after more than 16,000 Karen people fled their homes in Taungoo, Nyaunglaybin, Papun and Thaton districts when government troops locked down the region.
According to a local Karen leader, the SPDC has plans to finish this current military offensive within six months, or until the military has complete control of the area. The Burmese army has been building new camps and moving soldiers and supplies into KNU’s Brigade 6, Mahn Sha said.

Though eager to defend KNU territory, Mahn Sha still clings to a verbal ceasefire agreement brokered by Karen leader Gen Bo Mya and former Burmese prime minister Khin Nyunt in Rangoon in 2004.

“We’re disappointed,” he said. “We want a genuine peace through political dialogue, but we will never surrender.”

Shah Paung
Irrawaddy
Tue 26 May 2006
Image: KNLA Soldiers on Martyr's Day, 2005 - Paul Keenan

Most Karen refugees are women and children

A report released today by the Karen Women Organization says that up to 70 per cent of Karen fleeing the latest assaults by the Burmese army are women and children.

“Most of the women are mothers with small children and some are pregnant. Pregnant women have delivered their babies in the jungle without sufficient assistance or medicine,” the report says.
Since the Burmese government began its military attacks against the Karen villagers in northern and western Burma last September, thousands of Karen people have fled to the Thai-Burmese border.
An estimated 16,000 people have abandoned their homes to live in jungle hideouts. The soldiers burnt down 54 villages in Taungoo, 100 villages in Nyaunglaybin and more than 10 villages in Papun Districts.
In defiance of the mounting evidence of their attacks against the Karen, Burmese Information Minister Brig-Gen Kyaw Hsan, at a two-day media conference on May 13-14, blamed the forced relocation of the villagers on the Karen National Union.
“The government protects those [Karen] people as much as it can,” Kyaw Hsan said in the New Light of Myanmar, “We Tatmadaw [armed forces] have no position to protect them as the region is very wide and there are mountains and forest barriers.”
But giving the lie to his claims are the huge numbers of Karen people arriving at the Thai-Burmese border seeking safety.
According to the Mae Ra Moe Refugee Camp Committee and Thai-Burma Border Consortium, 2,422 refugees have arrived at the camp located in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son Province and a further 842 are living rough along the Salween River.
The KWO report claims the Thai authorities are skeptical about the true status of newly-arrived refugees. “Officially the Thai army [Rangers 36] and the Thai authorities [District Office at Sob Moei, near Mae Sariang] do not want the perception of routes into the refugee camps as being ‘open access’ to all those fleeing Burma,” it says.
A KWO official, K’Nyaw Paw, said: “Before, refugees could enter camps in small numbers, 15 to 20, but now border security authorities are more strict and they cannot enter as easily.” Many of the displaced families chose not to go to a refugee camp, fearing they would lose their freedom and encounter difficulties if they tried to return home when the fighting stops.
In March, Thai police at Mae Sam Lap (Thaw Leh Tah) arrested 40 refugees trying to enter Thailand from Burma and handed them to immigration police in Mae Sariang. The UN High Commissioner for Refugee tried unsuccessfully to negotiate for them.
Thai authorities told The Irrawaddy that the Thai government is still investigating what is going on inside Burma. Refugees already in the camp are undergoing registration.

Shah Paung
Irrawaddy
Tue 23 May 2006

Image: Children with Sick Brother Staying Warm by the Fire - FBR  

UNHCR: 2,000 Karen refugees flee Myanmar conflict

About 2,000 people from Myanmar have fled to Thailand after an upsurge of fighting in their homeland, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Jennifer Pagonis, spokeswoman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told journalists that 400 people crossed the border last week.
The influx began three months ago, she said.
Fighting has escalated since February in Myanmar involving the Karen National Union, which is the oldest and largest rebel force, still battling the country’s military regime.
Human rights groups say the upsurge has forced up to 11,000 people to flee their homes.
“The predominantly ethnic Karen refugees say their houses and villages have been burned and civilians killed,” said Pagonis.
“Many are very weak and suffering from illnesses such as malaria after a long, dangerous journey to the camps through heavily land-mined areas. Some also report that they had difficulties crossing the Thai border due to strengthened border controls.”
The refugees have been arriving at Thai government-run camps, mainly in the Mae Hong Son area in northern Thailand, Pagonis said.
The UNHCR is expecting more refugees to seek safety in Thailand in the coming weeks, she said.
Many of the refugees who crossed the border had first passed through a camp in Myanmar, she added.
“There, they say, hundreds more displaced Karen villagers are living in desperate conditions.”
There are currently 140,000 refugees from Myanmar living in nine border camps in Thailand, many of whom have been there for up to 20 years.

Agence France Presse:
Tue 23 May 2006 

US Senate Condemns Burmese Crackdown on Minorities

The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution condemning the Burmese military junta for its recent crackdown on ethnic minorities.
Earlier this month rights groups accused Burma's military of violent attacks on ethnic Karen people, including rape, murder, torture and forced labor. Reports say more than 10,000 Karen have fled their homes.
The Senate measure approved late Thursday also urges the U.N. Security Council to adopt a resolution calling for the immediate and unconditional release of Burmese democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi and all other prisoners of conscience in Burma.
Senator Mitch McConnell said in a statement that the resolution reflects the Senate's grave concern about the deteriorating situation in Burma.
McConnell also urged a U.N. envoy now visiting Burma, Ibrahim Gambari, to cut his visit short if he is not allowed to visit Aung San Suu Kyi or meet with top Burmese leader, Than Shwe.

VOA
20 May 2006
Image: Than Shwe meet Ibrahim Gamabri - NLM

Crisis in Karen State, Burma, continues to escalate as thousands more face attacks

The Burma Army is continuing its attacks on civilians in Toungoo District, Karen State, Burma, as it appears poised to unleash a fresh offensive against civilians in Papun District. Tens of thousands more could be displaced.
The total number of Karen people displaced in Western, Northern and North-western Karen State is now over 16,000, according to the Free Burma Rangers.
The Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG) reports that at least 27 Burma Army battalions are now poised to destroy hundreds of villages in the Papun hills. This, the KHRG claim, would “doubtless lead to the forced displacements of tens of thousands more.”
In a recent report, the KHRG emphasised that the current offensive, the worst since 1997, is not simply counter-insurgency.
“Please note that this is not an offensive against Karen resistance forces, and there has been very little combat,” the group states.
“These are attacks against undefended villages with the objective of flushing villagers out of the hills to bring them under direct military control so they can be used to support the Burma Army with food and forced labour.”
A Karen National Union (KNU) district leader told the Free Burma Rangers: “The dictators want to destroy the Karen people … This is the main reason for their offensive.”
Christian Solidarity Worldwide’s (CSW)National Director, Stuart Windsor, said: “This is attempted genocide unfolding before our very eyes. The scale of the attacks and the brutality of the atrocities are extremely difficult to believe. Yet this has been going on, in one form or another, for half a century. The United Nations Security Council needs to address the issue of Burma immediately, and we will be doing all we can to help make that happen.”
CSW is a human rights organisation which specialises in religious freedom, works on behalf of those persecuted for their Christian beliefs and promotes religious liberty for all.

Asian Tribune
20 May

KNLA Attack Kills 6 DKBA Troops and Wounds Three

A KNLA Special Commando Unit launched a surprise pre-dawn raid on a DKBA outpost at Htee Wa Klee Village, about 5 miles, from the 999 Special Battalion Headquarters at Shwe Koako.
The attack, which took place around 5 a.m. on the morning of 14th May, caught the sleeping soldiers totally unaware resulting in the deaths of six troops, three others, including the commander, are seriously injured.
It is believed the assault was in retaliation for an earlier attack, two weeks previous, which saw DKBA troops supported by the Burmese Army attack the KNLA’s Watkalupu Camp over what is perceived to be a struggle to control the lucrative logging trade in the area.

KHCPS
18 May 2006
Image: DKBA soldiers on Martyr's Day held 5th January 2006 - KHCPS
     

Displaced Figure Rises to 17,000 as Offensive Continues

The number of people displaced by the current Burmese Army offensive against the Karen population has risen to over 16,000 deep inside Burmese territory and over a thousand sheltering on the banks of the Salween River. According to the latest FBR report the victims of the ongoing attacks by the SPDC army in Taungoo, where over 5,000 have been forced from there homes, have enough rice to sustain them for two months however there is a strong need for medicines as the villagers are insistant on remaining in their own land rather than flee to Thailand and join the ever increasing refugee population.

KHCPS
18 May 2006  
Image: FBR
    

Myanmar troops widen Karen offensive

Myanmar troops, who have driven an estimated 15,000 Karen villagers from their homes, are throwing more battalions into a widening offensive against the ethnic minority, a Karen group said Thursday.

The Karen Human Rights Group said 4,000 to 5,000 troops were poised to destroy hundreds of villages in the Papun hills of eastern Myanmar, which would lead to another mass displacement of civilians.
“This is not an offensive against Karen resistance forces, and there has been very little combat,” the activist group said in a statement Tuesday. “These are attacks against undefended villages with the objective of flushing villagers out of the hills to bring them under direct military control so they can be used to support the (army) with food and forced labor.”
Myanmar’s ruling military has acknowledged its army is waging an offensive, calling the action necessary to suppress bombings and other attacks by anti-government guerrillas from the Karen National Union, which has been fighting for autonomy for nearly six decades.
The Karen rose up shortly after Myanmar, then known as Burma, gained independence from Great Britain after World War II, claiming that the Burman majority were out to suppress the ethnic peoples. The military took over the country in 1962 and has since then been unable to end the bloodshed.
The junta, which rarely comments on military activities, was apparently responding to growing international criticism that the offensive has uprooted thousands of ethnic Karen civilians and is causing a humanitarian crisis due to their lack of shelter and food.
Sharp criticism has been voiced in recent days by U.N. officials, U.S. Congressmen and members of the British Parliament.
The Myanmar regime routinely denies committing human rights abuses against the ethnic minorities and has declined to respond to numerous queries by reporters on the current offensive.
The offensive, which began last November, has been concentrated in the Toungoo and Nyaunglebin districts of Karen State, but the group said operations were now spreading into Papun district where more than 1,000 people have already been displaced.
“The only combat which has occurred is when Karen Army forces try to keep (junta) troops away from killing displaced villagers in their hiding places,” the statement said.
Attacks in the district, the statement said, began to escalate last month.
“Several villages have already been burned, rice supplies systematically destroyed, and villagers shot on sight,” it said.
The campaign in Karen State has forced more than 2,500 refugees to flee to or across the border with neighboring Thailand.
A number interviewed last week by The Associated Press inside Myanmar confirmed earlier reports of executions, looting and torching of villages by the Myanmar troops.
The offensive is the largest since 1997 against the Karen, the biggest of a half dozen insurgency groups fighting the central government.
Former junta member Gen. Khin Nyunt had negotiated cease-fires with 17 ethnic insurgent groups and was working on a peace deal with the Karen National Union when he was ousted by rival generals in 2004.

Denis D. Gray
Associated Press
Thu 18 May 2006 

Tutu Presses Rice for U.N. Resolution on Burma

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Peace Prize laureate, met yesterday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to press for a binding U.N. Security Council resolution calling on the Burmese military junta to release Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners and halt a counterinsurgency campaign that is targeting civilians.
"The secretary is very, very concerned about the situation in Burma. She said they really want to do all they can," Tutu said in an interview after the meeting. "The situation is deteriorating very, very greatly."
Tutu, the 1984 laureate, said he understands that the Burmese feel "deep distress that they are going through such hell." But, he added, "when we were struggling against apartheid, there were times when we felt it didn't seem as if the system would change. They must know it will change, and they have the world to support them."
Burma, also known as Myanmar, is regarded as one of the world's most repressive nations. The party of Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, won an election the previous year that the military leadership refused to accept. She has been repeatedly held in confinement.
Tutu, along with former Czech Republic president Vaclav Havel, commissioned a report last year on Burma that helped bring the issue before the Security Council for the first time. The U.N. undersecretary general for political affairs, Ibrahim Gambari, is due to arrive in Rangoon today for the first high-level talks between the United Nations and Burma in two years. Gambari has requested a meeting with Suu Kyi, but it is not clear whether one will take place.
Under U.S. policy, an official traveling to Burma on behalf of an organization or country must insist on seeing Suu Kyi. Tutu said he believes Gambari's visit is "badly timed" and "very surprising" because he is not insisting on seeing Suu Kyi. "They were trying to find every possible way of being not abrasive, I think."
A State Department official who attended the meeting between Rice and Tutu said a U.N. resolution is "a hard sell," but "we have got to get this back on the Security Council agenda." He said Gambari's visit provides a chance to request a Security Council briefing. "If he doesn't see her, then we must bring it up before the Security Council," he said

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 18, 2006; Page A20

Protesters tell Myanmar to stop attacks on minority

Washington: About 70 demonstrators rallied at the Myanmar Embassy in Washington on Tuesday, capping worldwide protests aimed at stopping what activists called ethnic cleansing in the Southeast Asian country.

Some of the protesters in the U.S. capital echoed demands at coordinated rallies at Myanmar’s missions in Japan, Britain, Thailand and eight other countries for U.N. intervention to stop an army offensive against the isolated country’s ethnic Karen minority.
“We call on the Security Council to take action and we call on countries around the world, especially democratic countries, to condemn soundly the military regime,” said Sein Win, a member of Myanmar’s parliament and a cousin of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
“Burma is a threat to the region that we cannot ignore,” former Mongolian Prime Minister Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj, a leading Asian democracy activist, told a rally of Myanmar exiles, school teachers and students.
Burma is the former name of the Myanmar, where the ruling junta ignored a 1990 landslide opposition victory and jailed students, intellectuals and opponents. Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since her latest detention in May 2003.
The protests came as U.N. human rights investigators called on Myanmar’s junta to stop targeting members of the Karen minority and cited allegations of killings, rape and torture by soldiers in what appears to be the biggest offensive against the ethnic group in 10 years.
The U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, and other U.N. investigators said Myanmar’s army had been driving thousands of ethnic Karen out of villages close to the junta’s new jungle capital.
Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma said the drive against the Karen, which intensified earlier this year, had destroyed 2,800 villages since 1996. More than 15,000 people had been displaced in this year’s campaign, he said.
Ibrahim Gambari, the U.N. undersecretary-general for political affairs, begins a three-day visit to Myanmar on Thursday, the first by a U.N. official in more than two years, the United Nations said.

Reuters
Wed 17 May 2006 

U.S. lawmakers denounce Myanmar’s targeting of Karen minority

Washington: U.S. lawmakers are blasting Myanmar’s military for engineering a humanitarian nightmare, joining a flood of international criticism of the ruling junta’s massive offensive against the country’s ethnic Karen minority.

As dozens of demonstrators protested Tuesday outside the Myanmar Embassy, lawmakers from both political parties urged the U.N. Security Council to condemn Myanmar’s governing generals for orchestrating atrocities.
“The thugs of Rangoon are on an all-out rampage,” Republican Rep. Joe Pitts said in a statement. “The world knows what is happening in Burma. If the international community does not act, we are complicit in the Burmese regime’s atrocities.”
The United Nations says a counterinsurgency by Myanmar, also called Burma, has led to the forcible displacement of thousands of villagers. Myanmar’s ruling military says its offensive against ethnic Karen minorities is necessary to suppress bombings and other anti-government attacks.
Lawmakers described a devastated area from which journalists and officials from relief groups and the United Nations are banned.
“Even in Sudan, aid agencies, journalists and representatives of the United Nations and African Union are allowed; not so in eastern Burma,” Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley said in a statement, referring to the African country where civil war has killed at least 180,000.
Outside Myanmar’s Washington embassy, dozens of people wore red headbands printed with “2800″ - the number of villages they say have been destroyed in eastern Burma by the military. The protesters chanted: “2,800, maybe more; what’s the U.N. waiting for?”

Foster Klug
Associated Press
Wed 17 May 2006 

Myanmar rebels make desperate call for ceasefire talks

Ethnic Karen rebels Wednesday issued a new plea for ceasefire talks with Myanmar’s military rulers, saying the plight of their people was increasingly desperate in the face of a bloody offensive.

The Karen National Union, the oldest and largest rebel group battling Myanmar’s junta, said the violence had exacted a crushing toll on villages in eastern Myanmar with some 11,000 people forced from their homes.
Advancing Myanmar forces had committed a litany of abuses against civilians in their path, including rape, torture, forced labor and burning of entire villages, the KNU said in a statement.
“The KNU solemnly call upon the SPDC military regime to immediately stop its current military operations and withdraw its operational troops, hold talks seriously with the KNU, abandon its policy of total obliteration and resolve the country’s problems by political means,” the rebels said.
The junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), launched the offensive in February.
Fighting during the dry months is normal in Myanmar, but the KNU said the military had stocked its front-line positions to press ahead even amid the seasonal rains that make travel difficult.
“The KNU strongly protest and condemn the SPDC’s wicked act of increasing military operations against us, instead of working toward nationwide ceasefire,” the statement said.
The military has reached ceasefires with 17 other ethnic armed groups, but talks with the KNU fell apart two years ago and have yet to resume.
The two sides had reached a “gentlemen’s agreement” to stop fighting until a ceasefire was hammered out.
Both sides insist they remain open to talks, even as the military presses ahead with its offensive.
Although the KNU once controlled a vast stretch of Karen state, the Myanmar military has made steady gains in recent years, leaving the rebels with little more than a string of bases mainly along the Thai border.

Agence France Presse
Wed 17 May 2006
Image: KNU delegation (left) meets with SPDC in December 2004 in Rangoon while Khun Nyunt was still premier - KNU/KHCPS