More Karen Refugees to Enter Thailand

Hundreds of Karen refugees were poised to enter Thailand, joining others who have fled an ongoing offensive against the ethnic minority by the Burmese army, a Thai official said Tuesday.
The campaign began last November and has driven at least 11,000 Karen villagers from their eastern Burma homes as troops hunt for autonomy-seeking Karen guerrillas, according to an aid group operating in the military-ruled country.
More than 1,800 have fled into neighboring Thailand and were living under plastic sheets at a temporary camp near the border, waiting for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to clarify their status, said Jaroon Jinakan, chief of the Mae Lama Luang refugee camp, in a telephone interview.
He said 600 more were hiding in Burma’s jungles, prepared to cross into Thailand's Mae Hong Son province.
"These Karen families claim that they escaped from being forced into slave labor by Myanmar [Burmese] troops," the camp chief said.
He said the Karen say their suffering has worsened after the ruling junta recently set up the country's new capital near Pyinmana in central Burma.
The military has burned villages, destroyed rice fields and killed civilians in northern and western areas of Karen State as it tries to suppress Karen National Union guerrillas, who have been fighting the central government for decades, according to reports from the Free Burma Rangers—a group of Westerners and ethnic minority volunteers who help displaced people in the country.
A senior KNU commander, Col Ner Dah Mya, said Tuesday that the frontier area was quiet—but that fighting was reported deeper inside Burma.
The government says it is taking security measures against terrorists, but denies that an offensive is underway, and that its troops have violated human rights.
On Tuesday, state-run media said land mines planted by "terrorist insurgents" wounded three people northeast of the former capital Rangoon, in two separate incidents on April 25 and 26.
The New Light of Myanmar newspaper said "terrorist insurgents are committing destructive acts using various means with the intention of undermining the stability of the state."
It did not identify any group, but the junta often accuses minority rebel groups or opposition exile groups of bomb attacks.
US lawmakers last week urged the UN Security Council to take urgent action against the junta in response to the offensive. The US State Department condemned the recent attacks, which Thai and foreign aid officials fear will add to Thailand's refugee burden.
More than 140,000 Karen and other ethnic minority refugees live in a string of camps along the border, including 13,000 at the Mae Lama Luang camp.
Analysts say the scale of the recent attacks is the largest since a 1997 anti-Karen offensive, and the KNU fears it may continue through this year's rainy season, which begins around May.
Observers and the KNU speculate that the drive may be an effort to secure the hinterland east of the new capital.
Burma's military regimes, which first came to power in 1962, had battled many minority insurgent groups seeking autonomy until a former junta member, Gen Khin Nyunt, negotiated cease-fires with 17 of them.
But his ouster in 2004 reinforced hard-liners and "resulted in increasing hostility directed at ethnic minority groups," US-based Human Rights Watch said in its 2006 report.
The KNU is the largest rebel organization still battling the 500,000-member military.
The violence of recent years—largely ignored by the international community—has spawned an estimated 1 million internal refugees and accelerated an exodus to neighboring countries.

By Denis D Gray/AP Writer/Bangkok
Irrawaddy
02/05/06

Image: CIDKP - IDPs in Nyaunglebin (KHCPS File Photo)

Women’s group slams military crimes in Karen State

Thousands of ethnic Karen have been forcibly relocated and women have been raped by Burmese troops during military attacks in Karen State, the Thai-based Karen Women’s Organisation said today.

In a statement released today the KWO said the military had stepped up operations in Toungoo, Nyaunglaybin and Papun districts in Karen State since September last year.
The group said Burmese troops involved in the operations had committed a variety of crimes including the rape of a villager in Papun district’s Dweh-loe township in February and the murder of an 80-year-old woman in March.
“Some people remain in the jungle, and some [crossing the border] are in Mae Hong Son staying temporarily at refugee camps along the Thai-Burmese border. And some are still on the way and some are staying by groups at somewhere in the jungle,” said KWO general secretary Naw Ziporah Sein.
Staff at the Thai ministry of foreign affairs today confirmed a large group of Karen refugees had arrived in the country after fleeing the fighting in their native state.
“They have fled skirmishes with the Burmese Tatmadaw and the Karen rebels,” a spokesperson for the Thai foreign ministry told Mizzima.
While the foreign ministry said they were still waiting for confirmation on the exact number of refugees, the Thai press quoted caretaker foreign minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon as saying an estimated 1000 Karens had made it across the border.
Naw Ziporah Sein said more than 70 percent were women and children under the age of 16 and while many groups were providing temporary relief to the refugees, more support was needed for children, the elderly and pregnant women.

Nga Ngai
Mizzima
02/05/06

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Two land mines explode in Kyaukkyi, two seriously injured

Nay Pyi Taw, 1 May — Two land mines exploded on 26 April in Kawpyin Village in Kyaukkyi Township, Bago Division, and one of the explosions blew off a villager’s left leg.

On 26 April morning, Maung Ye Tun, 20, Maung Tun, 20, and Ma Thin Mar Oo, 28, of Kawpyin Village went to the farm near the village. On their way, Maung Ye Tun stepped on a land mine planted by insurgents; the mine exploded and he sustained injury at his toe. When Ma Thin Mar Oo came to his aid, another land mine exploded and the second explosion blasted off her left leg under her left knee.

The officials have given treatment to the injured, and Tatmadaw men and police were in hot pursuit of the insurgents.

In an attempt to undermine the prevalence of law and order and to kill the innocent people, insurgents have committed acts of terrorism.

New Light of Myanmar
01/05/06

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KNU Vows to Retain Arms in Wake of New Offensive

The Karen National Union has declared its intention to keep its armed wing, the Karen National LIberation Army (KNLA), to defend it's people as fighting intensifies in Northern Karen State.
A renewed offensive by the SPDC in 2nd and 3rd Brigades as already resulted in 11,000 people displaced inside the country and over four hundred seeking refuge in Thailand.
Despite SPDC claims to the contrary an offensive has been launched with numerous villages being relocated in what is seen as an attempt by the Burmese Government to consolidate its grip on areas around Pyinmanna the country's new administrative capital.
The KNLA has been forced to return to Guerilla warfare to protect its people after a somewhat nebulous ceasefire agreement, implemented in Janaury 2005, was broken by Burmese troops. The full KNU Statement and battle statistics for April can be read below.

KNU on Settlement of Problems Justly by Political Means

As a result of odious propaganda by successive Burmese regimes dominated by arch chauvinists or ultra-nationalists, starting from the AFPFL government up to this day, the Karen people’s revolutionary resistance led by the KNU has been misunderstood as a militant, violent and narrow nationalistic movement by those, who have no chance or refuse to delve deeper into the ethnic issues of Burma. 
                From the very beginning, the KNU has no armed revolutionary program to seize state power or create a Karen State by military means. Its policy has consistently been resolution of the country’s problems justly by political means.
                After WWII, Karen leaders realized that they had to combine their forces to obtain and defend their rights as a people in an independent Burma. This realization was brought home by ruthless persecution suffered by the Karen people under the Burman (Myanmar) rule during the feudal period and at the beginning of Japanese occupation of the country in 1942. 
                In 1947, four Karen organizations, the Karen Central Organization, Buddhist Karen National Association, Karen National Association and Karen Youth Organization merged together and formed the KNU. The Karen people are the largest ethnic group after the Burman. A large number of them are found in the Irrawaddy (Aeyawaddy) Division, Rangoon (Yangon) Division, Tanessarim (Taninthayi) Division, Pegu (Bago) Division, Mon State and the Karen (Kayin) State. The Karen people in the Karen State account only for an eighth of the Karen population in the entire country.
                The 1947 Constitution of Burma divided the country into a large area of Burma Proper and small ethnic states, with no Karen State in it. Burma proper had a monopoly on the political power and the sates were relegated to vassal status. Karen leaders demanded creation of the Karen State out of Tanessarim Division, the Irrawaddy Division and Salween Sub-District.
                In a silent demonstration held on February 11, 1948, the Karen people called for equality, creation of a Karen State without delay, prevention of civil war and prevention of ethnic strife. Instead of dialogue and seeking a compromise solution, the Burman politicians of the ultra-nationalistic hue started to attack the Karen of being British colonialist stooges, narrow nationalists and traitors.
                In late 1948, Gen. Ne Win, who was Chief of Staff of the Burma Army used his pocket army troops to attack Karen villages in the Irrawaddy Division and Tanessarim Division. In January 1949, his troops burnt down Karen quarters in Rangoon and Thamine and threaten to attack the KNU Headquarters in Insein. On the 31st of January, the Karen people had to take up arms for self-defense. Thus, the revolutionary resistance of the Karen people started. When shouts came to blows, the KNU had no choice but to lead the resistance movement.      
                The KNU has met successive regimes in power on five different occasions to negotiate for peace and political settlement. However, on every occasion the regimes in power refused to discuss about political settlement and demanded surrender of arms, which is counter to the revolutionary principles of the Karen people. The current military regime in power, the SPDC, is more barefaced and ruthless. While keeping the people’s leaders incarcerated and after severely cracking down on the election winning NLD and all opposition parties, it lies openly to the international community that it is implementing its road map to disciplined democracy.
                A verbal ceasefire agreement was reached between the KNU and the SPDC in 2004. The KNU made it clear that it wanted to strengthen the verbal ceasefire agreement and go for a meaningful dialogue for solution of problems by political means. However, the SPDC keeps postponing the talks. Now it started to launch military operations in some KNU areas, in violation the verbal agreement, apparently with the aim of widening security perimeters for its new capital, in Pyinmana District.
                The KNU is still hopeful that the SPDC would eventually come to see the mistake of its policy of building bigger and bigger an armed force for eliminating all opposition by military means and adopt a policy of dialogue for peaceful resolution of conflicts and problems. Until and unless the SPDC clearly and publicly declares its willingness to embrace democracy, federalism and peaceful resolution of problems, the KNU will have to retain its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army for defending the Karen people and itself. 

April 19, 2006

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Major Myanmar offensive uproots 11,000 civilians, atrocities reported

U.S. lawmakers condemned a brutal offensive by Myanmar’s army against ethnic minority civilians, calling on the U.N. Security Council to take urgent action against the country’s ruling junta, statements received Thursday said.

Myanmar troops have uprooted more than 11,000 Karen civilians in their biggest offensive in almost a decade a campaign punctuated by torture and killings, according to reports from inside the country and Thailand.
Troops in eastern Myanmar have torched Karen villages and sent inhabitants fleeing into jungles in a campaign to suppress a decades-old insurgency, say reports from Free Burma Rangers, a group of Westerners and ethnic volunteers who provide aid to displaced people in the country, formerly known as Burma.
Tom Lantos, the top Democrat on the U.S. House International Relations Committee, said the attacks were a “deadly escalation of what is already one of the world’s most serious humanitarian disasters.”
“The Burmese military junta must call off its campaign against innocent civilians,” he said
He called on the U.N. Security Council to follow up on its debate last December on Myanmar with a binding resolution aimed at stopping the violence. “The longer the Security Council waits, the more villages will be destroyed and more people will die,” he said.
Some 11,000 people have fled their homes due to the onslaught, which began last November and has recently intensified, the Free Burma Rangers said. About 1,500 refugees have fled across the border to Thailand, and aid officials fear others will follow in coming months to swell the more than 140,000 already in Thai refugee camps.
Another congressman, Republican Joe Pitts, said the latest reports suggest the junta was actively hunting down more than 2,000 of the displaced.
“The thugs of Rangoon are on a violent rampage,” he said, referring to Yangon, the country’s former capital.
A leading British human rights advocate and House of Lords member, Baroness Caroline Cox, described the offensive as “the latest atrocities in a long litany of crimes against humanity” by the junta.
The military-run government has denied any human rights violations against ethnic minority groups, including the Karen, which it blames for a spate of recent bombings in the country.
“There is no offensive against the Karen National Union but security measures have been taken and cleaning-up operations are being conducted in some areas where (KNU) terrorists are believed to be hiding,” Information Minister Brig. Gen. Kyaw Hsan told reporters in Yangon earlier this month, referring to the main Karen rebel group.
But observers say the scale of the attacks is the largest since a major offensive against the Karen in 1997, and suggest that the military is trying to secure the hinterland east of the country’s newly established capital of Pyinmana.
“They don’t want the KNU near their new capital,” said KNU General-Secretary Mahnshar Laphan.
Myanmar’s military regimes, which first came to power in 1962, waged war against numerous ethnic insurgent groups seeking autonomy until a former junta member, Gen. Khin Nyunt, negotiated cease-fires with 17 of them.
But his ouster in 2004 reinforced hard-liners within the ruling junta and “resulted in increasing hostility directed at ethnic minority groups,” U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in its 2006 report.
The KNU are the largest of the rebel groups still facing off against the regime’s 500,000-strong military.
The violence of recent years has spawned an estimated one million internal refugees and accelerated an exodus to neighboring countries.
A recent report by Free Burma Rangers said the Myanmar army destroys any Karen homes it comes across. “If civilians are encountered on the way, they shoot at them,” it said.
In one incident described in the report, Myanmar soldiers killed Saw Maw Keh as he was carrying his 80-year-old mother up a steep hill in western Karen State this month. The two were gunned down at point-blank range by soldiers near their village, which was being abandoned in face of an attack.
Nearby, a still unidentified villager was found with an eye gouged out and his nose cut off, one of the incidents of torture the group has documented with graphic photographs and video.

 

Dennis Gray/AP

Graphic: Free Burma Rangers

27/04/06

Burmese military tells Karens they will shoot to kill

Reports have emerged from Karen State that the Burmese military has told civilians they had until last Tuesday to leave their homes or face being shot on sight.

According to the Free Burma Rangers, Major Aung Yan Tun of the military’s Light Infantry Battalion 168 told villagers from Ye Lo, Ta Pa Kee and Plo Baw Der in Toungoo district last Saturday if they had not relocated to Play Htsa Lo by April 25, they would be killed.
More than 11,000 Karens have fled their homes in the past three months as the military launched attacks against civilians, burning villages, looting stocks and shooting villagers at random.
In Karen State’s Muthraw district light infantry battalion 366 shot and killed 17-year-old Saw Has Rae Sae as he worked in his rice field near Paw Mu Der village on April 20. His friend, Saw Kyay Nu Wah was also shot an injured, according to FBR.
“The SPDC uses force to clear areas they would like to occupy, driving civilian villagers from their land and fields. It is very difficult for them to survive . . .” a Karen FBR relief team leader said in a statement.
“All of their possessions have been taken or destroyed by the SPDC . . . Their life in hiding sites is so difficult that many are now trying to cross the border to the refugee camps in Thailand. Others, despite their difficulties, choose to stay in the jungle and not leave their country.”
The scale of the Burmese military’s recent attacks in Karen State has been compared to the 1997 offensive that almost wiped out the armed resistance group the Karen National Union.
In the past military offensives in Karen State were limited to the dry season but the KNU told Mizzima this week they were concerned the attacks would continue during the monsoon.

Jessicah Curtis

Mizzima New

Thu 27 Apr 2006

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