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Reuter: Forced Relocations in Kayah



Subject: Reuter: Forced Relocations in Kayah State

Forced Relocations in Kayah State

    By Robert Birsel
     BANGKOK, June 18 (Reuter) - The Burmese army is forcing thousands of
villagers from their homes in the hills of eastern Burma's Kayah state in
an attempt to isolate ethnic minority guerrillas in the area, opposition
sources said on Tuesday.
     "So far 96 villages have been forced to relocate," Teddy Buri, an
ethnic Karenni member of Burma's exiled opposition told Reuters.
     He estimated the total number of people ordered from their homes was
about 10,000.
     Refugee workers on the Thai-Burmese border said more than 1,000
villagers had defied the Burmese army order to move to areas near garrison
towns in eastern Burma's Kayah state and fled to the frontier in recent
weeks.
     "It's related to the forced relocation of the villages," one worker
said of the most recent wave of people to arrive on the border. "We're
expecting more."
     The opposition sources said Burmese army patrols began posting notices
in the Karenni villages last month ordering the inhabitants to move by
early June.
     "Those who refuse to move will be categorised as insurgents and shot
on sight," Teddy Buri said.
     Separatist guerrillas of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP)
have recently operated in the area of the relocation after losing their
bases up against the Thai border in the face of a Burmese army offensive.
     A KNPP official, speaking from northern Thailand on the border with
Burma, said Karenni guerrillas had launched a series of attacks and had
managed to blow up a water pipeline at the Lawpita hydropower station on
June 6.
     "There are six turbines at the power station, now only three can be
used," the guerrilla official said.
     "That's why the SLORC troops are getting very aggressive now but they
already had the plan to move these people," the guerrilla official said,
referring to Burma's ruling military body, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council.
     The villagers ordered to move are mostly on the west bank of the
Salween river and they have been told to relocate to the
government-controlled towns of Shadaw and Ywathit, the sources said.
     The forced relocation of civilians from areas in which rebels operate
is a standard Burmese counterinsurgency tactic.
     "It's a question of cutting them (the guerrillas) off from their
information, recruits and supplies," Teddy Buri said.
     "It's like a concentration camp," the KNPP official said of the
relocation sites on the edge of the army-controlled towns. "They're
surrounded by soldiers and isolated."
     The KNPP agreed to a ceasefire with the SLORC in March last year but
the truce collapsed three months later after the SLORC sent forces into the
rebels' heartland between the Salween river and the Thai border.
     SLORC officals said at the time they were trying to stop the smuggling
of timber to Thailand. The KNPP said the SLORC had made a deal to sell the
teak to a Singapore logging company.
  REUTER
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