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NEWS - Ethnic Civilians Victims of
- Subject: NEWS - Ethnic Civilians Victims of
- From: Rangoonp@xxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 01 Jul 1999 20:24:00
Subject: NEWS - Ethnic Civilians Victims of Myanmar Army
Amnesty International: Ethnic Civilians Victims of Myanmar Army
AP
30-JUN-99
BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) -- Civilians from three ethnic
groups have been tortured and killed in a relocation
campaign by Myanmar's military, Amnesty International
said
today.
The London-based human rights group said the impact of
the campaign was being felt in countries neighboring
Myanmar, also known as Burma, as refugees continue
spilling into Thailand, India and Bangladesh.
"The Burmese army has devastated the lives of thousands
of
Shan, Karen and Karenni people by targeting them simply
because of their ethnicity or perceived beliefs," Amnesty
International said.
The rights group charged that during the past three
years,
hundreds of thousands of villagers have been forcibly
relocated as part of a military campaign to cut off
civilian
support for the rebels.
Villagers found outside settlement areas supervised by
the
military have been shot on sight.
"Many have been killed, others tortured and thousands
have
fled to neighboring countries. It is civilians, not armed
insurgents, who have suffered the vast majority of
casualties
in these conflicts," it said.
Amnesty International said it based its findings on
interviews
with more than 100 ethnic refugees from Myanmar.
A Myanmar government spokesman, speaking on customary
condition of anonymity, said the refugees interviewed
were
family members and sympathizers of "armed ethnic
terrorist
groups."
He defended forced relocations of villagers as "temporary
when necessary and done to protect them from being
terrorized by the armed insurgent groups."
Myanmar is a fractious and diverse nation of eight major
ethnic groups. Successive governments have had difficulty
reconciling their interests.
The military government says the divisions are a legacy
of
British colonial rule, but the country's democratic
opposition
has said the continuing insurgencies are set off by the
military's determination to resolve differences by force.