DKBA round up Christians in Aong Daw village
by Daniel Pedersen on Mar.25, 2009, under Battles, Burma reportage, The Karen
Northern Thailand
December 2000
THE DKBA soldiers began rounding up the Christians in Burma’s Aong Daw village in August 2000.
As the Christians were identified, they were separated from the Buddhists and marched out of town.
The villagers who have been allowed to stay at Aong Daw – some Christian and lying about their religion, others Buddhist – have no idea to where their neighbours have been marched, only that they have not been allowed to return and are not expected to be seen again.
Ye Ye Aye, a Christian, is 25 and the mother of three young children, she used to lie to the DKBA soldiers about her religious beliefs and prayed only when she knew she would not be discovered.
The soldiers that controlled her village were strict vegetarians and Buddhists.
They outlawed consumption of meat and each night searched from house-to-house looking for eggs, chickens or fish paste, a Karen staple.
Should villagers be discovered hiding meat products they were jailed in a compound they had been forced to build at gunpoint.
Ye Ye Aye fled her home with her husband, 32-year-old Saw Lah Ka Paw, on December 12, 2000.
They carried their three children through mountainous terrain in the hope of a new life, free of fear and oppression.
Their eldest, 5, was hospitalised on arrival at Mae La, suffering severe dehydration and diarrhoea.
They had been unable to stop to boil water for three days, for fear of being discovered by roaming Burmese troops.
Ye Ye Aye says she is very glad to have escaped, and has no intention of returning if the situation inside Burma remains the same.
And she doubts very much whether anything will ever change in Burma.
She has no reason to believe it will.
ENDS
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