Daniel Pedersen

NDF chairman speaks out on ethnic resurgence: part 1

NDF chairman speaks out on ethnic resurgence: part 2

If the report fails to load, go here

Thai officials order relief organisations not to support forces fighting Burma’s junta

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot

The United Nations and organisations working along the Thai-Burma border providing relief for refugees from Burma’s grinding civil conflict have been ordered not to support forces fighting for democracy.
At a meeting between Thai provincial governors, the UNHCR and non-governmental organisations, provincial authorities made it clear that any support for the democracy movement would upset bilateral relations with Burma’s ruling generals.
They said this could not be tolerated.
The Thai politicians alleged some aid organisations were providing food for ethnic soldiers fighting against Burma’s ruling military junta.
They also suggested the organisations were taking a substantive risk by travelling to border areas, particularly at night, in a bid to provide aid to those most at risk from the conflict.
The politicians suggested the proper process to manage visits to border areas was to contact the provincial administration for the area concerned and request access.
Tak Deputy Provincial Governor Samat Loifah went as far as to say he was not worried about aid workers dying or being arrested in dangerous areas, because the relationship between Thailand and Burma took precedence over any individual.
He also took aim at Mae Tao Clinic mobile backpack teams, who have been travelling in conflict areas in the midst of heavy fighting, saying they should cease and desist, because they were harming Thailand’s reputation with the junta.
Samat said NGOs working in the border areas should not overstep their authority or “imagine” that the Thai authorities were blocking aid.
But this is at odds with reality on the ground.
In fact Thai soldiers are turning back refugees fleeing across the border at gunpoint and police officers are demanding aid be left with them, rather than being taken to refugees.
A Thai special forces soldier attending the meeting with provincial governors said the Thais had “befriended” the Burmese Army and also had no problems with ethnic fighters.
Thai authorities are desperate to have the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge re-opened, which has been closed since June 20 last year.
Local businesses in Mae Sot are smarting from the closure.
Observers believe if the Burma Army manages to quell resistance fighters in the area then the bridge may be allowed to reopen and that Thailand is assisting the junta’s troops in its mission by closing down cross-border supply lines.
In late January two combat journalists, John Sanlin and Pascal Schatteman, were arrested by border authorities and detained for four days after having repeatedly crossed the border to record fighting between ethnic Karen fighters and the Burma Army.
The arrests indicated just how lightly the Thai authorities are treading with the Burmese.
Interestingly though, the journalists had informed Thai military intelligence of their intentions, as requested, and were still arrested.
Thai military intelligence officers have since warned all foreigners they will be stopped should they try to cross the border and will be arrested if detected returning from Burma.
Last night at 6.30pm, Karen National Liberation Army Colonel Nerdah Mya said the border had become “very strict”.
“They are not allowing KNU vehicles to move along the border,” he said.

Restaurant bombing kills two

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sot

Burma’s Myawaddy has again become an urban theatre of war, with two people killed in a bomb blast on Wednesday night near the Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge.

And witnesses said throughout the day on Tuesday they had heard sporadic gunfire from the Rim Moei Market, nestled on the riverbank directly opposite Myawaddy.

The Burmese frontier trading town became famous overnight on election day – November 7 – when soldiers of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army revolted against their Burma Army overseers, sparking pitched battles in the town’s streets.

Since then, the situation has deteriorated along the border as the junta’s troops seek retribution.

There are more than 10,000 refugees spread along both sides of the Moei River, human minesweepers are being driven ahead of Burma Army troops and hostilities are regularly spilling onto the Thai side.

Said a Thai military intelligence officer: “They’re [both Karen and Burmese troops] using Thailand like a guesthouse.”

Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, has ordered its army to embark on a major offensive to secure the border area in a concerted effort to open it up for trade.

The Burma Army has introduced 110mm GPS-guided cannons to the border area and is regularly plying ethnic army-held areas with as many as 200 120mm mortars a day.

It is firepower the ethnic armies of this region cannot match and significant base camps have fallen like dominoes in recent weeks.

Landmines, the main defensive apparatus used to protect their villages, have been detonated by mortar and cannon fire.

To protect themselves against landmines that have not been detonated by heavy artillery, the Burma Army imported 600 prisoners taken from state-run jails to walk in front of them, essentially as mine fodder.

Some sustained serious injury and were hospitalised in Thailand, their stories were corroborated by three escapees who fled across the border.

Soldiers of the ethnic armies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army and the Karen National Liberation Army, have been left on the run, sleeping rough in the bush with few supplies.

The DKBA has so far borne the brunt of the Burma Army’s latest offensive.

Until the ruling junta’s November 7 election, the DKBA and the Burma Army had been considered allies.

But a revolt on that day by elements of the DKBA resulted in heavy fighting in the Burmese border town of Myawaddy, opposite Mae Sot in Thailand.

The ensuing onslaught in areas to the south of Mae Sot could be viewed as the Burma Army looking to teach its former ally a lesson.

But things have not gone so well for the Burma Army and it has still not managed to wrest control of the contested areas, according to interviews with former soldiers conducted by the Karen Human Rights Group.

One 17-year-old Burma Army deserter told KHRG: “Our camp was attacked and the ones who got injured the most were us, but the DKBA soldiers did not get injured a lot.

“There were around 500 to 600 soldiers when we started operations but the total soldiers who died by landmines or got shot were over 200,” he said.

He fled the fighting to save his life, he said.

‘Beyond Section 10′ is a portrait of one Karen refugee in the run up to elections in Burma. Although he lives in a Thai refugee camp he has also served as a soldier in the KNLA since he was thirteen. He has recently become a father and as an increased level of fighting looms in the coming months he is torn for the first time between his love for his people and a desire to see his baby grow up.

The film is designed to highlight the plight of the Karen people and offer an accessible, human face to one of the victims of a brutal regime in a nation under persecution.

Mike Garrod is an English filmmaker who has worked on documentaries and drama since 2000 for broadcasters such as BBC, HBO, Sky and Al Jazeera. He is currently based in Stockholm and London and has been coming to Karen State since 2009. The film is currently being edited in London and is expecting a release in the summer.

Mike is putting out an appeal for footage that anybody can donate to the film and is especially interested in the following: Burmese news stories about the Karen and ethnic groups in general. Burmese news stories about the 2010 elections. Burmese movies depicting the Karen or other ethnic groups. International media news stories about the ethnic groups/elections. Footage of the Karen discussing elections. Karen festivals or holidays (new year?). Karen singing/music. Conflict footage inside Karen state. Burmese military parades.

Please contact through this site or mail@mikegarrod.com.

Mike Garrod

Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander Htoo Htoo lets a 60mm mortar rip towards a Burma Army base camp in an area known as Maw Kee, close to the Thai border. The State Peace and Development Council base camp has been besieged for weeks now, the soldiers forced to live underground.

Snipers have make on Burma Army base camps

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sot

Combined ethnic Karen armies have besieged three Burma Army base camps near the Thai-Burma border to the south of Mae Sot.

The camps – at Toh Kyo, K’ne Ley and Maw Kee – are the government’s closest footprint to the Thai border in this mountainous region.

More than 160 soldiers of Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, are pinned down, living underground, not daring to raise their heads for fear of attracting fire.

The Burma Army soldiers constitute the main body of government troops that once controlled the border with its former ally, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which was employed as a forward fighting force.

The DKBA mutinied on November 7, the day of Burma’s much-maligned election, taking control of strategic points in the frontier trading town of Myawaddy.

Fighting persisted for two days before the DKBA pulled out.

Since then the DKBA has rejoined forces with the revolutionary Karen National Liberation Army, which has been fighting for an independent Karen state since 1949.

The two Karen factions first split in 1994.

The Burma Army base camps now besieged are on high ground, from where SPDC soldiers once commanded a comfortable bird’s-eye view as they directed their Karen allies during firefights.

But the wet season is now finished in this part of South East Asia and high ground is a liability, because streams fed by steady rains since June have dried up.

Now the Burma Army soldiers must make their own way down from hillside bunkers to access permanent water, making themselves vulnerable in the process.

The combined Karen forces have laid land mines and set Claymore booby traps on pathways leading to the creeks and their snipers maintain a silent, camouflaged vigil waiting for a chance to hit their enemies.

Drinking water for mere survival takes precedence over sanitary conditions and the SPDC troops now have not been able to wash for almost a month.

“Now they are really under attack,” said one KNLA “Black” Special Forces soldier.

“They’ve got a base camp at the top of the hill and the bottom of the hill is surrounded, we have snipers with .308 calibre rifles and telescopic sights at 600 yards, 300 yards and much closer, maybe not even 200 yards,” he said.

“They’re [the SPDC] spending most of their time underground.”

The base camps have formidable bunkers dug deep into what is now dry, rock-hard clay and the tops are armoured with hardwood logs.

Karen soldiers said foliage was very dense around the camps and it was difficult to see anything.

Nevertheless, on Saturday the SPDC soldiers were forced out of their bunkers in search of water.

They used M-79 grenade launchers to clear a path through landmines to gather drinking water.

One of the Karen snipers said, because of the dense foliage, night time had become an ally.

“Any time they turn on a light they get shot at.

“One guy lit a cigarette, he was shot, I don’t know whether I killed him or not, but the lights went out and the cigarette went down – that was from 600 yards,” the sniper said.

He also wounded another soldier in the leg at 1068 yards.

“I’m using a .308 Remington model 700 with a mid-range Bushnell scope, a 24-power variable magnification adjustable scope,” he said.

“So after that, they moved most of their troops to the other side [of the hilltop], mainly to get away from the snipers and a Chinese-made .50 calibre machine gun we’re using, but then on the other side we hit them with RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] and 60mm mortars,” he said.

Their position, on the whole, was “not very good” he said, “really not good.”

“They’ve been on the radio begging for recruits to back them up, but they have been refused because three base camps in the area are all under attack.”

Other soldiers said there had been some return fire.

“There’s been some .50 calibre machine gun fire and some 81mm mortars but they haven’t come in on target,” he said.

“They really just don’t know what they’re shooting at.”

The Maw Kee base camp is the largest of the three under attack, home to between 80 and 100 men.

A little further north at K’ne Ley about 50 to 80 Burma Army soldiers are pinned down and “the only place they walk is back and forth in their holes”.

The most northern, and smallest, of the besieged government camps is Toh Kyo.

There too, the SPDC troops are stuck underground, with snipers at 800m, 400m and 200m

Ba Wa, the KNLA’s chief medic for the region, who has 15 medics at 10 different locations in the area, said the water supply to Toh Kyo had been surrounded with Claymore mines and land mines and snipers were laying in wait.

On Monday afternoon Ba Wa was at war with his mobile phone in Mae Sot.

Reports were constantly being called in about an ambush at Wa Shu Pu, between the Karen villages of K’ne Ley and Wah Lay.

A Burma Army unit of about 25 men was in the thick of a Claymore ambush and excited medics were calling their commanding officer to update him.

Terminating a final call before leaving town he said: “I’ve heard five [SPDC troops] injured by rifle fire and one has suffered a land mine injury, but it’s impossible to really know how many have been wounded because it’s still going on,” he said at about 2pm.

Ba Wa said his medics had been monitoring Burma Army radio transmissions and the men caught in the ambush had been reinforcements trying to sneak into Maw Kee.

The reinforcements didn’t get within a day’s walk of that besieged base camp.

Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander-in-chief Colonel Nerdah Mya surveys the besieged Burma Army camp. By night a mere suggestion of light attracts sniper fire into the bunkers they are trapped in - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK

A young Karen soldier shoulders an M16 as he listens for the radio call to move forwards - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

Soldiers of the Karen National Liberation Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, now fighting together after more than 15 years divided, pile into a truck after being re-supplied with M-79 grenades on Sunday (DEC 19, 2010) - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

A Karen National Liberation Army soldier stands ready to deploy another rocket-propelled grenade at the besieged Burma Army base camp near Maw Kee, close to the Thai-Burma border - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

Karen National Liberation Army 'Black' Special Forces commander-in-chief Colonel Nerdah Mya leads his men to a new position below the besieged Burma Army base camp - Photo: Mike Garrod, Imagine Pictures UK.

Summary executions
One KNU/KNLA Peace Council soldier was killed and five captured and summarily executed by the Burma Army near Phallu last week. The dead had their hands tied behind their backs and had been burned.
PHOTOGRAPHS: Thaw Thikho
Source: Democratic Voice of Burma

Firefights, shelling south of Umphang
The Karen National Liberation Army engaged a Burma Army unit between Umphang and NuPo refugee camp near Kwee Hta Ho on Tuesday, December 14, with as many as five Burma Army soldiers killed and another possible six wounded. The fighting took place with the backdrop of heavy shelling as the Burma Army unit advanced on the small village. More than 600 people crossed the border into Thailand. An Umphang local said the fighting could be very clearly heard and residents were frightened it could spill over the border.
Source: Daniel Pedersen

DKBA overrun SPDC outpost
On Thursday, December 9, the Democratic Buddhist Karen Buddhist Army made advances on the village of Phallu. At Phallu Lay, about 10km southwest of Phallu village they overran a Burma Army mortar outpost, killing a captain and wounding others in the process. The DKBA captured two 81mm mortar tubes, several shells and the commanding officer’s field notes. Soldiers first to the outpost said blood-drenched Burma Army uniforms were left lying around the outpost, suggesting a desperate withdrawal. Independent camera men returning from the scene said the Burma Army had taken heavy casualties and only one DKBA soldier had been wounded. The DKBA are expected to eventually take Phallu, while the Burma Army has retreated to higher ground. On Tuesday, December 14, the area was relatively quiet.
Source: Daniel Pedersen

Artillery focus on SSA South
Burma Army Forces reported to be setting up new artillery bases around Shan State Army South headquarters.
Source: Shan Herald Agency for News

Mass resupply
100 six-wheeled trucks loaded with weapons and supplies reported to have moved through Shan State Army North’s Lashio area above United Wa State Army territory.
Source: Shan Herald Agency for News

Mon State closed off
Chaung Zone Gate, a sea route into Mon State, closed by the Burma Army, in preparation for an attack on the Karen National Liberation Army from the rear.
Source: Independent Mon News Agency

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot
It is time for Aung San Suu Kyi to place herself above politics and become an overwhelming figure of unity for greater Burma, the Karen National Union vice president David Tharckabaw said yesterday.
By casting herself in the role of stateswoman she would become more powerful and a greater threat to the ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, he said.
“She is a great leader and a very forceful figure, she can speak about democracy,” said Tharckabaw.
On November 7, the SPDC cemented its role in a supposed democracy with elections widely regarded as a sham, with large swathes of the country’s citizens banned from voting.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, walked free from house arrest on November 13 after the barricades from around her lakeside home were removed.
A large crowd gathered to welcome her release.
The KNU’s Tharckabaw said he personally felt the time was ripe for a reassessment of Aung San Suu Kyi’s tactics in pushing for reform in Burma.
“Personally, I think she can be more effective outside the country,” he said.
“She has sacrificed and suffered enough and this junta still has no respect for her, they could lock her up again tomorrow, it’s [Suu Kyi’s tactics] not working,” said Tharckabaw.
The75-year-old dismissed the prospect of a political vacuum developing in Rangoon if she were to leave the country and was upbeat about the future generation.
“In 20 years [since the 1990 elections] young people have become politically conscious and have built the capacity for a movement for democracy,” he said.
“Some people say they don’t understand democracy, but they want to get rid of the military junta and people must respect that,” said Tharckabaw.
The Karen National Union is an elected body representing at least seven million people and has been fighting for recognition of its people and a say in how its state is run since 1948.
ENDS

The Courier Mail
Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot
Sporadic heavy shelling by the Burma Army to the west, north and south of Mae Sot, on the Thai-Burma border has tens of thousands of people on the run, displaced from their homes.
Intense fighting broke out between ethnic armies and the Burma Army on November 7, the day of an election that entrenched the military junta in the governing process.
The ongoing mortar attacks close to Mae Sot mark the latest onslaught against ethnic Karen soldiers who have been fighting Burma’s ruling military regime since 1949.
But casualties among ethnic fighters have been light and civilians are suffering most.
Since the ruling military junta’s November 7 poll, widely regarded as a sham by the West and by the Burmese people themselves, there has been fighting somewhere within 100km of the Thai border town of Mae Sot every day.
Fighting has also spread into Shan State in the north and refugees are spilling into Thailand from Three Pagodas Pass to Fang, north of Mae Hong Son, a stretch of border more than 1,000km.
People are also slipping over the Chinese border.
The Burma Army generally takes high ground as far as 5km away from its target and fires its opening mortar salvoes at about dawn.
On election day, ethnic Karen fighters seized strategic targets in the town of Myawaddy, across the Moei River and 4km from Mae Sot.
On that day 20,000 people spilled across the river into Thailand, with local Thais handing out food and water to the refugees bought with money from their own pockets.
Since then the fighting has moved about 40km south to the villages of Phallu and Wah Lay, and to the north of Mae La refugee camp, about 70km from Mae Sot.
The southern fighting has produced another 3,000 refugees, in the north several hundred have fled but more are expected to arrive within days.
The Thai Army has been “encouraging” people to return as soon as fighting subsides, but often the refugees find themselves back in Thailand within 24 hours.
But it is getting harder for them to convince Thai authorities to allow them to cross.
Exact numbers of people who have returned safely are difficult to ascertain, even for agencies charged with helping refugees, because after they have been evicted from Thailand once, people on the run mostly cross the border out of sight of Thai authorities so they are not sent back again.
An aid worker on the border said there was no doubt everyone would have preferred to stay at home had there been no fighting, but left because they feared for their lives.
Those with homes close to the border have an easier choice than those deep inside Burma.
Critically, it is rice harvest time and often people with farms close to the border are sneaking back into Burma during the day to harvest as much rice as possible then lugging it back to their Thai dislocation sites before nightfall.
There are no certainties for refugees fleeing fighting deep in the jungle.
Do they lose their crops intended to sustain them for the next 12 months, or do they possibly lose their lives staying nearby in the hope the fighting will pass them by and they can harvest their food?
Across Burma all of the ethnic armies are readying themselves for battle.
The Shan State Army, thought to be about 10,000 strong, is taking on new recruits and the Burma Army has responded by moving 50 truckloads of weapons into their area.
Troops and truckloads of equipment are also being moved into a position near the border with China to the north of the largest and most-heavily armed ethnic army, the United Wa State Army.
Also on the China border, a Burma Army ceasefire more than 15 years old has broken down with the Kachin Independence Organisation and the KIO says it expects attacks to begin soon.
All of the ethnics groups have pledged to back each other up in the face of Burma Army offensives.
Combined they constitute an army of at least 50,000.
ENDS

Daniel Pedersen
Mae Sot

The great danger the violence that threatens to spiral out of control in Burma’s post-election period is that it will be painted by the ruling military junta as ethnic groups fighting one another.
And public perception is a keystone in how modern wars are dealt with at an international level.
At the moment intense fighting in Karen State, north of the military and administrative capital Naypidaw, is pushing tens of thousands of people across the border into Thailand.
It seems likely to spread across the country.
Burma’s ethnic peoples are little understood by the West.
And the Western propensity to link the nation’s future with that of Aung San Suu Kyi is a failing.
The world’s press, it seems, has a problem explaining myriad ethnicities existing together in a nation state cobbled together by an occupying colonial force long gone.
Its reticence to delve into Burma’s diversity is baffling.
One of the higher-profile news pieces to attract recent headlines is the fact the newly-elected parliamentarians’ right to speak has been stifled before parliament has even convened.
On Saturday December 4, it was reported that Burma was undergoing political change according to United Nations envoy to Burma, Vijay Nambiar.
But in fact, what Nambiar said was gradual political change might begin as newly-elected politicians vacated the seats they have not yet formally occupied.
“Government formation is taking place. I think there will be new spaces, new slots in the parliament which will open up for by-elections,” he said.
Nambiar added that this might provide “small opportunities for increasing the political space for a broader, inclusive involvement”.
It is a fact that the ethnics control and inhabit most of Burma’s countryside.
They live together and work together, mostly in Burma with the common aim to grow enough food to sustain them and collectively survive as peoples.
In different regions they have substantially different cultures, languages, national songs, flags and beliefs.
But they are not at war with each other and they are not at war with the Burman ethnic majority.
Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, is at war with its own population.
Aung San Suu Kyi is undoubtedly important to Burma’s future, but there is a future no matter the role in which she finds herself cast.
The “ethnic minorities”, as they are so often referred to, have democratic processes to elect their leaders.
In some cases their elected leaders represent as many as seven million people.
While Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest, the ethnic leaders have been talking to each other.
In fact significant dialogue has been underway since 2001.
All are keen to speak with Suu Kyi, to let her know their intentions, but their decisions taken in unison representing the people who elected them to positions of such responsibility will not be swayed by a single person.
That is not how a democracy operates.
The Karen National Union vice president David Tharckabaw says the Western media’s preoccupation with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is “interesting”.
“There’s sort of a messianic complex developed about her,” he said.
“It’s as if, if she dies, democracy will come more quickly – and it won’t.
“Too much of a personality cult is not good for anyone,” said Tharckabaw.
“It is not good for her, not good for the movement,” he said.
“But I don’t want what I am saying to be misinterpreted, and I can see that it could,” he added.
“I believe she has sacrificed and suffered long enough and with the junta still having no respect for her, well, it’s not working,” said Tharckabaw.
“I personally believe (and he insisted he was not speaking on behalf of any of the organisations he represents) that she should ‘come out’.
“I think she would be more effective if she came outside,” he said.
The prospect of Aung San Suu Kyi leaving Burma would probably horrify many activists in the West.
But they do not have to weather years devoid of social contact and an inability to take action against what is perceived as a great injustice to a great many people.
“She should put herself above politics,” said Tharckabaw.
He said by doing so she could become far more powerful, making herself a figure of great unity for the peoples of Burma.
“She could travel and she could speak about democracy,” he said.
ENDS

A group of rebel soldiers has given Sky News rare access to Burma ahead of the country’s first parliamentary elections in 20 years.

Critics say the polls, which are due to be held on Sunday, are a facade as the country’s military junta tightens its grip on power.

A US internet security firm says Burma’s internet has been taken down in a cyber attack ahead of the poll, raising fears the regime is attempting to control information going into and out of the country.

Tens of thousands of Burmese live in squalid refugee camps in the town of Mae Sot in Thailand.

Surrounded by barbed wire fences, conditions are prison-like but residents say anything is better than returning home.

Zabuda fled across the border to Thailand three years ago with her four children after government troops destroyed their village.

“They told us we had to get out to make way for a new military camp,” she said.

“I was still thinking about how I would pack all our belongings when they set fire to our home. We lost everything.”

On a nearby rubbish tip several Burmese refugee families live among the filth collecting waste for 50 pence a day.

When they come to the Karen villages, they will rape, they will burn and then they will destroy all the crops and animals. Then they leave behind land mines.

It is a measure of their desperation that they consider it a better life than the one they left behind.

“The army came and kidnapped my husband,” said Thwe Aye, who has worked on the dump for two years.

“They took him away and forced him to carry their equipment for no pay.”

Other refugees complain of beatings and rapes carried out by government soldiers.

After years of international condemnation over human rights abuses, the group of generals who rule Burma have decided to go ahead with the country’s first parliamentary elections since 1990.

But pro-democracy activists, including Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, are not optimistic.

The last time Burma went to the polls the people voted overwhelmingly for Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).

The military junta responded by ignoring the result and jailing party members.

This time around the NLD is boycotting the election, convinced it is a sham.

Under Burma’s new constitution a quarter of all seats are reserved for military officers while the two main parties are widely viewed as proxies for the current military rulers.

Foreign journalists have been denied entry to Burma to report on the polling but Sky News was given rare access to the country by a group of rebel soldiers.

From bases hidden in the jungles of eastern Burma, the Karen National Liberation Army is fighting for the survival of the Karen, one of several ethnic groups at war with the regime.

Their American-educated commander is Colonel Nerdah Mya.

With weapons dating back to the Second World War, his men are massively outgunned but they are determined to fight to the end against a government that Colonel Nerdah accuses of ethnic cleansing.

“When they come to the Karen villages, they will rape, they will burn and then they will destroy all the crops and animals,” he said.

“Then they leave behind land mines.”

The village of Oo Kray Kee was burned to the ground by government troops two years ago.

Karen soldiers helped rebuild it, and now guard it against fresh attacks.

Like millions of other Burmese the villagers will not be casting any votes in the election.

“They don’t believe it will bring any real change,” said Colonel Mya.

“Many of them don’t even know that they’re holding an election at all.”

Meanwhile, Burma’s internet has been hit by a major cyber attack.

The disruption started last month and has intensified in the last few days, US IT security firm Arbor Networks said.

The Burmese government cracked down on internet provision during the 2007 pro-democracy protests, preventing demonstrators blogging and posting pictures of the unrest and the response by the army.

It is not known who is behind the current outage.

But it is being caused by the country’s state-owned internet provider, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunication, being flooded by data, known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

Arbor Networks chief scientist Craig Labovitz wrote in a blog posting: “Yesterday, Myanmar once again fell off the Internet.

“While DDoS against e-commerce and commercial sites are common (hundreds per day), large-scale geo-politically motivated attacks – especially ones targeting an entire country – remain rare with a few.”

Mr Labovitz said the attack was “several hundred times” more than enough to overwhelm the country’s terrestrial and satellite links.

Sky News

Help to make a difference:

Democratic Voice of Burma

Francis Wade

India and South Africa will take up a two-year membership of the UN Security Council next year but their appointment to the powerful grouping has concerned Burma observers.

They are among five UN member states, including Colombia, Portugal and Germany, recently appointed to the Council’s temporary seats. According to analysts, however, they have little leverage over the permanent members – China, Russia, Britain, US and France.

South Africa’s last stint as a Council member came under fire from rights groups after it voted against a resolution in 2007 condemning rights abuses by the junta in Burma. It did the same to prevent the Council from criticising the Zimbabwean government, and in both cases Russia and China had led the defence.

It is in the Security Council that some of the fieriest international debates over Burma have played out, with the chamber pitting two of the junta’s strongest critics, the US and UK, against its key economic and security allies, Russia and China. But while China has used its power of veto only six times, it is the US that leads the way with 82.

This conflict of interest could scupper any progress towards indicting junta chief Than Shwe at the International Criminal Court (ICC), an issue that has grown in prominence in recent months and which has received backing from key Security Council players, including the US and France.

India’s admittance will raise further concerns about the Council’s power to take any action on Burma. Delhi’s once-vocal condemnation of the junta changed in the mid-1990s to a policy of engagement, primarily to secure economic interests, and it has shifted its position to one of caution in criticising the generals.

“The fact that India and South Africa are on board probably means that the ICC issue is now further away than before,” said political analyst Aung Naing Oo, who claimed that the chances of indictment were slim in the first place.

“India is very close to the Burmese military, and they have a bigger fish to fry. They also have to look at the bigger picture: geopolitically, there are issues [other than Burma] that are imperative to India, and if it ever comes to a vote [on the ICC], I’m not sure that India will vote yes: they may abstain.”

South Africa has however been critical of the ruling junt, with comparisons made between its 1983 constitution, which looked to legitimise apartheid rule through only token participation of ethnic groups, with Burma’s controversial 2008 constitution.

South Africa’s Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Ebrahim told DVB that the transition to democracy that the junta promises after the 7 November elections cannot happen unless certain conditions are met.

“The [Burmese] government needs to create conditions for free dialogue, as well as releasing all political prisoners and lifting the ban on political parties and activists. Importantly, like South Africa, it should allow all exile to come back and participate in the dialogue.

Concern greets new Security Council arrivals

ABC Gippsland
By Celine Foenander

Why risk your life to tell a story few want to hear? Former Gippsland journalist, Daniel Pedersen went from writing about Sale to exposing the atrocities levelled against the Karen people of Burma.

Pedersen has dedicated the past eight years trying to dissect the complex web of Burmese politics, its military and the ethnic minority groups who are fighting for a share of their homeland.

With virtually no access to the ruling military junta, he has had to win over key figures from the ethnic minority armies to uncover the extent of the war which has raged for more than 60 years.

In the prologue to his soon to be released book, Secret Genocide, Pedersen writes: “This is a book about longing. About people longing for their homes, longing for their friends, longing for a sense of possession. About people being deprived of their very basic right to life.

“And no-one seems to care.”

Interview with Daniel Pedersen

Pedersen admits getting the story out to give the Western world an opportunity to “care” is an exercise in obstacles and potentially fatal consequences.

Add to that the Australian press, which either doesn’t understand or doesn’t see the news value in a long running war, so far away.

Pedersen, who now lives near the Thai-Burmese border, has returned to the family home at Airly, near Sale for a short while.

The reason for his visit, to reacquaint himself with his family. Perhaps too, he is hoping that distance will put the conflict into perspective.

“You’re talking about say, 50 million people and there’s been a great injustice done to so many, by so very few,” he told ABC Gippsland’s Mornings program.

“It’s interesting to explore the human motivation as to why people take up arms against the government.

“In the case of the Karen, it’s not very difficult to see why they take up arms. You have government troops coming in and burning down their schools, burning down their churches and then they go off somewhere a little bit safer and build them again, only to be discovered hiding there and the government comes and burns down the community facilities that they’ve built.”

Pedersen, the man, finds it difficult to comprehend.

Pedersen, the journalist, finds it difficult to put some balance in the story.

It’s not like the junta has a well-oiled public relations department.

“I haven’t travelled with militia aligned with the government troops, probably because you’d be arrested, possibly taken hostage,” he said.

“There is right and there is wrong in Burma and at the moment, what’s happening is wrong and as a contributor to human society, how do you contribute to stopping that injustice?

“How do you create a more equitable world? That’s the first step towards us moving forward as a society.”

Secret Genocide by Daniel Pedersen is published by Maverick House and will be released at the end of the month.

Genocide is not so secret anymore