Daniel Pedersen

www.danielpedersen.org

Don Talenywun

October 14, 2009

Unauthorised meetings with Burma’s ruling junta, the State Peace and development Council, in Rangoon and Naypidaw last year ensured Nay Soe Mya’s ouster from his father’s beloved Karen National Union and Karen National Liberation Army.

The KNU now regards him as a traitor and people who once thought of themselves as comrades-in-arms want nothing to do with him.

Better known as Tay Lay, the late General Bo Mya’s youngest son crossed into Thailand this month, driving a car with Thai registration plates, carrying a Thai passport and doing the rounds of his old stomping ground of Mae Sot, a town where whispers were exchanged in his wake.

He’s still got the same disarming grin and remains loose with the facts.

He’s stacked on weight around the gut, but sticks with his tight, black T-shirts that make clear he shares the broad shoulders of his famous father, the late General Bo Mya.

Tay Lay Mya likes to wear dark glasses, slip-on dress shoes, a nice cut of trouser and considers himself quite the ladies’ man.

Once a prominent figure in Karen circles, Tay Lay has now aligned himself with his uncle, former KNLA Brigadier-General Htein Maung.

Htein Maung was once KNLA Seventh Brigade commander, but absconded in 2006 amid allegations of multi-million baht theft.

Tay Lay has now joined Htein Maung’s ranks.

He brags about having taken 42 soldiers from KNLA Seventh Brigade’s 202 Battalion with him when he jumped ship to work with Naypidaw.

He’s a little more reserved when he admits he only got four from Sixth Brigade’s 201 Battalion, the hardcore crew that held onto the stronghold of Wah Lay Kee for months either side of the new year in the face of constant attacks.

“The Peace Council has a problem with the SPDC,” he says matter-of-factly, as he pulls up a plastic seat and orders a glass of milk at a Mae Sot cafe.

“Two months ago they [the SPDC] asked Htein Maung to fight the KNU.

“We have said we will not fight the KNU.

“We have been asked to change badges for an SPDC insignia, some DKBA [the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a KNU splinter group allied with the SPDC] commanders have agreed, some have not. We have not.

“Some of the leaders have said it would be considered a move against the Karen people,” he said.

Tay Lay said the current pressure from the SPDC for militia armies to “join the legal fold” and transform into “Border Guard Forces” backed by the SPDC was not working for the greater Karen community.

“The SPDC will order the border guard forces to fight the KNU,” he said.

The entity to which he is now aligned, the ambiguously-named KNU/KNLA Peace Council, has refused to fight the KNU and will not transform itself into a border guard force if that is a pre-requisite.

“But Htein Maung [the supreme KNU/KNLA Peace Council leader] has said we must control the borderline,” said Tay Lay.

Control of border territory relates directly to the Peace Council’s interest in trade with Thailand.

It seems this is not an area where conflict with the KNLA is likely anyway.

KNLA Special Warfare Branch chief, Brigadier-General Saw Hsar Gay, earlier this month said border fighting was not on the KLNA’s agenda, regarding it as an expensive waste of ammunition.

The KNLA’s intention is to move deeper inside Burma, he said.

So it would seem the Peace Council and the DKBA will have the border to themselves – and have to sort out who takes what cut on which deal, a potentially messy business.

Peace Council members are widely regarded within the KNU as money-grabbing opportunists.

And the SPDC has reinforced this view, rewarding their desertion with revenues from Thai-Burma border trade, showering them with “gifts” and essentially giving them their own carriage on the junta’s gravy train.

“We are close to the SPDC, but don’t agree with everything they say,” Tay Lay said of the Peace Council.

He, for one, has done well out of his shift from the KNU.

He shows me snapshots of his three new homes in Burma and says he now owns 12 vehicles, one a jeep with an M-60 machine-gun mounted on top.

For the record, the American-designed M-60 is capable of firing 550 7.62mm rounds per minute.

But, according to its own leaders, the Peace Council is not in conflict with anyone.

Tay Lay says he is now in the jade business, teaming up with SPDC vice chairman Maung Aye’s sister-in-law, selling jade internationally.

“We’re working together, she came to me and asked how she could help,” he said.

Tay Lay carries two passports, Thai and Burmese, and has homes at To Kau Ko, Myawaddy and Rangoon, but says he doesn’t live in Rangoon because he’s not really sure how the SPDC feels about him and worries they may assassinate him.

Much of Tay Lay’s cash comes from the Myawaddy-Mae Sot and Shwe Kokko-Kokko tax gates.

“We’re also planning a new road to To Kaw Ko,” he said, and quickly sketched a map showing To Kaw Ko directly west of Mae La refugee camp, across the dividing Dawna Mountain Range.

The sketch showed a rough square, bordered by Myadwaddy on the Moei, Kaw Ka Klae to the west, To Kaw Ko to the north and Mae Lae in the east.

This is apparently Tay Lay’s patch.

He said he personally commanded 1,800 men, the Peace Council’s Company One, which he described as a “special company”, comprising Battalions 709, 708, 37 and 777.

This flies in the face of KNLA Colonel Nerdah Mya’s (Tay Lay’s older brother) estimates of the Peace Council’s strength.

“They have about 300 men,” he said earlier this year.

Tay Lay said the major difference between the Peace Council and the SPDC and its ally, the DKBA, was that the Peace Council’s prime motivation was helping the Karen people, whereas the DKBA and SPDC thought about making money first.

“The schools are not good, they need to be helped first,” he said.

“The villages get 20,000 kyat a month from the SPDC, that’s not even enough for food.”

He said donations such as that from World Vision, which he claimed on September 27 donated books to a school in Karen State amid much fanfare, were welcome additions to sparse resources.

He said the Peace Council wanted to establish offices in Mae Sot, Thailand, “for the Karen people”, that could help administer aid distribution and trade deals over the other side of the border.

Cash doesn’t seem to be a problem for Tay Lay and just before he left to return to Myawaddy he said he intended to buy a helicopter.

But where would he buy a helicopter from?

“From the Thais of course,” he said, mocking me as if I were a fool for not realising the Thai military did deals with outlaw businessmen aligned to Burma’s military junta.

And for how much?

“Four hundred and fifty thousand baht, it’s an old one,” he said.

“I’ll only fly it once, but I want to fly over Nerdah’s house.”

Tay Lay said his motivation for buying a helicopter was “a show of strength in the face of the SPDC”.

Asked about Tay Lay’s hopes to buy a chopper, Colonel Nerdah simply laughed and said he cannot buy a helicopter”.

“He’s a businessman now, he just comes over the border to see his family,” he said.

Tay Lay’s wife and children live in Khamphaeng Phet.

ENDS

Special Warfare Branch to strike deep, hit strategic targets

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

October 15, 2009

When two explosions rocked the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army compound in the middle of the night, destroying a bulldozer and excavator, the Karen National Liberation Army’s Special Warfare Branch headed for the hills.

It was a rude post-midnight awakening for the DKBA soldiers of Brigade 999, but they quickly assembled a pursuit team.

And they struck out from Ta-ah Tah village, straight up into unforgiving terrain of the Dawna Mountain Range.

They had been hit by a KNLA strike deep behind the lines, a tactic favoured by Karen National Union Vice President David Thackrabaw, and they knew there would be hell to pay for destruction of such expensive machinery.

It is not the first such strike and will not be the last.

The Special Warfare Branch, headed by Brigadier-General Saw Hsar Gay, says this is the result of a new warfare doctrine, using small teams and hitting strategic targets.

The targets are of such value that the teams know hot pursuit will follow and prepare in advance to create a matrix of booby traps that will inflict maximum injury and death on their pursuers.

Some of the key weapons of these matrices are Claymore-style, directional anti-personnel mines, bounding and stake mines.

Brig-Gen Hsar Gay said these weapons were all detonated at the time of engagement, and so proved no danger to the civilian population later on and technically weren’t considered landmines.

“They are triggered either by remote control, electric trigger or a tripwire and, provided strict technical specifications are followed, can be manufactured anywhere.

“They represent the premium defensive weapons as small demolition squads withdraw under fire, or a lethal ambush weapon where a handful of men can hit entire enemy columns without expending ammunition.

“There’s also the benefit of the low risk of casualties,” he said.

These tactics will be spread throughout KNLA battalions.

“It is important to standardise construction of all our boobytraps,” said Brig-Gen Hsar Gay.

“Wherever they are assembled they must be identical, so that performance is streamlined and training and user manuals don’t differ.

“That means our special warfare soldiers can move between battalions and brigades and train others.

“Stealth communications and night warfare are also part of our new doctrine, but implementing these across the force means forming a centralised, homogenous programme using the same hardware, so battalions can carry out very similar coordinated operations, even if they are hundreds of miles from each other.

We’ve changed tactics, out of necessity we must make our weaknesses our strengths,” said Brig-Gen Hsar Gay.

“It’s quite contrary to previous doctrines, where we [the KNLA] wasted a lot of ammunition engaging the enemy in firefights.

“We created the section in 2001 and have since used it to pioneer new tactics that will be employed increasingly in the field by all of our troops,” he said.

“These are unorthodox tactics – behind-the-lines missions and Claymore ambush warfare – that are ideally suited to our outgunned army.”

“The Americans used these tactics as part of their ambush doctrine during the Vietnam War, but only as an ambush initiator, followed by a lot of small arms and machinegun fire, or even heavier weapons.

“But in Karen State we’re doing the opposite – the Claymores, stake and bounding mines are the main weapons and small arms fire is used only for self-defence or if the opportunity to seize enemy weapons and equipment presents itself and covering fire is needed,” he said.

“Our Second and Third brigades are using special warfare tactics with great success, particularly multiple Claymore and boobytrap withdrawals, that’s why the SPDC casualty figures are so high in those brigades.

“But now Sixth Brigade and Seventh Brigade are becoming more capable.

“We’ve trained NCOs [non-commissioned officers] and specially-selected soldiers from most brigades, but the better the tactics are understood by battalion and brigade commanders, the more easier and effective implementation is.”

While the logistical benefits are fairly obvious – the potential loss of life is minimised using small teams, valuable ammunition is preserved and premium weapons carried – there are also direct political benefits.

Earlier this year, frustrated by border warfare marked by shelling and heavy machine-gun fire, Thai authorities ordered leaders of the Karen National Union and its armed wing, the KNLA, off Thai soil.

Things had got out of control and pressuring the side perceived to be weaker – the KNU – was identified as the quickest solution to calm the border region and facilitate trade.

The DKBA, allied with the Burma Army and pitched against the KNLA, was running rampant up and down the border, launching attacks against the KNLA from Thai soil and terrorising Thai villages thought sympathetic to the KNU.

The KNLA tactics of small teams trekking through the jungle for days with one target in mind and avoiding fighting on the borderline will ease relations with the Thais as the matter will be considered an “internal affair” for the Burmese to deal with, said Brig-Gen Hsar Gay.

“The border fighting creates the false impression the KNLA is supported from the other side [the Thai side] of the border.

“It’s important not to affect Thailand’s security interests,” he said.

“And it also shows the KNLA’s ability to fight the Burma Army deep inside areas they claim to control.”

The DKBA broke with the KNLA in the mid nineties, claiming religious persecution of Buddhists by the largely Christian leadership of the KNU.

From its days as a rag-tag bunch of deserters it has developed into a formidable military force.

The DKBA is also one of the few ethnic minority armies to agree with Burma’s military junta, the State Peace and Development Council, and its proposal to form Border Guard Forces from disparate armies controlling areas of Burma.

However, the DKBA is not seen to have the loyalties of the greater Karen population.

Its submission to the will of the SPDC does not augur well with people hard done by for decades at the hands of the Burma Army.

There is little doubt a small band of KNLA specialists on the run from a larger unit of DKBA pursuers would be given sound advice on local conditions or a sock of rice by villagers in a bid to render their mission successful.

Such sentiments are not lost on DKBA foot soldiers.

And now, with their transformation into a border guard force, the DKBA are being issued with badges to be sewn into their uniforms bearing the motifs of the Burma Army.

This is creating dissension in the ranks according to one venerated retired KNLA soldier.

“The [DKBA] brigades are now operating independently of one another, doing what they wish, employing tactics of their own making, following allegiances held by their commanders,” he said.

At a clandestine meeting in Thailand, a commander of another breakaway military clique, the KNU/KNLA Peace Council, said both the SPDC and DKBA had plans to attack a KNLA stronghold opposite northern Thailand, across the Salween River “as soon as the rain stops and things dry up”.

Tay Lay Mya, a son of former KNU general Bo Mya and a surprise defector from the KNLA earlier this year, said both the SPDC and DKBA had their sights set on KNLA Fifth Brigade in coming months.

The once-traditional time for major military offensives by the Burma Army is the dry season, which begins late in the year, about November, and continues through until April.

Both sides are now well-advanced in their preparations for heavy fighting.

One senior KNLA commander involved in these preparations predicted as many as 2,000 refugees Karen could flood out of Burma during the dry season as the battles ensue.

ENDS

Summary report

August 1 to 31, 2009

Between KNLA, SPDC and DKBA troops

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Two DKBA soldiers killed, two seriously wounded in daring operation

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

September 29, 2009

The special KNLA squad, formed from Sixth Brigade’s 201 and 103 battalions, took the machines out with two kilograms of TNT.

The depot is on the western side of the southern reaches of the Dawna Mountain Range, about five days’ walk from the Burmese border town of Myawaddy.

KNLA forward scouts strapped the explosives beneath the engines and remotely detonated them at 1am on September 21.

Soldiers of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a militia allied with the Burma Army, gave chase after the explosions rocked their depot.

The KNLA soldiers evaded their pursuers, from the DKBA’s 907 Battalion, for more than two hours, and then led them into a claymore booby trap, killing two and seriously wounding another two.

The earthmoving machines were being used to build a new military road.

The D6 Caterpillar was estimated to be worth about three million Thai baht and the excavator two million baht.

They were the only two machines stationed at the depot.

DKBA Battalion 907 was instrumental in the offensive against KNLA Seventh Brigade during June and July this year that forced more than 5,000 Karen civilians across the Thai border.

Battalion 907 has since been deployed to the Sixth Brigade region.

The formation of a demolition squad specifically to destroy the machines would seem to be an extension of Karen National Union Vice President David Thackrabaw’s declaration earlier this year that the KNLA had to start operating “deep behind enemy lines”.

The KNLA has endured serious territorial losses in the past 12 months.

ENDS

Remnant population of KNU Seventh Brigade struggle on

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

September 16, 2009

Individual donors are starting to assist new refugees at Safe Haven Orphanage.

About 200 people have gathered on the grounds of Safe Haven, many of whom are children.

They fled Karen State, finally giving up their shaky hold on homes constantly in danger of attack, during an offensive by the Burma Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.

The DKBA and Burma Army troops seemed determined to displace the majority of people living in the Seventh Brigade region, suspecting them of supporting Karen National Liberation Army soldiers somehow.

But much of the KNLA guerilla force left the area before the enemy arrived.

They left landmines behind them however, and many of the DKBA dead and wounded, which both numbered in the hundreds according to the KNU, fell foul of these booby traps.

But left in limbo were the civilians who lost their homes.

With no shelter at the height of the rainy season they trod up and down mountains, finally crossing the Moei River to relative safety in Thailand.

For now they are allowed to stay where they are, but the chances of establishing a new camp for between 5,000 and 6,000 people displaced is almost nil, because nowhere is secure along the border.

DKBA are camped not far from Safe Haven, just over the other side of the river in view of anyone from the Thai side.

For now they have not attacked the camp and donors are providing the necessities of life, but mostly things that can be carried so all is not lost in the event of an attack.

More help is needed, mosquito nets and sleeping mats are most important.

ENDS

One DKBA captain killed, two SPDC soldiers wounded by landmines

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

September 16, 2009

A former Karen National Liberation Army captain who defected to the Burma Army has been killed in an attack by his former battalion.

Captain Ta Baw, who defected to the Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council last year, was killed on Saturday September 5 during an ambush by soldiers of KNLA Sixth Brigade’s Battalion 201.

After the former KNLA commander defected to the SPDC earlier this year he was set to work with the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.

He retained his rank of captain.

Neither side considered his defection as being of any great significance.

He walked away from the KNLA alone and without a weapon, yet leaked intelligence to the DKBA and SPDC about Wah Lay Kee’s defences, 201’s former base camp, before it fell earlier this year.

Wah Lay Kee was lost on April 28 this year, when the KNLA pulled out after a 14-day siege that left many dead and scores injured.

Neither side lamented Captain Ta Baw’s death.

While he died during an ambush, he was killed by landmines – he stepped on one mine, then staggered onto another.

DKBA Captain Ta Baw died of blood loss in the field.

Two SPDC soldiers were also wounded in the same skirmish, one later dying.

The attack occurred in the Kanelay area of Karen State, in the mountainous area between Wah Lay Kee and Umphiem Mai refugee camp, to the south of Mae Sot.

Colonel Nerdah Mya, a KNLA commander, said the SPDC nor the DKBA would be sorry Ta Baw was dead.

“They don’t care,” he said.

“It’s just another dead Karen, better we die fighting each other in their eyes.”

Just out of the field this morning (September 14), Colonel Nerdah backed a claim made last week by Karen National Union Vice President David Thackrabaw that DKBA leaders were feuding.

“That’s right, they know that if the KNU is eliminated then they will be next,” he said.

“They’ve got to be smarter than that, surely.”

An anticipated attack on KNLA Fifth Brigade, near Mae Sariang, across the Moei River, has not yet occurred.

After the KNLA’s rapid defeat in Seventh Brigade, during June and July, commanders expected a rapid advance to Fifth Brigade.

It has not yet happened, but an attack on Fifth Brigade headquarter is expected soon.

That brigade is better armed than Seventh Brigade and morale is high.

Thackrabaw last week said Seventh Brigade was the KNLA’s weakest, still reeling after former Brigadier-General Htein Maung’s defection in 2006 to form the KNU/KNLA Peace Council.

Peace Council vehicles, once boldly emblazoned with the militia’s name, still move around Mae Sot, but have been stripped of all markings, some observers suggesting they too have fallen foul of Thai authorities.

Thailand early this year demanded all KNLA commanders and senior KNU figures leave safe havens in Thailand, upping the pressure on the ethnic army, that has in the past enjoyed cordial relations with senior Thai military figures.

But that was when the KNLA held much more territory.

These days the Thais deal with the DKBA.

ENDS

Militia anguishes over slaughter of brethren

Mizzima

Daniel Pedersen

September 7, 2009

Leaders of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which broke away from the KNLA in 1994, are said to be split over the role the militia should play in a theatre of war that pitches soldiers against their brethren.

And in a bid to bolster its numbers the DKBA has begun to raid Karen villages to muster legions of child soldiers, said a senior KNLA source.

The DKBA has hit the KNLA’s Sixth and Seventh Brigades, to the south and north of the Thai town of Mae Sot, hard in the past 12 months.

But Karen National Union vice president David Thackrabaw said the DKBA and SPDC should steel itself for a fight in the north.

The KNLA’s Seventh Brigade fell in June, after a two-week offensive, but DKBA casualties were heavy.

“The DKBA suffered heavy casualties attacking Seventh Brigade,” said Thackrabaw. The KNU is the KNLA’s political overseer.

“They had 100 dead and about 300 wounded in just two weeks.

“Now the SPDC (Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council) has a plan to launch an operation against the KNU Fifth Brigade and also Sixth Brigade [again],” he said.

“But there is a quarrel, a lot of disagreement among the DKBA leaders.

“Some say they are just being used as cannon fodder by the SPDC, they will be just wiped out if they keep attacking the KNU.

“This is the junta’s policy and the other ceasefire organisations should draw a lesson – if they agree to become a border guard force then they will be used to attack other groups or other organisations still carrying on the resistance.

“Now they have attacked the Kokang, the Kokang is very weak comparatively [to others in the region] – it only has about 1,500 troops.

“They are saying the Kokang are producing their own weapons, they are saying they are still producing drugs, but drugs have been eradicated [in the Kokang area].

“It was in 2006 that the regime itself announced the Kokang region had become a drug-free area,” said Thackrabaw.

Asked if it was true that the Kokang had indeed stopped producing drugs, namely heroin, he said it was, and that the Kokang drug “era” had begun only in 2000 and had ended by 2006.

“They got help from the UN and substituted [drugs] for rubber and rubber is more or less a steady crop for export, so they have more trade and they don’t have to depend on drugs.

“Of course many groups [near the China border] didn’t agree to the transformation into a border guard force, including the Kokang, and so they are being attacked, the smallest, the weakest, as a warning to the others.

“But groups like the UWSA, the Wa, and the Kachin, I really don’t think the military dictatorship has the capacity to override them,” said Thackrabaw.

“The Wa are 20,000 strong and they have a number of heavy weapons also.

“Then you have the Mong La, the Mong La is the group below [to the south of] the Wa. It has about 5,000 troops,” said Thackrabaw.

“So the Wa, Mong La and the Kachin should stand firm, they don’t have to fear,” said Thackrabaw.

“They have nothing to fear because within the SPDC morale is low, they may have good weapons, but morale is low and the terrain favours the ceasefire groups.

“The SPDC does not care about any of the ethnic minorities, their ideology is to eliminate all of the ethnic peoples, by hook or by crook.

“They will employ methods of assimilation, or ethnic cleansing or genocide,” he said.

Thackrabaw said the KNLA’s Fifth Brigade was well prepared for an anticipated onslaught, perhaps at the beginning of the dry season.

“Fifth Brigade is well prepared, they have been fighting for a long time,” he said.

“Seventh Brigade was weak because of the actions of Htein Maung [the former brigadier-general who defected in 2006 to form the KNU/KNLA Peace Council].

“It would be fair to say it is the weakest brigade of the KNLA.”

He said the determination that saw the SPDC and the DKBA join forces and fight for more than six months in Sixth Brigade (to Mae Sot’s south) was largely to do with money.

“I think the DKBA particularly was encouraged by Thai business who want to log and who want to mine in our areas,” he said.

“The operation in Seventh Brigade was an SPDC test for the DKBA, in preparation for their transformation to a border guard force, to which they’ve agreed.

“They [the DKBA] have begun a campaign of recruiting, you know, forced recruiting, and if a village cannot provide troops then they have to pay 300,000 kyat.

“It’s based on a population scale, the larger villages have to provide more troops.

“In some cases they have to provide one person per household, that is fairly drastic we believe, one person per household.

“And they have started taking child-soldier recruits and so some people, they ran into Thailand to escape these human rights violations.

“But the Thais have said ‘the shooting has stopped, you had better go back, you can go back now,’ but they cannot,” he said.

“They would be going back to human rights violations, so the Thai policy is also against humanitarian values, it’s very immoral.”

Thackrabaw said the DKBA maintained no minimum age limit for its soldiers.

ENDS

 

Shan Herald Agency News

August 26 2009

Laogai, the capital of Kokang, just 5 months after celebrating the 20th anniversary of peace with the country’s military rulers, is under Burma Army control since Monday night, 24 August, according to sources.

“I haven’t seen any Kokang fighters all day,” said one of the few remaining residents told SHAN yesterday. “Everywhere it’s the Burmese the soldiers.”

Another source said he had gone past what was until yesterday the mansion of Peng Jiasheng, the Kokang supreme leader and saw only Burmese policemen both inside and outside the wall.

Peng and three others, which included his younger brother Jiafu and two sons, were said to have escaped to the north with his troops.

According to the latest information, Peng and troops loyal to him are still holding positions northeast of Laogai and at Qingsuihe (Chinshwehaw) aka Nampha on the southern border with Wa.

As the new base at Kunghsa is just 4km from Laogai, the Burma Army could have mounted an attack if it chose to.

“But they have yet to do it, probably because it is too uncomfortably near the Chinese border,” said a source from the border.

“The Burma Army has instead brought in other Kokang rivals of Peng to deal with him. Apart from Bai Souqian (his former deputy), there are now Kokang militias loyal to the Burma Army from Kunlong, Hopang and even his archenemy Yang Mouliang.

If there is going to be any shooting, the Burma Army can now tell the Chinese it’s a fight among the Kokangs, the Burma Army has nothing to do with it.”

On the other side of the border, China has set up a temporary holding center for the refugees from Burma, according to the same source. “They are giving them a blanket and a mat each, besides food,” he said.

Meanwhile, the United Wa State Army (UWSA) is reportedly holding an emergency meeting with its Kokang ally this morning at Namteuk, south of Qingshihe.

The two town are separated by the Namting and connected by a bridge over it. “The fall of Qingsuihe,” admitted a Wa source, “could greatly threaten the safety of Namteuk and restrict our movements.”

Namteuk is the headquarters of the UWSA’s 318th Division, commanded by Bao Ai Roong, the Wa supreme leader’s nephew.

The fall of Laogai without a shot being fired has brought into question the practicality of the “Not Shooting First” policy of the Peace and Democracy Front (PDF), whose members include Kokang, Wa and Mongla.

“We should also have spelled out what movements by the Burma Army would be deemed as hostile acts,” said a Shan ceasefire officer.

“Now, because we have said that we won’t shoot first, the Burma Army is being allowed to beef up its forces around us.”

The Kokang debacle could be repeated elsewhere, he warned, if the alliance continued to hold on the policy.

Kokang, since 1989, had been under the control of Peng Jiasheng. The Burmese authorities, now that an arrest warrant for him has been issued, is reportedly encouraging Peng’s rival groups to set up a new leadership.

Shan Herald Agency News

ENDS

Saw Yan Naing

The Irrawaddy News

August 24, 2009

A commander of KNU’s military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), who asked to remain anonymous, said he is ready to buy weapons and has enough money to purchase what he needs, but he cannot find a broker who will sell to him.

“We have enough money,” he said. “We are in the market to buy dozens of assault rifles, preferable AK-47s, but it is proving hard to get them.

“We are careful with our old weapons and maintain them very well, so we can use them for a long time,” he said.

The KNLA produces some explosives, especially landmines; however, it is commonly believed that the Karen rebels do not have the capacity to produce high-grade weaponry, such as assault rifles, RPGs or mortars.

The KNLA commander said that the insurgents are able to pay for arms from the income they generate from local businesses, taxation and border trade with Thailand, including logging and the sale of gold and zinc.

He noted that the supply of arms has decreased greatly since the civil war ended in Cambodia and since the KNLA lost its base of Thai support.

The Times magazine in London reported in March that the KNU leadership was losing the support of the Thai government which it had previously been able to rely on for a supply of weapons.

Earlier this year, all KNLA commanders were asked to vacate Thai soil and return to areas under their control.

Founded in 1947, the KNU is the oldest rebel force in Burma and has been fighting for self-determination, autonomy and equality ever since the Burmese central government declared independence from Britain colonial rule in 1948.

ENDS

Junta bleeding Burma dry with electricity projects for neighbours

Mizzima

August 14, 2009

The dislocation of between 5,000 and 6,000 people from Burma to Thailand in the past two months has so far been reported as a military thrust against the Karen National Union by Burma’s Army.

Coverage has largely focused on refugees, people fleeing forced conscription, forced labour, murder and rape.

Video footage of militia armies torching people’s modest bamboo homes and the schools and churches the inhabitants relied upon for their sense of community are widely available on the internet.

Free Burma Ranger medical teams shot close footage as community centres and schools built by villagers with material cropped from the surrounding jungle were razed to the ground.

Now, sent packing to Thailand, the people eat from communal kitchens on donated rice rations and sleep under plastic sheets.

On the surface this offensive, which involved a force of 1,700 junta-aligned soldiers, could be interpreted as a State Peace and Development Council (the ruling junta) bid to wipe out dissent before controversial elections planned for next year.

For 60 years the KNU has fought to defend human rights, people’s land rights and to establish its say in how its people are governed.

The Karen people have a population conservatively estimated to be about seven million, their own flag, their own songs, their own culture.

Since Burma’s independence in 1948, shortly after which military offensives began against the Karen people, soldiers of the KNU have stood as a symbol of rejection of centralised rule by the majority Burman race.

Without the KNU, the oldest representative body of the ethnic nationalities defying successive illegitimate military regimes, other people’s bids for recognition would be dealt a severe psychological blow.

A simple conclusion to draw is that what happened during June and July opposite northern Thailand’s Tha Song Yang district is just another incident, albeit severe, in the world’s longest-running conflict.

Dam the consequences

Yet there are untold benefits to be shared between Thailand and Burma.

The planned 33m-high Hat Gyi Dam will span a river the World Wildlife Fund describes as supporting “possibly the world’s most-diverse temperate ecosystem”.

It will produce 1,200 megawatts of power per hour, or 7,335 giga-watts (Gwh) annually, a giga-watt being the production of one million kilo watts for the period of an hour.

Burmese, Thai and Chinese interests will all play roles in funding and construction of the dam.

The Hat Gyi Dam is the smallest of five planned for the Salween River, but the first of which construction is proposed.

The Karen National Union has personally asked Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to halt construction.

And representatives of 19 villages that will be flooded on the Thai side have asked that the project be halted.

The dam will be built just to the north of where thousands of Karen people lost their homes to the Burma Army in June and July.

Po Luang Nu Chamnankhiripai, the local leader of the Thai group in Mae Hong Song province protesting the dam’s construction, told the government last month that the dam would mean more armed conflict on the Burmese side of the border.

And that, he predicted in a written plea to stop the dam project, would mean more refugees in Thailand.

“The construction of the Hat Gyi Dam will exacerbate human rights abuses against the Karen people and Thailand is bracing herself for more refugees and enormous burden,” he wrote.

Access justifies excess

The access road to the dam on the Burmese side runs straight through the Karen National Liberation Army’s (the KNU’s army) Seventh Brigade region.

At the moment it is a fair-weather road, meaning for about six months of the year it can barely be traversed in a four-wheel drive, let alone trucks moving heavy machinery.

And so the process of sealing the road must begin, raising once again the spectre of forced labour, a crime Burma has been accused of so often that the junta’s continual denials of such practices ring hollow, to say the least.

In the real world, people forced to abandon their homes and their ancestral lands to make way for major state infrastructure projects would be compensated.

But in Burma they have been pushed out of the KNLA Seventh Brigade area by a major military thrust and ended up in Thailand as refugees with nothing.

Back at home their houses have been burned to the ground.

Their farms now go unattended, barring some cross-border sorties by desperate villagers to harvest produce from their subsistence farms so their family can eat.

But even the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, which since 1994 has sided with the military junta and needs to supply workers to help build the road, has warned farmers not to go back.

The DKBA has suffered massive casualties to landmines and surgeons at Thai hospitals have been busy amputating the limbs of foreign soldiers.

But the job of clearing the area of civilians and the guerilla armies they help nourish is getting done and the population forced from their homes.

For now the KNLA has no base camps in Seventh Brigade, has lost its general headquarters and is waging a guerilla war with soldiers sleeping rough in the jungle, sometimes with not even a pair of boots to their name.

Refuge no haven

It was a surprise to international aid workers stationed along the border when Thai authorities agreed in principle to bringing all of the Seventh Brigade refugees together at one site.

The argument put forward was that they would be far easier to care for and supply logistics simplified if everyone was in the same place.

So the hunt for a place where refugees could be housed began.

It wasn’t long before the deserted Eden Valley Academy School was proposed and all non-governmental organisations based out of the bustling town of Mae Sot agreed that 2,300 people could be housed there.

The site had buildings, most with walls and some with roofs. Of the buildings in structural disarray, at least bare concrete slabs and footings remained.

It was by no means perfect, prone to some flooding, needing a footbridge to link it to another area of flat land, some construction and general maintenance.

But it was a beginning, an opportunity to get everyone to a single location.

But when the NGOs raised the most-pressing issue – security – they drew a blank.

DKBA patrols were known to pass through the area regularly, despite the site being well inside Thailand.

Thai authorities said they were unable to provide security.

Too many of their soldiers, they said, had been sent to the south, where a Muslim insurgency grinds away against the Malaysian border.

Eventually plans to inhabit the Eden Valley Academy School were abandoned – the refugees were granted permission to stay where they were, or return home.

But Thai authorities insisted that anyone returning to Burma would have to declare it was their own decision and sign a form to that effect.

They did not want media allegations they were forcing people back across the border into a war zone.

Who’s in power?

Thailand and Burma signed a memorandum of understanding to build the Hat Gyi Dam in 2006 and mutual benefits are assured.

But on the Burmese side the benefits seem mostly financial and therefore destined for the junta, which is widely estimated to spend 40 per cent of its national budget on its formidable military force.

Thai government officials told a July gathering representing the 1,800 people who will be officially relocated that Thailand would receive 90 per cent of the power generated by the dam, but were quick to add the project could yet be cancelled.

Much of Burma’s population relies on diesel-powered generators for electricity, one of the reasons escalating fuel prices acted as a catalyst for the 2007 “Saffron Revolution”, in which Burmese citizens were executed, beaten and jailed by their own army.

For Burma to “receive” just 10 per cent of the new dam’s power load suggests there is not much benefit pending for inhabitants of Karen State – a land kept isolated – and certainly none for those who will lose their homes and livelihoods.

Thailand’s current National Energy and Development Plan, which pledges to both diversify energy supply by buying from foreign countries and to reduce national dependence on energy imports, was implemented in late 2006.

Even at this stage, almost two years after construction had been planned to begin, Thai officials are publicly hedging their bets on whether the project will go ahead.

The Salween is Southeast Asia’s longest river that has not yet been dammed.

It was declared a World Heritage Site in 2003 and is home to 80 endangered animal species.

Eventually, after wending its way through 2,815 kilometres from the mountains of Tibet to Moulmien in Burma, the river spills into the Andaman Sea.

It is a wild river – just 89km of its course, through a series of gorges as much as a kilometre deep, is navigable.

Power partners

On July 30, at the 27th Association of South East Asian Energy Ministers’ meeting, representatives of the 10-member bloc agreed on a plan drafted by Thailand.

The plan, to be known as the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation 2010-2015, includes development of the Hat Gyi Dam.

Sometime this month a committee established by the Thai government, at the behest of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, is to recommend whether or not to go ahead with the dam.

ASEAN ministers are backing the project as an integral part of the region’s power grid.

Burma’s ruling generals are hungry for more foreign revenue and looking to cement their place as Burma’s legitimate rulers, while ingratiating themselves with their ASEAN partners.

Abhisit, in forming a committee to recommend to the government whether or not to go ahead, has distanced himself and his shaky coalition government from the decision.

There will be a maelstrom of international criticism if the Thai government goes ahead with damming the only major river in South East Asia that remarkably still follows its natural course.

But it is no secret that “development” and securing future energy reserves take precedence over protecting the environment in most of the world.

But what of human rights? Will the Hat Gyi Dam form the Salween’s first loch, and will there be more to follow?
And what of the proposed benefits for Burma?

Only the Thai government at this stage can answer these questions and it is due to do so this month.

In the aftermath of ASEAN’s salute to Thailand and Burma’s plans, environmental and Burma’s ethnic groups, not to mention Thai residents who will lose their homes and communities reliant on the river for their existence, issued statements condemning the project.

But Ethnic Community Development Forum representative Sai Khur Seng summed it up best: “Energy projects in Burma should be for the benefit of the Burmese people and not at their expense.”

ENDS

OFFICE OF THE SUPREME HEADQUARTERS

KAREN NATIONAL UNION

KAWTHOOLEI

August 12, 2009

Dear Karen Nationals, KNLA Officers and Men,

Firstly, I would like to extend my best wishes to all of you for the wellbeing of your body and mind.

The 12th of August is the day for honoring the heroic martyrs, Saw Ba U Gyi and all those who have sacrificed their lives in the struggle for justice and freedom for the Karen people.

We, the Karen people, have to wage a just war for gaining our birth rights. We still cannot struggle out of the various forms of persecution imposed on us by the military dictatorship.

Since our policy is to resolve political problems by political means, we have met with successive military dictatorships for several times, on different occasions.

However, as the military dictatorships, following the ideology of extreme chauvinism, have rejected the process of negotiation for resolving political problems, we still have to be struggling in the battle field.

Secondly, I would like to say that in the struggle for gaining their birth rights, the Karen people have been fighting together with other fellow oppressed ethnic nationalities against the ruling extremist military clique.

However, the Karen people still have not escaped from various forms of oppression and enslavement and they still have to bear increasingly vicious oppression, killing and tyranny. The chauvinist extremists and the military clique have been ceaselessly sowing dissension among the different ethnic nationalities and within each ethnic nationality.

We, the Karen people, and fellow comrades must always be alert to all the attempts by the enemy to sow dissension among us.

Thirdly, I would like to say that in the horrendous 60 years journey of the Karen people’s revolution, just as many shining patriots and heroes have emerged, there have been many traitors and ideologues of defeatism.

Using the traitors and defeatists, the military clique is pulling strings from behind to break up the KNU and launch military offensive against it.

In addition, the SPDC military clique is persistently attempting to hold elections in 2010 so as to become a legitimate military government based on the 2008 Constitution, which it has adopted by force and fraud. Before holding the elections, the military clique is planning to transform the armies of ethnic ceasefire organizations into the so-called Border Guard Forces and control them directly.

Our revolution is on the right path and it will never fail if we follow the policies, rules and regulations laid down, in accordance with Saw Ba U Gyi’s guideline, by the 14th Congress of KNU, for wiping out the enemy’s plots to divide us.

KNU President Saw Tamla Baw’s Address on 59th Anniversary of Martyrs Day. It is an important time for us to struggle on with unity and single mindedness, in obedience to the KNU leadership at various levels and in compliance with the organization’s rules and regulations, in cooperation with the entire Karen people, the fellow oppressed ethnic nationalities and the democratic forces for the right to decide our own destiny, equality, establishment of democracy and a genuine Federal Union.

In conclusion, I would like to earnestly urge you to make utmost effort, with the spirit of the martyrs, for the annihilation of the enemy and achievement of final victory.

Central Executive Committee

Karen National Union

For further information contact -

VP – Mobile: (66) 087 207 9296

GS – Mobile: (66) 086 215 0367

ENDS

Death, trade and tragedy dog a common people in uncommon circumstances

Don Talenywun

Mizzima

August 06, 2009

It was just another day for the surgeons at Mae Sot General Hospital, in Thailand’s north.

Overnight, on July 18, a dozen Democratic Karen Buddhist Army soldiers have arrived, allies of Burma’s ruling military junta.

They have all stepped on landmines across the Moei River on Saturday and on Sunday morning they were in Thai hospitals.

By afternoon the amputations have begun, and doctors dressed in ankle-length rubber splash coats carried around power tools that resembled small chainsaws.

Even the doctors have lost count of the mangled, discarded legs.

In little more than two weeks, from June 2 to June 19, 98 DKBA soldiers were wounded and 38 killed.

During the same period, just eight Karen National Liberation Army soldiers were wounded.

Yet DKBA soldiers are still arriving at Mae Sot General Hospital and the private Porvor Hospital.

The DKBA has money to pay the bills and at times armed guards have been posted outside Porvor Hospital, to protect the wounded inside from potential attacks.

There is no accurate overall count of how many DKBA or Burma Army soldiers have been maimed during this year-long offensive.

This is the human consequence of the State Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC) push to clear border regions of ethnic fighters before next year’s planned elections.

What is left for them, to become beggars in Thailand, or go home disabled and discarded in one of the world’s least-developed countries?

The wounded DKBA soldiers were forward troopers of a 1,700-strong force that attacked the Karen National Union’s Seventh Brigade, to the north of Mae Sot.

The Burma Army brought up the rear and provided artillery support as the DKBA soldiers were forced to wage war against their brethren.

The KNU force, vastly outnumbered, withdrew from its bases and left the DKBA to wade into minefields surrounding the empty camps.

But the offensive, launched from Karen State’s capital Pa-an, has been successful in the eyes of Burma’s ruling generals.

As they made their way towards the border,the DKBA emptied 20 significant villages and sent more than 4,000 refugees fleeing into Thailand.

Video footage from the Free Burma Rangers medical outfit shows DKBA soldiers torching villages along the way.

The KNU believes all of the refugee camps along the border are under threat of attack and strict curfews have been put in place.

Internal KNU documents list as one of the main reasons the DKBA launched such a major offensive against the Seventh Brigade was to “gain a wider springboard for the export of illicit drugs and other illegal activities”.

At Well Driving Service, Mae Sot’s only vehicle rental firm, the owner has felt the pinch of the “other illegal activities”.

Two months ago a Thai national and a foreigner with a UK passport rented a four-door, 4WD pickup, never to be seen again.

The passport was fake and Well’s owner heard on the grapevine his vehicle, sub-let from a friend, had been floated across the Moei River, the border in these parts, on a bamboo raft and sold to the DKBA.

Now has has a million-baht bill to pay.

Such motor vehicle thefts are commonplace in and around Mae Sot.

The KNU says the border offensive also helped to divert attention, if only momentarily, from Aung San Suu Kyi’s drawn-out show trial in Rangoon.

Many international observers are hailing this offensive, which began in earnest on June 2, 2008, and has so far spanned two brigade regions, as the end for the KNU.

KNU Vice President David Thackrabaw dismisses this as alarmist, or merely grist for the propaganda mill fed by Burma’s military intelligence.

“We have been [experiencing] bad times for so long that this bad time is not so very different from all the others, some [people] have exaggerated, they are SPDC elements, even within our own ranks,” he said.

“Some of them even argue that we should cooperate, that with economic development, human rights and democracy will come naturally, we do not believe this.”

Mr Thackrabaw said Thailand had not done the KNU any great favours of late.

Earlier this year the Thai military ordered all KNU and KNLA leaders off Thai soil.

The KNU was a once favoured buffer force between Thailand and Burma.

But when a major base camp fell in April, the Thai Army ordered villagers – suspected KNLA soldiers living part-time on the Thai side of the border – to dismantle their homes and depart forthwith.

For good measure, the DKBA burned a couple down first.

Mr Thackrabaw puts the changing attitudes of the Thai military down to pressure from business interests on both sides of the border, opportunistic grabs for cash and incumbent cronies installed by former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra.

He says the Thai Army’s actions along the border do not reflect government policy.

Even Thai politicians admit the military has charted its own course since the government’s troubles began late in 2005, with mass rallies calling for Mr Thaksin to step down.

Mr Thackrabaw says Mr Thaksin’s policy prevails for now.

“That was Thaksin’s policy, to gradually snuff out the insurgency against the SPDC,” he said, to clear the way for cross-border trade.

Asked what he thought the Thai motivations were for Thailand to progressively make things harder for the KNU to operate along the border he said simply “so they can have business relations with Burma”.

He said Thailand was particularly interested in Burma’s unknown, but undoubtably plentiful, resources.

“You know they have never properly prospected, above ground of course we can make reasonable estimates [of what'[s there], but the military regimes and the SPDC have never had enough time, with the communist uprising and the ethnic uprisings to properly prospect.

“There are also some ideas that there will be contract farming on the other side of the border, but close to the border.

“It was a project and policy of the previous government . . . and I feel that that policy is still in force, because when there is a change in government, normally a change in authorities follow, of local authorities, but not immediately.

“So I think that policy still has momentum.

“According to that policy the refugees are to be repatriated to the other side of the border and employed in contract farming and the Thai businesses have agreed to buy everything that is produced, agricultural produce.

“[This includes] sugar cane, beans, rubber, palm oil, so it is a very large project and the present government is probably not very enthusiastic about it because of the global financial crisis, they don’t want to invest in this prevailing atmosphere.”

“But the SPDC wants to make Burma a market, even some European countries want to see this happen, according to their market ideology.”

Mr Thackbrabbaw said he felt the Thai stance was somewhat cynical, in that towns such as Mae Sot consisted of wealthy micro economies practically built on the cheap labour of Burmese workers.

This cynicism was rooted in the fact that if the SPDC was able to continually strike more deals with Thai authorities while the Thais made survival harder for the ethnic armies, economic migrants would continue to flood across the border.

He estimated cheap Burmese labour contributed about five per cent to Thailand’s annual growth.

“But then you must understand that the problems of economic migrants is very difficult [for Thailand] to try and stop.

“You can get a shop assistant for say, 2,000 baht a month in Mae Sot, but that translates to about 100,000 kyat in Burma, which is the equivalent of a general’s wage. A mid-ranking military official would get about 60,000 kyat, a university lecturer would only get about 50,000 kyat.

Asked if people would be able to live well on that amount he said “not very well, but anyhow, you can live, perhaps you can even save – in Burma.

“Labourers [in Thailand] send about half of their earnings home to Burma, to their parents, or their brothers and their sisters to help support them.”

He said now the SPDC was looking to get its hands on a slice of that foreign income and would manage that with Thai assistance.

“Now they’re trying to make it official, so workers have to pay income tax.

“They will have to get a sort of passport to be able to work in Thailand.”

So did that mean they would be paying tax to both Thailand and Burma?

“Yes, Thailand’s will be an indirect tax and Burma’s direct, like an income tax.

“But this is not Thailand’s fault, any country with a large migrant workforce has the same problems, they have health problems, social problems, say they [a migrant worker] suddenly becomes unemployed, they might resort to petty crime for their survival so they [countries such as Thailand] have to prepare for that.”

But it seems change is brewing within the ranks of the DKBA.

Mr Thackrabaw says the DKBA was promised administration of Karen State when it split from the KNU in 1994, but today finds itself being used as a slave militia.

KNU intelligence agents and defectors report DKBA soldiers are constantly fed amphetamines, as many as 40 pills a day for frontline troops, possibly accounting for their massive casualties.

There are indications the DKBA leaders know they have been duped.

A letter of regret allegedly penned by a DKBA leader and distributed in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border apologised to the Karen people for the “black spot in Karen history” that the DKBA constituted.

It ended urging the KNU on to victory.

Defections in July by 70 DKBA soldiers and members of another splinter group working with the junta, known as the KNU/KNLA Peace Council, further suggests dissatisfaction within the ranks.

On July 9 and 10 the soldiers surrendered themselves to the KNLA’s Sixth Brigade, bringing with them 59 assault rifles, an M-79 grenade launcher, seven carbines, four pistols and 15 radios.

Among the defectors were two DKBA captains, a lieutenant-colonel and a colonel.

After debriefing and recuperation they may fight with the KNLA.

Sixth Brigade was hit hard last June at the top of the wet season and again in early January this year, forcing the withdrawal from two major base camps, that of 103 Special Battalion and 201 Battalion’s Wah Lay Kee stronghold.

The weapons, probably more welcomed than the men, are helping Sixth Brigade to rebuild, said one of its commanders, Colonel Nerdah Mya.

“They said the SPDC had ordered them to fight us and they no longer want to, so they organised themselves and defected as one group over two days,” he said, taking time out from overseeing construction of a new base camp.

Mr Thackrabaw said defecting soldiers were mostly so strung out on drugs they would be no use in the field until they had weathered a detoxification and rehabilitation programme.

And even then they might not recover, he said.

One of the reasons these men have become so disillusioned is their leaders’ agreement to transform from an army to a border security force.

That, argue many DKBA soldiers, means they are nothing more than a private security force for the much-loathed SPDC.

This is the SPDC’s ultimatum to ethnic armies still fighting in Burma’s interior: Join us before the 2010 elections and re-enter “the legal fold”, or we will obliterate you.

Despite the Thai military’s pro-Thaksin hangover, there appears to be a softening in light of the Seventh Brigade offensive.

In the last week of July another 500 people landed at a temple over two days near Mae Salid, in Tha Song Yang district.

More are spilling over irregularly as the DKBA seeks to forcibly increase troops numbers.

The Thai authorities are already pulling their hair out trying to find somewhere secure to place all of the refugees who have fled their homes since early June.

The total number of people who have desperately sought safe havens in Thailand is now more than 5,000.
International agencies are ready to care for them, but a coordinated approach is needed and having the population in one place makes that far easier.

One location, the deserted Eden Valley Academy School, offered vacant buildings with concrete slabs, roofs and walls, Agencies felt that with some sanitation work, expansion and construction of a pedestrian bridge a focal point – a new camp – as many as 2,300 people could be cared for indefinitely at the site.

That would take the number of camps along the border to 10.

In principle Thai authorities have agreed with the concept, but finding somewhere safe from DKBA attack is proving a challenge.

Where along the border can security be guaranteed and the site can accommodate such a massive influx of refugees? That is the problem facing Thai authorities.

But the KNU’s David Thackrabaw believes that the very fact Thai authorities are considering new sites suggests a softening in the formerly hard-edged attitude to distressed and dislocated Karen villagers from Burma.

“I think they are becoming more sympathetic to these refugees, they understand that it is not just because of fighting these people are leaving, that there are human rights abuses and an ethnic cleansing policy [in place across the border].

“I think Thailand is beginning to understand these people have to take refuge in Thailand for their very survival.

“It’s a scorched earth policy, burning down crops, burning down houses, these are not just human rights abuses, they are crimes in anyone’s terms and they are perpetrated by the SPDC and they use the DKBA to commit these crimes as well
“So the Karen population, the civilian population cannot survive [inside Burma].

“These are crimes, crimes against humanity,” he said.

ENDS

 

The misery of an unfortunate birthplace

Dan Pedersen

July 30, 2009

More than 200 people are living in pitiful conditions at the Safe Haven Orphanage on the Thai-Burma border.

About three quarters of them are newly-arrived refugees forced across the border by a rapacious campaign of forced recruitment into the armed forces of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, allies of Burma’s ruling military junta.

Most of them are children.

They live under thin plastic sheeting suspended over festering mud puddles alive with mosquitoes and larvae.

Until recently many of the children were suffering from malaria, but the Thai Public Health Ministry treated them.
But that does not stop new infections.

Water for the settlement is drawn from the Moei River, just below its confluence with the Salween River.

Both rivers are churning after two weeks of almost continuous rain and with no chemical treatment or filtering process for drinking water, the children are falling foul of all manner of ailments.

“One little girl has worms in her brain,” said an exasperated 25-year-old Brazilian woman who volunteered to teach English when she saw the already-poor conditions the children were enduring.

And that was before more than 150 more turned up.

Natcha Kehapeerasit, the displaced former principal of a school in Burma’s Karen State, is heavily pregnant but continues teaching her pupils who have come with her across the river.

“We have made a new school,” she says rubbing her belly as rain streams off the thatch roof of her tiny new home and gesturing to some bamboo poles holding up sheets of blue and white striped plastic.

Natcha says the children will likely call this place home until March 2010, when another school year ends.

Asked what is needed she replies simply: “Food, something to write with and notebooks.”

There is no mention of qualified teachers or extra clothing and the food requirements she reels off are simply rice, fish paste, salt and dried chillies, “because Karen people, they love chillies very much”.

What about sugar?

“No we don’t need sugar,” says Natcha firmly, “we have no need for it”.

There is no spare ground at the orphanage – rocks that jut from the earth and are too big to dig up take up the only space not occupied by people.

There is a narrow access track that winds through the rock outcrops.

It is in surprisingly good condition, but only because the myriad non-governmental organisations operating out of the nearest major town, Mae Sot, don’t come here.

“The Thailand-Burma Border Consortium gave us some of the plastic sheets,” said the Brazilian teacher, who washes in the river along with everyone else.

“But we haven’t seen UNHCR or anyone else like that, they just don’t come.”

About 45 minutes’ drive south, NGO 4WD vehicles adorned with logos from agencies the world over buzz in and out of Mae La refugee camp, delivering supplies and tending their particular projects.

Many refuse to cooperate with others when it comes to coordinating delivery of aid, insisting on delivering it personally.

The end result of such recalcitrance is duplication in some instances, while the children at Safe Haven Orphanage sleep with the mosquitoes, don’t have enough to eat and drink muddy water.

Money is urgently needed to buy food and essential items for basic living.
This is an open appeal to anyone who can afford to help these people, victims of an ongoing campaign of genocide to force them from their home country.

ENDS

Villagers flee as DKBA attempts to press local population into military service

Don Talenywun

July 29, 2009

Whether more than 4,000 displaced villagers from Burma will be able to return home in the near future lies in the hands of the armies locked in battle in Karen State, says the latest situation report from an international agency.

Penned on July 23, the report’s author said another 200 people had fled into Thailand in the 24 hours before the report was written.

Reports from other sources suggested more than 400 people had crossed the Moei River in the 48 hours before that.

Behind this exodus is a push by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, an allied militia of Burma’s ruling military junta, to upsize to become a private border security force for Burma’s State Peace and Development Council.

The DKBA is looking to bolster troop numbers from 3,000 to 6,000 to fulfill its obligations to the SPDC according to a new agreement recently signed.

To gain these numbers a campaign of forced recruitment has begun in the Karen National Liberation Army’s Seventh Brigade region, which the DKBA and SPDC now control.

Villagers want no part of fighting with the DKBA, but many cannot afford to pay the cost of avoiding conscription and so they flee.

The KNLA abandoned significant, long-standing base camps in Seventh Brigade, separating into small bands of guerilla fighters, because its soldiers did not want to fight their own people.

The base camps no doubt would have been taken by the DKBA/SPDC alliance anyway, but more lives would have been lost.

As it stands most injuries, in the hundreds, and deaths, perhaps totaling more than 100 throughout the campaign’s duration, have come as a result of landmines.

All sides in this theatre of war use landmines.

Even the DKBA, which wants to draw on the human resource pool currently languishing in Thailand, has told Thai authorities it is not safe for civilians to make their way home because there are too many landmines.

Most of the newly-arrived refugees are in the Tha Song Yang region, to the north of Mae Sot.

The Tha Song Yang District Committee – consisting of district officials, border police, the military and UNHCR officials – has now decided to leave people where they are, in six relocation sites close to the Moei River, until the end of the wet season.

That makes it harder for non-governmental organisations to properly supply those dislocated people with emergency rations and does not take into account small clusters of people who have not gravitated to those six main sites.

Thai authorities are reticent to allow a new camp to be established – something major NGOs want – because it will add to civil administration duties, the military cannot ensure security and, as a nation, Thailand would have to acknowledge the Burmese junta is waging war against its own people.

ENDS

 

Battle report

June 1 to 30, 2009

Between KNLA and SPDC army troops

KNLA Areas	No. of clashes	SPDC		KNLA
				Items captured				Lost
		KIA	WIA	KIA	A-Rifle			Hand grenade
Bde-1	-	-	-	-	-			-
Bde-2	9	9	20	-	-			-
Bde-3	-	-	-	-	-			-
Bde-4	5	11	15	-	1			-
Bde-5	40	17	30	-	-			-
Bde-6	2	5	4	1	-			6
Bde-7	9	13	26	-	-			-
GHQ	4	1	4	-	-			-
Total	69	56	99	1	1			6

 

Between KNLA and DKBA troops

KNLA Areas	No. of clashes	DKBA			KNLA
					Items captured
		KIA	WIA	Surrendered	WIA	M-16	RPG-7	Rfl rounds
Bde-1	1	1	1	1	-	1	-	100
Bde-2	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Bde-3	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Bde-4		-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Bde-5	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Bde-6	1	1	1	2	-	1	1	114
Bde-7	59	100	218	-	8	-	-	-
GHQ	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Total	69	102	220	3	8	2	1	214

 

Note:

Of the KNLA wounded in Bde-7 in actions against the DKB , 6 were due to accidents.

• Among the enemy KIA in Bde-2 were one brigadier general and one Bn commander
• In Bde-4, among the enemy KIA were one sergeant major and 3 sergeants
• In Bde-6, 3 DKBA trucks hauling rice were destroyed
• In Bde-7, among the DKBA WIA were one company 2IC, one 2nd Lt. & one corporal. Among the SPDC troops KIA was one sergeant. Among the WIA were one sergeant and one corporal

Abbreviations:
Bde = Brigade; GHQ = General Headquarters; MA-1, MA-2, MA-3, K-3 etc. = Myanmar Army assault rifles, designed by China and manufactured by SPDC; T-ceiver =Radio transceiver; M-79 = 40 mm grenade launcher of US origin; LM G = Light Machine Gun; AK = Assault rifle of Russian origin; RPG=Rocket-propelled Grenade Launcher; M-16 = Assault rifle of US origin; Bn = Battalion; Coy =Company; 2 IC = Second in Command; Maj. = Major; Capt.= Captain; Lt. = Lieutenant; 2nd Lt. = Second lieutenant; KIA = Killed in action; WIA = Wounded in Action.

Locations of KNLA Brigades:
Bde-1, Thaton District
Bde-2, Toungoo District
Bde-3, Nyaunglaybin District
Bde-4, Mergue-Tavoy District
Bde-5, Papun district
Bde-6, Kawkareik district
Bde-7, Pa-an District
GHQ Battalions, Kawkareik and Pa-an Districts.

ENDS