Daniel Pedersen

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

Dear All

Greetings from Maesot!

You are all invited to participate and join the Peace Walk for Burma. This will be on the 21st of September, 2009.

Please read the following information:

Purpose: To commemorate the International Peace Day. And pray for peace in Burma, Thailand and the world while commemorating the 18th of September 2007 peaceful monks protest in Burma.

Activities:

• 9:00am to 9:30am, 30 minutes of prayer (inter-faith payers led various spiritual and religious leaders).
• 9:30am to 11am, Walk from pagoda outside of Maesot check point to the City Park for some lunch and media interviews and other activities in connection to the Peace Walk.
• 1pm to 4pm, Walk around Maesot and to the border (Myawaddy Bridge). At the bridge the monks will lead the recitation of Metta Sutta and prayer for Peace by other religious leaders from various faiths.

The Calls for the Peace Walk:

• Peace in Burma: no to civil war
• No to nuclear enrichment in Burma

The Slogan of the Peace Walk:

“May all beings not fight each other… may all beings be happy and peaceful”.

If you need directions on how to get to the venue of the meeting, place call Raul at +66 (0) 847532671, he can help you get to the place and give you the right direction.

Please share this information to all.

Everyone is welcome to attend and to walk with monks. I am indeed encouraging everyone to be in solidarity with the Burmese Buddhist monks in their quest for the promotion of peace, justice and freedom for Burma, and we can all show this through our participation in the Peace Walk.

Hopefully, we will see you in the Peace Walk. Thank you.

If you have questions then you can directly contact Ashin Sopaka at +66 (0) 846683556 or email him at mettamail@gmail.com.

“May all beings not fight each other… may all beings be happy and peaceful”.

If you are not in Thailand or in Maesot, you can stage or organize a similar event in the place where you are to show solidarity and concern about the situation in Burma.

You can also issue statement that states solidarity to the said event and the cause by which the Peace Walk for Burma is based on.

you need further information, publicity materials, please let us know and we are more than happy to provide you with electronic copies of the poster, post cards, t-shirt designs etc. Thank you!

Let us promote the cause of the Burmese People: Peace, justice and freedom for Burma.

 

In Solidarity,

 

Peoples Partner for Development and Democracy (PPDD)

Mobile: +66 (0) 84 330 8550

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

NCUB

September 7, 2009

1. The National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB) strongly condemns the “Acts of War” by the SPDC military dictatorship in the ethnic Kokang Longai areas, Wa areas and the Kachin State. We earnestly call on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to intervene immediately to halt “Acts of War” by the SPDC to prevent further conflicts, the breakup of local communities and suffering of the innocent civilians.
2. The United Nations, the EU, the US and the world community should note that for nearly two decades, with the hope of progressing towards political agreements and peaceful co-existence, not only had the ethnic nationalities entered into ceasefires but they had also participated in the SPDC’s decade-long constitutional convention.
3. In the SPDC drafted and adopted State Constitution, Article 56 in Chapter II, under the heading “State Structure” provides Konkyan and Laukkai townships in Shan State as “Kokang Self-Administrated Zone”. Even before this Constitution is practiced, the spirit of it has been shattered by the same SPDC, which had previously declared success due to participation in the so-called National Convention by the ethnic nationalities, which had entered into ceasefire agreement with it. The SPDC has blatantly and unilaterally broken the ceasefire agreements, the constitutional agreements and the essence of coexistence of multi-ethnic societies, in peace.
4. The pouring in of more SPDC troops into Kunlong (north of the Wa controlled territory) and into Mongkhark-Mongyang (south of the Wa controlled territory) is an outright repudiation of request by the Foreign Ministry spokesperson of China, Jiang Yu, who had said that “China hopes Burma can properly deal with its domestic issues to safeguard the regional stability in the China-Burma border area.” The Bangkok Post of August 30, quoted a UNHCR spokesperson as saying “According to our information, as many as 30,000 people may have taken shelter in Nansan since August 8, as a result of civilians fleeing the fighting between the Burmese government troops and the ethnic minority groups.”
5. The SPDC is acting rashly and ruthlessly to disturb the stability on the borders of China and now Thailand. It is the same highhanded action of the SPDC that has made a mockery of the judicial system and the international community’s goodwill in its attempt to isolate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Khun Htun Oo and other political prisoners. We urge the United Nations Security Council members, especially China to stop referring to the SPDC’s wanton acts against the ethnic nationalities as Burma’s internal affairs and telling the UN that it should not interfere in the matter.
6. In conclusion, the NCUB and the entire democratic and ethnic movement seriously call upon the UNSC to take assertive actions by intervention to stop SPDC’s dangerous “Acts of War” against the Kokang, Wa and the Kachin peoples.

5 September, 2009 National Council of the Union of Burma (NCUB)

Contact persons: Nyo Ohn Myint -66 897003432

Saw David Tharkabaw-66 872079296

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

Promise of profit benefits few over the needy

Don Talenywun

Mizzima

August 18, 2009

As the sun sets through the branches of a kokko tree on the banks of the River Moei, one of the last commutes of the day – from Thailand to Burma – takes place.

The pilot of a longboat points his vessel upstream, revs its diesel engine and in 10 minutes has sidled to the opposite bank.

It’s a semi-official international border crossing, a sideways struggle against the current, where no-one on the Burmese side is waiting to check your papers.

On the Thai side a lone soldier with an M-16 casts a disinterested glance at the locals as they pass under or around the boom gate on a road to nowhere.

A few bulbs light the two Thai restaurants perched on stilts offering a view over the river to the small temple on the Burmese side.

One of the cooks arrives, stops for a chat and shakes his head at the columns of smoke rising from houses on the other side as Burmese Karen stoke charcoal fires on which they will cook their dinners.

Welcome to Kokko, a Thai hamlet of farms, farmers, itinerant workers and one of the “tax gates” that mark this region as an international trade frontier.

Kokko is part of Ban Mae Pa district, a few minutes’ drive from Mae Sot.

Across the river, the Burmese border town of Shwe Kokko is controlled by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army – in particular it’s notorious Brigade 999.

Once the region was Karen National Union heartland but as the KNU has ceded more and more territory, the DKBA have seized this place, ensuring a revenue stream from arbitrary taxation of anything crossing the river.

They have erected a small Buddhist temple right on the bank, thumbing their noses at the largely Christian-led KNU.

The land that surrounds Kokko is dedicated to farming.

Vast fields of corn are just beginning to flower, baby cobs are forming on healthy stalks.

Eventually the cobs will be as thick as a forearm, for corn grows lush here.

Beyond the corn, sugar cane is at the height of its growth cycle, soaking up the wet season’s rains.

Come cool, dry conditions later in the year the sugar content of the stalks will soar, but for now the plants are not worth cropping, the deluges of these months diluting their harvest potential.

Even in a good year, the returns on these crops are marginal.

Last year the bottom fell out of the corn market and investors and small-scale farmers alike lost out.

So enraged were farmers that for a time they implemented wildcat blockages of the Tak-Mae Sot arterial road, in a bid to bring attention to their plight and demanding better prices.

Another reason for agri-business losses were the exorbitant “tax” rates being charged by the Burmese military-aligned DKBA, to ensure safe passage to Thailand’s markets.

In some areas, assumed loyal to the KNU, the DKBA demanded as much as Bt20 per 16kg tin of harvested cobs.

For now the land will continue to be used for farming, making a little cash from relatively low-maintenance crops.

But for owners of the properties, like those in the nearby light industrial/residential zones that cluster along Route 105 on Thailand’s national roadway grid, the real money is yet to be made.

Ban Mae Pa is experiencing a real estate boom, with prices doubling in the past decade and a Bt1 million price tag for an old elevated timber home not off the radar, depending on its location.

The old real estate adage, location, location, location rings true in Ban Mae Pa.

One landholder who bought a nice house on a nice block in the area seven years ago for 750,000 baht has since been offered Bt2.7 million.

He is at a loss to explain exactly why, except that his land is right on the highway between Mae Sot and Mae Ramat, a region bordering Mae Pa further to the north.

He is realistic about property prices, bought what he could afford and, unlike many others, isn’t looking to cash in on an overly-inflated return as soon as possible.

“Look, Mae Sot is a false economy, a totally false economy, without over there [Burma] and over here the place would be just another little Thai town,” he says.

The highway that tracks through Ban Mae Pa eventually ends at Mae Sariang.

But by the time the weary driver arrives in Mae Sariang they have experienced all manner of road conditions, from washed out gravel to multi-lane thoroughfares.

Ban Mae Pa is home to hot springs, waterfalls and caves.

Even the most casual of tourists can see a little of everything in a day and still have time for a leisurely lunch by the river.

It’s about seven kilometres from Mae Sot Airport, 97km from Pa-an airport in Burma and about halfway between Chiang Mai and Bangkok, an hour-and-a-half off the main highway between the two.

The region experiences three distinct seasons, hot and dry, hot and wet and cold and dry.

While not cold by some standards, early-morning temperatures might drop to five or six degrees Celsius during the cold season, which includes Christmas and a month either side.

Early this year the Tak Chamber of Commerce proposed a new bridge be built across the Moei River to further facilitate already-booming trade.

The current friendship bridge opened in August 1997, dark days for the Thai Kingdom’s corporate elite.
It was a time of bankruptcy and suicides, with the “Asian Tigers” in the grip of a meltdown that shook South East Asia to its very core.

Thailand precipitated the region-wide disaster when it floated the baht in the face of runaway foreign debt.

The former peg to the greenback was abandoned and the baht went into freefall taking others, such as Indonesia’s rupiah, with it.

The danger signs presented themselves in early 1997.

But by early August, just days before the opening of the Mae Sot’s Friendship Bridge, the government had formally shut down 58 Thai finance companies and accepted a US$16.7 billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In Mae Sot the effects weren’t sorely felt in the local business community.

At an informal gathering over coffee of prominent businessmen in Mae Sot one Sunday afternoon the consensus on 1997 in Mae Sot was “sabai, sabai” (all’s well, or no problems).

They are wealthy men in a wealthy town, and they know they owe much of their good fortune to the bridge, and in turn Burma.

The talk then turns to just how much money is being made via the Friendship Bridge.

One mentions that Birdy, the popular chilled-milk coffee brand, sends Bt35 million worth of product over the bridge in Mae Sot annually – with a Bt2 mark-up on each can at wholesale rates.

A 180-millilitre can of pre-mixed, sweetened milk coffee sells for Bt13-Bt14 in Mae Sot, just five kilometres away, over the bridge, it can sell for as much as Bt20 or more from a local retailer.

Birdy is produced in Ayuddhya, an hour or north of Bangkok and 450km from Mae Sot.

In the final five kilometers from Mae Sot to Myawaddy on the Burmese side of the Moei, the product increases in value by more than 10 per cent.

Business has always pioneered river crossings in this part of the world, whether by boat or bridge, legal or illegal.

The Tak Chamber of Commerce estimates Thailand earns Bt1 billion each month from cross-border trade via the Friendship Bridge.

That figure can be doubled with a second bridge, says Chamber President Ampol Chatchaiyareuk
“If they [the Burmese government] agree to it, we will build it,” he said earlier this year.

The DKBA is ready, the road on the Thai side is a potholed mess, on the Burmese bank a semi-trailer could U-turn comfortably.

The first vehicular crossing of the existing bridge, other than trucks involved in its construction, was a convoy of 20 vehicles carrying 51 Thai businessmen and led by then Chamber of Commerce Vice President Panti Tangphati.

Greeting them in Myawaddy was Lieutenant Colonel Khin Maung Win.

The military runs business in Burma, and only a strange blend of patronage and submission enables civilians to open a business.

As evening’s twilight settles on a Saturday night at Kokko two high-sided, dual-trailer trucks are loaded with sawdust destined for Bangkok.

The sawdust will be used as fuel to fire a furnace for dyeing textiles.

The trucks are perched on an earthen ramp that leads to the water’s edge and their trailers chocked in place with rocks and coarse gravel.

Loading them is labour intensive.

On the Burmese side the sawdust is packed into 50kg rice sacks then transported by longboat across the river, unloaded, then manhandled into the trailers.

The truck drivers’ family members either slumber under a rough bamboo shelter at the ramp’s edge, or tend a huge pot of rice soup, awaiting departure time.

As night closes in it seems the day has defeated them, the trailers are not yet fully loaded and the five longboat owners have gone to their homes on the Thai side to eat.

There is no lighting at the ramp.

At dawn the slow shuffle of bags will begin again.

On Sunday, probably by mid-morning, the load will leave for Bangkok.

This is the slow pace of the transportation industry in Kokko, and workloads of the men working here, clad in ragged T-shirts, cut-off jeans and flip flops, would make a stevedore in the West shudder.

But even with loading mired in such inefficiency, there is still obviously money to be made.

A new bridge would undoubtedly hasten progress, but the greatest share of profits would remain Thailand.

The key to this inequitable arrangement is the fact Thailand at least has some economic legal infrastructure, such as property laws, a working banking system and credit lines open to most people if they can pay it back.

Rubbery as Thailand’s laws might be in reality, the gateway from Burma to Thailand is overseen by men with guns, illegitimate power and privilege.

Kokko bridge

Wangpha casino & resort,
Shwe Kokko

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

 

 

VOA News

Indonesia’s foreign minister has said Burma must release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi if its 2010 elections are to be credible. Indonesia has been pushing for tougher action against human rights violators during meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this week in Thailand reports Daniel Schearf >>> Indonesia says Burma must release democracy leader for elections to be credible

(continue reading…)

Senior commander allegedly expresses sorrow, claims militia duped by Burma’s military junta

Dan Pedersen

July 5, 2009

An open letter of sorrow and regret allegedly from a senior commander of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army is being circulated in Mae La refugee camp.

The letter, supposedly from Myaing Gyi Ngu and dated June 17, 2009, begs for forgiveness and understanding and issues a nation-wide apology to the Karen people.

It says the DKBA has been duped by the generals of Burma’s ruling military junta and its foot soldiers are now asking: “How can we say we support the four principles of Saw Ba U Gyi and fight for the Burma Army at the same time?”

Myaing Gyi Ngu says the DKBA leadership had no answer to this question for its soldiers.

He said the Burmese created the DKBA as a “religious army” and that should never have happened and constituted a “black spot in our Karen history”.

He goes further to say that what he is most ashamed of – working on the rationale that the DKBA is indeed a religious army – that it was unable to do anything to protect monks during the wholesale slaughter of September 2007.

“All people of Burma in the whole world were raising questions to us that why the DKBA, who were supposed to be for religion, couldn’t do anything to protect the religion and the monks?”

He said at the time the DKBA dared not show their faces and hid at home because they were supposed to be “for religion and the Karen people”.

But, putting aside even being “for Karen people” the DKBA “couldn’t even do anything to protect religion and monks while the Burmese Army was shooting them and killing them”.

He said the DKBA was even ordered to kill monks “if necessary”.

Myaing Gyi Ngu said he now knew why Mannerplaw (the former Karen National Union headquarters and stronghold lost in 1995) fell so easily.

“Later as I considered it, the KNU didn’t fight us because we are Karen; the fact is Karen didn’t want to kill Karen,” he wrote.

He said the DKBA was promised an independent state within a year of Mannerplaw falling.

“After that [promise] we, the DKBA, were conceited and proud of ourselves.”

But he said the promise was not fulfilled and instead DKBA leaders were given business opportunities and within Karen State it seemed like “we had the right to do whatever we wanted”.

As a result of this, he wrote, the Karen people learned about “gambling, began to use drugs and ran up debts of millions”.

He said much of the DKBA’s involvement in drug trafficking occurred under General Khin Nyunt (the former prime minister removed for corruption in 2004).

But he wrote the offer of becoming a border patrol force was a bitter pill to swallow and presented an excruciating choice for DKBA leaders.

He said what happened during Khin Nyunt’s time was well documented in the ruling generals’ intelligence files, with lists of names and activities.

So the DKBA had a choice: accept what the generals were offering or run.

He said the DKBA leaders were in big trouble.

“I am old. I am begging and apologise [but please] understand and forgive me.

The letter ended: “May the KNU and the Karen Liberating revolution have victory.”

Financial Times Burmese elite enjoy times of plenty

ENDS

Fear of attacks forces re-think

Don Talenywun

July 2, 2009

Plans to establish a new refugee camp near the Thai-Burma border to cope with an influx into Thailand of more than 3,000 people fleeing fighting in Burma have been abandoned.

Security concerns in the wake of the killing of a Democratic Karen Buddhist Army commander put paid to the plans for the new camp.

Colonel San Pyone, the DKBA’s commander of Battalion Seven under Brigade 999, died on June 26, when seven DKBA boats were attacked on the Moei River.

Six soldiers were killed and 20 injured in the attack.

The camp was to be in the Tha Song Yang region, at a place known as Ti Nu Koh, and built around the skeleton of an abandoned school.

But the Eden Valley Academy school’s proximity to the border, about 5km, and the fact there were two easy land approaches for DKBA troops meant the plan was shelved.

Attacks on civilians are anticipated in retribution for the DKBA commander’s death.

Because of the precarious security at Ti Nu Koh agencies responsible for critical infrastructure, food and clothing had asked the Thai Army to post armed guards around the old school should it be used as a temporary camp.

06Jul09 Update: Border Map & Populations (June 2009)

Thai security forces said they were undermanned, could not ensure security and recommended another site be considered.

All parties agreed to move the dislocated people into the massive Mae La refugee camp.

Anyone who wants to return home may do so, but Thai authorities will ask them to sign a form saying they have rejected refuge in Thailand of their own accord and have not been forced to leave.

This is to counter recent allegations of soldiers forcing those fleeing back across the border and to prove Thailand is willing to offer safe haven in a time of need.

An extreme Burma Army military offensive in the KNLA’s Seventh Brigade region has necessitated a rapid response from both Thai authorities and international agencies to deal with thousands of people forced over the border.

Karen village leaders, displaced along with their population, estimate more than 4,000 people have lost or fled their homes in recent weeks.

Free Burma Ranger video shot during the offensive shows DKBA soldiers torching schools and villages as they made their way towards the border, marked mostly in this region by the Moei River.

The headquarters of the KNLA’s Seventh Brigade, home to its 202 Battalion, has been abandoned and is now occupied by DKBA and Burma Army soldiers.

But a senior KNLA figure said the fight was far from over, claiming the abandonment of 202 headquarters was nothing more than a “tactical withdrawal”.

This has been a recurring tactic of the KNLA in recent times – to withdraw when severely outnumbered so as to live and fight another day.

Diagram of Academy [41kb]

 SPDC, DKBA offensive against KNU’s 7th Brigade

ENDS

Daniel Pedersen

July 2, 2009

One of Pado Mahn Sha’s alleged killers has met the same fate.

Former Karen National Union general secretary Pado Mahn Sha was assassinated on Valentine’s Day 2008 at his home in Mae Sot.

But who killed Colonel San Pyone, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army’s commander of Battalion Seven under Brigade 999?

The Colonel, for whom arrest warrants had been issued by a Thai Criminal Court for his alleged part in Mahn Sha’s death, was shot to death on June 26 by parties unknown.

He was traveling in a military flotilla of seven boats.

Six soldiers were killed and 20 injured in the attack, which was apparently launched from both sides of the Moei River.

The prime suspects, of course, would be gunmen of the KNU.

But KNU vice president David Thackrabaw said the KNU’s armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army, was not active in the area.

The attack occurred in KNLA Seventh Brigade region, an area recently ceded to the Burma Army and the DKBA.

Brigade 999 has a fearsome reputation among Karen villagers for forced recruitment, brutal treatment of its recruits and a murderous approach to the local populace.

But if the KNU did not kill San Pyone, then who did?

There is no motivation for the Thai Army to act in such a manner.

Some observers have suggested the Burma Army might have been behind the killing, citing a perceived need for the DKBA’s overseer to keep rogue commanders of its slave militia in line.

With the DKBA’s transformation into a border security force, senior military commanders will become increasingly irrelevant.

 SPDC, DKBA offensive against KNU’s 7th Brigade

ENDS

A human disaster is occurring and the world doesn’t seem to care.

Daniel Pedersen

Mae Sariang, Thailand

People are flooding over the Moei River into Thailand from Burma to become stateless no-ones.

At best there are only 6000.

They don’t make the news.

Driving north from the border-town of Mae Sot you find clusters of people spread out along the river banks, living under tarpaulins.

The sound of 120mm shells echoes in their ears as they huddle against the relentless rains of this wet season.

And they are simply grateful for having made it away from their home country, a country in which their own government is attacking them with conscripted, dislocated forces.

This is Burma’s ruling military dictatorship, the State Peace and Development Council’s preparation for the 2010 elections.

Via that election they hope to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the ‘international community’.

The preparation of a constitution upon which this new election is to be based was a corrupted affair and enshrines the military as the supreme power.

This latest offensive that drove thousands of people across the border into a neighbouring country began at the capital of Karen State, Pa-an.

From there they ran for their lives, not even stopping at Internally Displaced Peoples camps along the border.

As he drove north to hand out money at orphanages that have tripled in size in the past two weeks, Colonel Nerdah Mya said this latest offensive was aimed at wiping out the Karen National Union, which has been a thorn in the side of the junta for 60 years.

Eliminating political opposition is one of the keys to this election.

They must force their detractors into submission.

So the SPDC have put their military forces to work.

Who may suffer is inconsequential.

 DKBA burns down houses, school and hospital in Kler Day area

ENDS