Flood of people expected as Burma’s military junta prepares for elections this year

Mizzima

Dan Pedersen

May 5, 2010

The Thai Army has established “protection” areas close to the Burmese border near Mae Sot, anticipating a flood of refugees as Burma’s ruling military junta prepares for elections this year.

As many as 10,000 Burmese are soon expected to be driven across the Thai border by troops of the State Peace and Development Council.

As the ethnic minority armies reject the junta’s demands they declare themselves Border Guard Forces, thereby transforming into government-led militias, the fighting and the fleeing begins.

Already Mon State residents are clustering on the Burmese side of the border, having made it across Karen State to the Thai border.

For the time they are holed up in an internally-displaced persons camp known as Halockhani.

The Thai Army has been monitoring a major military build-up on the Burmese side and has interpreted it as a massing of troops for a major offensive.

So convinced are the Thais of the coming offensive that two areas have been selected to shelter people displaced by the fighting, one to Mae Sot’s north, the other to the south.

The area in the south, Walay, near Phop Phra, is opposite a former KNLA base, Wah Lay Kee (see article), lost to the DKBA last year.

The other is at Kokko (see article and video), the district slated for a new bridge across the Moei River between Burma and Thailand.

Walay backs onto the KNLA’s Sixth Brigade region, Kokko is opposite KNLA Seventh Brigade.

This time, the Thai Army has made it clear there will be no permanent structures established to shelter people and those fleeing fighting will be expected to return home.

Lessons have been learned from last year’s DKBA offensive to Mae Sot’s north, when thousands of people landed on the Thai side in nebulous clusters spread across hundreds of kilometers.

As many as 6,000 people landed in Thailand in a short period of time and several significant KNLA base camps were lost to the DKBA.

At that time – in June, July and August – Thai authorities initially agreed with NGOs operating out of Mae Sot that an entirely new camp might have to be built because of the huge numbers of people fleeing fighting.

But while a few potential sites were surveyed, a new camp was never allowed, because of security threats posed by either DKBA or SPDC troops.

The new rules put in place by the Thais will certainly eliminate any attraction to the temporary camps.

No water tanks or new toilets will be allowed.

And people fleeing fighting more than 100 kilometres from the border will not be allowed to cross into Thailand.

Access to the two refuge zones will be extremely limited, with Thai soldiers having the final say about who may cross the border for temporary security.

Anyone thought to have links to the KNU or the DKBA will not be allowed to cross.

And no new arrivals will be permitted access to the existing refugee camps in Thailand.

ENDS

SPDC units in hot pursuit of defectors heading to Thai border

Mizzima

Daniel Pedersen

May 3, 2010

Hundreds of Democratic Karen Buddhist Army troops are reported to have broken their alliance with the Burma Army. Military field reports have the DKBA soldiers heading for the Thai border, with State Peace and Development Council units in hot pursuit.

There have been significant engagements between the two armies as the DKBA soldiers move east.

Karen National Liberation Army sources last night said the DKBA soldiers were “coming back, but not the commanders, of course”.

Karen National Union vice president David Takapaw said he had heard that many DKBA soldiers were unhappy with recent demands made by the SPDC and that some had begun to defect.

A split within the Karen National Union, between Buddhists and Christians, created the DKBA in 1994. It rapidly proved a destructive split.

In early 1995 the KNU stronghold of Mannerplaw, near the confluence of the Salween and Moei rivers, had fallen, with Burma Army troops guided into the natural fortress by KNU defectors flying the new DKBA flag. At the time the ruling military junta promised the DKBA leaders they would rule Karen State as they wished.

But in 2010 the DKBA does not so much manage Karen State as terrorise the countryside and milk urban areas of cash with standover tactics, while its leaders get rich on cross-border tax.

A photograph in last week’s edition of Mae Sot’s weekly tabloid Pan Din Maere, or Motherland, featured DKBA Batallion 999 leader Chit Thu posing with his family in front of his new home.

Even the local Mae Sot paper was invited to his Myawaddy house-warming party.

The house is a monument to new-found riches as only the nouveau-riche can manage. It is ostentatious and simply lighting the place for his three-day extravaganza would have cost a fortune.

Chit Thu has been one of the handful of individuals who have benefited from the DKBA’s creation. His Brigade 999 has a fearsome reputation and money to burn.

Until the SPDC started pressing his army for reform as a local militia, Chit Thu was riding high.

The question is to what extent the DKBA will be damaged by such a mutiny by its foot soldiers.A few hundred soldiers is many, but not much of an indent on overall DKBA numbers.

A warlord is nothing without the loyalty of his men. Chit Thu must now be questioning some of his men’s loyalty.

With SPDC troops hunting DKBA defectors as they make their way towards KNLA territory, the prospect of the whole of the DKBA peacefully transforming into a Border Guard Force looks marginal.

The DKBA still insists it supports KNU founder Saw Ba U Gyi’s four guiding principles of the “Karen revolution”.

They are:

1. For us surrender is out of the question
2. The Karen, we shall retain our arms
3. The recognition of Karen State must be complete
4. The Karen, we shall decide our own destiny

This, on face value, would have the DKBA opposed vehemently to the SPDC’s rule. But the split that festered in 1994 to become one of the most-damaging blows the KNU has ever felt is these days all about business.

The DKBA now manages border trade with the SPDC, as the KNU once did with the Thais. The KNU logged its border strongholds and oversaw tin, zinc and gold mining.

Now, all manner of goods, both legal and otherwise, cross back and forth, and the DKBA takes a cut on virtually every transaction.

Its leaders are becoming very rich.

But its foot soldiers, ever in danger from KNU landmines and ambushes, see a distinct separation from the lives they lead in the field and those of their leaders, whom the local media follow like celebrities.

Deadlines for the DKBA to transform into a Border Guard Force have come and gone, and as each one passes the SPDC ups the pressure a notch.

The junta’s BGF programme is essentially a system of creating local militias commanded by SPDC officers.

According to its programme of transformation, the DKBA would disarm, change uniforms and then be re-armed. As a BGF, the force would answer directly to the Burma Army. Soldiers would receive a wage, equivalent to 1,200 baht a month. Dropped would be the original DKBA shoulder patch, and most likely the name.

Such a move would take the DKBA further than ever away from its roots and its claims of being driven by Ba U Gyi’s principles.

ENDS

‘Stop the killing’

Letter a desperate plea for action

Karen National Union

March 5, 2010

While we, the Karen National Union (KNU), welcome UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s expression of concern regarding new attacks on the Karen people, we do not believe that this alone is an adequate response to the current crisis. We would like to remind the Secretary General that these attacks have been taking place for more than 60 years, and that numerous requests and expressions of concern, and even resolutions from the United Nations General Assembly, and a Presidential Statement from the United Nations Security Council, have failed to halt these attacks and persuade the SPDC military dictatorship to enter into genuine dialogue.

If the report fails to load, go here