EU increases aid to Karen refugees

By Niccolo Sarno

BRUSSELS (IPS): The European Union has approved humanitarian aid worth US$897,000 for Karen refugees from Myanmar on the Thai border.

The special funds were assigned by the European Community Humanitarian Office (ECHO), in charge of crisis aid at the EU's executive Commission, and goes to the Paris-based NGO International Medical Aid (AMI). AMI has worked to help the Karen refugees in Thailand ever since they first started fleeing across the border to escape persecution in their country in the late 1980s.

Grichat Lepointe, AMI's Thailand desk officer, told IPS that ECHO's grant, approved Thursday, will go towards medical aid and basic sanitation facilities, and also towards training of Karen staff and preventive health programs.

''AMI has been training Karens in medical activities since its arrival in Thailand two years ago, and the personnel there is now made of more than fifty Karens, in addition our staff of nine.

''The grant, which should give support to AMI activities for six months, will help our team training Karens to help themselves, in sight of the time when aid agencies will have to leave. Our staff will train additional Karens in medical activities, such as treatment activities and preventive programs''.

Lepointe said that ECHO's grant will also be used for additional preventive programs, including vaccinations against diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria. The program also includes assistance for midwives. AMI operates in three camps in two crowded areas, assisting some 25,000 refugees.

''Two camps serve about 20,000 Karens presently camped in ditches along the road from the Myanmar border to the Thai town of Umphang,'' Lepointe said. ''The third camp is located in the surroundings of the Thai town of Maesariang, in a zone where some 5,000 more are in the same conditions.''

But a UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) official told IPS that their agency staff has been unable to visit the large number of other camps present in the area as often as they would like.

''We are concerned with the situation along the border, especially with sanitation. Thai authorities allow us only some visits but not a permanent presence there, claiming that the Karens are 'temporarily displaced persons', not 'refugees', and that there are already many NGOs on the field,'' said the UNHCR official.

At the beginning of last March, about a thousand refugees, out of the 100,000 believed to have found refuge along the 1,800 kilometer long Myanmarese-Thai border, were forced back into Myanmar, according to representatives of several humanitarian organizations.

The European Commission stated on Mar. 6 that it was ''prepared to examine the possibility of financing additional costs which might arise from the arrival of more refugees, as well as the evacuation and relocation of Myanmarese refugees inside Thailand''. Thai diplomatic sources in Brussels told IPS that Thailand has not asked financial assistance to the Commission so far.

The Karen ethnic group, which amounts to seven percent of the Myanmarese population, is the second largest minority in this country after the Shan (nine percent).

Last February, the Myanmarese army began an assault against the armed rebels of the Karen National Union (KNU), the largest of the ethnic insurgences along Myanmar's border. Some 80,000 refugees were already in Thailand before the latest assault, which KNU officials said is the biggest since 1995, when they lost their headquarters in the small border town of Mannerplaw.

Myanmar's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), a military junta, assumed power on Sep. 18, 1988, has targeted the Karen minority ever since, human rights organizations say.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) reported last month that ''the SLORC is systematically suppressing human rights, especially using forced labor... and it has become an essential element of the country's infrastructure policy.

''These practices include forced civilian portering to assist military offensives... and military labor,'' according to the unions. At the end of March the European Union suspended trade privileges offered to Myanmar in protest at the abuses.

Tension is rising in the country. A mail bomb sent to the Yangon residence of a leading member of the Junta, Lt. Gen.Tin Oo last Monday, killed his daughter, sparkling fears of renewed unrest and fresh crackdowns.

Meanwhile, in Brussels, European development NGOs meeting in conclave last Saturday are expected to produce a resolution which calls on EU institutions and member states to press the junta to immediately initiate a dialogue with the leaders of the ethnic groups and ease internal conflicts.