Shans fleeing Myanmarese army harassment
Shans fleeing Myanmarese army harassment
BANGKOK (Reuter): Hundreds of people are fleeing northeastern Myanmar's Shan state claiming harassment by Myanmarese government troops who moved into the area after drug lord Khun Sa surrendered this month, Thai police said yesterday.
Many of the people, most of them from Myanmar's Shan ethnic minority, have slipped across the border into Thailand over the past three weeks, Thai border police said.
Thousands of Myanmarese government troops have moved into the area since the beginning of the month, taking over bases and villages previously under the control of Khun Sa's guerrilla force.
The Myanmarese troops have been requisitioning villagers' homes and animals and other supplies of food, a Shan guerrilla officer said.
"There are no military barracks in Pieng Luang so the Burmese (Myanmarese) soldiers have taken over people's homes," the Shan officer said, referring to a former Khun Sa village on the border with Thailand.
"They come in and loot the people and kill their animals to eat," he said. "We heard that one woman was raped and killed in Mae Aw last week," he said, referring to another border village.
A Thai border policeman said an estimated 1,000 villagers had slipped across the border into Thailand from Pieng Luang and hundreds more, including subsistence-level minority hill people, were hiding out just inside Myanmar, waiting for an opportunity to cross into Thailand.
The Myanmarese army has a long record of harsh treatment of civilians, especially ethnic minorities in remote frontier areas.
United Nations human rights officials and rights groups such as Amnesty International have documented numerous cases of rights abuses by Myanmarese troops including summary executions and rape.
Khun Sa and his Mong Tai Army (MTA) officially surrendered on Jan. 7 and Myanmarese troops have been consolidating their positions in former MTA base areas since then.
Meanwhile, twenty people were killed in clashes between rival factions of Karens in southeastern Myanmar at the weekend, Thai border police said yesterday.
About 150 Karen National Union (KNU) troops launched a surprise attack on a camp belonging to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) on Saturday, police said.
Thai border police, monitoring field radio communications from the area, said 15 DKBA members were killed and more than two dozen were wounded in the attack.
Five KNU guerrillas were killed, police said.
The DKBA was formed by Karen rebels who broke away from the anti-Yangon KNU in December 1994 and joined forces with Myanmarese government troops.
The faction has launched regular cross-border raids on Karen refugee camps in Thailand in an attempt to force the inmates, most of them KNU supporters, back to government-controlled areas in Myanmar.
A KNU source said the weekend attack was in response to a recent raid by the DKBA on a refugee camp in Thailand when they executed a retired KNU commander.
The KNU has been fighting for autonomy since 1949 and is the only ethnic minority guerrilla force in Myanmar which has yet to agree a cease-fire with the Rangoon government.
Last month a KNU delegation traveled to Yangon for peace negotiations for the first time since 1963.
The KNU source said he hoped the weekend attack would not jeopardize the peace talks.
"The attack was revenge against the DKBA who crossed the border to kill our brothers in the camps. We have no intention of harming Burmese troops," the guerrilla officer told Reuters.