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.