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Articles from the Japan Times



Errors-To:owner-burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx
FROM:NBH03114@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Burmese Relief Center--Japan
DATE:June 14, 1995
TIME:   7:30PMJST

>From THE JAPAN TIMES' FOCUS Section, June 14, 1995

 JUNGLE DOCTOR' BRAVES LAND MINES, MALARIA
TO TREAT KAREN REFUGEES IN THAILAND

By Robert Horn 
The Associated Press

MAE SOT, Thailand  Cynthia Maung carefully rewraps the
bandages of a young guerrilla who lost his leg to a land mine. 
Joking in a soft voice, she succeeds in making the suffering
young man laugh.

Such compassion - and dangerous forays into the rugged war
zones of eastern Myanmar (formerly Burma) - have earned her
the nickname of "the jungle doctor" and won the admiration of
her fellow Karen people and foreign aid workers.

For six years, the 36-year-old Karen has been treating refugees
at a ramshackle clinic along the Thai-Myanmarese border and
venturing into Myanmar to care for others who can't get to her.

An estimated 70,000 Karen live in camps in Thailand,
refugees from a decades-old conflict sparked by the minority's
demand for more autonomy from Myanmar central
government in Rangoon.  U.N. officials say as many as
100,000 more are displaced within Myanmar. 

Her practice is carried on among hills plagued by malaria,
yellow fever and meningitis as well as land mines laid by the
warring factions.  Casualties have mounted in recent months
since the Myanmarese army intensified attacks in an attempt to
finally crush the nearly half-century-old Karen rebellion.

Maung - known as "Dr. Cynthia" to her patients - was driven
to this deadly landscape by fear.

In 1988 she participated in pro-democracy demonstrations in
Pa'an, a provincial Myanmarese city 160 km east of Rangoon. 
When the military cracked down, shooting unarmed protesters
and jailing political opponents, she and many other activists
fled to the hills along the eastern frontier.

The rugged, jungle-covered mountains have long been a
bastion of resistance and a stronghold of Karen rebels.  Many
of the activists who fled the cities, however, fared poorly in the
hills.

"There were many malaria cases in those early days," Maung
said.  "More than 100 students died from it that first year."

She spent several weeks in the Maela refugee camp before
volunteer refugee workers realized she was a physician and put
her to work in the camp hospital.

With the backing of the Karen political organization and a
number of nongovernmental organizations, she set up her
clinic in Mae Sot in February 1989.  Its walls are papered with
posters of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Myanmarese opposition
leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who has been under
house arrest in Rangoon for six years.

"There are no beds here," Maung said as she checked on
patients.  "We only have mats.  We usually have 30 to 50 pa-
tients, but we have handled as many as 100 at a time."

The clinic also serves as a base for her two mobile medical
teams.  Each team, consisting of seven to 10 health care
workers, journeys into Myanmar for a month at a time.

"It's always a problem to go into Burma because it's a war
zone," she said.  "We have to be careful about the location of
Burmese troops."

Maung said she is battling ignorance and superstition as much
as malaria or the Myanmarese army.

"Many hilltribe women believe that vegetables cause diarrhea,
that papayas bring on malaria, and fish will give you worms,"
she said.  "So many pregnant women are anemic, and their
children suffer from gastrointestinal problems and malnutrition
because of these kinds of beliefs."

She attempts to educate them, but is well aware there are some
things she cannot change.

"Many people here are animists," she said.  "There are times
when we are treating them that they insist they must go and
perform some ritual.  It would be pointless to try and stop them
- that would cause mistrust."

Volunteer workers attuned to these cultural nuances are every
bit as important as funding grants, she said.  And volunteers
are always needed.

International organizations like Doctors Without Borders are
helping in the camps.  And Maung has trained enough health
assistants for her mobile medical teams that she makes fewer
trips into the jungle.

These days she spends more time at the clinic and at home with
her 8-month old daughter, Cristen, 4-year-old son, Peace, and
husband, Kyaw Hein, who is a laboratory technician.

In a slightly soiled smock, fatigue dulling her face, Maung said
she is most proud that she has been able to bring some relief to
the Karen.

 - - - - - - - - -
Editorial from the Bangkok Post, reprinted in Japan Times,
June 14, 1995:

RANGOON NEEDS TO BE PRESSURED, NOT
PLACATED

UPI-Kyodo  Burma's military leaders, while preparing to
secure control of the country, recently paid official visits to
Indonesia and Singapore to foster stronger diplomatic and
economic ties and at the same time build up solidarity between
authoritarian governments.                          

Since the popular democracy uprising in 1988, which was
brutally crushed by the Burmese military, the Rangoon regime
has been shunned by most democratic governments, especially
from the West. 

But it has also gained friends and valuable allies like its giant
neighbor China and member countries of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations. 

Rangoon's newfound allies are governments who strongly
believe in engaging constructively with their neighbor, but
minding their own business, as they do not believe in
interfering in the internal affairs of another government.

Blatant human rights abuses such as forced labor, arbitrary
executions and imprisonment, selling off the country's
resources to the highest bidder without the consent of populace
and so on are not of their concern.  Nor do they care whether a
government is legitimate.  Indeed, depressingly, analysts,
dissidents and Western leaders believe that ASEAN is in the
best position to play a major role in changing Burma for better.

But this is not happening.

Burma's so-called allies have, however, refused to abandon
their approach toward the military regime despite repeated
calls from the Burmese people and the West.

Despite all this, ASEAN leaders are determined to invite
Burma to the upcoming summit in Brunei.  Many countries
have therefore urged ASEAN to lay down specific conditions
before inviting Burma's medieval dictators.

The ball is now in the ASEAN court.  If ASEAN, Thailand in
particular, really wants to see a change in Rangoon, it must
apply stronger pressure on the Burmese generals.
Bangkok Post (June 11)

- - - - - - -

BLEAK PROSPECTS FOR S.E. ASIA'S LAST TIDE OF
REFUGEES

By Jiraporn Wongpaithoon 

The Associated Press

Berklo Refugee Camp Thailand . More than 140,000
Myanmarese ethnic people displaced by government -
persecution and Southeast Asia's longest-running insurgency
have become the region's last major population in exile.

About half are from the Karen ethnic minority, which has been
seeking greater autonomy from Rangoon since Myanmar
(formerly Burma) attained independence in 1948.  They
continue to flee a brutal counterinsurgency campaign waged
against them by Rangoon's ruling junta.,

Others strung out in squalid, remote camps along Myanmar's
borders with Thailand and Bangladesh include the Mon, Shan,
Karenni and the Muslim Rohingyas.

Most of the Karen have arrived in Thailand in the past 10
years, and as the group's fortunes inside Myanmar continue to
wane, few seem to have any plans for returning voluntarily.

"Inside Burma people are afraid of everything," said Mutu, a
40-year-old mother of four at the Berklo refugee camp in
Thailand's Tak province, 8 km from the Myanmarese border. 
"SLORC forced our husbands to be porters.  If we don't want
to, we have to pay them money.11

SLORC is the acronym of the Myanmarese junta's official
name, the State Law and Order Restoration Council.

Forced labor for the military is one of many abuses refugees
and human rights organizations say the junta inflicts upon the
Karen.  Systematic rape and summary executions are among
the others.

Similar stories are told by refugees of the other ethnic groups.

But even in their safe havens inside Thailand the Karen have
come under threat - from their own ranks.

Encouraged by Rangoon, a group of Buddhist Karens last year
split off from the Christian-led Karen National Union, or KNU
- the ethnic rebels' main political organization - to form the
Democratic Karen Buddhist Organization, or DKBO.  The
Buddhists allied themselves with their former enemy, the
Rangoon government.

The breakaway group has since attacked half a dozen camps in
Thailand, burning down hundreds of homes as it seeks to force
the refugees to return to Myanmar under its protection.

Since the Myanmarese army captured the KNU's last major
bases inside Myanmar earlier this year, taking away the
refugees would dry up the last bastions of popular support for
the KNU.

As many as 3,000 Karens have returned to Myanmar since the
split in the KNU.  But some who were enticed by the
blandishments of the Buddhists and their government allies
were bitterly disappointed.

"I wanted to see if it was really getting better like SLORC
said," said Hein Nyunt, another refugee at Berklo.  "If so, I
wished to stay." But on his first day back in his village of Lang
Boi, he was arrested by the Buddhist Karens and accused of
working for the KNU.

"They broke my ribs and cracked my skull with their gun
butts," he said.  "I walked for two days, carrying my children
over the Dawna mountains and across the Moei River to reach
Thailand again."

Leaders of the DKBO have admitted to reporters that using
friendly persuasion to get the refugees to come home has been
a failure.

"So we had to take violent measures by attacking and setting
refugee camps ablaze," Tu Na, a DKBO captain, was quoted
as telling the Bangkok Post.

Thailand has recently been a reluctant host to the Karen.  Thai
military and civilian leaders have repeatedly stressed that they
want all the Karen to return home as soon as conditions inside
Myanmar are "safe."

Despite repeated requests, the U.N. High Commissioner for
Refugees has not been allowed to station a permanent rep-
resentative in the border area.

The Thais grudgingly moved refugees to Berklo from more
vulnerable camps closer to the border only after the DKBO's
attacks highlighted the Thai army's embarrassing inability to
secure the frontier.

Some of the refugees at Berklo say they feel safer there.  Many
are concerned about overcrowding - eventually some 30,000
refugees are slated to move in. There are almost 7,000
refugees at the camp now.  And they're also worried there won't
be enough water during the dry season. Others take the long
view.

"I don't want to be a stranger here in Thailand," said Yannu, a
52-year-old Karen.  "If the situation in my homeland calms
down, if there is no more war, I want to go back."

The war has dragged on for so long, however, that for some the
only home they know is a refugee camp.

"I am a Karen," said Tunminoo, a 15 year-old boy who was so
young when his family left Myanmar, be has no memory of it. 
"I am not Burmese.  I will not return to Burma."

Tunminoo says he is lucky.  He is able to attend school and
wants to become a teacher.  But in his vision of the future, he
and his people are still without a home.  "I will teach them
health care so they can take care of themselves," he said.

 - - - - - - - - 
BORDER ATTACKS LAID AT MYANMAR
GOVERNMENT'S DOOR

The Associated Press.

BANGKOK, Thailand The Myanmarese government was
behind a series of attacks, killings and abductions of Karen
refugees in Thailand during the past several months, a report
released June 6 by a human rights organization said.

The Amnesty International report, "Myanmar: No Place to
Hide," documents alleged attacks and abuses against Karen
villagers and the more than 70,000 refugees inside Thailand
that took place between February and May 1995.  The report
describes the refugees' situation as desperate,

The repeated incursions across the border were carried out by a
by a splinter group of the Karen and, at times, Myanmarese
government forces.

Rangoon has repeatedly denied that its troops were involved in
the attacks.

"These incursions," the report said, which resulted in the
abduction and death of a number of refugees and the burning
of thousands of refugee homes, are explicitly designed to
terrify the refugees into returning to Burma and thus to deprive
the Karen National Union of its supposed civilian base."

The Karen National Union, which has been waging a decades-long, losing war of 
independence against the central gov-
ernment, is a predominantly Christian led group.  The
breakaway faction, known as the Democratic Karen Buddhist
Organization, is predominantly Buddhist.

Myanmar's ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council
has denied having any control over the DKBO.

The London-based group, however, points out that the group
"operates from the SLORC military bases  -- and wears the
SLORC uniform except with a DKBO badge."

Amnesty's report appealed to the Myanmarese government to
contain the DKBO and cease its abuses against the Karen.

"The human rights organization calls on the Burmese
government to ensure that neither its troops nor the breakaway
Karen group, the DKBO, commit any further human rights
violations against ethnic minority Karen civilians," the report
said.

The KNU, meanwhile issued a statement on Tuesday saying
they are maintaining their unilateral cease-fire in the hopes of
holding peace talks with the SLORC.  The KNU said,
however, that they have yet to receive a reply from the
SLORC.

Col.  Kyaw Thein, head of the Directorate of Defense Services
in Rangoon, told The Associated Press on May 5 that peace
talks with the Karen would take place sometime in the next
few months.

Previous attempts at peace talks between the two groups were
unable to resolve the conflict. -