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Suffering of Karen refugees fostere



Monday, March 23, 1998


Suffering of Karen refugees fostered by opportunism 


By CRAIG SKEHAN, Herald Correspondent in Bangkok

Sheh Weh Paw, a 16-year-old Karen girl from Burma whose name translates as
"Clear Flower", lies in a Thai provincial hospital bed in excruciating pain,
her face and body badly burned.

In the adjoining bed is Sheh Weh Paw's mother.

A sister, younger by one year, died a few hours earlier after a four-day
struggle.

It was shortly after 1am on March 11 that mortar shells began falling on the
Huay Kalok refugee camp in Thailand's north-west.

Most of the 9,000 Karen residents fled into surrounding rice fields before
more than 80 men swept through the camp, setting the bamboo-and-thatch
houses ablaze.

Sheh Weh Paw's father could not run. He had lost one of his legs in a
landmine explosion in Burma during an earlier phase of the 50-year Karen
secessionist conflict.

The two girls and their mother stayed with him, but the bathhouse where they
were hiding burst into flames.

At least three people died in the attack, dozens were injured and fear
spread through other refugees camps dotted along the Thai-Burmese border.

Between 1984 and 1995, an estimated 70,000 members of the Karen ethnic
minority crossed into Thailand as refugees. Three years ago, the Burmese
military junta launched an offensive which destroyed key strongholds of the
Karen National Union (KNU) and swelled refugee numbers by some 20,000.

For several years, the Burmese regime has been sponsoring a small group of
Karen Buddhists who claimed they were treated as second-class citizens when
they were part of the KNU.

It was this group, the Karen Democratic Buddhist Army (DKBA), which attacked
Huay Kalok, apparently in league with Burmese soldiers.

What is not so clear is the role of elements of the Thai military. Many
refugees suspect that influential Thai military men came to see the presence
of Huay Kalok, and some other camps in the area, as a barrier to lucrative
cross-border trade.

Thai handling of refugee issues has often been confused and inconsistent,
partly because the main policy-making portfolios - the interior and foreign
ministries - do not have as much on-the-ground authority as the military.

The Thai Army tends to view its role as national defence, and refugee
populations as destabilising border areas.

The handling of refugee issues has been clouded by arch opportunism in the
form of secretive dealings involving members of the Thai military and,
variously, the Burmese Army, the KNU and the DKBA.

Illegal logging operations worth about $750 million a year have fostered
widespread corruption and intensified border tensions.

These in turn have spurred Thailand to try to gain greater control over
Karen refugees, principally by consolidating scattered populations into
larger camps.

Many see Thailand's camp consolidation policy as part of preparations for
large-scale refugee repatriations.

Some camp residents hope for help from the United Nations, and the Bangkok
office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees is close to agreement with
the Thai Government on establishing a permanent presence on the Thai-Burmese
border.

But some observers believe the Thai Government views a UN role as
potentially useful to legitimise repatriations.

In the meantime, the displaced inmates of Huay Kalok sleep in makeshift
housing or in the open, pending a decision on whether they will be moved to
a new site or crammed into an existing refugee camp.

Huay Kalok leader Ms Mary On, a well-groomed woman who says she never
married because she is totally devoted to the Karen cause, said the DKBA
were fools manipulated by the Burmese military leadership.

She grabs an old guitar and sings a song she wrote.

"Joan of Arc, guide our spirit through; lead the Karen to victory," one of
the lines goes.

Asked if personal tragedies such as that of Clear Flower's family were too
high a price to pay for the cause of sovereignty, Ms On remains defiant. "We
have to suffer, but our morale has been quite good up to now," the staunch
KNU supporter says.

"We are worried about the next attack.

"If there was genuine peace, we would return home tonight. We would not wait
until tomorrow."