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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BURMA RELATED NEWS - January - 21, 2001. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HEADLINE
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- AFP - Refugees pay the price for Myanmar's war
with ethnic minorities
AP - Bangladesh, Myanmar Agree To Defuse Border
Conflict
Xinhua - 34 Kayin Armed Group Members Surrender
to Myanmar Govt
Star -Bulletin - Hilo church aids
persecuted Karen people of Myanmar
The Straits Times - God's Army kids look to a new life
Sunday, January 21 12:45 PM SGT
Refugees pay the price for Myanmar's war with ethnic minorities BO WI, Thailand, Jan 21 (AFP) -
In this dusty encampment of tarpaulin tents and smouldering fires not far from
the Myanmar border, a young Karen man describes life before Myanmar troops set
fire to his village and sent his family running for their lives.
"It was very different. I didn't have to hide, I didn't have to move, and I
had plenty of food to eat," says 24-year-old Perd, who like the others here is
dirty, dressed in ragged clothes, and covered in insect bites.
But things turned harrowing for Perd and more than 100 of his fellow
villagers from Meng No Ki, across the border in military-run Myanmar's Karen
state.
The subsistence farmers became nomadic, managing to outrun troops in the
jungle for four years before their long and exhausting journey saw them arrive
in neighbouring Thailand on December 20.
They are the latest wave of refugees from the ongoing guerrilla war between
ethnic Karen rebels and the Myanmar junta that has pushed some 110,000 people
into camps first set up along the border in the mid-1980s.
Perd says Myanmar soldiers opened fire on his village repeatedly for two
months before it was torched and his family and friends took refuge in the
malaria-infested jungle.
The last straw came when one villager was shot dead and a 17 year-old woman
was taken by the troops, her fate unknown even as her family continues to wander
the jungle in search of her.
"We had to hide in the jungle and in the mountains. We had to hide to save
our lives."
As the villagers stumbled desperately through the undergrowth, many of
their old and sick couldn't keep up or simply lost their way.
"Forty of 50 people were lost. I don't know if I'll ever see them again,"
says the young man who, like many malnourished Karen, appears years younger than
his real age.
When they convened at this encampment in the mountainous border region of
Thailand's Ratchaburi province, the refugees numbered 81 people, with 18
families among them.
As to why his village was attacked, the boyish-looking young man stared at
the ground in bewilderment. "I don't know why they shot at us."
But sporadic fighting between Myanmar forces and the Karen National Union
(KNU) and its splinter groups -- all fighting for autonomy in the military-run
country -- is the likely reason.
The cherub-like leaders of one such group, known as the God's Army,
surrendered with 15 of their followers to Thai authorities this week.
Johnny and Luther Htoo were reputed by the group's poorly armed fighters to
possess magical powers that made them invincible against Myanmar troops.
The adolescent twin brothers were a symbol of hope for people who had
little else to arm them against Yangon's battle-hardened forces.
Like the grubby children and haggard adults who listlessly gather bamboo
kindling at Bo Wi, the God's Army band now seem destined to end up at one of the
11 border camps that house those who have fled the violence.
Some 84,000 of those living there are ethnic Karen, and camps have been
known to come under attack by Myanmar troops who suspect they are harboring or
supplying rebel insurgents across the border.
Many refugees cross the border briefly to avoid short outburts of violence,
only to return to Myanmar a few weeks later to resume their livelihoods.
Others -- particulary the sick and old -- settle in the Thai camps where
aid groups supply them with rudimentary facilities and basic food and
medicine.
The Bo Wi villagers may well be sent to the nearby Tham Hin camp, derided
by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees chief Sadako Ogata last year as
one of the worst she had seen in the world.
"I'm told by colleagues that some camps are better and some are worse. If
there are any worse, I can't imagine," she said.
"The camp is much, much too crowded and the shelter situation is really
substandard ... It is quite depressing."
Thailand was stung by the comment, saying authorities had done all they
could to help refugees and protect their human rights.
"The refugees in the camp are in similar or better conditions than the Thai
people who live outside the camp," the foreign ministry said at the time.
Despite pressure from Thailand which is fed up with shouldering
responsibility for the massive number of displaced, conditions in Myanmar
preclude the start of a repatriation program.
"The two countries have to be conducive. The time is not right for
repatriation," says UNHCR senior regional liason officer Indrika Ratwatte.
For now Thai army troops with camouflage uniforms and automatic rifles
stand watch over the villagers at Bo Wi and their cluster of ramshackle tents
with bamboo frames.
"I miss my home," says Bert, his eyes hollow and weary. "But I don't dare
go back."
Sunday January 21, 6:21 PM
Bangladesh, Myanmar Agree To Defuse Border Conflict TEKNAF, Bangladesh (AP)--Bangladesh and Myanmar will form a joint team
to verify if disputed constructions have been erected on a frontier river, a
Bangladeshi official said Sunday.
The decision came during a weekend flag meeting of border officials from
the two neighbors at the Myanmar frontier town of Maungdwe.
Senior officials from the two countries will jointly inspect the River Naaf
to verify if there are any embankments being built by either country, Lt. Col.
Rafiqur Rahman Bhuiyan, head of Bangladesh's team at Saturday's meeting told
reporters at this frontier town.
No date for the joint inspection has been set, he said.
Border troops of the two countries exchanged fire Jan. 8 after Myanmar
built an embankment on the river that forms part of the 273 kilometer frontier
they share.
The skirmish led to a buildup of forces by the two countries. Thousands of
Bangladeshis fled their homes fearing an outbreak of more clashes in the region,
320 kilometers south of Dhaka, the capital.
At Saturday's meeting, Myanmar accused Bangladesh of building mud
embankments on the river for farming shrimps.
"The two sides will now verify each other's allegations," Rahman
said.
34 Kayin Armed Group Members
Surrender to Myanmar Govt
2001.01.21 10:24:21 YANGON, January 21 (Xinhuanet)
-- Thirty-four members of the Kayin National Union (KNU), Myanmar's largest
anti-government ethnic armed group which has not made peace yet with the
government, surrendered to government forces earlier this month,
official newspaper The New Light of Myanmar reported Sunday.
The 34 KNU members, led by platoon commander Hwayt Laphe, " exchanged arms
for peace" in Dawei township, the country's southern Tanintharyi division,
on January 9, the paper said, adding that they brought along with them 10
assorted weapons and 198 rounds of ammunition.
The KNU has been operating for over five decades fighting the
government since the early days of Myanmar's independence.
The KNU lost its headquarters at Manerplaw and Kawmoora in
Myanmar-Thai border area during an attack by its splinter group, the
Democratic Kayin Buddhist Organization backed by the government, in
January-February 1995.
Although four rounds of peace talks have been held between the KNU and the
government since December 1995, peace has not yet been achieved between the two
sides.
According to official information, up to now, 17 anti- government ethnic
armed groups as well as the Mong Tai Army, led by former drug warlord Khun
Sa, have made peace with the government with cease-fire agreements
respectively reached between them.
Saturday, January 20, 2001
RELIGION - Hilo church aids persecuted Karen people of Myanmar By Rod Thompson Star-Bulletin HILO -- The members of a Hilo church are on a mission: to take help to a
persecuted ethnic minority on the border of Myanmar and Thailand.
Since the late 1940s when the British left Myanmar, then known as Burma,
the Karen people (pronounced ka-REN) have been seeking a measure of
self-government, said Dale and Carol Wilson of the Hilo Missionary Church.
Myanmar government troops have terrorized the Karens, sending 115,000
across the border into Thailand. They live in 16 refugee camps. In September the
Thai government set a three-year deadline for them to return to Myanmar, said
Carol Wilson, a teacher.
"What these people themselves feel is, they are doomed," she said. During a
stay last year at a camp with 20,000 people, the children told her, "They are
going to send us back to face our enemy."
Myanmar forces frequently use Karen men as laborers, then kill them. They rape Karen women and sell Karen girls into prostitution in Thailand, she said. The Hilo Missionary Church became involved because many Karens are
Christian, she said.
A Central Intelligence Agency Web site says Karens make up 7 percent of the
population of Myanmar, or about 2.9 million people.
A Karen Internet site, www.karen.org,
says 30 percent of Karens are Christian.
After adopting the Karens for missionary work last year, the Hilo church
sent a group of 30 people to visit them in Thailand in late June, followed by a
group of 12 in August.
Harry Char, former head of the church's missionary committee, found an
orderly community of huts scattered on a hillside with a school and churches.
The buildings had dirt floors and leaky grass roofs, but the people seemed
healthy.
But Dale Wilson, a former Army major and military historian, said as many
as a million Karens and other ethnic groups are "internally displaced" within
Myanmar because of Myanmar army activity. Some live hand-to-mouth, he said.
Unlike some ethnic minorities in Burma who make money from illegal drugs,
the Karens avoid drug trafficking, Carol Wilson said. But as desperation mounts,
there is danger of drug use, she said.
Wilson hopes to set up a "base camp" in Thailand next month through which
Christian groups can send relief supplies.
Church pastor Tim Carigon said about 100 people from the Big Island, Oahu
and Kauai, mostly teen-agers, will serve at various sites in Thailand this
summer.
To make donations, contact the church at 959-7510 or the Wilsons at
968-9211.
God's Army kids look to a new life
The Thai authorities caring for the teenage soldiers are wondering how to make it a better one for the twins after their surrender last week By James East
STRAITS TIMES THAILAND BUREAU BANGKOK - The emergence of God's Army from the jungles and dusty hills of
the Thai-Myanmar border until their surrender to the authorities last week has
highlighted the impact that ethnic strife and warfare has had on the region's
troubled children.
For years, teenage soldiers of God's Army lived like the child characters
of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, sleeping rough, eating insects and
smoking cheroots - pungent Myanmar cigarettes - while the world gawped at the
terrorist acts they were supposedly behind.
Up and down the 2,400-km border, there are some 46,000 children aged under
12 whose lives, like Johnny and Luther's, have been turned upside down by
Yangon's drive to control its ethnic border regions.
They, just like the two 13-year-olds touting M-16s on Thursday for a police
reconstruction of the shooting of six Thais, know all too well the power of the
gun.
Most of those living in the 11 border camps have fled onslaughts against
their villages by Myanmar's heavily armed soldiers.
Myanmar's State Peace and Development Council also stands accused by the
United Nation of bolstering its own 500,000-strong military with hundreds of
child soldiers whose fate is thought to be more traumatic than that of the
children who end up in the camps.
Those who have escaped have talked of forced portering and landmine work.
Meanwhile, following their surrender this week, 13-year-old twin leaders of
God's Army Johnny and Luther Htoo can now look forward to a new life.
Authorities caring for them are wondering how to make it a better
one.
The twins must be on Yangon's 'most wanted' list.
Their mini-army not only successfully fought off junta forces for years but
endured artillery bombardments and provided refuge to student rebels who seized
Myanmar's Bangkok embassy in 1999.
But refugee agencies fear that if sent to a camp, they could then be seized
by a junta snatch squad.
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