Burma Update

SCMP - Thursday, April 27, 2006


ASSOCIATED PRESS in Bangkok
Myanmar troops, engaged in their biggest military offensive in almost a decade, have uprooted more than 11,000 ethnic minority civilians in a campaign punctuated by torture, killings and the burning of villages, according to reports from inside the country and Thailand.

Scores of villages have been abandoned and their inhabitants forced to flee into the jungles as troops in eastern Myanmar attempt to suppress a decades-old insurgency among the Karen people, say reports from the Free Burma Rangers, a group of westerners and ethnic minority volunteers who provide aid to displaced people in the country.

Some 11,000 people had fled their homes due to the onslaught, which began last November and had recently intensified, the group said. About 1,500 refugees have fled across the border to Thailand, and aid officials fear others will follow in coming months to swell the more than 140,000 already in Thai refugee camps.

Jack Dunford, executive director of aid agency Thailand Burma Border Consortium, confirmed the inflow, saying the refugees from Myanmar's Karen State have arrived with "stories of increased troop activity, widespread destruction of villages and crops and human rights abuses".

The military-run government has denied any human rights violations against ethnic minority groups, including the Karen, which it blames for a spate of recent bombings in the country.

"There is no offensive against the Karen National Union but security measures have been taken and cleaning-up operations are being conducted in some areas where [KNU] terrorists are believed to be hiding," Information Minister Brigadier-General Kyaw Hsan said earlier this month, referring to the main Karen rebel group.

But analysts said the scale of the attacks was the largest since a major offensive against the Karen in 1997. There is speculation the military is trying to secure the hinterland east of Pyinmana, the new capital.

Myanmar's military regimes, which came to power in 1962, have waged war against a welter of ethnic minority groups seeking autonomy until a former junta general, Khin Nyunt, negotiated ceasefires with 17 of them. But his removal in 2004 reinforced hardliners within the ruling junta and "resulted in increasing hostility directed at ethnic minority groups", US-based Human Rights Watch said.

The Karen National Union is the largest rebel group still facing off against the regime's 500,000-strong military. The Free Burma Rangers said the military was trying to separate the civilians from the guerillas, destroying villages and food stocks to deprive the insurgents of any local support. After residents flee, the areas are mined to prevent the villagers' return, who seek shelter in remote, hostile regions.