An estimated 4,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are currently
hiding in the jungle near Hpasawng Township, about 94 kilometers south of
the Karenni State capital Loikaw, according to a Karenni relief group.

Daniel, a coordinator for the Karenni Social Welfare and Development
Center (KSWDC), which provides aid to Karenni IDPs, told The Irrawaddy on
Wednesday that the villagers had fled their homes fearing attacks by the
Burmese army.

“More than 4,000 Karenni IDPs are now hiding in Hpasawng Township,” said
Daniel, who uses only one name. “It will be very difficult for them if
they have to stay in the jungle for a long time.”

The Burmese army’s Light Infantry Battalions (LIB) 427, 428 and 337 patrol
the area around Hpasawng and have clashed with Karenni rebels in the area
six times so far this year, according to local sources.

Some of the Karenni IDPs want to move to the Thai-Burmese border, but they
fear possible attacks by Burmese troops along the way, said Daniel.

Poe Byar Shay Reh, chairman of the Karenni Refugee Committee, said that
more than 160 IDPs have arrived at Karenni refugee camps in Thailand’s Mae
Hong Son Province since the beginning of 2008.

He said, however, that so far, none of the IDPs currently hiding in the
jungle have reached the refugee camps.

“None of them have arrived at the refugee camps, but we don’t know if
they’ll start coming later,” said Poe Byar Shay Reh.

He added that some of the Karenni IDPs now sheltering in the refugee camps
had fled their villages after being accused by the Burmese army and the
ceasefire Karenni Nationalities People’s Liberation Front of supporting
the anti-government Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP).

The KNPP signed a ceasefire agreement with Burma’s ruling junta in 1995,
but the truce broke down after just three months when Burmese troops
deployed on KNPP territory.

There have been several failed attempts since then to restart talks, most
recently in late 2004. However, the junta suspended all contact with the
group following the ouster of Prime Minister Gen Khin Nyunt, who had
masterminded a number of ceasefire agreements with ethnic rebel groups.

Burmese military operations forced around 6,000 Karenni villagers to
become IDPs in 2007, according to a survey conducted by KSWDC.

More than 20,000 Karenni refugees are staying in two camps in Mae Hong Son
Province, according to the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium and the
Karenni Refugee Committee

Troops from the Burmese military and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army
withdrew from a Karen National Liberation Army stronghold yesterday, a day
after attacking the area.

The KNLA battalion 201′s stronghold is located 25 miles south of the Thai
town of Mae Sot on the border with Burma and across the river from a
village called Padi.

KNU information department coordinator major Saw Hla Ngwe said the
fighting lasted until yesterday and some heavy artillery shells fired by
the Burmese army landed on Thai soil, causing havoc among Thai villagers,
who fled their homes in fear.

“The SPDC troops fired artillery rounds upon the Wal Lay Khee stronghold
on Monday morning until 11am and about three shells landed on the Thai
village,” Saw Hla Ngwe said.

“About 200 Thai villagers had to flee their homes and took shelter in a
monastery and a school building.”

He said the clash ended yesterday evening when the regime’s army and DKBA
troops withdrew.

The number of casualties on the two sides is still unknown.

Saw Hla Ngwe said the government’s offensive was probably in retaliation
for the loss of regime troops killed in nine clashes with the KNLA in
June.

“Also, they can collect tax money from local farmers if they take control
of the area as well as getting themselves an open route to go in and out
of Thailand,” he said.

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI — (CFI News) — Thousands of storm victims in Burma are still in desperate need of relief aid, nearly two months after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the southeast Asian country.
Nargis touched down in Burma’s Irawaddy region in the early morning hours of May 3, 2008, bringing 120-mile an hour winds that left thousands of people dead or homeless, and an unprecedented trail of destruction in the already impoverished nation. To date, the government’s official death toll from the storm has reached over 84,000, with 53,000 more still considered missing.

Burma’s military government, which is known for an extensive history of human rights abuses and a vicious ethnic cleansing campaign against its Karen and Karenni population, was the subject of sharp criticism after the cyclone for its initial refusal to allow international relief aid into the country. But despite recent claims from ASEAN officials that most of the survivors’ needs are now being met and that the crisis appears to be stabilizing, many local victims have reported to indigenous CFI workers that they have yet to receive aid from either the Burmese government or any foreign relief agencies. And even as dozens of communities continue to struggle for survival without the most basic of necessities, the junta has reportedly threatened to begin confiscating land from residents who don’t resume rice production soon.

Christian Freedom International, an organization that has worked actively in Burma on behalf of persecuted Christians and provided firsthand testimony about the effects of the junta’s brutality since 1998, began distributing relief aid in the country through a network of local pastors, underground churches, and a team of backpack medics in the days immediately following the storm. Even as other humanitarian agencies waited for permission to enter the region, CFI had already begun wiring funds for emergency supplies to key contacts in the country, who then delivered essential items such as food, clothing, medical supplies and clean drinking water in storm-affected areas.

With most other foreign aid still seemingly under the junta’s strict control, CFI remains as one of the few organizations making a difference for storm victims who have been left to fend for themselves in Burma. CFI president Jim Jacobson, who recently traveled to the region to oversee the relief effort, is urging Americans to donate funds for more emergency supplies, including fishing and mosquito nets, water purifiers, clothing, food, medicine, and building materials to reconstruct homes. Funds are also urgently needed to purchase tractors to help with rice production, as well as to support the scores of children who have been left orphaned by the cyclone — children who may otherwise face recruitment by the junta and forcibly sent to government “indoctrination” schools.
Last Updated ( Monday, 30 June 2008 14:40 )

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More than 30,000 Myanmar refugees living in camps in Thailand have been
sent to third countries in what the United Nations said Wednesday had
become the world’s largest refugee resettlement operation.

Most of the refugees are Karen ethnic minority people who had been
sheltered in nine refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said 30,144 refugees have left
Thailand to start new lives abroad since the resettlement operation began
in January 2005. A UNHCR statement described it as the world’s largest
refugee resettlement operation.
But the camps remain home to 123,500 refugees and asylum-seekers.

“Some of the refugees have been here for nearly two decades. Some were
born in refugee camps, grew up there and are now raising their own
families in refugee camps,” UNHCR regional representative Raymond Hall
said Wednesday. “For them resettlement offers a way out of the camps and
the opportunity for a fresh start in life.”

The United Nations and human rights groups say that over the years the
Myanmar military has burned villages, killed civilians and committed other
atrocities against the Karen, who have long fought for autonomy from the
central government.

Some activists have charged that Myanmar’s ruling junta is waging a
genocidal campaign against the Karen and other rebellious ethnic groups.

Hall said prospects for the refugees to return to Myanmar or settle
permanently in Thailand were dim.

Nearly 21,500 of the resettled refugees have gone to the United States,
while Australia has received 3,400 and Canada 2,600.

Other resettlement countries are Britain, Finland, Ireland, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway and Sweden.

Myanmar refugees are now leaving Thailand for resettlement at an average
rate of more than 300 a week, the UNHCR said.

Around 100 refugees from Bogalay, Labutta and surrounding villages have
fled to the Thai border town of Mae Sot after losing their homes and
livelihoods in the cyclone.

One of the refugees said he had lost his home and family when the cyclone
hit Burma last month.

“We were left with nothing to eat. All our cattle and buffalo were killed,
and all our rice grain was destroyed. That’s why we decided to come out
here,” he said.

“My house was blown away by the wind during the cyclone. My wife and I had
to swim underwater to save ourselves and our four-year-old son, who I was
carrying in my arms,” he went on.

“But soon my wife was carried away by the tide and I couldn’t save her. My
son couldn’t make it either – he died in my arms.”

Manh Manh, the director of the Backpack Health Worker Team, said a group
had been formed to provide assistance to the new arrivals.

The Emergency Aid Team (Burma) is made up of a number of organisations
including the National Health and Education Committee, the Karen Youth
Organisation, the Burmese Women’s Union and Dr Cynthia Maung’s Mae Tao
clinic.

“The group has so far provided 1000 baht and a month’s ration of rice to
each of the refugees and is currently holding discussions on how to keep
providing them assistance in the longer term,” Manh Manh said.

While Myanmar’s ruling military fails its people suffering after a
devastating cyclone, it is committing crimes against humanity in a brutal
campaign against ethnic Karen civilians, an international human rights
group said Wednesday.

The London-based Amnesty International said the Karen in eastern Myanmar
are being killed, tortured and forced to work for the military while their
villages are burned and their crops destroyed.

An estimated 147,800 Karen peopleremain refugees in their own land because
the junta forcibly relocated them from their villages to camps, in efforts
to stamp out a decades-old rebellion by a segment of the Karen community
seeking autonomy from the central government.

“These violations constitute crimes against humanity … involving a
widespread and systematic violation of international human rights and
humanitarian law,” an Amnesty report said.

The government has repeatedly denied similar allegations in the past,
saying it was only engaged in security operations in Karen State aimed at
wiping out “terrorists.”

Amnesty said the continuing campaign is the fourth turbulent episode in
the country’s recent history.

The others include a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests last
September, a recent referendum on a constitution designed to perpetuate
military rule and “a humanitarian and human rights disaster in the wake of
Cyclone Nargis,” it said.

The international community has sharply criticized the junta for barring
foreign aid workers from areas worst hit by the cyclone and itself
providing little help to survivors.

Amnesty said that unlike in earlier campaigns against the Karen National
Union, the key rebel group, the current one that began 2 1/2 years ago has
“civilians as the primary targets.”

The group said it documented cases of more than 25 Karen civilians killed
by the military in Karen State in the two years since July 2005.

One farmer working in his field in Dweh Loh township was beaten and shot
by soldiers after he told them the location of a rebel camp. Another
farmer told of a civilian detainee being stabbed in the chest and then
dropped down a mountain slope “just like an animal.”

“If they found us they would kill us, because for the Burmese army the
Karen and the Karen National Union are one,” a 35-year-old villager in
Thandaung township told Amnesty. Myanmar is also known as Burma.

Arbitrary arrests, sudden disappearances, forced labor and portering for
the military continue to be widespread, Amnesty said. A woman from
Tantabin township said she and other porters were forced to act as human
minesweepers, and that some stepped on mines.

To purportedly separate civilians from the armed rebels, villagers have
been forcibly relocated from their homes into camps where men, women and
children are also forced to work for the military.

Often the villages they left behind were torched.

Shan, Karen and Karenni groups have appealed to the international
community to urgently grant much-needed funding for food provision to over
140,000 refugees living along the Burma-Thailand border.

The organisations said that the refugees, who have been living on the
border for up to 20 years, would face difficulties due to cuts in
assistance from the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, due to take effect
in August.

The annual budget for food provision in camps along the border has been
cut to US$ 6.8 million because of the decrease in the value of the US
dollar, and the hike in world food prices will exacerbate the shortfall.

The groups said the TBBC funding crisis has sparked new fears and
uncertainty among the refugees.

“Refugees are not allowed to go in and out of the camps freely to work
outside so they are reliant on food assistance to survive, such as the
rice, cooking oil, salt and chili given by TBBC,” said Aung Nge, a
spokesperson from a Karenni refugee camp.

“It will be very concerning for our refugees if the existing donors stop
or reduce their funding to TBBC.”

The TBBC has previously received financial assistance from the
Netherlands, Ireland, Poland, the USA, the UK, Canada and Spain.

According to the consortium, so far this year it has received funding from
the Netherlands, Ireland and Poland.

Aung Nge told DVB that refugees would continue to need outside support as
it is impossible for them to return home while the civil war continues and
the military regime remains in power.

“It would be best if we could go back to our homes and carry on with our
lives as we are not officially recognised as refugees by the Thai
government – we are only considered to be temporarily displaced persons,”
he said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t go home because our lives are not secure under
military rule.”

Friday, 23 May 2008 18:25

SAULT STE. MARIE, MI – (CFI News) – Christian Freedom International (CFI), a humanitarian organization that assists persecuted Christians worldwide, expresses deep condolences over the death of Saw Ba Thin Sein, chairman of the Karen National Union (KNU) in Burma.

The KNU, an ethnic rebel group that has been fighting for the Karen’s autonomy in Burma since 1948, lost its leader in the early morning hours of Thursday, May 22, 2008, in the Pa-an District of southern Karen State. Saw Ba Thin Sein, who joined the KNU in 1949 and became chairman in 2000, suffered from diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. He was 82 years old.

Throughout the chairman’s service, he stressed the need for unity among the Karen people, particularly after the division that led to the formation of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a KNU-breakaway group that ultimately aligned itself with the ruling military junta. Although he did not live to see the Karen’s liberation, he will be remembered for his brave leadership and unwavering dedication to the Karen’s 50-year-old struggle for independence. “[He] was a friend to me for the past ten years…he will be missed,” says CFI president Jim Jacobson, who has personally delivered relief aid to persecuted Karen Christians in Burma since 1998.

The loss is also a hard-hitting one for thousands of Karen people in Burma, whose ongoing struggle for survival continues in the recent aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, and the junta’s denial of desperately needed relief aid into Karen-populated areas. According to a statement issued from KNU headquarters on Thursday, Tamla Baw, vice-chairman of the KNU and former chief commander of the Karen National Liberation Army, will succeed Saw Ba Thin Sein.

The chairman is survived by his wife and four children.

The donor also told DVB that local authorities had switched international aid with products from Industry-1 before distribution.

“On 10 May, local authorities in Ngabyayma village in southern Bogalay forced cyclone survivors to buy petrol for 1000 kyat a gallon,” he said.

“Villagers also had to buy canvas sheets marked ‘UNICEF’,” he went on.

“According to an eye witness, authorities there switched international aid with products from Industry-1 and then distributed it to the people. I heard they even switched food.”

He added that people in a temporary camp in Bogalay had been asked or forced to cut trees and reconstruct roads destroyed by the cyclone.

“I have learnt from those who just came back from Bogalay and Bassein that people in Bogalay camp have been forced by the authorities to collect trash and cut trees,” the donor said.

“They are paid 2000 kyat a day and asked to survive themselves,” he said.

“Food distribution in the camp is insufficient. People in the camp are ordered to provide unpaid labour as well.”

The donor also said authorities in Bogalay township were reportedly stockpiling some of the relief supplies from the international community in warehouses, and would distribute the rest of the supplies only if people voted ‘Yes’ in the 24 May referendum.