VARIOUS: More than 800 ethnic Karen have fled to Thai border to escape the Myanmar army offensive

Record ID: 274525

  • Title: VARIOUS: More than 800 ethnic Karen have fled to Thai border to escape the Myanmar army offensive
  • Date: 23rd May 2006
  • Summary: REFUGEE WITH ONE LEG, SAW DA PULO, WALKING WITH CRUTCH VILLAGERS LOOKING ON SAW DA PULO SHOWING HIS LEG
  • Embargoed: 7th June 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVACPCQ8F3YOIZH5IMS2SOO36Z2W
  • Story Text: More than 800 ethnic Karen have fled the biggest Myanmar army offensive in a decade to a makeshift jungle camp near the Thai border over the past month.
    In some of the first independent confirmation of a growing refugee crisis inside the former Burma's Karen State, Reuters interviewed dozens of families who walked for weeks through malaria-infested forests to escape soldiers of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as Yangon's ruling junta is known.
    Protected by Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) guerrillas in a steep valley one mile (1.5 kilometres) from Thailand, they spoke of friends and relatives murdered, villages burned to the ground and the ashes seeded with landmines.
    So far, in the last month, 815 refugees have made it through the jungle to emerge, filthy, exhausted and sick at the Karen camp, a collection of 200 bamboo huts nestled in the dense jungle. The camp has only been open since April 5.
    Around three quarters of the refugees are children and the numbers grow almost daily as new arrivals emerge. A new school building is being constructed and is due to open in early June to educate some 390 refugee children.
    "SPDC military government, they force out the Karen people from the area. That means they don't want the Karen people to stay in the village and the area," said Peter, a leader at the new camp near Salween river.
    The Karen, a mainly Christian people who make up just over 10 percent of Myanmar's 52 million people, have been fighting a guerrilla independence war in eastern Myanmar for the last 50 years -- one of the world's longest-running conflicts.
    Since November, reports from refugee relief groups inside Karen State have pointed to a determined assault on ethnic areas by the Burmese-dominated junta.
    The Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a Christian group that helps refugees inside Myanmar, says more than 15,000 ethnic minority people have been forced to flee their homes but remain inside the country as internally displaced people, or IDPs.
    Seven-month pregnant Hay Ney Tha, 30, and her family were forced to leave the village close to the new capital of Pyinmana, fearing they would be arrested or killed.
    After leaving the village, they spent weeks in a jungle hiding from the SPDC patrols. She said her husband died two weeks later because of malaria and she had to lead her three kids along with friends for another weeks walking past the landmines to the relative safety of the Salween river.
    "After leaving the village, my husband was seriously sick and he died two weeks later. It was very hard for me to go back or continue the journey but my friends took me to the camp with them. I'm still doubting my future. It will be difficult for me especially to deliver a new baby alone and also my three kids. It will be very difficult for me to continue my life. Nobody will take care of me, " she said, sheltering from the midday sun beneath a blue tarpaulin slung across bamboo poles on the edge of the jungle.
    For many families, the journey has taken up to three months. Some died during the journey and some women gave birth as they fled. Their children, along with three others born at camp's medical clinic, now face the battle against diarrhoea, infection and malaria.
    At the entrance to the camp, Saw Da Pulo, a 43-year-old who lost his right leg to a landmine four years ago, sat waiting for his parents and children to arrive. His wife has already died.
    Pulo said he travelled for ten days on crutches after his house was burnt down by the SPDC. Separated from the group a month ago, he managed to make it on one leg to the Salween, where he was picked up by a KNLA patrol.
    "I spent 10 days getting from the village to here. When I was in the village, one of my cousins was arrested by the SPDC. They took him from the village to a military camp. After a few days, they killed him in the jungle. I'm afraid of this and many people from my village are also afraid of this. So we started to leave the village," he said.
    Thailand is home to more than 120,000 official long-term refugees from Myanmar, and experts believe another 500,000 people remain "internally displaced" as a result of conflict or junta policies such as forced labour.
    In Singapore, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill called for the military junta to bring in political reforms.
    "The latest example of this behaviour is found in the regime's intensified abuses of ethnic minorities in the Karen state. The only long term solution to Burma's problems is real political reform that leads to responsible governance and should the regime take steps in this direction, we and others in the international community would be prepared to respond positively," he said during his address on U.S. foreign policy in East Asia on Monday (May 22).
    Thailand is home to more than 120,000 official long-term refugees from Myanmar, and experts believe another 500,000 people remain "internally displaced" as a result of conflict or junta policies such as forced labour.
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