A displaced ethnic Kachin family in a camp in
the Kachin Baptist Church in the Myanmar-China border town Muse in northern
Shan State.
Many forced from their homes by fighting,
conditions are grim for the Kachin people in north-eastern Myanmar.
The
rain is coming down hard, flooding some of the temporary canvas shelters
provided by the UNHCR. Families are moving their bedding into the church’s
community hall where they will sleep for the night. Despite the obvious
discomforts the hundreds of ethnic Kachin recently displaced by fighting in
northern Shan State can still count their blessings. At the Kachin Baptist
Church (KBC) in Muse; a trade city in north-eastern Myanmar on the border with
China, they are safe, especially Zau Gun. He was captured by the Tatmadaw
(Myanmar armed forces) and forced to carry heavy mortar rounds as they fought
against some of his own people: an alliance of Kachin, Ta’ang and Shan armed
groups. With the rain bearing down on the tin roof of one of the church’s
offices, Zau Gun tells his sad story.
“At the
time I was so afraid, I thought I was going to die,” he recalled. In the early
afternoon, several days after fighting broke out between the Tatmadaw and
ethnic rebels nearby, about 100 government soldiers from Light Infantry
Division 88 arrived at his little village in Munggu Township. At gunpoint, they
spared no time in collecting all the villagers for questioning, separating the
men and boys from the women and girls.
“Are
you a soldier? Where is your gun?” they asked him. “I don’t have gun,” he
answered. By then, his four children were bawling at the sight of their father
with hands tied while six soldiers loomed menacingly over him. They told Zau
Gun he would be killed if his wife who was tending their vegetable plot didn’t
return home; she arrived moments later.
“They
took four of us as porters that day,” he recalled in a confident voice, which
seemed in stark contrast to what he had endured.
The men
were forced to carry the soldiers’ ammunition as they travelled on foot around
the front line, sporadically fighting with the ethnic armed groups. “They told
me they won’t withdraw from the area until they kill all the Kachin people,”
Zau Gun said.
“We
weren’t allowed to speak to each other,” he said, explaining they kept them
together at night, but if they stirred in their sleep they would investigate.
Exhausted
and sick from carrying heavy loads for long hours at a time, Zau Gun asked a
captain to release him on the seventh day. Once free, he returned to his
village only to discover it was abandoned. Eventually Zau Gun was reunited with
his family in the nearby Wing Seng village where many of the displaced had
gathered. Days later, he heard one of the other porters had escaped; the
remaining two were released less than a week later.
Naw
Din, a KBC pastor and camp coordinator, said the church acted quickly after
hearing news of the fighting. They sent transport trucks and other vehicles to
Wing Seng and other areas where the Kachin villagers were sheltering. Naw Din
recalls being “a little worried” as he and other church volunteers travelled the
front line to bring the displaced families to safety. “We could hear the
mortars being fired, the ground was shaking.”
They
didn’t wait for permission from the government to rescue the refugees. It was a
wise choice. Days after the camp was set up, several township administration
officers came by and asked the church leaders “so many questions,” Naw Din
said. They denied that fighting had taken place.
Initially
the church sheltered over 500 people with support from UNHCR and the World Food
Programme. After a month, however, that number had dropped down to around 300.
If families could go home, they did, more than eager to get started on a late
planting season. For others, conditions on the ground are still unsafe with
clashes breaking out near their villages. Or there are government troops based
close by, in some cases the soldiers sleeping in their homes and eating their
livestock. For still others, their homes were destroyed by shelling and there
is nothing to go back to.
Although
ceasefire agreements have been inked with most of the major ethnic armed
groups, fighting between the Tatmadaw and Kachin Independence Army (KIA) has
continued to plague the country’s reform process. Ironically, it broke out
almost as soon reforms were rolled out.
In June
2011, just months after President Thein Sein was sworn into office, a
17-year-old ceasefire with the political arm of the KIA; the Kachin
Independence Organization (KIO), unraveled. Pressure was building after the KIO
received an ultimatum to transform into a government border guard force. Since
then, scores of meetings between the government’s peace team and KIO have made
little progress and fighting has largely continued. The KIO say they want more
autonomy for their people as promised under the previous 1994 ceasefire. This
would involve a federalism system allowing the mainly ethnic dominated states
to share power with the Union of Myanmar; the current constitution affords
little power outside of the capital Naypyidaw. The government wants a new
ceasefire signed before any discussions take place.
The
completion of the Shwe Gas and Oil Pipeline project last July has seen many
government troops being deployed to northern Shan State. The pipelines, largely
bankrolled by China National Petroleum Corporation at an estimated cost of
$14.2 million, started pumping oil and gas from Myanmar’s westernmost Arakan
State, through northern Shan State destined for China’s Yunnan province.
Various
government-endorsed militias, which often support Tatmadaw offensives, have
also sprung up in recent years. Because they are required to be financially
independent they must compete in the murky world of cross-border trade,
commonly involving timber sales, illicit drugs, and human trafficking rings.
Jai Mai
was displaced by fighting in Namkut in early May. She’s one of 147 still
receiving shelter at the Muse Royal Catholic Church, with many already returned
home. In the last two years, government troops often came through Jai Mai’s
village in northern Shan State because there used to be a KIA base nearby until
being overrun.
They
usually harass the men, accusing them of being members of the rebel group, she
explains. Jai Mai’s eldest son supports her and his own baby. She looks after
the baby while her son works as a cook in China. Her youngest son is addicted
to heroin, his whereabouts unknown.
Julia
Dai Tse, who hails from the same village, was displaced around the same time.
Neither
of the women can return to their village after receiving news that government
soldiers are now living in their homes.
“I am
so worried, I feel so many emotions. I just want to live in a safe place
without war,” Julia Dai Tse said. “Now our rice farms and pigs are gone because
the army is there.”
Brennan
O`Connor
Business & Investment Opportunities
Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd (SBC) is incorporated
in Singapore since 1994.
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