High up in the mountainous border region where Burma meets China, more
than 70,000 displaced Kachin are bracing themselves for cold season. The
plywood shelters in refugee camps, likely still recovering from the monsoon
season, are no match for the end-of-year weather when temperatures dip to
single figures.
It’s all depressingly familiar –
the same warnings were issued a year ago, and today refugee numbers have not
diminished, nor has the government’s reluctance to allow international aid
groups unfettered access to victims of the conflict. They, and millions of
others in the country, know little of the heady developments of the past 12
months in Burma.
An issue often overlooked in
coverage of Burma’s various conflicts is the psychological toll that those
forced to flee their homes carry, but IRIN last week spoke with local aid
worker May Li Awng who spelled out the situation.
“Some students have no interest
in schooling and are refusing to go to school. They are listless – gazing
somewhere. At night, they cry and sleep-walk.” May Li Awng directs the WPN
umbrella group of Kachin NGOs who, given the woeful lack of outside assistance
getting to the refugees, have essentially spearheaded the aid effort. They
deserve great respect for their work.
Some estimate that around 50
percent of displaced Kachin are suffering from trauma. “We don’t have the human
resources to heal such traumatized cases,” May Li Awng told IRIN. “All of the
groups [donors] are just interested in giving material assistance. Few are
interested in such issues.”
Other aid workers told me of
similar concerns when I was there in June this year. La Rip, coordinator of the
Relief Action Network for Internally Displaced Persons and Refugees (RANIR),
based in Laiza, said that reductions in outside funding had forced them to
concentrate on the primary concerns of physical health and food supplies. This
means that for many, young children especially, their trauma is left to fester.
He said that local aid workers
were either too overrun or unequipped to tackle the psychological problems
emerging among the displaced. A year ago he warned: “We are at our wit’s end.
If we don’t get support within the next couple of weeks, there could be serious
problems with food and shelter shortages and worsening weather.” Now, with no
UN convoy having reached eastern Kachin state since July, the same situation
presents itself.
Aside from the fighting itself,
the treatment of civilians by Burmese troops will have left deep scars. When
the conflict first erupted in June 2011, various reports told of gang rapes and
mutilation of Kachin women by soldiers, torture of males considered
collaborators with the Kachin Independence Army, and so on. This has not stopped
- a mother of four was reportedly gang raped near the town of Mogaung in Kachin
state on 1 November by Burmese soldiers. (See here for a past blog post on the
Burma army’s use of rape as a weapon of war).
Moreover, children were often
forced to flee their homes amid gunfire and walk days to reach safer ground,
many getting ill along the way. They remain confined to refugee camps in a
tormenting state of limbo.
Funding clearly needs to be
ramped up. President Obama touched on the conflict during his speech at Rangoon
University last week, but one hopes he pressed for greater international access
and an end to attacks by the Burmese army when he met privately with President
Thein Sein. The ethno-religious violence in Arakan state will have distracted from
Kachin state, but both situations require urgent attention.
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