No.13 - 10/2005
16 October 2005

Human Rights

Junta launches new scorched earth campaign

In a move highly reminiscent to the 1996-98 campaign that had displaced 300,000 people from their ancestral homes and fields, the Burma Army is again launching a new drive that began last month to realign scattered villages in southern Shan State in an effort to isolate the resistance from the local populace, according to latest reports received by S.H.A.N.:

A couple who arrived on the Chiangmai border yesterday told S.H.A.N. two of  the villages Wanzan (60 households) and Koonkieng (40 households) where they came from were ordered by the Army on 4 October to move to the tract seat of Wanpong, Laikha township. (Tract in Burma denotes a cluster of villages)

"We lost our paddy fields and corn fields that were waiting ot be harvested, as well as the sesame field that we have just sown," said Yazing, 40, who brought his wife Nang Li, 30, and three children. "We decided there and then and we had had enough of being pushed around and that we should get out while we still have each other."

A year after the 1996-98 campaign the Burma Army had either forced or allowed the people in the relocated sites to move back to their former villages. "And now they want us to move again," he said.

Aid workers in Fang, 160 km north of Chiangmai, say similar reports have been coming from Laikha's neighboring townships of Mongkerng, Kehsi and Mongnawng. "We expect more refugees to arrive at the border beginning this month," said one this morning.

The mass exodus had actually started soon after the outbreak of hostilities between the Burma Army and the Shan State Army-South's former 758th Brigade that had switched allegiance to a new group called Interim Shan Government (ISG) that declared Independence on 17 April. To which Rangoon promptly responded by designating it an 'unlawful association' and launching a crackdown.

The MOC#5 strength in the 758th Four Corners is 4,100 according to a Burma Army source.
Update: 18 October 2005

According to the ISG, Rangoon had dispatched 7 light Infantry battalions: 346, 372, 542, 544, 562, 563 and 566 from the western state of Arakan, in addition to local units for its Four Cuts operation that consists of cutting food, funds, intelligence and recruits by the villagers for the resistance movements.

For details on the 1996-98 campaign, please visit http://www.shanland.org/resources/bookspub/humanrights/dispossessed/