Burma's Junta Ratchets Up Pressure on Ethnic Minorities - washingtonpost.com

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Bringing Autonomous Ethnic Enclaves Back Into Fold Poses Major Challenges

Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, September 25, 2009

MONG LA, Burma -- The maps say that the town of Mong La is in Burma, but to the casual observer, it could be China. The shop names are in Chinese. The shopkeepers are mostly Chinese, and they accept only the Chinese yuan. A suggestion of a meeting at 4 o'clock is met with a question: "Burma time or China time?"

Mong La is the capital of an area known as Shan Special Region No. 4, one of 13 autonomous enclaves carved out of Burma's mountainous east over the past 20 years as part of cease-fire deals that armed rebel ethnic groups have signed with the generals who run the country.

While central Burma has been driven into penury by economic mismanagement and sanctions, areas such as Mong La have thrived, along with the National Democratic Alliance Army-Eastern Shan State, which controls it. The region has over the years profited from drugs -- it lies at the heart of the opium-producing Golden Triangle -- and more recently from gambling.

In rebel territory, late-model Japanese sedans ferry Chinese punters from Mong La to the neon oasis of Mong Ma, 12 miles away, where they sip French brandy and play baccarat with stacks of 10,000-yuan chips. On the way, they pass the neoclassic pile that Sai Leun, commander of the National Democratic Alliance Army, has built for himself, complete with a golf course.

But Mong La's days as a tributary to the river of China's economic growth could be ending. Last month, a few hours to the north of Mong La, government troops attacked Special Region No. 1, which was run by the Kokang militia, driving about 37,000 residents over the border into China. Today, 80 percent of the shops in Mong La are shuttered, and their owners, taking refuge in China, are waiting to see whether Special Region No. 4 will be the government's next target.

Areas such as Mong La lie at the heart of the strategic conundrum that is Burma.

"Without a political settlement that addresses ethnic minority needs and goals, it is extremely unlikely there will be peace and democracy in Burma," the Transnational Institute, an Amsterdam-based research organization, said in a recent report.

For 15 years, the United Nations has advocated a three-way dialogue among the military government, the democratic opposition and the country's ethnic minorities, but given many of the groups' history of drug involvement, it has been a hard policy to promote in Western capitals.

In recent months, the world has focused on the role of Aung San Suu Kyi, the imprisoned opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, but although she is a key figure, her freedom is unlikely to solve Burma's long-standing political problems on its own.

Ethnic minorities make up about 40 percent of the country's 60 million people, dominating the mountainous regions that surround the flood plains where most of the majority-Burman population live. The minorities have no faith in the government and resent the majority's domination of politics. Several young Shan professionals used the same word -- "tricky" -- to describe the Burmans.

The Burmese government has been trying to unify the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948, a crusade that has taken precedence over all other concerns, including democracy, and is still the driving force behind the current government led by Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

"When Than Shwe wakes up at night, he isn't worrying about democracy or international pressure," said a Western diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He's worrying about the ethnic groups."

But the generals who run the country cannot afford to anger China, their most significant ally and investor, in the process.

Over the past 20 years, the Burmese authorities have signed cease-fire agreements with 27 key opposition groups, most of which are ethnically based.

China played a key role in persuading the groups to talk to the government. Many were part of the Beijing-sponsored Burma Communist Party, which controlled most of the territory along the Chinese border until it imploded in the late 1980s. At the time, Beijing's interests lay in keeping the groups as a buffer, but that policy came at a cost as many Burmese warlords established mini-states, funding themselves through drugs and gambling and spreading addiction, disease and crime into China's southern borderlands.

Many analysts now say that the Chinese are eager to see Burma reunified under a central government, pointing out that Beijing wants to build pipelines through Burma to import oil and gas from the Andaman Sea to the populous but relatively poor province of Yunnan and to open trade routes to the lucrative markets of India.

Signs are growing that the groups China used to see as a strategic buffer it now regards as a barrier to trade. When the Burmese army moved against the Kokang militia, one of the weaker groups, the Chinese government rebuked it over the refugees who were driven across the border. Beijing urged the junta to "properly deal with its domestic issues to safeguard the regional stability of its bordering area with China." Some analysts say, however, that the rebuke reflected displeasure over how the takeover was handled rather than the takeover itself.

Bringing Mong La and other cease-fire areas back into the Burmese fold poses significant challenges for the Burmese as well as the Chinese.

The Burmese authorities have called on the cease-fire groups to disband their militias and take part in elections set for next year, but the groups, which have received little assistance from the central government, are loath to give up the leverage provided by their armed wings, although many have said they are not intrinsically opposed to participating in the elections.

The groups seem more inclined to maintain their militias and use them to help force a better deal from the new government. The biggest cease-fire group, the United Wa State Army, is estimated to maintain 20,000 men under arms.

However, with their move against the Kokang militia, the generals have ratcheted up the pressure, and many residents of the border areas, like the Chinese traders in Mong La, think the authorities could move against other groups, picking them off one by one.

The stakes are high. As the Transnational Institute points out, if the cease-fire groups are not defeated decisively, they will simply retreat to the mountainous border territory, where they are likely to resume wholesale narcotics trading to fund a renewed guerrilla campaign, intensifying regional instability.

Burma Army Attacks Displace Thousands of Civilians

August 14, 2009

(New York) - Burmese army attacks against ethnic Shan civilians in northeastern Burma have displaced more than 10,000 people in the past three weeks, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on Burma's military government to immediately end attacks against civilians and other violations of international humanitarian law.

Following democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's sentence this week to return to house arrest on August 11, Human Rights Watch reiterated its call to the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Burma and to create a commission of inquiry to investigate possible war crimes and crimes against humanity by all parties to the fighting in Burma's ethnic minority areas.

"While the world has been focused on the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burmese troops have been battering civilians as part of the military government's longstanding campaign against ethnic minorities," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "These attacks in Shan state should remind the international community that in addition to the persecution of the Burmese political opposition, Burma's ethnic minorities are systematically marginalized and brutalized by the Burmese government and army."

According to credible reports by Shan human rights groups, the Burmese army, or Tatmadaw, has deployed seven army battalions to clear civilians from large areas of Laikha township and parts of Mong Kerng township in central Shan state between July 27 and August 1. Troops have reportedly burned down more than 500 houses as they attacked 39 villages in the area. Human Rights Watch believes this recently scaled-up forced relocation operation is part of an intensified counterinsurgency campaign, as Tatmadaw units attack the Shan State Army-South (SSA-S), an insurgent armed group that operates in the area. The SSA-S has been conducting deadly ambushes regularly for years and on July 15, SSA-S forces attacked the 515th Light Infantry Battalion in Laikha, killing 11 Tatmadaw soldiers. There are reports that many of the displaced civilians are moving toward the Thailand-Burma border.

The Thailand-Burma Border Consortium annual internal displacement survey reports that more than 13,000 civilians were displaced in 2008 in Laikha and surrounding townships because of increased Tatmadaw operations against the SSA-S. This follows years of similar operations. Between 1996 and 1998, the Tatmadaw effectively cleared central Shan state of its civilian population. Burmese army forces have been responsible for deliberate attacks on civilians, summary executions, rape, torture, destruction and forced relocation of villages, and use of child soldiers and forced labor. More than 350,000 civilians were forcibly displaced during that campaign, many of them becoming refugees in neighboring Thailand.

"While the Burmese Army flouts the laws of war, Shan civilians pay the price," said Adams. "The ongoing Burmese army attacks in Shan state demonstrate the vicious modus operandi of the Tatmadaw and its disdain for the lives and well-being of civilians."

Recent attacks by the Tatmadaw and their proxy forces, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, forced some 5,000 ethnic Karen across the border into Thailand in June. The civilians, mostly women and children, were fleeing fighting, forced labor, and the widespread sowing of landmines.

According to the Thailand-Burma Border Consortium's annual survey, nearly half a million people are internally displaced in eastern Burma, either in government relocation sites, within non-state armed groups ceasefire zones, or in so-called free-fire areas highly vulnerable to Tatmadaw patrols that maintain an unlawful "shoot on sight" policy against civilians. Human Rights Watch has documented abuses against civilians in ethnic areas of Karen state in eastern Burma and in Chin state in western Burma. Abuses such as extrajudicial killings, torture and beatings, and confiscation of land and property continue with impunity.

There are more than 140,000 Burmese refugees along the Thailand border in nine temporary refugee camps. Although 50,000 refugees have been resettled to third countries like the United States, Norway, and Canada, more refugees continue to arrive, fleeing the armed conflict in eastern Burma.

Thailand does not recognize people from Shan state as refugees, and refuses to permit the establishment of refugee camps for ethnic Shan, fearing a larger influx of civilians fleeing repression from northeastern Burma. Instead, those Shan who reach Thailand eke out an existence as migrant workers, often without legal status. Human Rights Watch called on the government of Thailand to offer sanctuary to refugees fleeing abuses in Shan state in accordance with international law. Although Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol, it is bound by the customary international law prohibition against returning people to countries where they face persecution.

Human Rights Watch reiterated its calls to the United Nations Security Council to establish a commission of inquiry into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Burma and to pursue a comprehensive arms embargo against Burma. Human Rights Watch said that Burma should become a regular topic for discussion on the Security Council agenda, to pressure the Burmese government to respect basic freedoms of its citizens and continue to inform Security Council members of its progress. Security Council Resolution 1674 on the protection of civilians in armed conflict states that "peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations and the foundations for collective security."

A May 2009 report by the International Human Rights Clinic at Harvard Law School, "Crimes in Burma", reviewed United Nations human rights reports for several years and concluded that human rights abuses are widespread, systematic, and part of state policy. The report, endorsed by five eminent international jurists, cited cases of forced relocation, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, and torture. It similarly called for a commission of inquiry to be established by the Security Council to investigate potential crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma.

Human Rights Watch said an arms embargo could stop the supply of weapons, military assistance, and technology that enable continued attacks against civilians in ethnic conflict areas. China and Russia, both of whom supply weapons to Burma, are the military government's main diplomatic supporters and continue to block stronger international action against the ruling junta.

On August 13, the UN Security Council issued a weak press statement on Burma that both "reiterate[s] the importance of the release of all political prisoners," but also affirms Security Council members' "commitment to the sovereignty and territorial integrity" of Burma.

"The UN Security Council should end its inaction and authorize a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses and enforce an arms embargo," said Adams. "This will not happen unless China and Russia stop protecting Burma's generals."