A Myanmar man holds a child at a refugee camp in Nanshan, in southwestern China’s Yunnan province, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2009. Thousands of refugees have fled across the Chinese border to escape fighting between government troops and ethnic militia in Myanmar’s Kokang region. : (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

By NG HAN GUAN, Associated Press Writer Associated Press Writer : 30 Aug 2009

MENG PENG, China – Hundreds of ethnic rebels have fled clashes in northeastern Myanmar, surrendering their weapons and uniforms to Chinese border police and crossing to safety after several days of skirmishes with Myanmar government troops.

Myanmar’s military junta ended a news blackout about the clashes Sunday, saying three days of fighting had killed 26 government forces and at least eight rebels. It said the fighting had ended and “the region has now regained peace.”

The United Nations and Chinese officials say up to 30,000 civilian refugees have streamed into China to escape the fighting, which broke out last week after hundreds of Myanmar soldiers moved into Kokang, a mostly ethnic Chinese region run by a local militia.

Myanmar’s junta is trying to consolidate control over several armed ethnic groups along its borders to ensure next year’s national elections, the first in nearly 20 years, go smoothly.

A U.S.-based Myanmar watchdog group said Sunday that most of the Kokang rebels had surrendered their arms to Chinese authorities upon entering the country, but it was not clear whether their leader was among them. They also gave over their green uniforms in exchange for blue cotton tops and pants.

“There was no way we would win,” said one former rebel, Ri Chenchuan, as he shopped for new clothes in the few shops of Meng Peng, a mountain town about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the border. Several former rebels said they arrived Saturday and slept in the open-air vegetable market.

The clashes have strained China’s close relationship with Myanmar’s military junta and come at a particularly sensitive time — ahead of Oct. 1 celebrations to mark 60 years of communist rule.

Beijing has asked Myanmar to end the fighting.

A government announcement read aloud Sunday evening on state-run TV news broadcasts in Myanmar said the fighting killed 26 junta soldiers and police and left 47 wounded. It said eight bodies of Kokang rebels were found and 600 pieces of weapons seized.

There was no way to independently verify the figures.

An official with the Public Security Bureau in China’s Zhenkang county, which oversees the border area, said Sunday there had been no reports of fighting since late Saturday. Like many Chinese officials, he refused to give his name.

In Meng Peng, several men told The Associated Press they had turned in their weapons to Chinese officials. Dozens of the men wearing blue cotton pants and shirts, issued to them when they surrendered their green rebel uniforms, were seen shopping for civilian clothes.

Li Jiayun said he and others decided to retreat “so that more civilians didn’t get hurt.”

The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese minority group that speaks Chinese and, according to exiled Myanmar rights activists, has received support for decades from China because of its traditional ties to the Communist Party.

The Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma said about 700 rebels from the Kokang ethnic minority’s militia had fled from thousands of Myanmar troops into China late Saturday, but tensions remained high.

“The majority of the Kokang troops have surrendered to China,” said Aung Din, the campaign’s executive director. There were conflicting accounts of whether militia leader Peng Jiashen was among them, he said.

But Myanmar’s junta is expected to target other ethnic minorities along the border, Aung Din said. Several armed ethnic groups along the border with China are resisting pressure from the junta to join with the military to become border guards ahead of next year’s elections.

“There will be more fighting, more tension and more conflict because the regime will continue to try to force these groups to surrender their arms,” Aung Din said.

The conflict area is on the fringe of the drug-producing Golden Triangle region where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet. Many of the ethnic armies there have used the drug trade to finance their operations. The Kokang and neighboring Wa regions, both isolated by mountainous terrain and a lack of roads, were traditionally Myanmar’s main poppy growing areas.

Myanmar, also known as Burma, is the second largest exporter of heroin after Afghanistan.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said up to 30,000 people have poured into the Chinese border town of Nansan from Kokang since early this month after a confrontation between the government and rebels on Aug. 8. Chinese authorities are providing emergency food, shelter and medical care, it said.

The official People’s Daily newspaper quoted Yunnan provincial police chief Meng Sutie as confirming the 30,000 figure during a press conference Sunday. The report also said China’s Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu visited the border area recently to see how the massive influx of refugees was being handled, but it gave no specifics.

Hundreds of refugees could be seen milling around Nansan on Sunday. Many hiked or drove up to a popular tourist spot to take photos of the heavily guarded border crossing.

The refugee camps, however, were off limits to foreign reporters. Li Hui, a local Foreign Affairs Department official, told AP reporters that media were not allowed in the settlement areas and ordered them to leave.

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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Fleeing fighters say Myanmar crushed border enclave

Refugees from Kokang in Myanmar’s Shan State rest in a temporary shelter house at the border town of Nansan, China’s Yunnan province, August 29, 2009. : REUTERS/Stringer

By Chris Buckley – Sun Aug 30, 6:57 am ET

NANSAN, China (Reuters) – Men who said they had been fighting Myanmar government troops in fierce battles over recent days streamed into China on Sunday, saying their long-autonomous enclave had fallen and its future was in doubt.

The clusters of weary men, some clutching a few belongings, described widespread bloodshed in the Kokang ethnic enclave in northeast Myanmar after government troops moved in, seeking to dislodge local rulers and their militia who have long controlled this mountainous terrain next to China.

Some said the Kokang militia had been decisively defeated, a turn that will present Myanmar and China with tricky choices on how to govern the enclave and deal with the tens of thousands of residents who have fled to neighboring Yunnan province in China.

“The Kokang army has collapsed. We’re all on the run,” said Chen Bo, a refugee who arrived from Myanmar at the Chinese border town of Nansan on Sunday.

Chen said he was a Chinese national who had been fighting for the Kokang forces for money. He pulled up his shirt to show what appeared to be a bullet graze on his deeply tanned back.

“People may return to Kokang, but there’ll have to be the right conditions, there’ll have to be negotiations so we feel safe,” said Chen, a rake-thin man in his thirties.

“The Myanmar army had too much strength and won, but running Kokang is very difficult.”

Many of the fleeing men said they escaped on Saturday after the latest spasm of gunfights in Kokang, joining the many refugees in Nansan and other refugee collection points in Yunnan.

Kokang has long served as a freewheeling buffer zone between China and Myanmar, and drug trafficking and gambling have long underpinned the enclave’s economy. Most of its predominantly ethnic Chinese residents can speak Mandarin.

“We’re soldiers from the Kokang army. But we had to give up. The fighting was too much,” said Xiong Zhaole, walking, head bowed, with about six other men along a muddy mountain road near a border crossing.

Xiong said he and his companions had been told by Chinese soldiers who received them at the border to swap their army greens for blue outfits, abandon any plans to fight and find somewhere to stay with relatives or in refugee camps.

The battle erupted after the Myanmar military moved into the area as part of efforts to ensure ethnic groups participate in elections next year, according to reports by Chinese media and Myanmar exile groups.

One of those groups, the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said in a statement that about 700 troops from the Kokang militia had fled to China and surrendered their weapons.

A BRITTLE BALANCE

The overrunning of Kokang by Myanmar government forces will open up questions about the government’s relations with other powerful ethnic groups along the mountainous border with China.

China is one of neighbor Myanmar’s few diplomatic backers and has deflected pressure from Western governments over the military government’s tough steps against protesters and pro-democracy campaigners.

But the many thousands of refugees highlight the brittle balance Beijing has sought between working with the Myanmar government and accommodating the forces who have long run Kokang.

“I think ultimately the future of Kokang will have to be solved through negotiations, not war,” He Shengda, an expert on Myanmar at the Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, told Reuters.

He cited the example of a 1989 ceasefire agreement over control of the enclave.

“If the fighting continues, this could damage the stability of other, bigger border regions in Myanmar.”

Yunnan Communist Party official Meng Sutie told a briefing on Sunday that about 30,000 people had fled from Myanmar into China, and that two Chinese nationals had been killed in the fighting — one in Myanmar and another on the Chinese side of the border — according to state television.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that Myanmar had “apologized for Chinese casualties” in the fighting. The report also said refugees had begun to return from China to Myanmar on Sunday after fighting died down.

Li Hui, an information officer with the Yunnan provincial government, told Reuters the main border crossing near Nansan had been reopened on Sunday afternoon, but few, if any, appeared ready to move back just yet.

That could leave Beijing with many displaced and angry Myanmar nationals to cope with in this remote hill country. The Chinese government has not officially called them refugees.

“We want (ethnic) Chinese people to run us. We’re scared of the Myanmar army and now they have the upper hand,” said Li Deming, a native of Kokang who had tramped into Nansan, where refugees are crowded into tents and half-completed buildings.

Far from all the refugees sympathized with the local militia. Some described Kokang as a lawless den of drugs and gambling.

“Kokang is run by warlords, and warlords and drugs are like twins, so that’s how Kokang works,” said one refugee in the main refugee camp in Nansan. He could not give his name, because the interview was interrupted by Chinese officials.

(Additional reporting by Royston Chan in Nansan and Li Jiansheng in Beijing; Editing by Jason Subler)