Border war rattles China-Myanmar ties
Burmese unrest may provoke reaction from China
China resolves issue with Sino-Myanmar border inhabitants
Kokang Conflict Highlights Constitutional Flaw
New Japanese Gov’t Expected to be More Critical of Junta
Myanmar occupies Kokang region, sending message to other rebels
Economic Crisis Hits Burmese Migrant Women
Myanmar opposition leader Suu Kyi to renovate home-cum-prison
Why Violence Erupted on the China-Burma Border
Myanmar refugees wary of return
Fighters flee as Myanmar crushes militia
Junta Sends Major Reinforcements to Shan State
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Sep 1, 2009
Border war rattles China-Myanmar ties
By Larry Jagan

BANGKOK – Myanmar military operations against an ethnic insurgent group have forced tens of thousands of refugees across China’s southern border and ratcheted up bilateral tensions between the usually allied neighboring nations.

Now there are growing fears that Myanmar army actions against the ethnic Kokang Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) could explode into a wider conflict as other ceasefire groups, including the heavily armed United Wa State Army (UWSA), are dragged into the fighting.

The 20-year-old ceasefire agreement between the ruling junta and MNDAA has fallen victim to the government’s attempts to exert its authority over border areas before democratic elections are held next year. Some analysts believe the guerilla MNDAA has suffered heavy casualties and that at least one-half of their estimated 1,500 armed forces have fled into China.

In response, Beijing has deployed extra troops and armed policemen to the area to guard against a possible spillover of the violence across its border. A senior Chinese envoy has been dispatched to the Myanmar capital at Naypyidaw to convey Beijing’s “serious concerns” about the situation, according to a senior Chinese government official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

By the weekend, an estimated 50,000 refugees had fled from northeastern Myanmar into China, a local Chinese government official in the Yunnan province city of Kunming told Asia Times Online on condition of anonymity. The first wave of refugees crossed the border nearly three weeks ago, he said. “First, they came in dribs and drabs, and then in much larger numbers,” according to a resident on the Chinese side of the border.

Up to 30,000 people earlier this month streamed into the Yunnan provincial town of Nansan and other nearby villages from ethnic Kokang areas in Myanmar’s northeastern Shan State, according to Kitty McKinsey, regional spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees based in Bangkok. “Chinese authorities are providing emergency food, shelter and medical care,” she said.

Over the weekend, the apparently defeated remnants of the Kokang army fled across the border, a Kokang military leader told Asia Times Online. At least 700 soldiers handed over their weapons to Chinese authorities as they crossed the border, discarded their green military uniforms and donned blue overalls supplied by their Chinese hosts. They are being held close to the border in a separate camp from the other refugees by heavily armed Chinese security forces, the Kokang military leader said.

Chinese refugees
Some of those who have fled the fighting are believed to be Chinese citizens, including businessmen and workers who in their thousands have migrated to Myanmar’s Kokang areas over the past decade. Most businesses, including money changers, restaurants, casinos and entertainment venues in Kokang areas are either owned or run by Chinese citizens. Hundreds of traders also cross the border every week to do business and trade in the Kokang capital. They have been advised to suspend their activities until the situation stabilizes, according to Chinese sources.

One Chinese official, who requested anonymity, said that Chinese central authorities were “extremely upset” by the spillover effects of the Myanmar military’s actions and were “furious” that they had not been forewarned about the offensive. After a flurry of diplomatic contacts, both in Beijing and Naypyidaw, Myanmar has “apologized” for the instability caused across the Chinese border, according to a Myanmar Foreign Ministry official.

It appears the military operations were aimed primarily at capturing a Kokang arms factory, Myanmar leaders told their Chinese counterparts. But Myanmar analysts remain skeptical and believe this was a pretext at best. “The junta knows it must move to disarm these ethnic rebel groups, and the Kokang are the weakest militarily,” a Burmese academic and military specialist at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, Win Min, told Asia Times Online. “Before the military launched this attack the authorities have been trying to portray the Kokang leaders as drug dealers.”

The Kokang are ethnically Chinese and speak a dialect of Mandarin, but have lived for many decades inside Myanmar. They have their own armed militia and fought against the Myanmar army for several decades demanding autonomy. They were part of the Burma Communist Party and agreed to a ceasefire in 1989, which until now had held.

The Kokang were also heavily involved in the narcotics trade and were known until recently to be major opium producers. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, their area has been poppy-free since 2003, though some analysts have contested that assessment.

Well-planned assault
Tensions had been rising in Myanmar’s border areas for months as the military junta pressured various ethnic rebel ceasefire groups – including the Kachin, Kokang and Wa – to surrender their arms before democratic elections planned for next year. The Myanmar government wants to integrate these groups under the national government as border police guard units, but these and other ethnic groups along the Chinese border have resisted integration.

Thousands of Myanmar troops took up positions in the Kokang area in early August before launching their major offensive last week. Security along the way to the Kokang headquarters at Laogai had been tightened by the Myanmar military, while rice and food supplies were prevented from entering the area, according to one resident.

On August 8, a local Myanmar officer sent soldiers into the area to investigate reports that the Kokang forces were operating an arms factory. They also reportedly entered the home of Kokang military leader Peng Jiasheng in search of narcotics. He has reportedly since fled into the neighboring area controlled by the UWSA, which is believed to have more than 15,000 troops under arms.

Since the fighting subsided, the Myanmar army is in total control of the Kokang capital, Laogai. Once a bustling border town, full of bars, discos, karaoke clubs and gambling dens, the town center is now virtually deserted except for Myanmar soldiers. Most of the refugees fled with only the clothes on their back and a suitcase and left most of their possessions behind, according to aid workers.

Some refugees are now weighing whether to return to their homes for fear that their property will be looted by the soldiers. But they are also worried about living under Myanmar army rule. “We fear that the soldiers will not treat us well,” a 53-year old Kokang woman told Asia Times Online. “We have heard how the army rapes women and children, forces the men folk to carry supplies and executes anyone who refuses to obey them,” she said.

But with the Kokang promising to retaliate, and with the more powerful UWSA coming to their aid, the prospect for an orderly return of displaced persons is distant. “More confrontation and military encounters are expected in the following days and thousands of villagers are fleeing to the China-Burma border to avoid the war, and subsequent human-rights abuses,” said a statement from the Kokang group.

Analysts believe other ceasefire groups could be targeted next. “This does not augur well for the other ceasefire groups like the Kachin and Wa,” said the academic Win Min. “This may be a preview of what’s to come,” he added. Earlier this month, the Kachin, Kokang and Wa leaders all formed an alliance, known as the Myanmar Peace and Democracy Front, in which they mutually agreed not to surrender their arms before the scheduled elections.

Now there is a very high risk of a return to widespread armed conflict along the China-Myanmar border, according to a Chinese government official who closely follows events in Myanmar. “The problem is that the Wa are very close to the Chinese government and it would be very hard for them to desert them at this crucial point in time,” he added.

At the same time, China wants to restore peace to border areas before it destabilizes areas of China. Beijing has advised Myanmar to stop fighting and encouraged a new ceasefire settlement with the Kokang, an arrangement China has offered to mediate, according to Chinese government sources. Beijing wants the refugees to return to Myanmar as soon as possible, but has no intentions of pushing them back, said the official. At the same time, Chinese authorities are guarding against the refugees traveling and attempting to settle further inland.

The military offensive bears out recent suggestions that Myanmar is bidding to assert itself against China, widely seen as the reclusive regime’s main international backer. In the past few months, the ruling junta had reportedly become disillusioned with Beijing’s lack of support for its attempts to disarm the rebel groups, including those that enjoy a special relationship with China.

Some say the enthusiastic reception the junta recently gave to United States Senator Jim Webb – usually only reserved for heads of state – was a clear sign of the junta’s attempt to move away from its diplomatic reliance on China. In another jab at Beijing, this week’s edition of the Myanmar Times ran a short agency news story on Tibet’s spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, visiting Taiwan, after it was approved by government censors.

It represented the first time Myanmar’s tightly controlled media had even mentioned the Dalai Lama in more than 20 years, according to Yangon-based diplomats.

Larry Jagan previously covered Myanmar politics for the British Broadcasting Corp. He is currently a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KI01Ae04.html
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Burmese unrest may provoke reaction from China
Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times
Monday, August 31, 2009
(08-31) 04:00 PDT New Delhi –

An uneasy calm settled over northern Burma on Sunday as rebels and refugees continued to cross the border into southern China after an assault by the Burmese military.

The United Nations and overseas Burmese groups say upward of 10,000 refugees and hundreds of ethnic Kokang fighters are in southern China, presenting a logistical headache for the central government in Beijing.

Still unclear, analysts said, is whether this is only a lull in the fighting and how great an effect this human tide will have on relations between China and its ally, Burma, which is also known as Myanmar.

In the past, Beijing has played down political, social and human-rights problems raised by the West, contending that these were internal Burmese issues that didn’t affect regional stability or China’s national interest. This stance may be harder to maintain now that the problem has washed over into Chinese territory.

“India will remain quiet as long as its national interests aren’t affected,” said Aung Zaw, the editor of The Irrawaddy, a news magazine published out of Chiang Mai, Thailand. “But this puts China in a difficult situation.”

A number of considerations appear to have fueled Burma’s decision to launch a campaign against the Kokang militants, analysts said.

“This is a several-prong strategy,” said Zarni, a senior fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science who uses only one name.

The move may be aimed at boosting domestic support in advance of promised elections in 2010, the first in two decades. The elections are being held under a new constitution widely seen as favorable to the nation’s military rulers.

Northern Burma is better off financially than many other parts of the impoverished nation because of smuggling, Chinese investment, trade and other factors. So an attack on the Kokang, the weakest of several armed groups in the area, could win points among voters farther south who envy the area’s relative prosperity.

The attack on a group that is ethnically and linguistically Chinese also may be a way to send a signal to Beijing that Burma doesn’t want to be pushed around.

Although this risks awakening the sleeping giant, Burma also knows that China’s Communist Party doesn’t want trouble in advance of the nation’s politically sensitive 60th anniversary of party rule.

Furthermore, China recently staked $1 billion on an oil pipeline project through Burma, which probably will make it think twice about applying too much pressure on the military junta.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/31/MNK619G53L.DTL

This article appeared on page A – 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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China resolves issue with Sino-Myanmar border inhabitants
15:48, August 31, 2009

Thousands of Myanmar residents flooded into China after Myanmar army standoff on August 26, and crossed into Yunnan province, southwest China, to escape fighting. And the Yunnan provincial government have helped them to settle down in seven settlements with supply of life necessities and medical care as human assistance in an effort to safeguard bilateral friendly ties and maintain stability in the border areas.

At present, the situation in Myanmar’s Konkan region, or Shan State special Region-1 in the northeastern part of the country, has returned to normalcy, and some border inhabitants, who fled the fighting into China’s Yunnan province, start to return to their homes, announced a related Yunnan provincial department on Sunday, August 30.

The Konkan region shares a border in northeastern Myanmar with China’s southwestern Yunnan province and has a population of about 150,000, and fighting kept on in this Myanmar ethnic region.

To date, about 37,000 border inhabitants comprising both Burmese and Chinese had fled into China after armed conflicts erupted in the Konkan area in northeastern Myanmar, said Meng Sutie, police chief of Yunnan Province on Sunday. One Chinese citizen was killed and two others injured by three shells that were fired into the Chinese territory.

Meanwhile, Meng acknowledged, the conflicts in Myanmar have also killed a Chinese and injured 13 others in that country… Myanmar had apologized for the Chinese casualties for the Chinese side made a stern representation, he said.

At present, more than 13,000 of the 37,000 border inhabitants fleeing into China havee accepted aids from the Chinese government, while others have gone and live with their relatives and friends. Some of those Chinese border hinhabitants doing business or seasonal jobs at the Konkan region have already returned their homes.

To cope with the exodus of border inhabitants fleeing into Yunnan border areas, the governments of Lincang city and Yunnan province have resorted to varied viable measures, including the location of seven settlements on the frontier region, the provision of thousands of tents for inflooded people, and the allocation of 10 million yuan (1.47 million US dollars) as relief founds for settling border inhabitants, so as to ensure that they would obtain proper humanitarian aid.

After the outbreak of the incident, Chinese Party and government leaders have paid close attention to the development of the thorny issue and repeatedly publicized important directions for its settlement. Yunnan province has, in addition to taking other viable, prompt measures, enhanced the management or control of frontier areas, stepped up epidemic monitoring and made active medical preparations for any possible emergences, so as to help guarantee the normal production and living orders in the frontier areas.

Hostilities had practically come to a halt on the early evening of last Saturday, or August 29, Meng recalled. The Chinese side had lodged a stern representation with the Myanmar side via diplomatic channels on the life and property damage and economic losses inflicted upon Chinese citizens in the Konkan region, in a hope that Myanmar will safeguard the life and property security of Chinese citizens in Myanmar and the relevant Myanmar department will make the commitment in this regard.

It has been learned that border inhabitants have to go through entry formalities upon their entry into China and, as for a few, scattered Myanmar armed personnel who have entered China, the Chinese side seized their arms, took them in and would repatriate them at an appropriate time in accordance with the International Law and other relevant practices.

At present, a large number of border inhabitants have begun returning from China as the situation in the Konkan region calms down. It is reported that the Konkan region has now regained stability, and the Konkan ethnic people who have returned to their homes are being accepted back after scrutiny, whereas the production and living conditions for border inhabitants inside China have become normal on the whole.

China sincerely hopes that Myanmar would appropriately resolve its domestic problems and maintain the stability of the China-Myanmar border region in the border area and effectively assure the security of life and property of Chinese border inhabitants, proceeding from the overall situation of Sino-Myanmar friendly relations, said Yunnan provincial police chief Meng Sutie.

By People’s Daily Online and contributed by PD reporters Wang Yan, Yang Yueping and Wu Xiaoyang
http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6744158.html
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COMMENTARY
Kokang Conflict Highlights Constitutional Flaw
By YENI         Monday, August 31, 2009

The recent clashes between the Burma Army and the Kokang ethnic militia, known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), in the country’s northeastern region expose a central flaw in the constitution that was approved in the so-called referendum held a few days after Cyclone Nargis struck Burma in May 2008.

Although the Burmese junta announced on Sunday that the fighting is over and that the Kokang region—the autonomous First Special Region of the northern Shan State, recognized by Napyidaw—is again stable, there is growing suspicion and distrust of the  Burma Army within the Sino-Burmese border-based ethnic groups that have ceasefire agreements with the Naypyidaw regime.

Relations between those ethnic groups and the junta deteriorated when Naypyidaw in April ordered all ceasefire armed groups to transform their armies into a Border Guard Force, to operate under the Burmese army.

The junta’s recent move to transform the troops of the ceasefire groups into border guard forces before the upcoming 2010 election is believed to be in accordance with the constitutional provision.

Clause 338 in the new constitution’s chapter VII, entitled “Defense Services,” states that all armed forces in the union shall be under the command of the defense services, known in Burmese as the “Tatmadaw,” which is described as the main armed force for the defense of the union.

As the June 30 deadline approached for accepting the regime’s border guard proposal, Lt-Gen Ye Myint, chief of military affairs security and secretary of the transformation committee for the border guard force, visited the Wa, Kokang and Mongla regions to promote the plan. Burmese military officials also met with representatives from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in Kachin State.

However, with the exception of the Burmese-Thai border-based Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, armed ceasefire groups have refused to accept the border guard proposal, effectively rejecting a central clause of the new constitution. Seventeen insurgent groups have signed ceasefire agreements with the ruling generals since 1989, according to official reports.

Despite signing ceasefire agreements, ethnic armed troops have recently been preparing for possible combat with the Burmese army by recruiting and training soldiers and producing small arms and ammunition. The United Wa State Army (UWSA), in particular, is manufacturing arms and ammunition for use by its own battalions but also to sell to other armed groups in the region.

According to a Jane’s security report, the UWSA facility marks the first time an insurgent group in the region has succeeded in setting up a small-arms production line. The UWSA is also known to be operating as traffickers and middlemen, buying from Chinese arms manufacturers, then reselling the weapons to Indian insurgent groups and the KIA.

Observers believe that the patience of Burmese military commanders is wearing thin and Naypyidaw seems have no option but to launch military action against ceasefire groups.

In a tactic aimed at achieving ethnic compliance with the junta’s border guard plan, the Burmese regime began its pressure on the Kokang group, citing its concern about Kokang  links to illegal arms production—charging that arms production facilities had been set up at the home of the MNDAA’s chairman, Peng Jiasheng.

The area rocked by fighting between the Burma Army and Kokang forces is also renowned for illegal activities such as gambling, drug production and trafficking. The regime has no shortage of reasons, therefore, for using its armed forces to bring the ethnic groups into the “legal fold,” neutralizing their threat and giving some extent of “legitimacy” to next year’s general election.

Meanwhile, the Burma Army is busy deploying its troops to consolidate control over several armed ethnic groups along its borders—both those with China and Thailand. There are serious concerns that the boom years that began with the signing of a ceasefire agreement with then-intelligence chief Gen Khin Nyunt are ending on the battlefield.

The current clashes on the Sino-Burmese border offer a clear picture of what the election will mean for Burma’s ethnic regions. It’s a familiar picture—of conflict, fleeing refugees and massive human rights violations.  http://www.irrawaddy.org/opinion_story.php?art_id=16689
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New Japanese Gov’t Expected to be More Critical of Junta
By LAWI WENG    Monday, August 31, 2009

Burma pro-democracy activists in Japan say newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama should be more supportive of the pro-democracy movement when he takes office in September.

The opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), led by Hatoyama, defeated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) by more than 300 seats in the 480-seat lower house of parliament in the election on Friday.
A press member takes pictures of Democratic Party of Japan campaign posters at Laforet Museum Roppong in Tokyo. (Photo: Getty Images)

Min Nyo, a secretary in the Burma Office Japan, an activist group, told The Irrawaddy on Monday he believed Japan will take a tougher stance toward the military government and offer more support for pro-democracy activists.

Members of the Burma Office and the Japanese Trade Union Confederation will meet with newly elected officials to discuss policy changes toward Burma, said Min Nyo.

A Japanese Labor Union office official, who asked not to be named, said, “We will request the Democrat Party change the official policy on Burma. We plan to meet elected leaders in the future and ask them to support economic sanctions and not to recognize the junta’s new constitution.

However, Shwe Ba, a Japanese freelance journalist, said, “They [Democrat Party] have said many things before. I don’t think they will do everything they say.”

Shwe Ba said that a weakness of the Japanese government’s current policy toward Burma is its lack of support for economic sanctions.

“It’s very important to block them [the regime],” he said. “Burmese democracy activists need to discuss with Japanese politicians ways to put pressure on the Burmese regime.”

Yukio Hatoyama is believed to be a strong supporter of the Burma democracy movement in Japan. He talked with pro-democracy opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi on the telephone when she was released from house arrest in 2001.

Hatoyama attended a meeting early this year in Japan with several Burmese ethnic leaders and said that American and Japanese foreign policy on Burma should be the same. Currently, Japan does not support economic sanctions.

In July, Japanese Foreign Minister Hirofumi Nakasone told Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win at the Asean Regional Forum in Thailand Aung San Suu Kyi should be released from prison and Burma’s national election in 2010 should be free and fair…

After the Suu Kyi verdict, the Japanese foreign minister said in statement that Japan was deeply disappointed and called for the release of Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

Japan is one of Burma’s main donor nations. It provided Burma with more than US $2.96 billion from 1999 to 2006 in development assistance, according to Japan officials.
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16690
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Myanmar occupies Kokang region, sending message to other rebels
Asia-Pacific News

Aug 31, 2009, 10:52 GMT

Yangon – Myanmar’s junta claimed Monday to have restored ‘peace and security’ to the Kokang region of the Shan State after losing 26 soldiers and police in clashes with rebels, but resistance sources said the fighting was still underway.

‘Peace has been restored, and tasks for restoration of regional peace, stability and development have returned to normal,’ Myanmar’s state-run newspapers and TV reported Monday.

Fighting between an estimated 700 Kokang troops loyal to leader Peng Jiasheng and thousands of Myanmar troops forced an estimated 30,000 civilians to flee to Nansan, in Yunnan province in China, irking the Chinese government.

But sources on the Thai-Myanmar border claimed the fighting was ongoing.

‘We hear that the Burmese army is still seizing people to turn them into porters while they mop up the Kokang fighters on the Myanmar side of the border,’ said Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the pro-resistance Shan Herald Agency for News website.

‘My sources said they can still hear fighting,’ he said in a telephone interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

The New Light of Myanmar newspaper claimed the fighting had left 15 Myanmar soldiers and 11 police dead, and dozens wounded.

The government mouthpiece blamed the outbreak of fighting on Peng Jiasheng, whom they claimed was involved in various illegal activities such as drug trafficking and the illicit manufacturing of arms and ammunition.

Analysts of the region, however, claim Myanmar’s junta was annoyed with Peng Jiasheng for refusing to comply with their demand that the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army – as the Kokang army has been called since 1989 – be turned into a border militia under army control.

The Kokang are one of a dozen former insurgencies that signed ceasefire agreements with the junta in 1989 in exchange for a certain measure of autonomy, allowing them to keep their small armies and run their own economies.

But the armies must come under government control by October, and be turned into border militias as part of the junta’s preparations for a general election next year.

Besides the Kokang, other much larger ethnic minority armies such as the Kachin, Wa and Shan have expressed reluctance to turn their armies into border militias under the Myanmar army, their traditional enemy.

The attack on the Kokang army, with less than 1,000 soldiers, was seen as a warning to the other ethnic minority groups in the Shan State, analysts said.

‘This was a means of sending a warning to the other ethnic minority groups,’ said Win Min, a lecturer on Myanmar affairs at Chiang Mai University. ‘After seeing what happened to the Kokang they will be afraid of being attacked as well and of losing control over their territories,’ he said.

The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese minority group that has lived in north-eastern Myanmar for centuries. They once formed a core fighting group in the now-defunct Burmese Communist Party.
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1498344.php/Myanmar-occupies-Kokang-region-sending-message-to-other-rebels
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Economic Crisis Hits Burmese Migrant Women
By MARWAAN MACAN-MARKAR / IPS WRITER    Monday, August 31, 2009

BANGKOK — The global financial crisis is threatening to shred the dreams of thousands of women from Burma, who have fled their military-ruled country over the past decade for better jobs in more prosperous Thailand, say activists.

Mae Sot, a town along the Thai-Burma border that has been a magnet for female migrant workers, is one area where this pain is being felt, they add. Ongoing conflicts between the military and ethnic groups and a depressed economy in Burma, also known as Myanmar, are among the reasons behind such flight across the border.

“There is growing worry among these women that they will not be able to remit part of their earnings to their families in Burma,” says Jackie Pollock, director of the Migrant Action Programme, a group lobbying for migrants’ rights in Thailand. “Entire families depend on such remittances, which are about 2,500 baht (about 75 U.S. dollars) every quarter.”

She expects this predicament to worsen as the crisis, which has resulted in the drying up of export markets in the United States, unfolds in the months ahead. “It is just starting to hit them. The families in Burma are living off what was saved from last year’s remittances.”

This economic downturn is squeezing a female labour force that is already being discriminated against by the factory owners, mostly Thais, who refuse to pay the daily minimum wage. The Burmese women who labour for hours behind sewing machines get between 60 and 80 baht a day, whereas the minimum wage set out by the Thai state for Mae Sot is 151 baht (4.57 U.S. dollars) a day.

These women make up the predominant labour force in the nearly 300 export-oriented textile and garment factories in Mae Sot, reveals a report launched Friday in Bangkok. Each factory employs 100 to 1,000 workers, while “about another 200 unregistered ‘home factories’ would employ between five and 20 workers,” says the report.

This female labour force is part of the estimated 300,000 Burmese migrant workers in Mae Sot, which also provides work in other areas. That includes jobs in agriculture, construction, domestic work, call centres, the entertainment industry and on garbage sites.

In all these fields of labour, “women are shouldering a disproportionate burden,” says Soe Lin Aung, co-author of the 48-page report, ‘Critical Times—Migrants and the Economy in Chiang Mai and Mae Sot.’” A substantial number of women we surveyed—43 percent—reported a drop in their incomes.”

“Knitting factories, which produce warm clothing largely for very hard-hit US and European markets, are said to be struggling disproportionately, with demand dropping steeply,” states the report. “The local chapter of the Federation of Thai Industries claims that orders have dropped by 12 percent, and ‘the talk,’ as one report puts it, is overwhelming layoffs, reduced working hours and increased difficulty finding new jobs.”

Currently, the average monthly income for a worker in such factories hovers close to 2,500 baht, with only regular shifts available. Yet “at this time last year, which is a relatively high season, a knitting factory employee might have made 6,000 baht (182 US dollars) a month, while a garment factory worker would have made a bit more than 3,000 baht, including overtime hours,” adds the report.

“I can’t support my parents because I’m not in a good job situation. My brother and sister are also not okay û they also can’t support with any money,” says one female migrant worker interviewed for the report.

The money sent home by the migrant workers has become a vital lifeline for the families they have left behind, most of whom are elderly fathers and mothers and children too young to work.

“Over 30 people have come to work in Thailand from my village,” says Deng Lungjong, who works in the northern city of Chiang Mai, another magnet for Burmese women in search of jobs.

“There are six people in my village that are depending on the money I remit home,” the 26-year-old said in an interview. “Earlier I could remit money four times a year; now I can only send twice a year.”

The migrant workers in Mae Sot and Chiang Mai are among an estimated two million registered and unregistered migrant workers from Burma, Cambodia and Laos in Thailand. They labour in work described by labour rights groups as “dirty, dangerous and difficult.” The majority of them—over one million—are from Burma.

The plight of the migrant workers in Mae Sot—or other parts of Thailand feeling the economic pain—hardly surprises the International Labour Organisation (ILO). “All too often migrant workers in poorly visible categories of work tend to be the shock absorbers during an economic downturn,” says Tim De Meyer, labour standards specialist at the Bangkok-based Asia office of the ILO.

In fact, the Geneva-based body did have the female migrant workers from Burma in mind when it said earlier this year that the current economic meltdown has a “woman’s face,” since women laborers are affected more severely, and differently, compared to their male counterparts.

In the Asia-Pacific region, the ILO projected that as many as 27 more people could become unemployed, pushing the total number of people in the region without jobs to 112.2 million.

And hit taken by women in this dire picture stems from the work they do: often in labour-intensive export industries like the ones in Mae Sot.

It was a similar scenario that played out a decade ago, when Southeast Asia was hit by the 1997 financial crisis, decimating once vibrant, export-driven economies. In Thailand, for instance, 95 percent of the workers laid off from the garment sector were women, according to the ILO.

But despite such a reality repeating itself in places like Mae Sot, the female migrants from Burma are reluctant to return home. “While the situation may be getting bad here, the situation is worse in Burma,” says Deng, who have been working in Thailand for 10 years. “My family at home has only me to depend on.”
Copyright © 2008 Irrawaddy Publishing Group | www.irrawaddy.org
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16686
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Myanmar opposition leader Suu Kyi to renovate home-cum-prison
Asia-Pacific News

Aug 31, 2009, 8:50 GMT

Yangon – Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi plans to renovate her lakeside home-cum-prison, where she has spent 14 of the past 20 years under detention, media reports said Monday.

Suu Kyi was last month sentenced to a new term of 18 months under house arrest at her family compound on Inya Lake, after being found guilty of breaking the terms of her detention for allowing US national John William Yettaw to swim, albeit uninvited, to her home on May 3.

‘Now that her trial is over, Daw (Madame) Aung San Suu Kyi wants to repair her house,’ Nyan Win, Suu Kyi’s spokesman, told The Myanmar Times.

‘She wants to mount iron grills in the windows,’ he said.

No renovation work has been done on the house since Suu Kyi began living there in 1988, when she returned top Myanmar, also called Burma, after spending much of her adulthood in England where she attended Oxford University and married a British professor. Suu Kyi is the daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San.

‘She will spend her own money on the renovation,’ Nyan Win said.

He added that according to city regulations, property owners must apply for a permit themselves, but given her situation, the permit can be sought by ‘the authorities who are responsible for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest.’

Authorities erected two fences on the lake side of the compound after Yettaw’s infamous swim.

It was widely believed that Yettaw’s bizarre escapade provided Myanmar’s junta with a pretext to keep Suu Kyi out of the political picture until after a planned general election next year.

Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years in prison, was released less than a week after receiving his verdict at the behest of US Senator Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia who is chairman of the East Asia and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee. http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/asiapacific/news/article_1498317.php/Myanmar-opposition-leader-Suu-Kyi-to-renovate-home-cum-prison
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Why Violence Erupted on the China-Burma Border
By Hannah Beech Monday, Aug. 31, 2009
Ng Han Guan / AP

China’s border with Burma is a porous demarcation, with everything from tropical timber and rubies to heroin slipping across with little oversight. But August brought a more unusual Burmese import: thousands of Kokang hill-tribe members fleeing violence in their small enclave in Burma’s northeastern Shan State. By late in the month, the United Nations estimated that some 30,000 refugees had poured across the border into China’s Yunnan Province, as the Burmese military routed a small rebel force that had laid down its arms for two decades before a ceasefire crumbled in early August.

The refugee crisis comes as the Burmese military regime is tightening its grip across the country ahead of nationwide polls it has announced for next year. Since taking power in 1962, the exclusively ethnically Burman, or Burmese, junta has largely tamed an unruly patchwork of 100-plus ethnic groups, in part by signing ceasefire accords and granting certain minorities a modicum of regional autonomy. But with the upcoming polls, ethnic groups with standing armies — such as the Kokang, the Kachin, the Karen and the Wa — have been given until October by the junta to refashion themselves as a centrally controlled border force or forgo the chance to participate in the elections. (Read about Burma’s ethnic minorities.)

Many of these armed groups have already indicated that they are not interested in giving up their already limited sovereignty in return for participating in an election that few believe will be free or fair. Burma’s last electoral exercise in 1990 ended with the non-ethnic National League for Democracy winning the most seats in parliament, ethnic-based political parties coming in second and third, and the junta-backed party finishing fourth. However, the junta, which has controlled the country since 1962, ignored the results and kept its grip on power. “Some analyses say that even a rigged election is okay, if it leads to democracy,” says Gun Maw, a high-ranking officer in the Kachin Independence Army, one of the armed ethnic groups operating on the border with China that has decided not to give up its guns. “But it looks like these elections will not lead to democracy, so it is better not to be involved.”

The Kokang, under a commander named Peng Jiasheng, had also recently rejected the regime’s border-force offer. Soon after, gun battles erupted between the Burmese military and elements of Peng’s Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, as the Kokang militia is known. Throughout August, the Burmese army made incursions into the Kokang enclave, a region they had largely kept out of since the 1989 ceasefire was inked. The initial reason given by the junta for its forays into Kokang territory was that a weapons factory there was in fact being used to churn out illegal narcotics. Several of the ethnic militias in this part of northeastern Burma have financed themselves through the drug trade.

On Aug. 30, the Burmese state-controlled media finally acknowledged the bloodshed in Shan State, reporting that 36 junta forces had been killed in the fighting. Estimates for Kokang casualties vary widely. But even the Kokang admit that their outnumbered forces have been no match for the invading Burmese army, which now appears to be occupying large parts of Kokang turf.

The Kokang originally came from China, first arriving in Burma in the 17th century. Supporters of the Ming emperors, they fled for exile as that Chinese dynasty disintegrated in 1644. After Burma gained independence from the colonial British, Kokang territory was under the control of Burmese communists, who for decades waged an insurgency against the central government and were among the military regime’s most persistent foes. “The [Burmese army] hates many ethnic minorities very much,” says Aung Kyaw Zaw, a former anti-junta rebel who now lives in exile in Yunnan province. “But they especially hate the Kokang because they are ethnically Chinese and they used to be communist.”

Blood ties may explain why China, which has been one of the Burmese regime’s biggest supporters by shielding the country from U.N. criticism and pouring in foreign investment while some Western countries have strengthened economic sanctions, took the unusual step last week of castigating the junta for the Kokang situation. The Chinese Foreign Ministry warned Burma that it should “properly handle domestic problems and maintain stability in the… border region.” The stability-obsessed Chinese government presumably isn’t pleased with gun battles on its southern flank, including stray fire that claimed the life of a Chinese citizen in Yunnan.

The entire border region is also a valuable conduit for Burmese natural resources on which China has become increasingly dependent. For instance, the planned route for a Chinese-financed natural-gas pipeline from western Burma to China runs near the Kokang region. That project is slated to become the biggest-ever foreign investment commitment in Burma. As Beijing sends in People’s Liberation Army reinforcements to its land across from the conflict zone, it can only hope that the Burmese regime keeps a fragile peace with the various ethnic groups in other border areas. “This area has always been like a bomb waiting to go off,” says the Kachin Independence Army’s Gun Maw. “Everyone, from all sides, has to be very careful.” http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1919559,00.html?xid=rss-world
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Myanmar refugees wary of return

Many refugees are afraid to return to Myanmar due to fears of continued conflict [AFP]

Refugees who fled fierce clashes between the Myanmar military and rebels in the northeast of the country have said they fear returning home because of possible reprisals by government troops.

An estimated 37,000 refugees had streamed across the border into China’s Yunnan province in recent days, Chinese officials have said, following days of fighting in Kokang, a mainly ethnic Chinese region of Myanmar’s Shan state.

Eight rebel fighters and 26 security forces were killed in the clashes, state media in Myanmar reported on Sunday, adding that the unrest had ended.

Two Chinese nationals were also killed, officials said.

At a border crossing in the Chinese town of Nansan, refugees were crossing back into Myanmar on Monday in groups of about 40 at a time.

“The Myanmar government has told us through diplomatic channels to send them back,” Li Hui, a spokesman for the Yunnan government told reporters.

“Those who want to go back can return. We are finding that most of these people want to go back to their homes,” he said.

“The Myanmar government is saying that it is calm over there. From what we see, we don’t think that there is any armed fighting.”

But many refugees said they were unconvinced by the government’s claims that calm had been restored in Kokang.

‘Afraid’

“They were shooting ordinary people. I saw it myself. We don’t believe what they say. We are afraid to go back,” said 24-year-old farmer Li Jun.

“They say they will not shoot again but they will shoot.”

Rows of blue tents had been set up in Nansan to accommodate the refugees.

Li said 13,000 refugees were staying in camps, while 10,000-20,000 more were believed to be living with friends and relatives in and around the town.

China is one of the few allies of Myanmar’s, providing the country’s ruling generals with military hardware and is a major consumer of Myanmar’s natural resources.

However Larry Jagan, a Myanmar analyst, told Al Jazeera that China has grown increasingly worried over the conflicts in Myanmar.

“While China continues its policy of non-interference, it has shown and expressed its concern to the ruling generals in Myanmar that it wants a stable neighbour,” he said.

The Kokang rebels – known as the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army -agreed to a ceasefire with the government in 1989 after fighting for autonomy in the region.

However, Myanmar’s military government has recently stepped up efforts to secure the support of ethnic minorities and political groups ahead of national elections due some time next year.

Widening conflict

Over 30,000 refugees poured into China from Myanmar’s Shan state [Reuters]

It wants to co-opt armed ethnic minorities living on the borders of China and Thailand.

These groups have long fought for independence, but between 15 and 20 years ago, the central government signed cease-fire agreements with many of them.

Now it wants to completely absorb those rebel groups, finally ending their push for autonomy.

Many analysts fear this latest flare-up with ethnic Chinese Kokang fighters could spread to draw in the Wa and Kachin ethnic groups, both of which are heavily armed.

Myanmar’s other major internal conflict is with the Karen on the border with Thailand.

Until June, The Karen National Union rebel group controlled much of the border with Thailand. But a major push by the military that month overran seven major camps.

That resulted in around 5,000 people fleeing into Thailand.
Source:        Al Jazeera and agencies
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Fighters flee as Myanmar crushes militia
Web posted at: 8/31/2009 8:56:16
Source ::: AFP
Refugees from Kokang in Myanmar’s Shan State rest at a temporary shelter at the border town of Nansan, in China’s Yunnan province, yesterday.

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

The clusters of men, weary and sometimes 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 neighbouring 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 yesterday.

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. “We were trying to defend our people, but the Myanmar troops were pushing us back.”

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 US Campaign for Burma, said in a statement early on Sunday that about 700 troops from the Kokang militia had fled to China and surrendered their weapons. http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Philippines+%26+South+Asia&month=August2009&file=World_News2009083185616.xml
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Junta Sends Major Reinforcements to Shan State
By SAW YAN NAING        Monday, August 31, 2009

The Burmese regime has been heavily reinforcing its army units in northern Shan State since the weekend in preparation for a major conflict, according to sources.

The troop movements have come despite a report in the Burmese state newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, on Monday that said fighting in Kokang areas in northern Shan State ceased on Saturday and locals were returning to their homes.

Slide Show (View)

The day after Burmese troops occupied Laogai, the capital of the Kokang region on Aug 24, fighting broke out between Burmese forces and Kokang soldiers, resulting in more than 30,000 refugees fleeing across the border to China.

One source in Shan State who recently arrived in Chiang Mai said he witnessed dozens of trucks carrying fully equipped Burmese troops going from Taunggyi to Kengtung on Saturday.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on Monday, Aung Wa, a Kachin source on the Sino-Burmese border, said about 100 trucks carrying Burmese soldiers were reportedly sent to Lashio in northern Shan State during the weekend.

Lapai Naw Din, the editor of the Thailand-based Kachin News Group, said the Burmese regime sent seven Light Infantry Divisions including LID 99, 55, 33, 22 and five other battalions to northern Shan State.

He also said the United Wa State Army (USWSA), which has 20,000 soldiers and is the strongest ceasefire group, reportedly threatened to attack the Burmese forces in the Kokang area unless they withdrew.

Naw Din said, “The Wa and Kokang armed groups told the occupying Burmese troops to withdraw, otherwise they would launch a major attack.”

He also said the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the Kachin ceasefire group, is on alert after issuing a warning that it would attack any Burmese troops forcibly entering KIA-controlled territories.

Saeng Juen, an editor for the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News, said Burmese army reinforcements were also being sent against the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), also known as the Mong La group.

Sources believe the Mong La group is being targeted because its leader, Sai Linn, also known as Lin Mingxian, is a son-in-law of the Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng, who is now on the junta’s wanted list.

Residents in the Mong La group’s area of control fear an impending attack, and wealthier civilians have been leaving their homes in recent days. Some have gone to China and others to Tachilek on the Thai-Burmese border, Saeng Juen said.

On Aug 28, more than 20 trucks carrying Burmese soldiers were sent from Mandalay to northern Shan State, he said.

About 700 Kokang troops who fled to China handed over their weapons to Chinese officials during the weekend, but about 200 Kokang fighters remained in UWSA-controlled territories with their leader, Peng Jiasheng, to launch guerrilla attacks against Burmese troops, according to sources.

Aung Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese observer on the Sino-Burmese border, said the Burmese regime has also been reinforcing its troops in southern Shan State opposite UWSA units based on the Thai-Burmese border.

He said the Burmese regime might continue fighting weaker ethnic ceasefire groups in northern Burma as there has been no significant international pressure as a result of the recent clashes in the Kokang area.
http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16692