NGOs in Thailand assist thousands fleeing Myanmar violence
Myanmar, Jun 09, 2009
 Aid groups in western Thailand are assisting an estimated 4,000 members of the Karen ethnic minority group who have been displaced by fighting between Myanmar's (Burma's) military and an ethnic rebel group involved in one of the longest running insurgencies in the world. Although aid groups and officials have offered figures for the number of displaced ranging from about 1,700 to more than 6,400, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), an alliance of aid groups serving as the key aid providers for refugees in the area, said Tuesday (June 9) that 4,060 Karen villagers, mainly women and children, had crossed into Thailand since people began to flee on Friday (June 5), the Associated Press (AP) reported. Some aid groups have described the recent Karen exodus as the largest single movement across the Thai-Myanmar border since 1997. The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said Tuesday that staff have been sent to the area about 62 miles (100 km) north of the Thai border town of Mae Sot where the displaced have settled in five sites. The AP reported the TBBC as saying that the Thai government is considering relocating the refugees into a single location to make it easier to provide shelter for them amid heavy seasonal rains. UNHCR hopes to obtain an accurate count of the number of affected people and is distributing plastic sheeting. The TBBC is supplying the refugees with food, mosquito nets, cooking materials and blankets, according to UNHCR. Aid workers said most of the refugees say they want to remain as close to their villages in the southern part of Myanmar's Karen state as possible so they may return quickly when the fighting subsides, the AP reported. The movement started after an estimated 9,000 Myanmar troops gathered near a stronghold for Karen rebels on Friday in preparation for an offensive. The Karen National Liberation Army, the military branch of the Karen National Union (KNU), has been fighting the military for six decades with the original aim of securing independence for Karen, one of several eastern Myanmar states made up of ethnic minority groups that were promised the chance to petition for independence from the majority Burmese but never allowed to do so. The military launches an annual offensive against the KNU, usually in January, and more than 500,000 people are thought to be displaced by the violence inside Myanmar, while nearly 150,000 others are living in nine UNHCR-run camps in Thailand. According to the AP, the latest unexpected military offensive is under way, with Myanmar troops shelling encampments of Karen rebels. The AP attributed a spokesperson for the Karen as saying that the KNU had killed about 25 Myanmar troops and members of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army - a Karen group that broke away from the KNU in 1995 and has joined the government's fight. But there is no way to confirm the figure and no one has offered estimates of KNU casualties. The Irrawaddy news magazine reported Tuesday that the KNU has called on the UN and other international bodies and neighboring countries to pressure Myanmar's military government to engage in talks on political and ethnic military conflicts in the country.
8
Source:
Recent News related to Myanmar:
|
