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Baptist
church where the Maran Zau Ja was buried
Compass
Direct News |
A Baptist church in Loije, Bhamo district,
held a funeral on Dec. 27 for 47-year-old Maran
Zau Ja, who was shot dead without provocation by
Burmese Army ’s Light Infantry Battalion No. 321
on Christmas Day, a Kachin source told Compass
by phone.
Zau Ja was a farmer who
was returning from his sugarcane field with a
friend when troops sprayed bullets at them. His
friend survived the gunshots.
The two were not armed
insurgents of the Kachin Independence Army
(KIA), the armed wing of the Kachin Independence
Organization (KIO) that has fought for autonomy
in the Christian-majority state since the early
1960s, when then-Burmese Prime Minister U Nu
made Buddhism the state religion.
About 90 percent of the
roughly 56 million people in Burma, also known
as Myanmar, are Buddhist, mostly from the Burman
ethnic group. Burmese soldiers see “all Kachin
civilians as the enemy,” the Kachin News Group
recently quoted a Kachin village elder as
saying.
On Dec. 16, troops of
Light Infantry Battalion No. 142 burned a
building housing the kitchen of a Baptist church
in Dingga village, also in Bhamo district, the
source added. KIA men and local villagers
managed to save the church building, but the
fire engulfed five homes.
Earlier, on Nov. 30,
Burmese soldiers killed a woman and injured six
villagers as they fired mortar shells targeting
civilians in Tarlawgyi area in Waingmaw
Township, while another battalion burned down 10
homes in Nam Wai village and five more in
neighboring Hpa Ke village. (See
www.compassdirect.org,
“Christian Civilians in Burma Face Deadly
Attacks,” Dec. 5, 2011.)
On Oct. 16, about 150
soldiers from Light Infantry Battalion 438
stormed Nam San Yang village in the Daw Phung
Yang area of Bhamo district and opened fire at
members of a Catholic church before the weekly
mass. While no one was hurt, the priest and some
parishioners were detained. (See
www.compassdirect.org,
“Burma Army Targets Christian Civilians in War
on Insurgents,” Oct. 28, 2011.)
Thailand-based activist
Shirley Seng of the Kachin Women’s Association
told Compass that civilians have been living in
fear since military action hit Kachin state last
June, and that her research team found that
women and children were most affected by the
war. At least 37 women and girls were raped
during the first two months of the conflict, she
said – 13 of them killed.
She added that other girls
and women continue to be abducted.
“They just disappear after
being abducted,” Seng said. “Perhaps they are
first sexually abused and then killed or sold to
brothels.”
President’s Sham Order
The KIO controls most of
Kachin state and runs schools and hospitals and
the public distribution system. The Burmese
government or Army has little control outside
the state capital of Myitkyina. Since June 2011,
however, when the Army ended a 17-year-long
ceasefire with the KIO, government troops were
heavily deployed in KIO-controlled areas leading
to clashes.
More than 90 clashes have
occurred between the Army and the armed
insurgents since President Sein, a former junta
general, reportedly instructed the military on
Dec. 10 to start no fighting with the KIA.
The president’s order was
apparently a mere show, the Kachin source said,
adding that deployment of Army personnel and
attacks on civilians were on the rise and
helicopters were bringing in ammunition and
reinforcements.
“The government made peace
with [formerly detained opposition leader] Aung
San Suu Kyi and has set a few political
prisoners free to gain concessions from the
international community on its brutal military
offensive against ethnic minority states,
primarily in Kachin,” the source said.
After the general election
in 2011, believed to be rigged and the first in
two decades of junta rule, the military’s proxy
Union Solidarity and Development Party came to
power and has been trying to showcase reforms in
an attempt to end economic sanctions and gain
legitimacy.
Little has changed,
however, for Burma’s ethnic minorities.
Internally Displaced
People
According to local
estimates, the military conflict has displaced
about 45,000 people.
“It’s a major threat to
thousands of displaced civilians who are caught
between the warring parties,” Lynn Yoshikawa, an
advocate from the Washington, D.C.-based
Refugees International, told Compass by email.
“The Burma Army does not distinguish between
combatants and civilians, leading to severe
human rights abuses. There is not enough
assistance, and with winter setting in,
displaced people lack enough warm clothes and
are more vulnerable to diseases.”
Yoshikawa urged the
international community “to put pressure on the
military to follow the president’s orders to
halt attacks against the KIO and make sure that
the UN’s access to areas outside government
control is sustained and expanded to meet the
growing needs.” International donors should fund
the humanitarian response, she added, or else
the United Nations World Food Program’s food
stocks will run out in February.
In addition to Kachin, six
other ethnic minority states – including
Christian-majority Chin state and Karen state,
which has a substantial presence of Christians –
have had armed and unarmed groups fighting for
autonomy from the successive military-led
regimes for decades.
While Kachin is the
current target of the Burma Army , it is feared
that other states are also likely to face war in
the near future. Ethnic minority areas along
Burma’s borders with India, Thailand and China
are resource-rich and have strategic importance
for the Union government. Burma’s neighbors have
invested, and intend to accelerate investment,
in power generation and other projects in and
around the ethnic minority region.
The ethnic minority states
were administered separately during British
rule. Some ethnic leaders agreed to incorporate
their states into Burma after the Panglong
Agreement was signed in 1947 providing for full
autonomy, a share of the national wealth and the
right to secession to ethnic states. But Gen.
Aung San, democracy activist Suu Kyi’s father
who was then heading the interim government and
led the signing of the agreement, was
assassinated months later. Subsequent regimes
refused to honor the agreement and forcibly made
ethnic states a part of the new country.
The federal government is
carrying on with the military offensive on the
one hand, and holding “peace talks” with armed
ethnic minority resistance groups on the other,
the Kachin source said. Minorities are still
praying and hoping for peace in the near future,
he added.
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