Fresh fighting broke out yesterday between Myanmar’s junta and ethnic rebels forcing a continued flow of refugees into China, where a bomb killed one person, witnesses and state media said.
Clashes in Myanmar’s remote northeast have driven up to 30,000 refugees across the border in recent weeks, the UN has said, causing China to issue a rare admonishment to its neighbor and ally to resolve the conflict.
Battles that erupted this week in Kokang, a mainly ethnic Chinese region of Myanmar’s Shan state, have violated a 20-year ceasefire and analysts have warned the fighting could escalate into full-scale civil war.
Refugees were still crossing the border yesterday, said Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the Shan Herald Agency for News.
“It’s not like the other day, we’re not hearing of too many but they are still crossing,” he said.
The state-run China Daily, quoting a Chinese Red Cross official, said a bomb was thrown across the border on Friday, killing one and injuring several others in a remote mountainous region of China’s Yunnan Province.
Only sketchy details of the fighting in Myanmar emerged yesterday, but China’s Global Times said one of its correspondents in the area witnessed “fierce” gunfire between the Kokang ethnic army and government forces.
The state newspaper said Chinese border guards had been put on alert to prevent the conflict from spreading to China.
A resident of China’s Zhenkang County on the border, who gave only his surname Xie, said he heard gunfire in the distance early yesterday.
“It was pretty loud. Everybody could hear it. I heard it for about an hour,” he said.
A statement from the Chinese foreign ministry on Friday said it “hopes that Myanmar can appropriately solve its relevant internal problems and safeguard the stability of the China-Myanmar border.”
It also urged its neighbor “to protect the safety and legal rights of Chinese citizens in Myanmar”.
China is one of the few allies of Myanmar’s isolated junta, its main source of military hardware and a major consumer of its vast natural resources, despite Western concerns over the military-ruled nation’s rights record.
Refugees who had crossed to the border town of Nansan were being housed in tents or other makeshift shelters and authorities were providing them blankets, medical care and other necessities, Chinese state media reports said.
The Global Times quoted Kokang leader Peng Jiasheng (彭家聲) as saying in an interview that his forces had killed more than 30 Myanmar government soldiers and captured another 50. It did not give his location.
The Washington-based US Campaign for Burma, which uses Myanmar’s former name, also said late on Friday around 30 junta soldiers had been killed with another 40 injured and 20 missing, citing local sources and ethnic media.
It said around 7,000 junta troops were now in the region, where they had at least eight military encounters with rebel groups on Thursday and Friday.
Win Min, a Thailand-based Myanmar analyst and academic, said tensions had grown because the junta was trying to exert control ahead of the elections next year.
UKRAINE, NVIDIA: The US leader said the subject of Russia’s war had come up ‘very strongly,’ while Jenson Huang was hoping that the conversation was good Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump had differing takes following their meeting in Busan, South Korea, yesterday. Xi said that the two sides should complete follow-up work as soon as possible to deliver tangible results that would provide “peace of mind” to China, the US and the rest of the world, while Trump hailed the “great success” of the talks. The two discussed trade, including a deal to reduce tariffs slapped on China for its role in the fentanyl trade, as well as cooperation in ending the war in Ukraine, among other issues, but they did not mention
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday lavished US President Donald Trump with praise and vows of a “golden age” of ties on his visit to Tokyo, before inking a deal with Washington aimed at securing critical minerals. Takaichi — Japan’s first female prime minister — pulled out all the stops for Trump in her opening test on the international stage and even announced that she would nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize, the White House said. Trump has become increasingly focused on the Nobel since his return to power in January and claims to have ended several conflicts around the world,
GLOBAL PROJECT: Underseas cables ‘are the nervous system of democratic connectivity,’ which is under stress, Member of the European Parliament Rihards Kols said The government yesterday launched an initiative to promote global cooperation on improved security of undersea cables, following reported disruptions of such cables near Taiwan and around the world. The Management Initiative on International Undersea Cables aims to “bring together stakeholders, align standards, promote best practices and turn shared concerns into beneficial cooperation,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said at a seminar in Taipei. The project would be known as “RISK,” an acronym for risk mitigation, information sharing, systemic reform and knowledge building, he said at the seminar, titled “Taiwan-Europe Subsea Cable Security Cooperation Forum.” Taiwan sits at a vital junction on
LONG-HELD POSITION: Washington has repeatedly and clearly reiterated its support for Taiwan and its long-term policy, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday said that Taiwan should not be concerned about being used as a bargaining chip in the ongoing US-China trade talks. “I don’t think you’re going to see some trade deal where, if what people are worried about is, we’re going to get some trade deal or we’re going to get favorable treatment on trade in exchange for walking away from Taiwan,” Rubio told reporters aboard his airplane traveling between Israel and Qatar en route to Asia. “No one is contemplating that,” Reuters quoted Rubio as saying. A US Treasury spokesman yesterday told reporters
RSS