Nearly 4,000 ethnic Karen have abandoned a camp and villages in eastern Myanmar to seek refuge in Thailand following attacks on Karen guerrillas by government troops, a spokesman said yesterday.
Myanmar troops were shelling and attempting to advance on five encampments of Karen insurgents while small groups of villagers continued to flee in one of the largest movements of refugees across the border in a decade, Karen spokesman David Thaw said.
Thai troops have been deployed along the frontier in recent days to prevent a spillover of the fighting.
The ethnic group’s Karen National Union (KNU) has been fighting for more than 60 years for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s military government, but its strength has dwindled over the past decade because of army offensives and divisions within its ranks.
Some 100,000 mostly ethnic Karen refugees already shelter in camps in Thailand after fleeing counterinsurgency operations, while aid agencies say nearly half a million others are internally displaced inside eastern Myanmar.
David Thaw said Ler Per Her camp in Myanmar, which had sheltered internal refugees, had been abandoned and government troops along with those of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) were trying to overrun five Karen positions in the area of the camp.
The DKBA split off from the largely Christian KNU in 1995, joining the government side.
“When there is [battlefield] contact they withdraw and start shelling again,” he said.
About 25 opposing troops have been killed or wounded since the fighting began over the weekend, the spokesman said. He said he had no information about Karen casualties.
A Myanmar government spokesman has not responded to requests for comment.
The refugees were taking shelter about 100km north of Mae Sot, a border town 380km northwest of Bangkok.
The Thai government does not allow them to enter established refugee camps in the country and so were seeking shelter at Buddhist monasteries, David Thaw said.
Tension along the border has heightened in recent days, and the aid group Free Burma Rangers said DKBA troops have threatened to shell Thai villagers across the border if they do not supply them with food for their campaign.
The Rangers conduct humanitarian missions inside Myanmar and have been providing food, clothes, mosquito repellant and other aid items to the Ler Per Her refugees.
Human rights groups as well as the UN have long accused the Myanmar government of torture, killings and rape of Karen civilians in their attempts to stamp out the insurgency. But this appears to have had no effect and the military regime has denied the charges.
“Once again the international community is looking the other way while my people are attacked and forced to run for their lives,” said Zoya Phan, a Karen with the Burma Campaign UK.
“Why hasn’t a single government called for an end to these attacks?” she said in a statement from the activist group.
RALLYING CRY: Former US president Donald Trump has raised suspicions about why Chinese migrants are going to the US and advocacy groups worry about his rhetoric The US Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday said that it sent 116 Chinese migrants from the US back home in the first “large charter flight” in five years. The flight, which happened over the weekend, comes as Chinese immigration has become the subject of intense political debate in the upcoming US presidential election. “We will continue to enforce our immigration laws and remove individuals without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. The department said it was working with China to “reduce and deter irregular migration and to disrupt
SOUTH CHINA SEA DISPUTE: The Philippines prefers to handle operations on its own, and would exhaust all possible options before asking for help, the military chief said The Philippines has turned down offers from the US to assist operations in the South China Sea, after a flare-up with China over missions to resupply Filipino troops on a contested shoal, its military chief said. Tensions in the disputed waterway have boiled over into violence in the past year, with a Filipino sailor losing a finger in the latest June 17 clash that Manila described as “intentional high-speed ramming” by the Chinese coast guard. The US, a treaty ally, has offered support, but Manila prefers to handle operations on its own, Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief General Romeo Brawner told
Georgian student Elene Deisadze was browsing TikTok in 2022 when she stumbled across the profile of a girl, Anna Panchulidze, who looked exactly like her. Months later, after chatting and becoming friends, they both separately learned they were adopted, and last year decided to take a DNA test. It revealed they were not only related, but identical twins. “I had a happy childhood, but now my entire past felt like a deception,” said Anna, an English student at university. Far from an innocent case of separation at birth, the sisters are among tens of thousands of Georgian children who were
Prominent activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) yesterday asked for a lesser sentence in court after he earlier pleaded guilty in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case. Wong was one of 47 activists charged in 2021 under a Beijing-imposed National Security Law with conspiracy to commit subversion for their involvement in an unofficial primary. The activists were accused of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and topple the territory’s leader by aiming to win a legislative majority and using it to block budgets indiscriminately. Wong and 44 others admitted their liability or were convicted by the court. They could be sentenced to life in