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DAWN NEWS BULLETIN (r)
Forced Relocation in Karenni area
About 2500 Karenni refugees from Karenni refugee camps 1 and 2,
most of them
women and children, were forcibly relocated to a new site which is just
one hour's walk
from the Slorc outpost in Karenni area.
The 537 households are living under a cloud of fear after being
forced to move
from their camps to the new location by the local Thai authorities on 19
March 1996.
About 12 Thai border police equipped with M16 and HK arrived at
Char Le camp
(Refugee Camp 2) in the morning of March 19. They demanded the refugees
pack all
their belongings and ordered them into waiting trucks. The soldiers
threatened if the
refugees did not obey their orders, they would burn down the camp and
kill the camp
leaders.
" We did not dare to disobey their order. They were so tough --
just like Slorc
soldiers in Burma! We just had to follow their demands even though we
did not know
where we would be going." said Pha Daw, a Karenni refugee from the camp.
Another
refugee said, "The Thai soldiers shouted at us and called us 'stray
dogs'. I feel bad because
I understand Thai. They used really bad words in Thai, shouting their
orders at us to obey
and be forcibly relocated."
After negotiations with the camp leaders, the deadline extension
of four day was
agreed upon, but about 40 refugees were loaded into the trucks
immediately anyway. The
next day, the same soldiers arrived in the morning and took the refugees
away in 4 trucks.
Some refugees fled at night because they were in great fear for their
safety.
Aye Maung , a ward leader of the Char le refugee camp, said Thai
security officials
came to the camp and ordered them out. "They ordered us not to try to
escape from the
camp, to pack and get ready to leave. The next morning they trucked us
from the camp
and dropped us at the new place."
The new site is just dense forest. Upon their arrival, the
refugees had to build
rough temporary shelters of plastic sheets and bamboo. A single mountain
range, which
marks the border, is the only barrier between the refugees and Slorc
forces.
"I am very scared to live here because it is so close to the
Slorc troops. They can
come and kill us at any time," said Naw Esther in her crude bamboo hut.
In an interview with Aike Ku, a 30-year-old Karenni from Shardaw
township, he
expressed the great fear for his safety; if he were sent back to Burma he
would surely be
arrested by Burmese troops. He had been conscripted for forced labor at
military bases
and for porterage several times when in Burma. In 1987, he was arrested
and charged
with supporting KNPP forces in 1987. During his interrogation, he had
been beaten and
tortured. He was released only after his village headmaster bailed him
out with some
amount of money. As soon as he was released he fled to the Karenni
refugee camp. He
first came to the Nang Aung Karenni refugee in 1988 and six months ago he
moved to
Cher Le camp. "Most of the refugees in this camp are in the same
situation as me. We all
would be in great danger if we were sent back to Burma and rearrested by
the Burmese
troops." said Aike Ku.
Most of the refugees fled to Thailand several years due to the
wide ranges of
human rights abuses by the Slorc troops in their native territory. Some
of them fled
recently because of the latest round of fighting between Slorc and
Karenni forces.
No reason for the forcible relocation by the Thai authorities was
clear, but a KNPP
commander, General Aung Myat, said he believed the refugees were driven
out of their
old camp in response to demands by Burmese authorities. "The Burmese
soldiers accused
Thailand of sheltering guerrillas in the old camp and they threaten to
fire at it with artillery
if the Thai authorities did not allow them to search it." Their old
camps were about seven
kilometer (four miles) inside Thailand while the new location is just on
the Thai side of
the frontier.
A Thai border security official said all of the estimated 6,000
Karenni refugees in a
string of camps inside Thailand would be relocated to the border line.
ABSDF family
member camp in the Karenni area also faced the similar fate of
relocation. ABSDF camp
members were evacuated into Thailand to escape an intensive attack by the
Burmese
army. They were immediately forced to move to the same place as the
Karenni refugees.