Caught in the crossfire of Burma’s civil war, hundreds of thousands of Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan are trapped in No Man’s Land

At night, my mother and I boiled rice while my sister dried our wet clothes by the fire,” said Moo Kay Paw. “We were too scared to light a fire during the day in case the government troops saw it and came for us.

“We survived for weeks only on boiled rice. At night, we slept rough on the ground with pieces of bamboo for pillows. I shared a single blanket with my four sisters to stay warm,” she said. 

a family waits for help before rushing across a Burmese military road in northern Karen State. (Photo: FBR)

Four years ago, when Moo Kay Paw was 14, her village was burnt down by government soldiers and her father was shot before her eyes.

In many ways, her story is typical of someone from a farming village in eastern Burma. Constantly on the move to avoid the war between the Tatmadaw—the Burmese military government’s forces—and the ethnic insurgents of the region, Moo Kay Paw’s family has lived in a state of fear since the 1980s.

The first of five daughters, she was born in 1991 to a rice-farming Karen family in the village of Chaw Wah Den in Pegu Division. As a young girl she witnessed junta troops looting her village many times.

Sometimes, she said, they burned down houses, barns or rice stocks, and often conscripted men and boys to serve as porters, carrying military supplies for days on end.

On one occasion, her brother was gravely injured deactivating landmines in the jungle, she said. He was blinded and lost both hands in the blast.

Moo Kay Paw’s family finally left their village on Dec. 26, 2004, the same day her father was killed.

“We knew that the government troops were close by and my father told my mother to get all the girls and my brother together and wait outside the village in the jungle until the soldiers had gone,” she recalled.

They packed some blankets and clothes and headed for a hilltop. From there they saw the government troops enter the village and confront Moo Kay Paw’s father and the other men who had remained to safeguard their homes.

“The soldiers dragged him outside and began hitting him with their rifle butts,” she recalled tearfully. “They smashed all his teeth out before they shot him. Then they burned the village down.”

Her family—a widowed mother, five young girls and a disabled son—walked through the jungle for weeks, carrying clothes, blankets, a machete, lighters and some food.

They carried as much dry rice as they could and later scavenged for roots, berries, leaves and other food in the jungle.

Sometimes they joined other families, settled for a few months and tried to grow crops. But, sooner or later, the conflict caught up with them.

After years of living rough or in temporary shelters, Moo Kay Paw’s family reached Ei Tu Hta village in eastern Karen State in August 2007. They have sheltered there since.

In the terminology of relief agencies, Moo Kay Paw’s family are classified as “internally displaced persons,” or IDPs, meaning that they have been displaced from their ancestral homes, usually by government troops, and are now living rough in the jungle or are sheltering in “safe” havens under the control of ethnic armies.

The IDPs are refugees in every sense, but lack official recognition.

Because of the seemingly never-ending conflict, the difficulties of transportation and logistics, and a lack of government consent, aid groups in Thailand, such as the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), are unable to provide aid for them, nor are the humanitarian agencies based in Rangoon.

The UN refugee agency,  UNHCR, is also unable to assist. “We have to honor national boundaries,” said a UNHCR spokesperson.

For the most part, the IDPs must take care of themselves.

In its most recent survey, the TBBC estimated there are currently some 451,000 IDPs in eastern Burma—135,000 in Shan State, 53,300 in Karenni State, 104,900 in Karen State, 47,700 in Mon State, 65,600 in Tenasserim Division and 44,500 in Pegu Division.

Htoo Klei, the secretary of the Karen Office of Relief and Development (KORD), blames the military junta in Naypyidaw for the misery in eastern Burma.

“The IDPs are the human cost of a war caused by the Burmese regime trying to take control over all the ethnic states and, in response, the ethnic groups’ fight for liberation,” he said.

According to Amnesty International and several other human rights agencies, Burmese government forces routinely kill, torture, abuse and steal from the mostly uneducated villagers of the region.

It has been reported for decades by rights groups, such as the Shan Women’s Action Network, that Burmese government troops systematically rape ethnic women as an act of war.

Government forces also conscript villagers in the war zones to act as porters, carrying the army’s supplies—work that is often tantamount to a death sentence.

Another deadly hazard the IDPs face is the threat from landmines. The government forces, their allies and the ethnic insurgent armies are all guilty of laying mines in villages, farms, fields and trails throughout the region.

Ethnic leaders have said that the Burmese regime’s army targets villagers in the belief that civilians are the “lifeblood” of the ethnic insurgent groups.

Hte Bu, the director of the Karenni Social Welfare and Development Center, said that since the central government substantially increased its military operations in Karenni State in 1996, tens of thousands of ethnic Karennis have been forced to flee their homes.

“It is inhumane that the government troops target civilians,” he said. “The villages’ headmen are the most frequently selected for torture and murder. They are regularly accused of supporting the ethnic rebels.”

In Shan State, about 300,000 civilians, including ethnic Shan, Pa-O, Palaung and Lahu people, have been forced to leave their homes and relocate by the Burmese government forces—a policy that peaked in 1996-97, said Kham Harn Fah, the director of the Shan Human Rights Foundation.

Unable to return home due to hostilities in the area and the consequent economic crisis, thousands headed for Thailand to find work, mostly on farms, orchards or construction sites.

In Mon State, the New Mon State Party (NMSP) signed a ceasefire agreement with the Burmese regime in 1995. There are currently about 35,000 ethnic Mon IDPs sheltering under the auspices of the NMSP, according to Nai Kasauh Mon, the director of the Human Rights Foundation of Monland.

Community-based ethnic relief and rights groups say that displacement in eastern Burma will not end while there is conflict in the region.

The human tragedy is that each internally displaced person has his or her own story of barbaric treatment and heartbreak.

Grassroots Aid
By SAW YAN NAING

Despite the difficulty of getting relief aid to the more than 450,000 displaced people in eastern Burma, they are not entirely lacking outside assistance. Some nongovernmental organizations are active in the Burmese border region, not only delivering essential supplies and medical aid but also documenting cases of abuse by Burmese government forces.

Chief of these groups is the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a multi-ethnic humanitarian service founded in 1997.

Working at the grassroots level and with community-based organizations, the FBR sends out teams with food, clothing, construction materials and other essentials. The teams include ethnic teachers and medics, who treat up to 2,000 patients during each mission—a total of more than 400,000 since 1997.

The FBR has trained more than 100 ethnic relief teams, and 52 are currently active in the Karen, Karenni, Shan, Arakan and Lahu regions. Missions last up to two months.

The FBR teams also act as a non-combatant information service, warning IDPs and villagers in advance if they detect threatening troop movements.

Sai Noung Noung, an FBR relief worker, said the IDPs are truly homeless, constantly fleeing attacks by government forces. “They sometimes have to move to new shelters every day,” he said.

The Back Pack Health Worker Team, founded in 1998, has 80 mobile clinics in Karen, Mon, Karenni and Shan States. The group’s director, Mahn Mahn, said children, pregnant women and elderly people were the most in need. Many children suffer from malnutrition, while malaria is also endemic.

Karen relief organizations that are active in Karen State include the Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People and the Karen Office of Relief and Development (KORD). Htoo Klei, the KORD secretary, said food shortages, restrictions on freedom of movement and the threat of forced labor were among the reasons villagers became IDPs.

An international charity, Partners Relief & Development, also assists IDPs in Burma and refugees who cross into Northern Thailand.