Thai-Burmese border...!!!!

[sunny]

Burmese Army Mobilizes near Chinese Border

The Burmese military government has mobilized hundreds of soldiers into areas near the Sino-Burmese border controlled by armed ethnic groups, including the United Wa State Army (USDA), the National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA), the Shan State Army (SSA-North) and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO).

The move comes at a time when junta supremo Snr-Gen Than Shwe is on a five-day trip to China.

Sources from Burma's northeastern ethnic areas said that the Tatmadaw, or Burmese government forces, have reinforced their troops around the region where a lengthy dispute has continued between Naypyidaw and the ethnic armies over transformation of the ethnic cease-fire groups' battalions into border guard force (BGF) units under the command of the Tatmadaw.

“In past five days, we have learned that more troops have been mobilized near Wa territory in northern Shan State,” a source close to the UWSA told The Irrawaddy on Monday. “Tensions mounted on Friday as several Tatmadaw battalions surrounded UWSA troops while they [the Wa] were on patrol. About 15 army trucks were involved in the incident.”

Last week, Naypyidaw ordered all government and NGO staff to leave UWSA and NDAA areas in Shan State where about 40 unarmed military officials were stationed. The officials had been stationed in the area since former Communist forces signed a cease-fire agreement with the Burmese junta in 1989.

Ethnic sources said the withdrawal could signal the junta’s intention to attack the ethnic armies after a deadline to join the BGF passed on Sept. 1.

Burmese government forces also mobilized into areas close to SSA-North bases, particularly near the group's Brigade 1 base, putting fresh pressure on the cease-fire group to join the BGF ahead of the election on Nov. 7.

“Unusual troops mobilizations were reported in Tangyang [near Wa territory], Mong Ya and Mong Hsnu,” said Saengjuen Sarawin, an editor with The Shan Herald Agency for News. “The troops are from two newly deployed battalions under Military Operations Command 1 and 2.”

Commenting on a potential offensive with the ethnic groups, he said the Tatmadaw might not send in a massive number of troops as it did in the 1970s and 80s, but that they will be prepared with more strategic weapons such as artillery and rocket launchers.

Meanwhile, China has tightened security along the Sino-Burmese border near Mong La and set up surveillance across the border. However, traders report that it is still a case of “business as usual,” sources said.

Apart from the Burmese army mobilization in Shan State, KIO sources in Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin group, said Tatmadaw maneuvers had been reported near the KIO-controlled area.

Sources said the KIO maintained that there will be no polling stations allowed in KIO territory for the election.

“The KIO will arrange transportation if voters want to leave to vote in the election,” a KIO source said. “But we won’t allow polling stations in our area while the [BGF] dispute is ongoing.”

The KIO, the UWSA, the NDAA and the SSA-North are yet to confirm whether they will permit elections in their areas. Naypyidaw has not sent election officials to the areas in question although Lt-Gen Ye Myint, the former chief of the Military Affairs Security, told the groups in August that all ethnic groups would be expected to cooperate with election officials when they arrived in early September.

Sources said that ethnic leaders are watching closely as to how relations develop as a result of Than Shwe's visit to China.

Beijing has played a mediating role between Naypyidaw and the ethnic groups, many of which are historically close to China.

Publicly or privately, Chinese officials have said that stability and development along the border is vital and they do not wish to see a resumption of hostilities as in August 2009 when some 37,000 Kokang- Chinese refugees fled to China to avoid conflict.

[sunny]

UWSA Deploy Troops at Thai Border

Burma's largest armed ethnic group, the United Wa State Army (UWSA), has deployed three battalions from its headquarters in Panghsang to southern Shan State close to the Thai border in as preparations mount for a military showdown with the Burmese amy, sources close to the UWSA say.

The three battalions—comprising some the Wa army's elite troops—were dispatched within the last few days. The battalions were led by veteran commander Wei Hsaitang who has extensive frontline experience and is strategically familiar with the geography of southern Shan State where many Wa people live, the sources said.

Saeng Juen, an editor at the Thailand-based Shan Herald Agency for News said that Wei Hsaitang first became notorious as a warrior when the Wa battled former drug warlord Khun Sa’s Mong Tai Army in 1989-96.

The mobilization comes as tensions increase between Naypyidaw and several ethnic cease-fire groups that have refused at accede to the junta's border guard force (BGF) plan.

The UWSA has an estimated 30,000 soldiers, some 4,000 of whom are based in villages around the Shan State-Thai border where 60,000-120,000 Wa people live.

Saeng Juen said that the headmen of several Wa villages organized a public gathering in Mongton Township in southern Shan State on Sept. 7-8 when they explained preparations and evacuation plans to the assembled crowd.

There are no reports of Burmese army reinforcements in southern Shan State, said Saeng Juen. However, The Irrawaddy reported on Wednesday that government forces had mobilized close to the Chinese border in areas traditionally controlled by Shan Wa and Kachin armies.

An official from the UWSA in Panghsang told The Irrawaddy on Thursday: “We have to wait and see what happens after Snr-Gen Than Shwe comes back from China. We think that his talks with the Chinese government will include border stability issues.”

He said, however, that he does not believe the Burmese regime will order an offensive against the UWSA before or during the general election, which is on Nov. 7, but perhaps in the post-election period.

On April 23-24, small clashes occurred between UWSA units in southern Shan State and Burmese government troops, according to Thai soldiers posted at Ang Khang hill, about 23 kilometers from the Fang District border with Shan State.

[hacksecrets]

Thai AICHR Rep Calls for 'Open Doors' in Burma

The Burmese military government should accept the UN’s proposed Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma if the regime wants to prove it has transparency, said a Thai representative at an Asean Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) on Monday.

Speaking to The Irrawaddy on the sidelines of a seminar at Chiang Mai University attended by some 70 participants, the main speaker, Sriprapha Phetmeesri, who is the Thai representative at AICHR, said the Burmese government should open its doors for the CoI to investigate crimes that have allegedly occured, especially in ethnic areas in eastern Burma, in order to prove its willingness to cooperate and show transparency.

Sriprapha said that she supported the establishment of a CoI, an idea initiated in March by UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma Tomás Ojea Quintana. It has already received support from Australia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada, the UK and the US.

Sriprapha said she had already told the UN Special Rapporteur that the CoI should not only be comprised of people from outside the region, but that some experts from within the Southeast Asian region and those who have knowledge about Burma should also be involved.

London-based Amnesty International recently said that any inquiry should focus on reports of widespread and systematic persecution by the Burmese government forces against the civilian populations of the Muslim Rohingya minority in Arakan State, the ethnic Shan minority in Shan State, and the ethnic Karen minority in eastern Burma.

According to a 2008 report by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella group of donors and humanitarian organizations, the total number of Internally Displaced Persons in eastern Burma is likely to be well over half a million with at least 451,000 people estimated to have been displaced in rural areas alone.

Sriprapha said Burma's human rights record will be a challenge for the rest of Asean members as they aim to complete the establishment of an Asean community by 2015.

Despite the Asean members raising concerns and calling on Naypyidaw to hold free and fair elections in November, Sriprapha said she worried that Burma will not take the calls too seriously.

“The Asean members have been voicing these concerns. But I don’t know how much attention the Burmese government is paying,” she said.
She said, “It would be good if independent observers are appointed who could monitor the election process in Burma.” However, she noted that did not hear of any consensus among Asean members about sending election observers to Burma.

She said she doubts change will come to Burma after the election as the current government ministers and officials have formed a party to contest the election.

Earlier, the secretary-general of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Surin Pitsuwan, welcomed the upcoming election in Burma, saying, “I hope that Myanmar will prove the skeptics wrong and Myanmar will respond positively to the appeal for freedom of mobility and expression during the lead-up to the elections scheduled for 7 November.”

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[hacksecrets]

Junta Deploys More Troops after China Visit

The Burmese junta has increased its troops deployment near areas controlled by the largest ethnic armed group, the United Wa State Army, following Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s five-day trip to China, where he discussed border issues with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing.

Ethnic sources along the Sino-Burmese border said several hundred government troops have reinforced the tactical command of the Military Operation Command (MOC)-1 around Tangyang in northern Shan State since Sunday, a day after Than Shwe returned to Burma.

“We learned on Sunday that an estimated 500 government troops were sent to the MOC-1’s tactical command in Tangyang. Before fresh reinforcements, there were seven battalions under the command. So now there could be around 2,000 troops total in Tangyang under the MOC-1,” said an ethnic source, who said one more light infantry division is likely to be deploy in northern Shan State.

An official of the Shan State Army-South (SSA-South) said that since last week there also are more government troops deployed in southern Shan State, particularly near areas controlled by UWSA bases along the Thai-Burmese border.

Before the dispute started in April 2009 between the junta and ethnic armed groups over their transformation into a border guard Force (BGF) under the command of the Burmese army, the UWSA deployed three division commands along the Sino-Burmese and five division commands in southern Shan State near the Thai border.

Meanwhile, the UWSA has called for new soldier recruitment as well as more militias following the BGF tension.

Apart from the situation around UWSA areas, the junta also has restricted movements of the Kachin Independence Organization(KIO), another significant cease-fire group in northern Burma and along the Sino-Burmese border which has also rejected the BGF plan.

“The KIO conveys and official travel in Kachin State are not like before. Now the government has restricted it,” said a KIO official from the group’s headquarters in Laiza.

KIO sources said a rumor spread along the border that during Than Shwe’s visit he had talked to Chinese counterparts about a military offensive against ethnic armed groups along the Sino-Burmese border.

“But this rumor came from traders from Myitkyina and Bamo, not from the China side. So it seems like psychological warfare from the military government, the same as in the state-run-newspapers,” the KIO official said.

The New Light of Myanmar reported on Sunday that Chinese President Hu Jintao said, “China vows not to accept and support any groups who world carry out” anti-government movements along the border “to damage bilateral relations.”

However, a story by China’s Xinhua news agency differed from Burma’s state media coverage. “Hu called on both sides to jointly safeguard peace and stability on the frontier and to boost economic and social development of the border areas,” Xinhua reported.

Responding to Burmese newspaper reports, ethnic minority sources on the border said they are not working against the junta, but they are working for better autonomous and ethnic rights in the region.

Burma and China share more a 2,200 km-long border. Ethnic minorities such as the Kachin, Shan, Kokang and Wa live in Burma as well as in China’s southwest province of Yunnan.

A UWSA source said that what they call autonomous rights is what those ethnic groups in Yunnan are enjoying in China. “But the [Burmese] government does not give us even these kinds of rights,” he said.

Meanwhile, Xinhua reported on Tuesday that the China National Petroleum Corporation will break ground on the Chinese end of a 771-kilometer pipeline to Burma on Friday, a section of the Sino-Burmese oil and gas pipelines from Burma’s Kyaukpru Port to China’s Yunnan Province.

The strategic pipeline, 2,806 km long, will run parallel to each other, and they are expected to carry 22 million tons of crude oil and 12 billion cubic meters of gas annually to China. The natural gas pipeline will extend farther from Kunming City to nearby Guangxi and Guizhou, Xinhua reported.