Word: burma
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...Shan. A recent report by the New York-based NGO also documents the murder, rape, enslavement and brutal displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Burmese army's long-running assault on Karen insurgents; some 650,000 people, says HRW, have been made homeless in eastern Burma alone. The junta has dismissed allegations of army atrocities against ethnic minorities as "totally untrue...
...Thailand and Burma share a centuries-old enmity, and a porous, ill-defined border. Even in recent years there have been clashes between the Thai army and its Burmese and Wa counterparts, usually over drug smuggling. Today, Bangkok is pursuing a policy of closer ties with Rangoon. Besides sending back the Shan, the Thai authorities have cracked down on illegal Burmese workers, and moved Burmese exiles living in Thailand to overcrowded border refugee camps. Thai officials say better relations with the pariah regime will not only help solve cross-border problems, such as the trafficking of narcotics, but also encourage...
...under house arrest, has again put the spotlight on the repression practiced by the regime. Recent bomb attacks by unknown perpetrators in Rangoon and Mandalay have killed and injured scores of people. Unprecedented pressure exerted by other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations means Burma is unlikely to take its turn chairing ASEAN in mid-2006. The purge of Prime Minister and intelligence chief Khin Nyunt last October on corruption charges has caused hairline cracks to appear in a seemingly monolithic military, and the cease-fires he brokered with more than a dozen ethnic rebel organizations could crumble...
...S.S.A. claims it killed 337 U.W.S.A. soldiers in the April fighting. If true, this is no mean feat. Much feared for their ferocity in battle, the 750,000-strong Wa traditionally live along Burma's equally rugged border with China; some are former headhunters. The U.W.S.A. struck a cease-fire with the junta in 1989 in return for keeping the peace. It also kept its weapons and, free to run its home region as a semi-autonomous state, expanded its trade in heroin?the Wa hills are opium-growing territory?and later in methamphetamines. Today, the U.W.S.A...
...year-old alliance with the U.W.S.A. is looking shaky. Rangoon is disquieted by the rebel group's bristling armory and aspirations for nationhood, while Wa resentment grows at fighting and dying in the Burmese army's own battles. Whatever happens next in the violent and complex relations between Burma's ruling generals and its diverse ethnic groups, Colonel Yawd Serk is not expecting peace for his long-suffering Shan anytime soon. "If the Wa don't come for us," he says from his hilltop redoubt, "the Burmese will come for sure...