MYANMAR'S ETHNIC MINORITIES FLEE IN FEAR
Thousands displaced amid crackdown
Her head in her hands, an exhausted woman crouches on the muddy forest floor. At her feet, a barefoot infant clutches the remains of a cheap snack. Another child stands in pink cartoon pyjamas — indicating the suddenness of their flight from home.
The family, hiding deep in the jungle of Myanmar’s southern Kayin state, were among 212 villagers from the Karen ethnic minority who were reportedly forced to flee as shells fired by the national army hit their homes on Sunday.
Two weeks into the military coup that overturned the Southeast Asian nation’s elected government on Feb. 1, fears that the political turmoil could be used to mask a worsening of the oppression of ethnic minorities in Myanmar, previously Burma, are already being realized.
“There are now over 5,300 Karen people displaced in northern Karen (Kayin) state as the Burma army advances,” said Dave Eubank, leader of the Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a relief group operating on the front lines of the country’s decades-long ethnic conflicts. “The army is trying to crush all dissent in the cities and control all in the mountains where we are.”
From an undisclosed location in the mountainous jungles, where he and his team are delivering aid packages to mainly women and children hiding in terror of the army, Eubank has been drawing attention to their plight with the help of a satellite phone.
“The Burma army was shelling all the way through December and January before the coup, but the shelling and fighting has increased since the coup and the army has sent more troops up. It has now attacked deeper into the village areas,” he said.
“There is an increasing number of displaced people, especially up in western Karen state, as the army pushes more troops in and attacks towards the villages, driving people further into the jungle,” he said.
“By God’s grace and people’s help we are able to get rice to all of them. That’s a lot of carrying though because most of it is done on our backs. The army shows no sign of slowing down.”
Photos and videos transmitted by Eubank highlight the desperate conditions faced by civilians hunkering down in shelters with their elderly relatives and babies.
In the urban centres of the Bamar Buddhist majority, Myanmar’s youngest generation has not yet known the brutality of the junta firsthand, but the military’s oppressive violence has never been far from the doors of the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.
Since independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar has been riven by internal conflicts that have seen the rise of multiple armed insurgencies against central rule — rebels fighting for greater self-determination.
The reversing of the country’s fragile democratic transition in this month’s coup — an attempt by the military to annul the November election victory of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy — has further endangered an already limping peace process.
As peace talks now hang in the balance, members of the country’s Karen, Kachin, Chin and Rohingya minorities have joined the opposition to the coup, staging their own rallies.
For many, the focus is less on the short-term restoration of the civilian government than on more far-reaching reforms to the 2008 constitution that grants the balance of power to military rulers.
After a meeting with Karen and Karenni leaders on Monday, Eubank said they were mobilizing to both support the protest movement and stop the army’s attacks.
“They are trying to get a united front so that not just the military is removed but a representative government with ethnic rights and a new constitution comes out of this,” he said.
In Yangon, Erik Thant, a 23-year-old student protester from eastern Shan state, said that ethnic minorities had overcome long-held grudges against the Bamar majority to oppose the military regime.
“Everyone joined the fight against the military, united against the coup,” he said.
Ethnic groups had hoped Suu Kyi’s government would bring about equal rights and autonomy, according to Benedict Rogers, a human-rights activist and author of three books on Myanmar.
“Without doubt, the coup only means more bad news for Burma’s ethnic minorities,” he said. “We have already seen an escalation in military offensives in ethnic areas in recent months, including in ceasefire areas, and with the junta being in power again that is only likely to increase.”
Minorities have been subject to violations including rape, shelling, shootings and trumped-up charges by the military for years, John Quinley, a senior human rights specialist at Fortify Rights, confirmed.
“More now than ever there is a need for local and international human rights monitors and journalists to have unfettered access to cover the unfolding situation in the country, including in ethnic areas,” he said.
In a message to supporters on Feb. 7, Eubank said the Karen people hoped the democratic uprising against the military would bring about profound change and a national revelation of the “evil” situation they already face.
“Their own lives haven’t changed: they were attacked before the coup and they are being attacked now after the coup,” he said.