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.

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.

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Source: The Irrawaddy
Date: 20 Aug 2009

By SAW YAN NAING

You could say it runs in the family—45-year-old Saw Lubermoo’s grandmother and grandfather were IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), his parents were IDPs, and now he is an IDP.

The ethnic Karen says he has been constantly on the move and hiding in the jungle since he was four years of age.

He is among hundreds of thousands of ethnic Karen, Karenni, Mon and Shan civilians who have been displaced in eastern Burma for decades.

According to a 2008 report by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, an umbrella group of donors and humanitarian organizations, the total number of IDPs 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. The group also says that many IDP cases in eastern Burma go unreported.

According to Shan and Karen relief groups, there are currently about 20,000 IDPs in hiding in the jungles of central Shan State and northern Karen State.

A separate group of some 4,000 Karen villagers fled during the joint Burmese army– Democratic Karen Buddhist Army offensive against the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) in June and are presently being sheltered on Thai soil.

Shan community-based rights groups, including the Shan Women’s Action Network (SWAN), reported on August 13 that in the previous two weeks, the Burmese army had burned down more than 500 houses and forced about 40 villages to relocate, mostly in Laikha Township in Shan State.

On Wednesday, a top US administration official expressed anxiety over the displacement of thousands of civilians in northeastern parts of Burma due to the Burmese army’s military activities.

“We have been deeply concerned by very recent reports of large-scale displacement, perhaps as many or more than 10,000 civilians,” the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, Eric Schwartz, told reporters on Wednesday at a special briefing at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the US State Department.

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Dear friends,

Here is a report from our FBR HQ team after the latest training of Shan, Karenni and Pao relief teams. It is about love and what can make us cry. We were there to start the training and our ethnic headquarters team finished the training and prepared the new teams for thier missions.
After the graduation and after the last team had gone on thier missions, our headquarters group sent us this message.

“We want to share with you about the unusual FBR training/events that happened here after you left.

After the teams graduated and before they left for thier relief missions we sang all the Good Life Club songs together, prayed and did push ups. Then the teams began leaving each day in turn. The three Shan FBR girls who were part of the training will now stay to help with the Community Health Worker training taking place here. They are doing very well and are helping us teach rappelling, swimming, and Good Life Club work. They try their best to lead the other students. They are each now a lot better in doing push ups, running up the big mountain, working hard, helping in teaching GLC songs and acting like Rangers, and they always smile.

As the first Karenni teams left, the girls were crying but the men said ‘ I want to cry but doing push ups helped me not to cry’!.

Then a day later one of the Shan teams asked us to sing together with them.. We did not know they were leaving that day. Later on the girls came down and sang with us. We found out they were leaving when they were crying and the girls were crying with them.

Then as the Pa-O team were leaving, one of the Pa-O girls said ‘I will not cry because even when I left my Mom and Dad I did not cry. I do not know crying’. The 3 Shan girls were singing and crying but at first the Pa-O girls did not. Then we kept singing and the Pa-O girls began to cry too.

As a joke to make everyone laugh, the Shan FBR leader (Sai Noung) brought a bucket for the girls to collect their tears. Then later another Shan team joined us to sing bfore they left.. Many men including Sai Noung cried this time. After the team left we asked Sai Noung ‘why did you cry’ and he said ‘all the team have trucks to drop them off for the start of thier mission, but they do not, they have walk even before they start the mission’.

We do not want any Free Burma Rangers to cry but we can not stop them [from doing] whatever they have to do: crying, singing, and doing push ups at the same time. We do not think this kind of FBR action is bad. We train people to do [the things] they have to do and we also do not try to stop what they want to do. The only bad thing is that the camera men are going very close to the crying persons and taking their pictures (and laughing).

Anyway, we only want to share with you about this FBR training and what we call “Train to Cry Training”!

Thank you and God bless you,
The HQ FBR team

Free Burma Rangers