Burma death toll reaches 500

Burma death toll reaches 500

The Australian

As many as 500 people may have been killed in the first flair up of violence between the Burma's ruling military junta and the Kokang ethnic minority - hundreds more than official estimates - with Chinese people who fled last week unable to adopted country facing the loss of their livlihooods as attacks against Chinese people rise.

The situation in the Burmese northern Shan state remains incredibly volatile with thousands of Burmese troops streaming into the area with large numbers stationed at the border of Wa territory, the region’s best armed minority which boasts as many as 30,000 armed troops and who are regularly named as the area’s biggest drug producers.

The Burmese are focusing a possible attack on the United Wa Army on the town of Nandeng, which has a population of about 10,000 and is only 30 minutes drive from the Chinese border town of Qingshuihe that serves as the primary crossing point for the Wa.

While Burma has officially said that 36 of their soldiers were killed with one Chinese casualty after stray arms fire cross the border the fatalities list is more than ten times higher with 500 Kokang soldiers and civilians killed, according to sources in the ethnic army who spoke to The Australian via mobile phone from inside Burma. Amongst these are believed to be a number of Chinese nationals living in Burma.

Citizens of China who remain stranded in the remote border town of Nansan in Yunnan province, have called on the Chinese government for humanitarian aid and for the international community to step in.

Attacks on the Chinese inside Burma during the conflict and raiding their property in the aftermath by soldiers represented an escalation of long standing prejudice in Burma from the country’s ruling ethnic Burmese against people from the region’s re-emergent super power.

The majority of Burmese nationals, including the largely ethnic Chinese Kokang, has returned to the country but thousands of Chinese have been left stranded in China. Business people have long been resented in Burma – as in other south east countries - for controlling much of the small to medium business sector as well, in Burma’s case, as a raft of banks.

The booming amount of Chinese investment which has seen billions of dollars for infrastrcutrure and resources tipped into the country over the past decade has only re-inforced the viewsa of ordinary people in Burma including regular soldiers.

Long Lianxiao, a 30 year-old business women from Hunan province who runs a garment shop with her younger sister in Kokang, fled the battle fires across the border with one suitcase and and one cook.

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China says Burma promises border stability

NANSAN, China (AP) – Burma has pledged to restore peace to a border area where its troops battled ethnic rebels, in fighting that sent more than 30,000 refugees fleeing into China, Beijing said Tuesday.

The comments by China's Foreign Ministry came as authorities pulled down tent camps after thousands of the refugees went home Monday. The number leaving appeared to fall sharply Tuesday.

While the deadly fighting reportedly has ended in northern Kokang region, monitoring groups have warned it could resume.

Burma's ruling junta thanked China for caring for its citizens during the crisis, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing.

"Myanmar also promised to restore peace and stability along the border," Jiang said.

Burma's border regions have for decades been the scene of fighting between ethnic armies and the ruling military, conflicts that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

Burma is largely estranged from the West, but China, with its policy of noninterference in the politics of its allies, has maintained close economic and diplomatic ties with the junta. Large numbers of Chinese citizens have migrated to Burma for business and major state companies are big investors in the country's oil and gas industries.

The crisis, however, prompted a rare request from Beijing that Burma calm the situation.

Last week's fighting broke out after hundreds of Myanmar soldiers moved into Kokang to pressure wary rebels to give up their arms and become border guards. The junta wants stability with its several armed ethnic groups before next year's national elections, the first in nearly 20 years.

The junta said the three days of fighting killed 26 government soldiers and at least eight rebels.

Chinese authorities housed the refugees in makeshift camps in Yunnan province, and about 4,000 returned home on Monday. But many thousands remained, and it was not clear whether they intended to stay. Some camped in unfinished buildings, their laundry hanging from the frameless windows.

"Chinese people don't really want to stay over there anymore," said Zhang Suzhen, a Chinese citizen heading back to Kokang to look after her shop.

"Some of the people have lost everything they own," she said.

Officials in Yunnan refused to release updated information on the status of the refugees and ordered foreign journalists to leave the area.

The Foreign Ministry's Jiang said China was providing "necessary humanitarian assistance" to the refugees, but gave no figures on numbers remaining or a schedule for closing the camps.

She repeated an earlier statement that Burma had apologized for the death of one Chinese national from three artillery shells fired into Chinese territory.

"After what happened, China and Myanmar have kept in close communications," Jiang said.

Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma, said the Burmese forces were continuing to pour into the northeast, as a prelude to more fighting.

Despite its policy of nonintervention, China may try to persuade Burma to hold its fire to ensure border stability ahead of the Oct. 1 celebrations of the 60th anniversary of communist China, said Lai-Ha Chan, a researcher on China at Australia's University of Technology, Sydney.

Chan said more serious political steps are unlikely, adding, "Myanmar still holds ideological and material value for China."