04/17/2006

Four months after the first ever briefing on Burma at the United Nations Security Council, armed conflict and widespread internal displacement continue to take place in the country. Burma has the worst internal displacement crisis in Asia. In 2005, there were estimated to be at least half a million internally displaced persons in eastern Burma alone. The vast majority of this population belongs to ethnic minority groups.

Wide-ranging human rights abuses by the Burmese military, fighting ethnic insurgent groups, has driven hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. The Burmese government targets civilians in conflict areas to cut supplies of food, funds, recruits and information to the resistance groups and undermine their strength by severing their links to the local people. To a lesser extent, violations are also being carried out by insurgent groups fighting the government. Even in ethnic states where armed conflict has come to an end, ongoing human rights abuses by the military and large-scale development and infrastructure projects are uprooting large numbers of people.

In eastern Burma’s Karen State, an informal ceasefire agreement in 2004 between the Karen political leadership and the Burmese military regime raised hopes that there would be a reduction in armed conflict and the associated abuses. Following the informal ceasefire, the number of skirmishes between the Burmese military and the Karen ethnic army decreased. However, the conflict has worsened dramatically in recent months following the Burmese government’s 2005 decision to change the country’s capital from Rangoon to the remote outpost of Pyinmana.

Some analysts believe that the government’s motivation for changing the capital to Pyinmana, closer to the eastern Burma border, is so it can better maintain control over ethnic territories along the border. Reports from the Thai-Burma border indicate that since the capital’s relocation, thousands of unarmed civilians have been forced to move by the military, which, in trying to secure the area around Pyinmana, is carrying out a concerted violent campaign against the ethnic groups.

Villagers in Karen State have largely borne the brunt of the latest assault. According to reports, in the last few weeks vicious attacks by the military, during which civilians are being beheaded and villages torched, have displaced 7,000 Karen people. The majority of the recently displaced is hiding in jungle areas with little food or basic necessities. Many in hiding can’t be accessed by groups trying to assist the displaced. Others are fleeing across the border into Thailand.

Such violence over the past decade has led to more than a million Burmese becoming refugees in neighboring countries. Internally displaced people in Burma, after exhausting all survival options, cross national borders in search of asylum. Today Burma has the largest refugee outflow in all of Southeast Asia.

In the light of these developments, Refugees International urges the United Nations Security Council to agree on new initiatives to seek a resolution to the political crisis in Burma, without which the large-scale internal displacement and refugee crises will persist.