Myanmar terrorists on the ethnic cleansing


Burmese troops are hunting down some 2,000 civilians hiding out in the
jungle after being driven from their homes in a brutal offensive
against the Karen ethnic minority, reports from inside Burma said
Friday.

The troops were some four hours walk from the fleeing refugees who had
split up into groups of 300 to 400 each, said a member of the Free
Burma Rangers contacted by satellite telephone as he moved with one of
the groups.

The Rangers, who include Western and ethnic volunteers, provide aid to
some of the estimated one million people displaced in Burma by decades
of conflict between the military regime and ethnic minorities seeking
autonomy.

Recent reports from the Rangers say the offensive, the biggest since
1997, has already uprooted more than 11,000 Karen civilians in a
campaign marked by the torching of villages, destruction of food
stocks, killings and torture. The ruling junta denies any human rights
violations, saying it's taking military action against a terrorist
group it holds responsible for a series of bomb attacks in recent
months.

The fleeing civilians, pelted by rain storms, were hiding out in remote
areas of the Karen State's Mon Township, about a nine-day walk from the
Thai border to which some 1,500 other displaced people have already
fled, said the volunteer who demanded anonymity because of the
sensitive cross-border operation.

Karen families were carrying whatever few essential possessions they
could gather up before abandoning their villages. One 60-year-old woman
hauled a pack weighing about 27 kg and stuffed with a cooking pot, some
plastic sheets, soap, rice, a torn blanket and utensils. Other women
also were loaded down with nursing children strapped to their chests,
he said.

Only a trickle of aid from the Rangers and other non-government
organizations based in Thailand has reached the 11,000 displaced
including some medicine for the increasing number of people suffering
from malaria and other diseases.

The Burmese army campaign has been condemned by US lawmakers, British
human rights advocates and others, with some calling on the UN Security
Council to take urgent action against the country's ruling junta.

"The longer the Security Council waits, the more villages will be
destroyed and more people will die," said Tom Lantos, the top Democrat
on the US House International Relations Committee, in a statement
earlier this week.

"It has been clear for many years that the Karen people are facing
genocide and experiencing crimes against humanity and war crimes. This
latest evidence adds further weight to these charges," said Lord David
Alton, a member of the British House of Lords active in humanitarian
issues.

The Karen National Union, the main Karen guerrilla organization, says
the offensive, which began last November and recently intensified, may
be aimed at securing the hinterland east of the country's newly
established capital of Pyinmana.

Burma's military regimes, which first came to power in 1962, waged war
against numerous ethnic insurgent groups seeking autonomy until a
former junta member, Gen Khin Nyunt, negotiated cease-fires with 17 of
them.

But his ouster in 2004 reinforced hard-liners within the ruling junta
and "resulted in increasing hostility directed at ethnic minority
groups," U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in its 2006 report.

The KNU are the largest of the rebel groups still facing off against
the regime's 500,000-strong military.

The violence of recent years has spawned not only the internal refugees
but an exodus to neighboring countries. More than 140,000 Karen and
other ethnic minority people live in refugee camps inside Thailand.

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