Myanmar occupies Kokang region, sending message to other rebels

Aug 31, 2009, 10:52 GMT

   Yangon - Myanmar's junta claimed Monday to have restored 'peace and security' to the Kokang region of the Shan State after losing 26 soldiers and police in clashes with rebels, but resistance sources said the fighting was still underway.

   'Peace has been restored, and tasks for restoration of regional peace, stability and development have returned to normal,' Myanmar's state-run newspapers and TV reported Monday.

   Fighting between an estimated 700 Kokang troops loyal to leader Peng Jiasheng and thousands of Myanmar troops forced an estimated 30,000 civilians to flee to Nansan, in Yunnan province in China, irking the Chinese government.

   But sources on the Thai-Myanmar border claimed the fighting was ongoing.

   'We hear that the Burmese army is still seizing people to turn them into porters while they mop up the Kokang fighters on the Myanmar side of the border,' said Khuensai Jaiyen, editor of the pro-resistance Shan Herald Agency for News website.

   'My sources said they can still hear fighting,' he said in a telephone interview with the German Press Agency dpa.

   The New Light of Myanmar newspaper claimed the fighting had left 15 Myanmar soldiers and 11 police dead, and dozens wounded.

   The government mouthpiece blamed the outbreak of fighting on Peng Jiasheng, whom they claimed was involved in various illegal activities such as drug trafficking and the illicit manufacturing of arms and ammunition.

   Analysts of the region, however, claim Myanmar's junta was annoyed with Peng Jiasheng for refusing to comply with their demand that the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army - as the Kokang army has been called since 1989 - be turned into a border militia under army control.

   The Kokang are one of a dozen former insurgencies that signed ceasefire agreements with the junta in 1989 in exchange for a certain measure of autonomy, allowing them to keep their small armies and run their own economies.

   But the armies must come under government control by October, and be turned into border militias as part of the junta's preparations for a general election next year.

   Besides the Kokang, other much larger ethnic minority armies such as the Kachin, Wa and Shan have expressed reluctance to turn their armies into border militias under the Myanmar army, their traditional enemy.

   The attack on the Kokang army, with less than 1,000 soldiers, was seen as a warning to the other ethnic minority groups in the Shan State, analysts said.

   'This was a means of sending a warning to the other ethnic minority groups,' said Win Min, a lecturer on Myanmar affairs at Chiang Mai University. 'After seeing what happened to the Kokang they will be afraid of being attacked as well and of losing control over their territories,' he said.

   The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese minority group that has lived in north-eastern Myanmar for centuries. They once formed a core fighting group in the now-defunct Burmese Communist Party.