YANGON: Ethnic Kachin rebels have urged Myanmar’s military to end operations in their war-wracked state to bolster contact between the sides, a Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) spokesman said yesterday.
Several rounds of talks to resolve the conflict in the country’s far north have been overshadowed by ongoing battles and relations between the sides are threadbare.
KIO spokesman La Nan said the government had recently pushed new units into the territory.
“(The government) should stop launching offensives in Kachin State. If they do the situation in Kachin state will stabilize at some point,” La Nan told AFP.
“Relations with them (the government) have almost been cut,” he said, adding that renewed dialogue is possible if both sides show “restraint.”
Tens of thousands of people have fled the fighting since June last year when a 17-year cease-fire between the government and rebels collapsed, with an estimated 5,000 seeking refuge in neighboring China.
China has been heavily criticized by rights groups for forcing the refugees back over the border into Kachin.
Fighting between the KIA — the armed wing of the KIO — and government troops, coupled with China’s reluctance to allow in those fleeing the violence, mean refugee numbers in camps around Kachin have swelled to around 150,000, an independent peace negotiator told AFP.
Warning of a “real crisis,” Yup Zaw Hkaung, a businessman acting as a peace negotiator, said: “As both sides have not decreased the fighting, people are getting hurt and are caught in the middle.
“People in villages and towns are also in difficulties. They are also in real crisis. People dare not to go to their farm lands. Many villages and town people in Kachin State also became refugees.”
Civil war has gripped parts of Myanmar since independence in 1948. The country’s reformist government has agreed cease-fires with several ethnic rebel groups as part of reforms since coming to power last year.
Experts say clashes in Kachin, which come despite a presidential order to the army to stop fighting, raise questions about whether the leader exerts full control over local military units.
Kachin rebels urge end to Myanmar fighting
