Posted on 04/19/2006 4:51:41 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
Troops in Burma have stepped up a military offensive against the Karen rebel group in the east of the country. Andrew Harding says the situation has been complicated by the military government's relocation of the capital from Rangoon to Pyinmana and that civilians are being caught in the middle.
The soldiers arrived at Bukee village at around ten in the morning. They said little, but started to work quickly and methodically.
First they began shooting the animals - and five of the villagers. Then they set about burning down the houses - clustered on a wooded hillside. They paid particular attention to the communal grain store.
Some of the soldiers started laying mines on the pathways leading into the village. Others looked for guns or ammunition - any evidence that ethnic Karen fighters opposed to the regime had been staying there.
By this time most of the civilians had already run into the surrounding forest - leaving a few men, like Saw Paul, to stay behind.
Village attack
Paul is a 56-year-old grandfather with a dark, creased face and strong, sinewy legs.
He was not trying to be particularly brave - just practical.
After all, this was the eighth time soldiers from the Burmese army had attacked his village.
Usually they just went through the motions - hoping to extort some money - often demanding the younger men come and work as porters or dig trenches for the troops.
But this morning was turning out rather differently.
After they had finished their work, some of the soldiers began to cook and eat the chickens they had killed.
Then an officer came over to Saw Paul and his friends. The ultimatum was delivered in a matter-of-fact sort of way.
"If you stay in your village," said the soldier, "we will kill you."
After that, the soldiers left.
Saw Paul went to the forest to look for his family. He is a widower - his wife died seven years ago, during a similar raid. She had run to hide in the woods, but it was the rainy season, and she had been washed away by a sudden mud-slide.
This time, his two grown-up daughters and their five young children emerged safely. They all spent one night in the ruins of their village, then set off early the next morning on foot.
Relentless exodus
Twenty-three days later they were still walking, when I ran into them on a forest path close to the border with Thailand.
Saw Paul was carrying his youngest grandchild. The others trudged wearily behind him - their skin caked in mud.
I watched them slowly sink to the ground. The children silent. The grown-ups quietly rigged up a few hammocks, and started a fire to cook dinner.
They were not alone. Scattered along the path, and on the river bank, there must have been a dozen more families. All from different villages - all telling similar stories.
They are part of a slow but relentless exodus which has been going on in Burma for years.
Hundreds of thousands of civilians have been driven from their homes by the Burmese military as it tries to crush one of the world's longest running insurgencies. And new flashpoints keep emerging.
Right now, an offensive is under way around a place called Pyinmana.
This is the site of Burma's brand new capital - the regime having suddenly and mysteriously announced it was abandoning Rangoon, and built itself a new headquarters, virtually from scratch - close to an area controlled by rebel groups.
To secure the area, troops have been doing the rounds of nearby villages - with predictable results.
As for Saw Paul and his family, they are the victims of a separate campaign.
Burma's secretive government recently decided it wanted to build a series of hydro-electric dams along the mighty Salween River. It will sell the electricity to neighbouring Thailand, and use the cash to strengthen its grip on power.
The regime spends 100 times more on the military than on health care.
'Secure areas'
But in order to build the dams, the government will again have to "secure" the areas around them against attack by ethnic rebel groups.
Some 30,000 civilians have already been forced from their homes - and that is just the start.
New roads are being built through the forests. More troops are flooding in. Saw Paul's village was close - too close - to one of those new roads... hence the ultimatum.
These atrocities have been routinely condemned by western governments. The European Union and US have imposed sanctions. But Burma's neighbours - China, India, and Thailand - seem happy to take a more business-like approach.
And so Saw Paul and his family sit in their filthy clothes, and scrape the last rice from their cooking pots. In a few days time, they will cross the border into Thailand, and head to one of the giant refugee camps there. Beyond that, Saw Paul has no idea.
I ask him if he thinks he or any of his family will ever return to Burma, and to their village. He looks down at his nine-month-old granddaughter Kopiya and says, solemnly, but without emotion:
"Probably not".
In the early '90's, I promised myself that I would never spend money in that country until Aung Yung Sun Kyi was free. She still isn't, I still won't. Let the military a-holes build their dams and roads without peasant labor!
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