More than 2,000 villagers from Myanmar’s restive Karen state have fled across the border to Thailand to avoid possible fighting between rebel forces and government troops, an aid group said yesterday.
The human rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide said more than 1,200 villagers in temporary camps along the Thai border have fled because of fears the government was planning to launch attacks.
The Karen Human Rights Group said another 700 villagers fled potential clashes between the rebel Karen National Liberation Army, the military arm of the Karen National Union (KNU), and government troops and their supporters, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army.
The KNU has been fighting for half a century for greater autonomy from Myanmar’s central government. Myanmar’s military continues to launch sweeping counterinsurgency operations in Karen areas along the Thai border, displacing thousands of civilians. Many join some 100,000 of their countrymen in refugee camps in Thailand.
Christian Solidarity and pro-democracy groups including the US Campaign for Burma called on the UN to intervene to prevent a humanitarian crisis.
“The reports we have received indicate that Burma army troops may attack within hours,” Alexa Papadouris, an advocacy director for Christian Solidarity Worldwide, said in a statement. “This is an urgent situation which requires immediate international attention.”
A Myanmar government spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment on the reports of fighting.
The groups urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo on the country’s military regime and establish a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity.
At least 1.5 million people have already fled such attacks, said Aung Din, cofounder of the US Campaign for Burma.
Ceasefire talks between the KNU and the government broke down in 2004, and the Myanmar army launched a major offensive in Karen State in eastern Myanmar in 2005.
Since then, army offensives, coupled with divisions within the organization, have reduced the group’s armed presence over the past decade.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS