Refugees who fled Myanmar into China after deadly clashes between junta forces and ethnic rebels trickled back across the border yesterday, but some said they feared going home to more unrest.
Officials in China’s southwestern Yunnan Province said 37,000 refugees had streamed into the country following days of fighting in Kokang, a mainly ethnic Chinese region of Myanmar’s Shan state.
Eight rebel fighters and 26 security forces were killed in the clashes in Myanmar’s remote northeast, state media reported late on Sunday, saying the unrest had ended. Two Chinese nationals were also killed, officials said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
At the border crossing in the Chinese town of Nansan, refugees were crossing into Myanmar in groups of about 40 at a time, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporters witnessed. The occasional person came into China.
“The Myanmar government has told us through diplomatic channels to send them back,” Yunnan provincial government spokesman Li Hui told reporters.
“Those who want to go back can return. We are finding that most of these people want to go back to their homes,” he said.
“The Myanmar government is saying that it is calm over there. From what we see, we don’t think that there is any armed fighting,” he said.
But refugees interviewed by AFP in Nansan said they remained unconvinced by the junta’s claims that calm had been restored in Kokang, a town of about 150,000.
“They were shooting ordinary people. I saw it myself. We don’t believe what they say. We are afraid to go back,” 24-year-old farmer Li Jun said.
“They say they will not shoot again but they will shoot,” Li said.
Rows of blue tents have been set up in Nansan, nestled in rugged and lush mountains, to accommodate the refugees. China has provided them with food and medical care — but has warned Myanmar to resolve the conflict quickly.
Refugees were also being housed in a number of nearly half-finished buildings.
Li, the provincial government spokesman, said 13,000 refugees were staying in camps, while 10,000-20,000 more were believed to be living with friends and relatives in and around Nansan.
Kokang’s ethnic Chinese retain close ties with their kin across the porous border.
A Chinese clothing shop owner, who gave only his surname Chen, said he left Kokang with his wife amid the fighting.
“We have heard that our stores were being looted and that they are attacking the Chinese stores. We don’t know what happened to our store,” he said.
A reporter for the Global Times, an English-language state daily in China, who crossed the border into Kokang at the weekend also reported Chinese-owned restaurants and stores had been looted.
“The Myanmar government has committed to protect the safety and property of Chinese citizens,” the Yunnan government spokesman said, adding that Beijing had “expressed concern” on the issue.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not