Burma: Thousands flee as new attacks threatened

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) has received reports today indicating that the Burma Army is poised to launch an attack tomorrow on a camp of internally displaced people (IDPs) in Karen State on the Thailand-Burma border.

As the trial of Burma’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi continues, this new crisis has caused over one thousand IDPs to flee across the border into Thailand.

Ler Per Her, an IDP camp just inside Karen State, Burma, has been evacuated today as more than a thousand troops from the Burma Army’s Infantry Battalion (IB) 81, Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) 202, and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), a pro-regime militia, approach the area. An attack is expected tomorrow. The camp has been attacked twice before and forced to relocate.

CSW has visited the camp many times, including once earlier this year, and has received first-hand evidence from the camp’s over 1,200 IDPs, who have already had to flee the regime’s policies of forced labour, rape, torture, destruction of villages, crops and livestock and the use of human minesweepers. CSW’s sources claim over 60 families have arrived in Ler Per Her since October 2008, including 40 within the past week alone.

Alexa Papadouris, Advocacy Director at CSW, said: “The reports we have received indicate that Burma Army troops may attack within hours. This is an urgent situation which requires immediate international attention. Karen civilians have been suffering such attacks, as well as other gross violations of human rights amounting to crimes against humanity, for several decades and it is time for the international community to act to bring an end to the crisis in eastern Burma. We call on the UN Security Council to impose a universal arms embargo on Burma’s military regime, and to establish a commission of inquiry into crimes against humanity. We urge the authorities in Thailand to provide shelter and protection to the Karen from Ler Per Her, and we urge members of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), China and India to use their collective influence with the regime to call a halt to such offensives against civilians”.