WUNRN
MYANMAR/BURMA & CHINA BORDER FIGHTING HAS FORCED TENS
OF THOUSANDS OF CIVILIANS TO FLEE – WOMEN
Refugees displaced by clashes this week. More than 30,000
people have crossed into China since fighting began, according to the Chinese
state media.Credit Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters
Some Chinese microbloggers have responded to his call by likening his
struggle to retake Kokang to the fight of Russian separatists in Ukraine, where
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula last year.
“Let us help Kokang,” one Weibo user commented, while sharing the photo of
the flag-holding girl. “The beasts of the Myanmar Army are continuing to slaughter
Kokang’s Chinese in Laukkai,” another one wrote, sharing a photo of corpses in
the city that has seen most of the fighting. Both those posts and many similar
ones have since been deleted from Chinese microblogs.
In a Lunar New Year’s message released on Wednesday, the rebels’ military
commander in charge of operations, Peng Deren, thanked Chinese Internet users
for their support over the last year, along with Kokang residents and allied
armed rebel groups. “The coming of spring brings back us wanderers’ desire to
return home,” he wrote. Mr. Peng is the son of the rebel leader Peng Jiasheng.
Chinese state-affiliated news outlets were quick to denounce references to
Crimea. “Those who are stuck in such comparisons are either spouting nonsense,
or have ulterior motives,” Global Times, a state-run newspaper, wrote in an editorial
on Monday.
“Varied forces in Chinese society should stay sober and avoid any premature
stance or interference in northern Myanmar affairs, so as not to affect the
government’s diplomacy,” the editorial argued.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, echoed the sentiment at a regular news conference
on the same day. China “does not allow any organization or individual to spoil
China-Myanmar relations and undermine stability of the border area on the
Chinese territory,” she said.
More than 30,000 people have crossed the border into China since the
fighting began, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, has said.
The outpouring of support from Chinese citizens has been overwhelming for
some residents of China. Lin Sen, who lives in Yunnan Province, across the
border from Myanmar, said he had harbored up to 20 refugees at his home and had
been flooded with phone calls from people wanting to help refugees.
“I tell people that there is no need to send supplies,” he said. “There is
no shortage at the moment.” Some callers, he said, even contacted him from post
offices, asking him for his address to mail emergency supplies.
On Tuesday, Myanmar imposed three months of martial law in the region.
Fighting continued as of Friday, residents said. “They are still exchanging
fire,” Li Jiapeng, who volunteered distributing aid to refugees on the Chinese
side of the border, said by telephone.
Fighting between Myanmar army and ethnic Chinese rebels
has endangered civilians. Many ethnic Han Chinese feel they are treated as
second-class citizens in Myanmar.
Myanmar has
declared a state of emergency in a conflict-torn border region where fighting
between the army and ethnic rebels has forced tens of thousands of civilians to
flee.
"A serious
situation has developed that has put people's lives at risk, so a state of
emergency has been declared starting from today," the country's Ministry
of Information said on Tuesday, in a statement outlining the measures in the
Kokang region of Shan state.
In a separate
announcement, the ministry said Myanmar's army chief now had full control of
"rule of law and stability" in the area.
Tens of thousands
of refugees have fled Kokang into the neighbouring Chinese province of Yunnan
over the past week, amid the ongoing fighting.
Lin Sen, a
volunteer helping refugees in Yunnan, told the AP news agency on Tuesday that
he estimated 30,000 to 50,000 refugees had escaped the conflict in Kokang over
the past week.
Also on Tuesday,
the Reuters news agency reported that Red Cross volunteers, who are helping the
refugees, came under attack from unknown armed men, resulting in two injuries……..
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Conflict in Myanmar Reverberates Across the Border in China
By Patrick Boehler
- February 19, 2015
A photo of a young girl holding a Chinese flag is one of many that China’s
online censors have deleted over the last few days in an effort to quell
nationalist support for ethnic Chinese rebels in Myanmar.
Others have depicted looted storefronts and bodies of civilians, some dead,
some wounded, seeking shelter.
Dozens of soldiers and rebels have died since fighting erupted in the
Kokang region near the Chinese border last week, according to the state-backed
newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar.
Tens of thousands of refugees fleeing into China and an appeal for help
from the rebel forces in Myanmar have now turned the hostilities into a
delicate matter for the Chinese government. The Kokang region is largely
populated by ethnic Chinese.
Peng Jiasheng, an ethnic Chinese who was affiliated with the now defunct,
formerly China-backed Communist Party of Burma, leads the rebel forces in
Kokang, who call themselves the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army.
Mr. Peng ruled Kokang until his ouster in an attack by the Myanmar armed
forces in 2009 and has since lived in hiding.
A day into an attack by his rebel forces last week that ignited the
hostilities, the 85-year-old appealed for support from all those of “common
race and roots,” in an open letter widely circulated on social media.
“How is it possible that more than a hundred years after the Opium War,
there are still more than 200,000 Chinese suffering under ethnic
discrimination?” he wrote. “Every time Jiasheng is reminded of this situation,
he bursts into tears, and the pain is unbearable.”
Some Chinese microbloggers have responded to his call by likening his
struggle to retake Kokang to the fight of Russian separatists in Ukraine, where
Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula last year.
“Let us help Kokang,” one Weibo user commented, while sharing the photo of
the flag-holding girl. “The beasts of the Myanmar Army are continuing to
slaughter Kokang’s Chinese in Laukkai,” another one wrote, sharing a photo of
corpses in the city that has seen most of the fighting. Both those posts and
many similar ones have since been deleted from Chinese microblogs.
In a Lunar New Year’s message released on Wednesday, the rebels’ military
commander in charge of operations, Peng Deren, thanked Chinese Internet users
for their support over the last year, along with Kokang residents and allied
armed rebel groups. “The coming of spring brings back us wanderers’ desire to
return home,” he wrote. Mr. Peng is the son of the rebel leader Peng Jiasheng.
Chinese state-affiliated news outlets were quick to denounce references to
Crimea. “Those who are stuck in such comparisons are either spouting nonsense,
or have ulterior motives,” Global Times, a state-run newspaper, wrote in an editorial
on Monday.
“Varied forces in Chinese society should stay sober and avoid any premature
stance or interference in northern Myanmar affairs, so as not to affect the
government’s diplomacy,” the editorial argued.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, echoed the sentiment at a regular news conference
on the same day. China “does not allow any organization or individual to spoil
China-Myanmar relations and undermine stability of the border area on the
Chinese territory,” she said.
More than 30,000 people have crossed the border into China since the
fighting began, Xinhua, the state-run news agency, has said.
The outpouring of support from Chinese citizens has been overwhelming for
some residents of China. Lin Sen, who lives in Yunnan Province, across the
border from Myanmar, said he had harbored up to 20 refugees at his home and had
been flooded with phone calls from people wanting to help refugees.
“I tell people that there is no need to send supplies,” he said. “There is
no shortage at the moment.” Some callers, he said, even contacted him from post
offices, asking him for his address to mail emergency supplies.
On Tuesday, Myanmar imposed three months of martial law in the region.
Fighting continued as of Friday, residents said. “They are still exchanging
fire,” Li Jiapeng, who volunteered distributing aid to refugees on the Chinese
side of the border, said by telephone.