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Just weeks after the Burmese government signed a peace accord with ethnic rebels, renewed fighting broke out in eastern Burma.
Members of the Shan State Army-South and government forces attacked one another over the past several days, after the army attacked a Shan base on Tuesday, reported the Irrawaddy, a publication based in Thailand.
“Clashes have taken place in the Mong Ton area,” Shan spokesperson Maj Sai Lao Hseng told the publication. “Government troops attacked our base. The most serious battle was on Feb. 7,” when about 200 government troops closed in on SSA units, who withdrew from the base, he said.
Hseng added that a “government column then followed our retreating troops and attacked one more time,” according to the Irrawaddy.
On Thursday, the leader of the Shan State Army, Lt-Gen Yawdserk, downgraded diplomatic ties with the Burmese government, according to Shan Herald.
“The agreement with the government is that we stay out of towns and the Burma Army out of the countryside,” Yawdserk said, according to the Herald, “and that movements outside of one’s sphere of control must be notified in advance to the other. This is a deliberate act of discredit against the government.”
The Burmese has remained engaged with separatist rebels for decades, but only recently signed peace accords with some of them. Western powers, including the U.S. and the U.K., have called on the recently-elected civilian government to hold peace talks with the rebels, release political prisoners, and engage with opposition parties.
Last month, clashes flared up again with the Karen rebels, only a few weeks after the government agreed upon a ceasefire with them.
The U.S. recently denounced government-led violence in Kachin state. Michael Posner, the assistant secretary of state for human rights, said last week that “at the same time, violence in the Kachin state has worsened, with reports of serious human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law,” according to a transcript.
“Ultimately the ethnic violence is rooted in political causes, and it will require negotiated political solutions on both sides to address the underlying grievances,” he said.