UN Concerned About Heavy Fighting in Burma’s Kachin State

Refugees from Burma stand beside a river near the China-Burma border in Wanding, in China's southwest Yunnan province on Nov. 30, 2016. Thousands of refugees have fled into China in November due to fighting in northern Burma, and are being housed in temporary shelters along the border. Locals near the Chinese border in Burma's northern state of Shan said they were fleeing heavy fighting between the army and four armed ethnic groups, including the powerful Kachin Independence Army. (STR/AFP/Getty Images)

GENEVA–Conflict between Burma’s army, the Tatmadaw, and guerrillas of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) in northern Burma, also known as Myanmar, has escalated since Jan. 19, including in Sumprabum, Waingmaw and Tanai townships, a U.N. humanitarian report said on Friday.

“The United Nations and its humanitarian partners are concerned about the safety of civilians in these areas,” it said.

“The Tanai area has seen heavy fighting since 25 January 2018. There have been reports of a number of civilians killed or injured.”

The KIA has clashed regularly with the Burmese military since 2015, when a 17-year-old ceasefire broke down.

The KIA now is one of Burma’s most powerful militias, and has joined a Northern Alliance coalition of rebels along with two smaller groups and the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA ) – formerly part of the Communist Party of Burma, a powerful China-backed guerrilla force that battled the Burmese government until splintering in 1989.

The U.N. report said aid agencies were reporting about 1,800 people, mainly laborers, had been evacuated from the Tanai area as a result of the latest fighting, but other civilians were still in the areas of conflict and unable to leave.

U.N. staff had not been granted access to the area and could not independently verify the information, it said.

In Sumprabum township more than 700 people were sheltering in the forest after being displaced on Jan. 22. They included villagers and about 500 people from an internal displacement camp who fled after mortar bombs landed near the camp.

Tanai and Sumprabum are located on the two major roads running north from Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin state, the northernmost part of Burma, between China and India.

On three occasions since mid-December, most recently on Jan. 27, mortar bombs also landed close to a displacement camp in Waingmaw township, just cross the Irrawaddy river from Myitkyina, the report said.

Burma is already under international scrutiny for its handling of the Rohingya crisis on the Bangladesh border.

The U.N. human rights investigator for Burma, Yanghee Lee, was barred in December from visiting the Rohingya areas and also Kachin and Shan states.

She told Reuters at the time that Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government had no authority in Kachin state, since anything connected to security issues was controlled by military commanders.

She called on the international community to put more pressure on military commanders, and on China, to ensure that human rights were respected in the conflict.

By Tom Miles

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