Myanmar refugees tell of murder, villages burned –

By Ed Cropley

NEAR THE SALWEEN RIVER, Myanmar, May 14 (Reuters) – Over the last month, more than 800 ethnic Karen have fled the biggest Myanmar army offensive in a decade to a makeshift jungle camp near the Thai border. Hundreds more are likely to follow.

In some of the first independent confirmation of a growing refugee crisis inside the former Burma's Karen State, Reuters interviewed dozens of families who walked for weeks through malaria-infested forests to escape soldiers of the SPDC, as Yangon's ruling junta is known.

Protected by Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) guerrillas in a steep valley one mile (1.5 km) from Thailand, they spoke of friends and relatives murdered, villages burned to the ground and the ashes seeded with landmines.

Some of them used the word "myo dong". In Karen, it means genocide.

"The SPDC is trying to make sure the Karen are wiped off the map of Burma -- the people, the culture, the language," said 30-year-old Sor Law Lah Doh, who arrived two days ago in the camp near the Salween river with his wife and three children.

Another new arrival, 70-year-old Kya Kwa Po, agreed.

"The SPDC will only be happy when there are no more Karen in Burma," he said, sheltering from the midday sun beneath a blue tarpaulin slung across bamboo poles on the edge of the jungle.

The Karen, a mainly Christian people who make up just over 10 percent of Myanmar's 52 million people, have been fighting a guerrilla independence war in eastern Myanmar for the last 50 years -- one of the world's longest-running conflicts.

Since November, reports from refugee relief groups inside Karen State have pointed to a determined assault on ethnic areas by the Burmese-dominated junta, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).

Over the weekend, Yangon's secretive generals, who exert total control over the media, accused the KNU of planning "atrocities and sabotage acts" against the government.

"The government has to clear up the areas where KNU members and their hardcores could be hiding," Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan told reporters on Saturday.

However, he blamed the exodus of refugees on a power struggle within the Karen rebel movement.

The Free Burma Rangers (FBR), a Christian group that helps refugees inside Myanmar, says more than 15,000 ethnic minority people have been forced to flee their homes but remain inside the country as internally displaced people, or IDPs.

The U.N. refugee agency confirmed two weeks ago that 1,800 had crossed into Thailand since December, where 120,000 ethnic minority people from Myanmar live in permanent refugee camps.

U.N. officials did not comment on possible IDP numbers, but information from refugees near the Salween river, which forms the border with Thailand, corroborated FBR estimates of thousands on the run in the jungle.

FLIGHT TO SAFETY

Sor Law Lah Doh, who led his family past landmines and SPDC patrols on a 10-day trek to the relative safety of the Salween, said 170 of the 200 people in his village fled after a raid in which all their homes and rice banks were razed.

He said he knew of 100 other similar-sized communities who had suffered a similar fate.

So far, in the last month, 805 refugees have made it through the jungle to emerge, filthy, exhausted and sick at the Karen camp, a collection of 200 bamboo huts nestled in the dense jungle. The camp has only been open since April 5.

Some families trekked for up to three months to escape. In two cases, women gave birth on the run. Their children, along with three others born in the camp, now cling to life, at the mercy of diarrhoea, infection and malaria.

"This is the worst situation for the Karen for 10 years," said Peter, a teacher from one of the main refugee camps in Thailand who has been brought in to try and establish clean water, food and shelter at the rapidly swelling village.

Another group of refugees from Karenni State to the north are due to arrive at any moment, he said.

"If the SPDC continue to use force to chase people away, it will get bigger," said Peter, who has only one name. "The Thai camps are already full -- there is no room for new arrivals. The people will have nowhere to go but here."

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