Gaybutton Posted February 14, 2008 Posted February 14, 2008 The following appears in the BANGKOK POST: _____ Karen Liberation Leader Assassinated in Tak A leader of Burma's biggest ethnic armed groups has been killed at his home in the border town of Mae Sot, in Tak province. Mahn Sha Lar Phan, secretary-general of the Karen National Union (KNU), was reported shot dead at about 4:30pm on Thursday at his two-storey wooden home by two men who had arrived in a pick-up truck. Kim Suay, his wife, told Reuters news agency: "One of them walked up to the house and said in Karen 'How are you, uncle?' Then the other man joined him after parking the truck and they both shot him with two pistols." The killing was immediately blamed on the Burmese military government. In an interview on Monday, the Karen leader had predicted a possible increase in violence ahead of a constitutional referendum in Burma in May. However, the KNU and its armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), are riven by internal feuds and lethal vendettas. His son Hse Hse, another senior member of the predominantly Christian Karen rebel movement, blamed a Buddhist Karen splinter group which brokered a truce with the Burmese government in the mid-1990s. "This is the work of the DKBA and the Burmese soldiers," Hse Hse said, referring to the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. Thai police said they had the registration number of the truck and were setting up roadblocks around Mae Sot - a frontier town of refugees, illegal migrants and gem dealers - to try to catch the two killers. The Karen have been fighting for independence in the hills of eastern Burma for the past 60 years. The group once controlled areas of eastern Burma, but now is reduced mainly to a string of bases pressed against the Thai border. Burma began a bloody offensive against the Karen two years ago, which activists say has targeted ordinary villagers rather than separatists. Decades of fighting have devastated eastern Burma, where 500,000 people have been displaced by violence, according to Human Rights Watch, a New York-based rights group. Rape, forced labour, summary executions and land grabs remain widespread, while the military also forced villagers to act as human minesweepers, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report last month. __________ And This: also from the BANGKOK POST _____ Leader of Myanmar's Ethnic Karen Rebel Group Killed in Thailand By CHIRAVUT RUNGJAMRATRASAMI, Associated Press Writer The leader of the Karen National Union, one of the biggest ethnic groups fighting Myanmar's military government, was killed Thursday, dealing a fresh blow to forces opposed to the country's hard-line ruling junta. KNU General Secretary Mahn Sha was shot by two gunmen at his home in Mae Sot, Thailand, a town on the border with Myanmar, Thai police Col. Pasawat Tangjui said. The killing may have been the result of internal differences in the rebel group, he said. No one has claimed responsibility for the murder. Mahn Sha's killing came at a politically sensitive time: less than a week after Myanmar's government announced plans for a referendum on a new constitution this May, to be followed by a general election in 2010. The plans have been denounced by the regime's opponents as a sham meant to perpetuate military rule. "We lost, not only for the KNU, but all the democracy struggle for Burma, a very qualified man. He was a key person, the engine of the KNU," said Zin Linn, a spokesman for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, an exile opposition group. Burma is the name preferred to Myanmar by the junta's opponents. The KNU is one of more than a dozen armed ethnic groups that for decades have sought greater autonomy from Myanmar's central government. It is sympathetic to the pro-democracy movement inside the country of detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi because the junta is their common foe. Since 1988, many other groups have signed formal cease-fires with the ruling junta _ formerly known as the State peace and Development Council, or SPDC _ but the Karen didn't reach a formal agreement to lay down their arms. The KNU, which has been fighting for more than five decades, once had a powerful guerrilla force in Myanmar's eastern border region, but Myanmar army offensives, coupled with divisions within the organization, have reduced the group's military presence considerably over the past decade. Most of the group's senior leadership resides inside Thailand, while its military bases are mostly located just inside Myanmar's border. Myanmar's military continues to carry out sweeping counterinsurgency operations in Karen areas in the eastern part of the country, displacing thousands of civilians every year, many of whom end up joining about 100,000 of their countrymen in refugee camps in Thailand. Mahn Sha, 64, took over leadership of the KNU in 2000 from his ailing predecessor, Bo Mya, who died in 2006. He had been with the KNU since 1963, becoming joint general secretary in 1995 before taking the top post. Mahn Sha was sitting on a balcony on the second floor of his house when the two gunmen arrived in a pickup truck driven by a third man, police Col. Pasawat said by telephone from Mae Sot. "One guy went upstairs, greeted Mahn Sha and then shot him at close range. Then, another guy came up and shot him again before they fled in the same vehicle," he said. "Initial investigations showed that the assailants are also Karen, and after speaking to some witnesses, we believe it was an internal problem within the KNU that prompted the assassination. Still, we have to investigate further to know for sure," he said. A spokesman for Shan ethnic rebels, who continue to carry arms against the government and are de facto allies of the KNU, said Mahn Sha's death "will strategically undermine all opposition groups against the junta's government." "It definitely has a psychological effect, too," said Lao Hseng, spokesman for the Restoration Council of Shan State and the Shan State Army, which is based mostly in remote jungle areas of northeastern Myanmar. "It shows none of us is safe." He said that although the KNU "has many enemies, including other Karen factions," the timing of the attack suggested that the junta was behind it. Factionalism in the KNU leaves open the possibility that rival Karen were responsible. The group's breakaway 7th Brigade signed a cease-fire pact on its own with the government last year, and has since then reportedly been the target of several attacks by the KNU. An earlier breakaway group also allied with the junta, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, is another violent rival. In an interview just hours before his death, Mahn Sha _ also known as Mahn Sha Lah Phan _ denounced the junta's referendum and election plans as a fraud and said they were the sign of an increasingly desperate regime. The junta's plans marked the first time Myanmar's military rulers have set dates for stages of its so-called roadmap to democracy, which it is pursuing without the free participation of the country's pro-democracy movement or ethnic minorities. Speaking to Anjali Kwatra, a journalist working for the London-based humanitarian group Christian Aid, he urged the international community to play a bigger part in bringing about political reconciliation in Myanmar, suggesting the United Nations has to use "a large stick and a small carrot" in pressuring the regime because it so far refuses to accept a peaceful solution. Kwatra told The Associated Press that there was no visible security at Mahn Sha's home, which also served as his office. Quote
