Kachin Refugees Face Food Shortages

Kachin State’s war refugees who are camped out at the Sino-Burmese border will soon suffer from food shortages if there is no further aid, and the government keeps blocking international aid agencies from supporting them, says two prominent Kachin NGOs.

“The refugees in Maija Yang have only enough food for 20 days,” said Mai Li Awng, a spokesperson for a local Kachin relief group called Wun Tawng Ningtwey (Light for Kachin People), on Wednesday. “We cannot ask the local people for more donations, because they have been supplying food to the refugees for two months already. We face a food shortage if we don’t get further aid.”

Mai Li Awng said there are about 4,000 refugees in Maija Yang. However, the total number of refugees at the Sino-Burmese border, including the city of Laiza, is estimated at nearly 20,000 by the Kachin Women's Association Thailand (KWAT).

More than 3,000 have taken refuge in the Kachin capital Myitkyina and the nearby town of Waimaw, according to a recent KWAT report.

Mai Li Awng said that the refugees dare not to go home as fighting still breaks out from time to time in their villages.

Nongovernmental organizations and relief agencies such as World Food Program and the International Committee for the Red Cross are prohibited from supplying aid to the Kachin refugees, said the KWAT report.

The fighting between government troops and the rebel Kachin Independence Army (KIA) flared on June 9. Despite ongoing ceasefire negotiations between the two sides, no truce has been announced. Atrocities and human rights abuses by the government army troops are driving increased numbers of villagers to flee to towns or border areas.

Those refugees in temporary camps along the Sino-Burmese border are surviving on donations
of rice and occasional other food supplies from local communities, but a lack of proper food is starting to cause malnutrition among the children, said KWAT in its report.

Shirley Seng, a spokesperson for KWAT, said, “We urge international donors to push for access to the war-affected in Kachin State. They must not stand by while the regime blocks aid to those who
desperately need it.”

The government stated in its press conference on Aug. 12 that local authorities had opened
relief centers in Kachin towns for the refugees.

However, these refugees in fact are mostly sheltering in churches, where local communities are struggling to provide support, and international and local NGOs have been expressly forbidden to assist them, according to KWAT.

The report also blamed the government for blocking Rangoon-based NGOs’ and relief agencies’ support to Kachin refugees at the border.

At a press conference in Naypyidaw last Friday, Burma's Information Minister Kyaw Hsan accused the KIA and its political wing, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), of destroying the 1994 ceasefire agreement between the government and the KIO. He also blamed an umbrella organization of armed ethnic groups, the United Nationalities Federation Council, saying that it was formed by insurgent groups such as the KIO.  

In response, the KIO released a statement on Wednesday condemning the government for its accusations, and describing the government’s press conference as “propaganda.” 

The KIO says it wants a nationwide ceasefire and political dialogue with the new government to establish a real federal union in Burma.

Resources From: Irrawaddy