Ethnic Nationalities Voice တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ျမစ္ၾကီးနားရွိေကအုိင္အုိအဖြဲ.၏အရာရွိအိမ္မ်ားကုိဗမာစစ္အစုိးရတပ္က၀င္ေရာက္စီးနင္း

ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္၏ထုတ္ျပန္ခ်က္ကုိဆန္.က်င္ဖုိ.လက္မွတ္အတင္းထုိးခုိင္းျခင္းကုိျငင္းပယ္ခဲ့သျဖင္.အခုလုိ၀င္ေရာက္စီးနင္းတာျဖစ္တယ္လုိ.ကခ်င္းသတင္းဌာနမွာေရသားေဖာ္ျပထားပါတယ္၊ ေအာက္ပါသတင္း ကုိဖတ္ပါ။

Junta raids KIO officials' homes in Myitkyina

November 18, 2007KNG

Combat troops of the Burma Army and Sa-Ya-Pha, Military Affairs Security Unit also called the military intelligence, yesterday raided the homes of officials of the main Kachin ceasefire group, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in Myitkyina, capital of Kachin State in Northern Burma. They seized all illegal Chinese landline telephones they found, said KIO officials.

The raid follows the KIO's refusal to sign a statement opposing Aung San Suu Kyi's November 8 statement that she had been approached by a number of ethnic groups to represent them in the dialogue with the military junta. The junta has been arm twisting a number of ethnic ceasefire groups to issue statements refuting Suu Kyi's statement.

In a bid to pressurize the KIO, troops and officers of the military intelligence surrounded the homes of senior officials of the KIO and went in ostensibly checking for strangers and unreported guests but seized the Chinese landline telephones instead.

The junta also seized Chinese telephones in Myitkyina, Waingmaw and Bhamo areas yesterday evening.

The raid was conducted between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. local time and was targeted at houses of the battalion, brigade commanders and senior officials, and liaison offices in Myitkyina and Bhamo cities including KIO vice-president N'ban La Awng in Shatapru quarter in Myitkyina, according to KIO sources and eyewitnesses.

Family members of KIO officials in Shatapru and Du Mare quarters told KNG today, they were forced to open all the rooms in their homes to allow the raiding teams to check for strangers and guests and seized Chinese wireless landline telephones which are serviced by China.

There are over 30 houses of KIO officials' in Myitkyina, residents and KIO sources said.

In Myitkyina Township, there are hundreds of Chinese wireless land telephones used by people from all kinds of backgrounds—the junta, KIO and civilians because the illegal Chinese phones are cheap and the service is good compared to the telephones on offer by the military junta.

The raid was ordered by the Northern Command Commander Maj-Gen Ohn Myint based in Myitkyina because the KIO did not keep the junta's request to them to release a statement countering the National League for Democracy (NLD) General Secretary, Aung San Suu Kyi statement on November 8 released in Singapore by the UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari on her behalf, KIO officials said.

"The statement only concerns Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the junta. So, we assume we are not required to release any special statement on it, till now," The KIO vice-chairman Gauri Zau Seng assured KNG this evening.

The junta-run newspaper the New Light of Myanmar stated this week, that seven ethnic ceasefire groups in Burma – the Lahu National Development Party, Kokang Democracy and Unity Party, Shan State Army of Shan State (North) Special Region-3, Kachin Defence Army of Shan State (North) Special Region-5, Karenni Nationalities People's Liberation Front, Palaung Nationalities Group of Shan State (North) Special Region-7 and Kayinni National Peace and Development Party have released statements countering Aung San Suu Kyi statement.

The raid is unusual and has taken place for the first time in 13 years of the ceasefire. The raid came after a special representative of junta supremo Sr-Gen Than Shwe, Maj-Gen Ye Myint, chief of Military Affairs Security (Sa-Ya-Pha) met KIO leaders in Myitkyina early this month.

There is a discernable change in the situation of the KIO after UN Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari's trip. When Maj-Gen Ye Myint met KIO leaders, he unofficially promised to create an opportunity where the KIO could discuss with the junta its proposal to the National Convention.