Ethnic Nationalities Voice တုိင္းရင္းသားအသံ

ေကအုိင္အုိစစ္သား(၅)ေယာက္နဲ.အရာရွိ(၃)ေယာက္တုိ.ကုိဗမာစစ္တပ္ကဖမ္းဆီးလုိက္ျပန္ျပီ

Eight KIO servicemen detained by Burmese Amy

November 22, 2007KNG

In a sudden swoop, and in another instance of arm twisting by the military junta, the Burmese Army, Infantry Battalion N0. 146 this morning detained five soldiers and three office staff of the Kachin Independent Organization (KIO), the main ethnic Kachin ceasefire group in the state in Northern Burma, insiders said.

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All the detainees are from at Dingga Controlled Areas Office in Dawhpum Yang region under the KIO’s 3rd Brigade, including the office in-charge and second-office in-charge, an accountant and five soldiers, an officer of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), battalion No.(12) near Dingga Office told KNG this evening.

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Till the time of writing this report the reasons behind the arrests are not known but the KIA officers in the area admitted that military tension between the KIA and the Burma Army has escalated since last weekend, according to KIA Battalion 12 sources.

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The detention of the KIO servicemen comes in the wake of illegal Chinese wireless landline phones being suddenly seized in KIO liaison offices and from homes of officials' in two major cities of Kachin State—Bhamo and Myitkyina by the ruling junta, five days ago.

This afternoon, a convoy of Burmese military trucks crossed Balaminhtin Irrawaddy River Bridge from Myitkyina to Waingmaw, --- areas east of Irrawaddy River where the KIO headquarters is located, eyewitnesses in Myitkyina told KNG.

On the other hand, the three Burma military battalions including Waingmaw based Infantry Battalion N0. 58 and Shwenyaungbin based Light Infantry Battalion No. 321 are operating in the gold mining areas in Nam San Yang near Laiza, the KIO controlled areas. The army has arrested and driven out the gold miners, said locals.This is the latest in terms of military pressure by the junta on the KIO after it refused to issue a statement opposing Burma's democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's November statement released in Singapore by UN special envoy Mr. Ibrahim Gambari.