BurmaNet News, April 18, 2007

[Editor]

April 18, 2007 Issue # 3186

INSIDE BURMA
DPA: Burma PM 'likely to retire soon'
Kaladan News: Police loots goods from shopkeeper
Kachin News Group: Animals killed by chemical agents in Hukawng Valley

ON THE BORDER
BBC Burmese Service: NCUB and ENC denounce offensive against the KNU
Slate.com: Refugees or rebels?
Irrawaddy: Burmese refugees to receive ID cards

HEALTH / AIDS
Kantarawaddy: Five, including children die from diarrhea

REGIONAL
Hindustan Times: India to counter Chinese presence in Myanmar
Mizzima: Mizzima head office unsealed by Municipal Corporation of Delhi
DVB: Burmese couple yet to be charged over suspected kidnap plot

STATEMENT
KNU: KNU Statement on new military operation by SPDC


____________________________________
INSIDE BURMA

April 18, Deutsche Press Agentur
Burma PM 'likely to retire soon'

Burmese Prime Minister Soe Win will retire "very soon" due to poor health,
a well-placed government source said Wednesday.

Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan acknowledged at a press
conference last month that General Soe Win had gone to Singapore for a
health check-up for ailments typical of a man his age.

Should Soe Win retire, his most likely successor will be
Lieutenant-General Thein Sein, Secretary-1 of the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC), as Burma's ruling junta styles itself, sources
said.

Prior to his appointment as prime minister in October 2004, Soe Win was
best known for his part in the bloody crackdown on democracy protestors in
1988 - for deploying troops around Rangoon University and ordering them to
shoot at Rangoon General Hospital during the upheaval.

Soe Win was also commander of Sagaing Division in May 2003, when
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy
(NLD) followers were attacked in Depeyin district, Sagaing, by pro-junta
thugs. Suu Kyi was arrested after the incident on charges of created
unrest. She has been languishing under house arrest in Rangoon since.

The post of prime minister is not deemed the true seat of power in Burma,
which is still under the thumb of the SPDC, headed by Senior General Than
Shwe.

Recent rumours that Than Shwe, 74, was on the verge of death proved
unfounded. In a rare public appearance the ageing general presided over
the annual Armed Forces Day parade on March 27, standing in the hot sun
for more than an hour with no apparent signs of weakness.

____________________________________

April 18, Kaladan News
Police loots goods from shopkeeper

Buthidaung, Arakan State: Police in Buthidaung town looted goods worth
Kyat 5, 25,000/- from a shopkeeper while he was carrying it from Akyab
(Sitwee) in a small boat to his village along with another Rakhine shop
owner.

The shopkeeper Anwar Sadek (28) is the son of Rahmat Ali, belonging to
Dabyu Chaung village, where it has a military Operation Command (MOC) No.
(15) headquarters of Buthidaung Township Arakan State , Burma .

Anwar is a businessman and has been transporting goods to his village shop
from Akyab, the capital of Arakan, with the help of Rakhine shopkeepers
over a long time.

On April 4, ten policemen seized the goods he was ferrying in a small boat
from Akyab to his village in Buthidaung Township . The seizure was made on
the suspicion as to where he got such a lot of money for his business,
another shopkeeper said.

According to a close friend of the victim, Anwar and the seized goods were
brought to the police station in Buthidaung town. He was asked by a police
inspector where he had got the money for buying the goods. Anwar said, "I
have been in business for 10 years.  This is my own money and nobody gave
it to me."

He was detained in the police station, but his goods were sold to people
in Buthidaung town. The proceeds of the sale were pocketed by the police.

But, some goods such as chili, rice, dried fish and potatoes were
distributed to the villagers of Dabyu Chaung at a lower price.

Anwar is still in detention and no case has been filed against him yet,
said a relative of the victim.

____________________________________

April 18, Kachin News Group
Animals killed by chemical agents in Hukawng Valley

An unidentified chemical agent has killed scores of domestic and wild
animals in Hukawng Valley, Kachin State in northern Burma. The chemical
agent was used by farming companies, locals said.  The loss of domestic
animals has put the farming community in severe problems.

Dead cattle and wild pigs are littering the areas near sugarcane and
tapioca plantations in the valley, said a resident of Danai in Hukawng
Valley.

The chemical agent has been used by U Htay Myint's Yuzana Company and a
Yunnan-based Chinese company. The companies targeted to kill animals like
buffaloes, cows and wild pigs to check damage to their crops, residents,
alleged.

As a chain affect, vultures have been dying after eating the chemically
contaminated carcasses. Local villagers who have eaten the flesh of dead
wild pigs are suffering from diarrhea, said a resident of Hukawng Valley.

Farmers are worried because they cannot plough their paddy fields without
the buffaloes and cows, residents said.

Residents of Hukawng Valley traditionally rely on buffaloes and cows for
ploughing their paddy and other crop fields.

A special report on Hukawng Valley "The Valley of Darkness", issued by
Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) in January has clearly pointed
out that deforestation and danger from wildlife have been created by the
Burmese junta's militarization, land confiscation by the army, gold mining
and internal migration in the valley.

Last year, both a Yangon-based Burman businessman U Htay Myint, owner of
Yuzana Company, who is also close to the son of the junta's vice Senior
General Maung Aye and Myitkyina-based Jadeland Company owned by a Kachin
businessman, Yup Zau Hkawng bought thousands of acres of land in the
valley from the ruling junta.

Land in Hukawng Valley is historically owned by Kachin and Shan residents
but they do not have any right to manage their land, according to
residents.

The world's biggest tiger reserve has been created in the Hukawng Valley
in Kachin State by the Burmese military junta together with the US-based
Wildlife Conservation Society, in 2004.

____________________________________
ON THE BORDER

April 18, BBC Burmese Service
NCUB and ENC denounce offensive against the KNU

Recent fightings have made Karen villagers fled for safety. Military
offensive against the KNU has been denounced by the NCUB and the ENC, the
most influential organisations among the Burmese opposition forces in
exile.

NCUB is an umbrella organisation of the pro-democracy movements based in
border areas and ENC stands for ethnic nationalities council of Burma.

ENC said although the attacks were being carried out against the Karen
forces, the consequences could be felt in the pro-democracy movements
based along the border areas.

____________________________________

April 17, Slate.com
Refugees or rebels? - Nicholas Schmidle

Nurul Haq hasn't been sleeping at home. In the middle of the night, he
slips away from his wife, tiptoes out of the house, and lays on the muddy
bank of the Naf River. Every night of the last week, Bangladeshi police
and army personnel have stormed his refugee camp in search of criminals—or
any able-bodied male with the capacity to act as one—as part of a
nationwide anti-crime and anti-corruption campaign. Nurul, a gaunt man in
his early 20s who wears a trimmed mustache and a floppy hairstyle, claims
that dozens have already disappeared. To avoid arrest, most of the men
hide in the jungle. When I asked Nurul why he opts for the riverbank,
which seemed to provide less cover, he answered frankly: "I am terrified
of the elephants." (Wild elephants roaming the dense hills along the
Bangladeshi-Burmese border impale, maul, or stomp to death at least 20
locals every year.)

Nurul is a Rohingya, an outcast community of Muslims from Rakhine state in
western Burma (officially known as Myanmar). Burma's military government
considers Rohingyas to be migrants from Bangladesh, since they moved to
Burma only in the last few centuries, and it refuses to grant them
citizenship rights. "They are treated like dogs," an official from the
U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees told me. Under "nationality and
religion," their national ID cards read "Bengali Muslims." The junta
disparages Rohingyan religious and cultural traditions at every
opportunity. Most mosques stand in disrepair. Those in passing condition
are turned into police and fire stations. Rohingyas who wish to marry must
obtain official permission and pay a whopping tax. If the Burmese
authorities find out that a couple has evaded payment, the groom is sent
off to a labor camp for several years until he works off his "debt."

In 1992, 250,000 Rohingya refugees crossed into Bangladesh after rumors
circulated that the Burmese army was torching Rohingya villages. UNHCR
immediately established 22 camps from Cox's Bazar, a resort city that
boasts the longest natural beach—at 75 miles—in the world, to Teknaf, the
southernmost city on the Bangladeshi mainland and a renowned hub of
smuggling activity. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to
Burma, and only two official UNHCR camps remain, housing 26,000 people.
But there is also an unofficial camp just north of Teknaf that is home to
some 10,000 refugees—commonly referred to as the "makeshift camp."
Opportunities for work are scant; Nurul pulls a rickshaw a few days a week
and fills the rest of his time as a fisherman. Neither pays more than a
dollar a day. Burma's government asserts that rebel fighters belonging to
the Rohingya Solidarity Organization operate and recruit there. Others
allege that international jihadist outfits poach from the ranks of
desperate refugees.

I rented a microbus and went to Teknaf to see the makeshift camp. The road
from Cox's Bazar to Teknaf crosses through one of the most conservative
areas in Bangladesh. Madrassas, or Islamic seminaries, appeared every few
miles on either side of the road. The few women on the streets wore black
burqas that cloaked their faces. From a distance, it was difficult to tell
which direction they were heading. Lush hills, like giant green gumdrops,
formed the landscape to the west. The unimaginably wide Naf River, the
natural barrier between Burma and Bangladesh, formed the other. I was
marveling at the natural beauty when we arrived at the camp.

At first glance, the makeshift camp looked like a burlap city, hut after
hut made of floppy brown material. But it wasn't burlap or canvas, it was
tarps and patches of plastic garbage bags caked with dust. Along the
roadside, sections of homemade bamboo lattice pretended to act as a fence.
Yet the refugees spilled across the street. Naked children with dripping
noses and medicine-ball bellies chased one another back and forth through
traffic. Nurul sent someone from the hut he shared with his teenage wife
and another couple to bring tea, while his 2-year-old son stood by his
side. The boy was naked and snot dripped onto his lower lip. (Doctors
Without Borders, which runs a clinic across the street, estimates that 30
percent to 40 percent of the kids have respiratory infections.) He played
with his penis the entire time.

The Rohingya camps are filled with disease. More debatable is whether
criminals infest the camps. In one of the UNHCR camps, a Bangladeshi
security officer explained that almost every male was involved in muggings
and thievery, if not worse crimes. I couldn't gauge the veracity of such
claims. On the one hand, no one would know better than the man in charge
of security for the camp; on the other, Bangladeshi officials exaggerate
the Rohingyas criminal activities in order to expedite their repatriation
to Burma. The government accuses them of being terrorists. The Dhaka-based
Daily Star reported in August 2006 that, "Jama'atul Mujahideen
Bangladesh"—the group responsible for detonating 500 bombs simultaneously
throughout Bangladesh in August 2005—"emerged with its militant activities
by sending trained Muslim Rohingya rebels to Afghanistan and Kashmir war
fronts in the 1980s." When I asked Nurul whether he had witnessed
recruitment in the camp, he first denied hearing about any such things.
Then he spoke up: "Last year, 15 people suddenly disappeared and went off
to get military training in the hills. When they came back, we asked them
where they had gone. They said, 'We went for the greater benefit of the
Rohingya people.' " Nurul said he didn't know the name of the group that
offered the training, but he assumed it was RSO. The fresh recruits told
Nurul that they were "preparing to fight for the liberation of Myanmar."

Until then, the Rohingyas will keep squatting in their squalid camps,
grateful for every day they aren't arrested, evicted, or forcibly
repatriated. The UNHCR camps aren't accepting new refugees, and the
Rohingyas believe that the Bangladeshi government is looking for any
excuse to deport them. For a long time, they've had no place to call home.
Now, with a state of emergency declared in Bangladesh and the army being
given more leeway to chase criminals and "cleanse society of unwanted
elements," the Rohingyas fear a more aggressive campaign against them may
be in the offing.

If people like Nurul returned to Burma, the military would kill them
before long. The Burmese army keeps track of the Rohingyas in Rakhine
state by conducting unannounced head counts. Those who are absent are
considered rebels. According to Nurul, one of the army's preferred methods
for punishing traitors is to bind them to a pole under a low tin roof in
the sun and then leave them to bake to death. Nurul came to Bangladesh for
the first time nearly 10 years ago, holding in his hand a 20-day work
token for which he had paid a Bangladeshi border guard a few hundred
taka—or around $5. (The Burmese border guards make no effort to keep the
Rohingyas from leaving.) When Nurul returned to the border area after his
token expired, a fellow Rohingya warned him that roll call had been done.
He was listed as missing. He immediately turned around and has been in
Bangladesh ever since.

I put a question to Nurul and the other people who had joined us in the
hut: Could you ever return to Burma under the current government?

An old man who had recently arrived in Bangladesh spoke up. He said he was
cheering for leaders like Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate whom the
military junta has kept under house arrest since 1989, and desperately
wanted to see democracy in his home country. Only then could he consider
returning. But being a Rohingya has made him skeptical of all governments.
"It doesn't matter who is in power," he said, "If I see cops in the road,
I have to run and hide in the forest."

Late in the afternoon, I said goodbye to Nurul. His son gave me a
high-five with his penis-twiddling hand. Just outside the hut, another
toddler sent an arching stream of urine into a pool of stagnant water, on
the other side of which a woman was washing her hair. Teenage girls
carried bundles of sticks on their heads, and the glow of the setting sun
filled the alleys of the camp. In a few hours, it would be dark, and the
army would come looking for criminals. With luck, Nurul would once again
tiptoe out of his house to go sleep in the muck along the side of the Naf
River.

____________________________________

April 18, Irrawaddy
Burmese refugees to receive ID cards - Shah Paung

Several hundred Burmese refugees in camps along the Thai-Burma border have
received refugee identification cards from Thai authorities, the Karen
Refugee Committee said Wednesday.

Refugees at camps including Htam Him in Ratchaburi Province, Ban Dong Yang
in Kanchanaburi Province and Mae La Oon and Mae Ra Moo in Mae Hong Song
Province began receiving the cards last week, the chairman of the KRC in
Mae Sot said. Refugees at Noh Poe, Umpheim Mai and Mae La refugee camps
should receive the cards soon.

More than 140,000 refugees live in Thailand. An estimated 88,000 refugees
will receive the cards.

Tee Si, a camp leader at Htam Him, said, “In the last week, more than 600
refugees in our camp received their ID cards, and after the water festival
[holiday], the authorities will start issuing cards again.”

He said so far refugees who have ID cards have not been allowed to go
outside the camp. Htam Him camp has more than 8,000 refugees, including
many who have applied for resettlement to a third country.

“Some of the refugees do not follow regulations at the camp, and they
secretly go outside the camp,” Tee Si said. “The ID cards are good for us
because if refugees get arrested now, they will be sent back to a camp
instead of Burma.”

The process was the culmination of three years of work by the UN Refugee
Agency. The ID cards will be issued by Thailand's Department of Provincial
Administration to all refugees over age 12. The project was funded by the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees under a US $1 million grant.

“The ID cards are an important way of improving protection of refugees
because the most basic element of protection is being able to prove your
identity,” said Hasim Utkan, a UNHCR representative in Thailand.

“At the same time, we hope the ID cards will be only the first step in a
series of measures that will open up the closed camps where refugees have
been living for almost two decades.”

Meanwhile, Malaysia has reiterated that it will not sign the UN refugee
treaty, fearing the treaty would draw a new wave of asylum seekers and
refugees into the country.

“We have given humane treatment to these people who have come to this
country illegally,” Malaysia Foreign Minister Syed Hamid told the New
Straits Times. “It is a transition, but it is becoming a flood.”

Like Thailand, Malaysia is not a member of the UN Convention on Refugee
Status 1951 and Protocol 1867.

____________________________________
HEALTH / AIDS

April 17, Kantarawaddy Times
Five, including children die from diarrhea

Five persons including children died from diarrhea at the end of last
month in 'Dawtamagyi village quarter', Demawso Township , Karenni State .

"Two persons from Dawnyeaku village, two from Dawtamagyi village and one
from Dawsawphya village died," said Ko Win Min who is working for the
Karenni Central Social Development Department.

"Mostly children, especially under 10 years of age, have been afflicted by
diarrhea. It causes loose motion at least three to 20 times a day. The
excreta are white in colour and the smell is very bad," Ko Win Min said.

Karenni back-pack medics are attending to people who are suffering from
diarrhea in the region.

The disease spreads easily because the villagers have poor personal
hygiene and use unclean toilets, back-pack medics said.

"According to the latest news, there are about 50 people suffering from
the disease. Two of those who died are between 10 and 15 years of age
while three children are under 10 years of age," Ko Win Min said.

____________________________________
REGIONAL

April 15, Hindustan Times
India to counter Chinese presence in Myanmar

With China’s hands full with a raft of infrastructure projects in Myanmar,
a realisation seems to be dawning on New Delhi to accelerate efforts to
underline Indian presence in the military-ruled state.

Alarmed by China darting across Myanmar modernising ports, tapping into
the country’s energy resources and building roads, bridges and rail; India
is increasingly thinking in terms of addressing the imbalance and raising
its stakes in a country with which it shares a land border of 1,640 km.

That the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has been asked to study the
possibility of taking up a second road project in Myanmar serves to
illustrate that the government has an actual plan in mind to stand
alongside China and challenge its domination there.

Spearheading efforts to expand the Indian footprint, the BRO has just
wrapped up a survey of the proposed 150-km road link from Rhi to Tiddim
across the Mizoram border. To be sure, China remains unrivalled in Myanmar
going by the sheer number of its projects - it has contracted hundreds of
works in a variety of sectors ranging from energy to hydropower to
engineering and other fields to raise its economic profile in southeast
Asia.

India is only getting started and it is certainly no coincidence that it
has been jolted into action by China’s ever rising influence in Myanmar,
which shares a long border with China in the north contiguous to the
disputed Sino-Indian border.

Minister of State for Defence MM Pallam Raju told Hindustan Times, "We
need to be much more active in our region. China is expanding its presence
all over the globe."

India’s existing infrastructure projects in Myanmar include the 160-km
India-Myanmar friendship road from Tamu to Kalemyo to Kalewa built by the
BRO in 2001 for Rs 94 crore. India will maintain the road till mid-2009,
spending another Rs 55 crore.

BRO director General Lieutenant General KS Rao told HT that the
organisation was increasing its manpower and going in for mechanisation in
a big way to take up more projects within and outside the country.

India has offered help to Myanmar, its largest neighbour on the eastern
flank, for improving its rail infrastructure and connecting it to links on
the Indian side.

The Sagar Samriddhi venture, a deep-sea project to explore oil and gas
reserves in the Bay of Bengal and the Shwe gas pipeline are among the key
Indian projects aimed at tapping the energy resources of Myanmar.

General Rao said, "As of now, there’s only one point between Moreh in
Manipur and Tamu in Myanmar to facilitate border trade. The Rhi-Tiddim
road could help open more cross border trade points on the Mizoram side."

____________________________________

April 18, Mizzima News
Mizzima head office unsealed by Municipal Corporation of Delhi

As an exceptional case, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi today unsealed
the head office of Mizzima in New Delhi. It was sealed by the civic body
on April 16, 2007.

The decision to reopen Mizzima's office was made today by the Deputy
Commissioner of the MCD and member of the Sealing Monitoring Committee,
Mr. Deepak Hastir, following a meeting between Mizzima's representatives
and the Chief Engineer of the MCD west zone, Mr. Naveen Verma.

Mr. Verma told Sein Win, Mizzima's managing editor, one of the
representatives who met MCD officials, that the Sealing Monitoring
Committee had decided to unseal the Mizzima office on the ground that it
is not into commercial activity.

The meeting between Mizzima's representatives and MCD officials took place
after about 50 Mizzima staff members and supporters held a peaceful
demonstration today outside the MCD office.

Following the meeting, a Junior Engineer of the MCD office came along with
Mizzima's representatives to the Mizzima office and broke the seal that
was put by the civic authorities two days ago.

Mizzima, while rejoicing over the outcome of today's demonstration,
credits today's success to the support and solidarity by Mizzima support
groups and organizations, particularly to the Southeast Asian Press
Alliance, International Freedom of Expression and Exchange, Committee to
Protect Journalists, Burma News International, Burma Media Association,
and International Press Institute, and for showing concern and writing to
the Indian Home Minister, Mr. Shivraj Patil.

While Mizzima is grateful to the MCD and thanks it for understanding the
nature of Mizzima's activity and unsealing its office, it also expresses
its appreciation of the Indian government's role in the matter.

____________________________________

April 18, Democratic Voice of Burma
Burmese couple yet to be charged over suspected kidnap plot

A Burmese refugee couple have yet to be formally charged with the
kidnapping of a five-year-old Malaysian boy after being arrested and
detained on suspicion of the crime four days ago.

The boy, Muhammad Nazrin Shamsul Ghazali, also known as 'Yin', went
missing on March 31 from the Sogo shopping complex. A nationwide search
was launched, catching the attention of the Malaysian media.

The Thai-Malaysian border was heavily guarded by soldiers in an attempt to
make sure the child was not smuggled out of the country. Yin’s parents
promised a reward of more than US $7000 to anyone who could return their
son.

Fifteen days later, a Burmese couple contacted a friend of Yin’s father to
say they had been looking after the child since he disappeared. Rasidah
Nur Islam, 27, and her husband Abdul Rahman Doli Rahman, 31, both Rohingya
refugees from Burma, said they had found Yin after he tried to cross a
road the day he disappeared and was almost hit by a car.

Rasidah told police and the Malaysian press that she feared for the
child’s safety and took him home to look after him after waiting to see if
his parents would come and look for him.

“I saw a boy trying to cross the road and he was nearly hit by a car. I
grabbed his hand and took him to the roadside . . . Worried for his safety
I took him back to my house,” Rasidah was quoted by Malaysia’s state new
agency Bernama as saying.

The couple, who live with five children in a ramshackle house in Kuala
Lumpur’s Sentul Pasar suburb said that since they had no TV, they did not
realise the country was searching for the boy until they saw a poster
bearing his picture.

One day after the boy was returned to his family with his head shaved and
significant blistering on his feet, the Burmese couple were arrested on
suspicion of kidnapping. Kuala Lumpur's police chief SAC II Zul Hasnan
Najib Baharudin told reporters the couple were alleged to have used the
boy as a beggar.

“Police have received information that the couple has been using children
for begging in the Klang Valley area,” Baharudin was quoted by Bernama as
saying.

Rasidah and Abdul told police they shaved the boy’s head because he had
measles but medical tests confirmed Yin had never had the disease. The
couple, whose period of remand in police detention ends tomorrow, has yet
to be charged.

Malaysian police were repeatedly unavailable for comment on the case today

____________________________________
STATEMENT

April 12, Office of the Supreme Headquarters, Karen National Union,
Kawthoolei
KNU Statement on new military operation by SPDC

Starting from April 7, 2007 the SPDC military clique launches a military
operation against the base area of the KNLA 7th Brigade, in Pa-an District
of the KNU. In this operation, LIBs 231, 355, 356, 546, 98 and 28 from
MOC-12, and some DKBA units are being used. With regard to this, we, the
KNU, issue a statement as follows.

1. In July 2006, the SPDC tried to use the ploy of taking Gen. Bo Mya to
Rangoon for medical treatment, but as it was rejected by Gen. Bo Mya
himself, the SPDC suffered a shameful setback. Once again when Bo Htin
Maung defected and surrendered to the SPDC on February 22, 2007, the SPDC
suffered another blow of shame, as the 6 battalions of the KNLA 7th
Brigade and the 3 battalions of KNLA General Headquarters explicitly
opposed it. As a result of its failures, the SPDC became pathologically
incensed and started this military operation, in order to put pressure on
the KNU.

2. In fact, since February 2006, the SPDC has been launching ferocious
military operations in the KNU base areas of Toungoo, Nyaunglaybin, Papun
and Thaton Districts, in the northern part. These military operations have
caused the destruction of more than two hundred villages and the emergence
of about 25,000 destitute internally displaced persons (IDP), who have to
flee from their hearths and homes and hide in the jungles.

3. Some news media are wrongly portraying the military clashes as the
Karens fighting among themselves. The truth of the matter is that the SPDC
is launching military operations against the KNU and the Karen people and
they are part of the SPDC military clique’s agenda to divide the KNU,
destroy the Karen people’s revolutionary resistance and enslave the Karen
people protractedly. The use of some Karen armed groups now in these
operations is also in accordance with a long-time arrangement
systematically planned by the military clique.

4. We, the KNU, will continue to struggle on, with unfailing loyalty to
the Karen people, until they gain the right to decide their own political
destiny, and oppose all acts within the Karen people to destroy national
unity and the unity of the revolutionary resistance. We will oppose all
kinds of defeatism within the Karen community and cooperate with those who
truly have patriotism. We urge every Karen to see the actual common enemy
of the Karen people, not to do anything benefiting the enemy and oppose
the treacherous tactics of the enemy, using Karen to fight against the
Karen.

5. Constantly rejecting dialogue for resolving the fundamental political
problems of the country fairly and launching military attacks viciously
against the Karen revolutionary resistance by the SPDC, in accordance with
the policy of total annihilation, are not correct acts. For that reason,
we decidedly condemn them and, with this statement, call upon the SPDC to
resolve the country’s political problems, justly, through dialogue.