Three Burmese army battalions have been relocated from Mon State to provide security for an incipient gas pipeline in Arakan State, says a highly ranked source in the Sa Ya Pha military intelligence in Three Pagodas Pass.
According to the Sa Ya Pha source, the Southeast Command ordered Infantry Battalion (IB) No. 538, No. 34 and No. 20 to leave their posts in Three Pagodas Township at the end of December. Other local battalions from the Southeast Command are replacing all three battalions.
The relocations are unusual, said the Sa Ya Pha source, which remarked upon the rarity of three battalions simultaneously changing their positions for reasons unrelated to immediate conflict. IB No. 538, he also noted, had been posted in Three Pagodas for just one month, far short of the normal three to six month rotation.
A day before the battalion relocations, on December 24th, the consortium of South Korean, Indian and Burmese companies who control the Shwe fields announced a 30-year contract to sell gas to the China National Petroleum Corporation.
An official route for the pipeline, however, has not been announced. Whatever the route, however, it will have to begin by passing through Arakan State before traversing nearly the entire span of Burma to enter China’s Yunnan Province.
According to the Sa Ya Pha source, whose position entails him a copy of formal order documents issued by the Southeast Command, the three battalions are to help prepare the area for the new pipeline. All three battalions originally hail from Rathedaung, Sittwe and KyaukphuTownships in Arakan State.
According to Mr. Kim at the Shwe Gas Movement (SGM), an international pipeline watchdog group, battalions from at least one other state have also recently relocated to Arakan State. The new additions are part and parcel to a trend of intense militarization in the area. In the last fifteen years, the number of battalions located in Arakan State has increased to over 60, SGM’s Global Coordinator Wong Aung told IMNA in an earlier interview.
Before any pipe can actually be laid the route must be brought under military control, said Mr. Kim. The Burmese army must clear the route of villages, farms and armed resistance, as well as trees and natural obstacles. “The Shwe project has already lead to forced relocations, beatings, intimidation and other abuses against people and communities in the project areas and against local populations expressing opposition to the project,” reads a recent press release from SGM. “If this [Shwe-China pipeline] project moves forward, we can expect to see these abuses increase exponentially.”
The exact role the battalion’s from Mon State will play in providing pipeline security could not be confirmed. Their participation is sadly ironic, however, given the repeated comparisons drawn between the Shwe project and the nearby Yadana pipelines. The pipelines, which pass from the Yadana gas fields into Tennasserim Division before branching east into Thailand or north into Mon and Karen states, have been the sites of widely reported abuses. “Another Yadana, sadly, is in the making,” says the Thailand based Earth Rights International, “synonymous with forced labor and severe human rights violations.”
