Mae Sot (Mizzima) – Over 2,000 Karen villagers straddling the Thai-Burma border are finding it increasingly difficult to survive, trapped in a war zone with a lack of food security and further victimized by arbitrary taxation and deteriorating health conditions.
Kaw Ser, Klaw Gaw, Kaw Poe Pee and Paw Buh Hla Ta, four Karen villages located to the south of the Thai-Burma border town of Mae Sot and clustered between Umpheim Mai refugee camp and the Thai town of Umphang, are home to 2,111 people.
Villagers yesterday morning said they were desperate for more rice and fish paste, currently only being able to consume a little rice minus the fish paste – a Karen staple.
According to sources, each village is being forced to provide five unpaid porters a day to Burmese Army and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) forces, whose increased military activity in recent months has left the villagers struggling to feed themselves.
At any given time there are about 350 active hostile troops in the region, drawn from DKBA units 333, 999, 907 and 906 and Burmese Army units 404, 283 and 284. It is not uncommon for these troops to seize what rice is found in the villages.
Despite the region being rich in minerals and typically used extensively for contract farming, the current war zone that villagers find themselves subjected to has greatly hindered production from the land, including corn.
In quieter times, Thai investors generally carried the cost of seed for contract farming and in turn, at harvest, provided rice for the villagers who worked the farms.
However, even what corn that is able to be cropped is now being taxed by the DKBA, Burmese Army and Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) to the point that it is no longer a commercially viable enterprise, a condition only made worse with this season's depressed corn price.
As a result, Thai investors have not deemed projected returns adequate enough to pay the farmers with rice for working the fields – a transaction relied upon by villagers to carry them through the year.
Remnants of KNLA Brigade 201 and Special Battalion 103, numbering in all about 300 soldiers, are in the region attempting to provide security to the villages.
Asked about supplementary foods to go with the rice, for example fish paste, chilies and cooking oil, a committee established to assess the needs said there was none available in the region, with the only rice available being emergency rations recently donated by a foreign NGO.
Mobile units of medics and nurses accessing the area say the greatest medical needs at the moment are rehydration packages and Ibuprofen, although some of these are being provided by Help Without Frontiers (HWF).
Villagers, in turn, identified the biggest health risks facing them at the moment as diarrhea, dysentery and malaria.
The four villages had been receiving medical aid from Special Battalion 103’s base camp. But the base was overrun last year, leaving them now dependent upon the mobile medical units.
It the past, it has been common for Karen villages to come under increased pressure from Burmese Army troops during the dry season, with hostile forces withdrawing upon the onset of the rains. However, this year the DKBA and Burmese Army have constructed what appears to be at least a semi-permanent base at Paw Buh Hla Ta, leaving villagers wary that their presence is likely to persist through the rainy season and beyond.
