Shan State Army (SSA) leader Col Yawdserk firmly refuted that the group had hacked eight civilians to death in southern Shan state on May 28, in a statement released yesterday.
"The SSA is not active in the said area," he said. "There are only two armed groups there: The Burma Army and the (ceasefire) Shan State Nationalities People's Liberation Organization (SNPLO)."
According to The New Light of Myanmar, the Burmese military junta's mouthpiece, (31 May issue), around 25 rebels attacked a saw-mill in Mawkmai Township in Langkher district and seized nine workers of whom eight were hacked to death.
Col Yawdserk has claimed that the group does not have any policy of executing people without trial. "This kind of policy is only adopted and carried out by the Burma Army," he said. "Their favourite ploy is to kill people, sometimes by wearing SSA insignias so that it is convenient to put the blame on us," he added.
He counter-charged the ruling military junta of trying to stir up racial tension. "Our quarrels are only with the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) headed by Gen Than Shwe and not with the Burmese people," he said.
Ex-junta diplomat Aung Lin Tut, who has sought asylum in the United States, told the Voice of America (VOA) Burmese program on 25 May that Senior General Than Shwe himself had issued the order in 1997, to relocate the villagers in Shan State, "extreme measures" were in order then. "No one, not even a foetus, should remain alive in the villages in order to move them," he was quoted as saying.
From early 1996 to the end of 1998, the Burma Army forcibly relocated some 1,500 villages with a population of over 300,000 in southern Shan State into strategic relocation sites, according to Shan Human Rights Foundation's Dispossessed report. At least 665 people were confirmed to have been killed and 625 girls and women raped. The report License to Rape, which came out in 2002 had provoked uproar among the international community.
Col Yawdserk, however, acknowledged that the SSA had been on a recruiting campaign in the neighbouring areas. "As citizens of Shan State, every able-bodied man, 18 upwards, is required to serve in the army for 5 years," he said. "Some of the PaO young men are fleeing from the area in order to avoid being conscripted. Maybe we still need a lot of publicity to make the people aware of their duties to the country."
