Millions of Myanmar refugees flee to neighboring countries

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Mon, 10/08/2007 8:31 AM

Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Myawadi, Myanmar

A group of four women, one carrying her baby daughter, stopped by in front of a restaurant near the ""Friendship Bridge"" that links Myawadi in Myanmar and Mae Sot in Thailand on Saturday morning.

Myawadi is located around 400 kilometers east of Yangon while Mae Sot is Thailand's westernmost city, some 400 kilometers northwest of Bangkok.

Looking exhausted and frightened, one of the women said that they had come from Shan State, hundreds of kilometers north of Myawadi, and wanted to cross the bridge to go to Thailand.

""Our village was burned down by soldiers, and the men were killed or taken away by them. We can't go back,"" the woman, who said her name was Naw Ester, said through an interpreter.

""But we heard that there is a place across the bridge that can give us free medication and shelter. My sister was wounded in her leg from a soldier's bullets during the attack,"" she said, pointing at another young woman who was wearing a bandage on her leg.

Ester was referring to the Mae Tao clinic run by Dr Cynthia Maung on the outskirts of Mae Sot.

The clinic, established in 1989 by Dr. Cynthia, a Karen tribal member who took part in the 1988 student uprising that led to the killings of more 3,000 people by the military, has treated hundreds of patients from Myanmar recently.

The clinic provides inpatient and outpatient medicines free, basic surgical services, voluntary counseling and HIV/AIDS tests.

""We give free medication, surgery and drugs to them because we know that most of them are displaced people. They have traveled far, and have nothing left. After all, we built this clinic for people who are forced to run by the Burmese military junta,"" she told The Jakarta Post on Saturday at her clinic.

Cynthia said that the clinic has seen patient numbers increase by around 35 percent every year as more and more people flee Myanmar.

""Beside medication we have also trained people to become paramedics to be sent inside Burma as a backpack health worker team. They have found that millions of Burmese are displaced internally while millions others have fled to neighboring countries or stay along the border to avoid military attacks and abuse,"" she said.

According to the Thai government, around 2 million Myanmarese people are living in Thailand, both legally and illegally, with 150,000 of them in dozens of refugee camps along the Thai-Myanmar border.

International human rights watchdog Human Rights Watch reported recently that millions of Myanmarese have fled to Bangladesh, China, Cambodia, and has even gone as far as Malaysia and Indonesia.

The recent monk-led wave of protests that saw over 100,000 people march the streets of Yangon and many other big cities, has increased the number of internally displaced people and refugees fleeing to other countries.

Bangkok-based Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma coordinator Debbie Stothard said that with the millions of refugees, Myanmar's problems have become a threat to regional and international security and peace.

""The problems have been getting worse and worse in recent years. So it's time that the UN Security Council issues a resolution to force the military junta to negotiate and stop attacking and forcing their own people to flee. Myanmar's military junta is only afraid of the UN Security Council,"" she told the Post by phone from Bangkok.

Stothard said that as ASEAN's biggest member and a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Indonesia should push for the resolution.

""It's not time to beg the military junta anymore as they will not listen. It's time that Indonesia shows some strength if it wants to make a difference,"" she added.

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