BORDER CRISIS

Fighting between Burma army soldiers and Karen fighters along the Thai
Burma border has displaced as many as 12,000 villagers. These people are
now taking refuge in 22 hiding sites on both sides of the border. Journalists
from the Karen Information Centre are reporting daily from the conflict
areas and from the displacement sites.

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Border trade ban hurts traders

Since early July 2010, Burma’s military regime has insisted on keeping the Myawaddy-Mae Sot
border checkpoint closed in retaliation for what it claims was the unofficial construction of a concrete
embankment on the Thai side.

March 15, By Saw Thein Myint (KIC)

This month is the ninth month that the border has been closed. Now authorities in Myawaddy
officially announced the closure of all the trade crossing the border - effectively banning the import of
all goods from Thailand into Burma through Karen State.

According to traders from Burma the closure was financially crippling them.

Myawaddy District Peace Council (DPC) chairman U Khin Maung Lwin and his officials held a
meeting with traders in Myawaddy Town on the 8th of March confirmed the ban on border trade. A
local trader told The Karen Information Centre that transporting goods will take longer and be more
expensive as the „new‟ routes will be longer and more difficult as smugglers will have to find news
ways to avoid checkpoints.

The trader explained.

“On 8th March, authorities summoned and told us not to import goods from Thailand until the
restrictions are lifted. If we fail to heed the warning, our goods will be seized and confiscated. During
the initial closure last year we had to import our goods through Tadarkyoe crossing to avoid
checkpoints. Now it is even more difficult as we have to go through Tokawko - the roads are not
good, it has been raining and that causes a lot of difficulties for us."

A trader who attended the meeting with officials said no time was given for when the ban would be
lifted. Traders say they were told that as the process of transferring of power from the military to the
new civilian government hadn‟t been fully transferred traders would have to wait until new economic
strategies and plans had been decided on.

Of the 54 traders who have goods stored at warehouses close to the trading gates along the border
were invited to the meeting, only 28 showed up to discuss the closure of the trade crossing with U
Khin Maung Lwin, Chairman of Myawaddy township, U Aung Soe Thein, head of the trading zone,
the Division commander Gen. Naing Win and other government officials.

1
During the last 15 months, the Burma army has attempted to disarm and dismantle ethnic ceasefire
groups under its control. The regime‟s intention was to reduce their size and reform the groups as a
Border Guard Force and bring them under the strict command of the army.

After Burma closure of Thai-Burma Friendship Bridge in July 2010, traders from Myawaddy have
been importing goods from Thailand through newly established Border Guard Force (BGF) tax gates,
according to a source close to the BGF.

“Traders will find their own ways of getting their goods inside Burma. At present, the authorities have
been checking border trade every two or three days, but it has become more restricted and difficult."

Myawaddy is one of the largest crossing points of border trade between Burma and Thailand - traders
come from faraway as Rangoon, Moulmein, Pegu, Pa-an, Kawkareik and Mandalay.

Reported in the Bangkok Post, Prasert Juengkijrungroj, the secretary general of the Tak Chamber of
Commerce based in Mae Sot, says the three main items exported through Mae Sot to Burma are
petrol, cooking gas and cooking oil. Followed by second hand cars, electronic goods and MSG
(monosodium glutamate).

“In 2009 exports through Mae Sot to Burma were worth 25 billion baht. This is a considerable
increase from the five billion baht we earned in 2005. In 2010, before the [border] closure we
estimated our exports would earn us more than 30 billion baht.”

Myawaddy residents also fear a fresh outbreak of fighting between the Burma army and the DKBA
faction that rejected the military regime‟s border guard force.

A local resident said.

“We've heard that the DKBA will come and attack Myawaddy. Working as trader has become more
difficult and on top of that there is now the added security issue. Traders who are not residents here
have all left. Myawaddy seems dead - there are only few traders left who are determined to work
whatever it takes."

#ENDS#