U.S TO TAKE 1,500 BURMESE STUDENTSMatthew Pennington
(Washington Post)
Bangkok,Thailand : The United States has agreed to take 1,500 exiled
Burmese Students, part of Thailand's desire to be rid of them following two
hostage crises in the past four months.
The transfers have been in the works since Thailand cracked down on the
exiles in October after a radical group calling themselves Vigorous Burmese
Student Warriors seized Burmese embassy in Bangkok. They were allowed to go
free after releasing their captives unharmed.
Members of the organisation--along with the allied group, God's Army--were
involved this week in seizing a provincial Thai hospital, where hundreds of
people were trapped for 22 hours until commandos staged a rescue operation
Tuesday and killed the 10 gunmen.
Thailand's national security chief Kachadpai Burusaphat met with U.S and
United Nation's officials Thursday and asked them to speed up sending the
estimated 2,700 Burmese students asylum-seekers in Thailand to third
countries.
A U.S embassy spokewoman,speaking on condition of anonymity, said Friday
that the United States has agreed to take up to 1,500 of the students,many
who fled to Thailand in 1988 after Burma's military regime crushed a
pro-democracy uprising.
She said it would take between 18 months and two years to resettle the
students, depending on how long it takes to process their cases.
Jahanshah Assadi,representative of the U.N High Commissioner for Refugees
in Bangkok, expressed concern that the hospital seige could provoke a
backlash against ethnic Karens making up the majority of 100,000 people
living in refugee camps on the Thai side of border. Child Soldiers born of conflit and isolation
By Craig Skehan(The Sydney Morning Herald)
Hearld Corresspondent in Bangkok
"They come from another planet - planet Burma," one human rights worker said of the God's Army insurgents who took hundreds of people hostage at a Thai hospital this week.
The siege, which ended when Thai commandos stormed the building and killed the 10 God's Army gunmen, was a tragic reminder of the psychological trauma and physical misery caused to children dislocated by conflit.
Photographs of the killed insurgents showed that some of them were adolescents, and the ethnic Karen God's Army behind the hostage-taking is led by twin twelve-year-old boys Johnny and Luther Htoo.
Aid workers and human rights groups familiar with the God's Army say they live such an isolated existence in a remote jungle camp that they have little understanding of the realities of the outside world.
One school thought is that the students, some of whom are thought to be suffering from various degrees of mental illness after long years in exile, coaxed the naive Karens into the hospital attack.
In Burma, the abuse of children and young teeagers has been a hallmark of decades of political and ethnic conflicts against the country's repressive military rulers.
The regional director of UNICEF, Mr Kul Gautam, told a Bangkok conference on childres's rights this week that the hospital tradedy in Ratchaburi underscored "how the anger and frustrations of displacement can so terribly manifest themselves.
"Although they did not take part in the incident, to think that the twins might have helped plan or played a role in so desperate an act is heartbreakingly sad."
He said reports suggested the behaviour of Johnhy and Luther was a "mix of classic battle fatigue and childish playfulness".
"The twins have been fighting against Myanmar[Burmese} soldiers since they were nine and they have lost count of how many they have killed," Mr Gautam said.
This should stir moral outrage in each and every one of us and move us to take all the action necessary to protect other children from such a fate."
Mr Gautam pointed to a growing proble of internally displaced people in Asia as well as cross-border refugees.
"There are displaced children who face the threat of death or dismemberment due to conflit or landmines, the ever-present silent killers," he said. "Other displaced children have been, as the incident in Ratchburi clearly showed, coerced by adults into becoming child soldiers and taking up arms themselves."
Earlier this week it was announced in Geneva that an agreement had been reached on a new international accord prohibiting the use of child soldiers in war.
The accord officially raised the age for involvement in combat from 15 to 18, but that means little in places such as Burma and Sri Lanka where the use of child soldiers is commomplace.
The cigar-smoking Luther and Johnny have been the subject of international publicity, including reports that their followers believe they have divine powers.
However, the scessionist Karen National Union, from which the more militant God's Army split in 1997, believes the power and influence of the twins have waned.
This school of thought holds that others manipulate the boys to gain publicity and support.
When we think of the fate of the twins boys, Johnny and Luther, how their so-called breavery and prowess is cynically glamourised, I know we all feel compassion for them," Mr Gautam said.
"We should be angry, angry, wtih their adult manipulators." God's Army on the run
Magical....twelve-year-old Luther, with an M-16 rifle, and his twin brother Johnny
By Patrick McDowell in Bangkok
(Daily Telegraph - Sydney, Australia)
TWIN 12-year-old boys who lead the fringe Burmese rebel group God's Army were reported to be on the run through the jungle yesterday after their headquarters was overrun by governmetn forces.
God's Army's 100 guerillas, many of them little older than their leaders, had split into three separate band headed by the boys, Johnny and Luther Htoo, and a veteran adult guerilla, Su Blas, a Thai military intelligence officer said.
The twins are supposed to have magical powers.
The Karen National Union, the biggest rebel army still fighting Burma's military regime, has disavowed God's Army.
They were apparently headed for Karjom mounatin, near their fallen camp at Ka Mar Pa Law on the Burma side of the dangerous Thailand-Burma border, the officer said. He asked not to be named.
A local dissident radio station with good rebel contacts also reported the fall of the God's Army headquarters.
God's Army was one of the rebel groups involved in the siege of a Thai hospital earlier this week.
On Tuesday, 10 gunmen from God's Army and an allied group, the Vigorous Burmese Student were killed by Thai commandos who stormed the hospital and freed hundreds of people.
Thais were outraged by the seizure of the Ratchaburi provincial hospital, 96km west of Bangkok.
