Many internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have returned to their homes under pressure from Myanmar’s military continue to face unsafe conditions, sources in the affected areas have reported.
Last week, returnees in Karenni (Kayah) State and southern Shan State were forced to flee again amid fresh clashes, according to an officer of the Karenni IDPs Humanitarian Aid Network, a local relief group.
Residents of the town of Nan Mei Khon and the villages of Kyun Taw, Pu Hpar, and Thay Su Lel Ywar Thit, where around a third of inhabitants have returned since last month, fled fighting between the military and local defence forces last Tuesday, the officer told Myanmar Now.
“The military negotiated with an ethnic armed group to get the locals to return. Most who did were military supporters, anyway, so they just did as they were told,” he said.
One Kyun Taw villager who did not return said that local administrators started pushing residents to go back to their homes about a month ago, despite ongoing clashes between the military and resistance forces in the area.
“The military said that it could no longer take responsibility for the safety of locals if they didn’t return to their villages, and warned them that their houses would be destroyed if they didn’t go back,” said the villager.
She added that she decided not to return because of safety concerns, after hearing of at least two fatal incidents involving landmines—one in Thay Su Lel Ywar Thit, where a man was reportedly killed on November 16, and another on November 27 near Moebye in southern Shan State, where the victims were three children.
Struggling to survive
Many who have returned have also found little remains of their former lives. One man who went back to his home village of Sao Nang Khe in Shan State’s Pekhon Township said that only eight of its 60 homes were still standing after the military carried out a major offensive in the area in May that displaced tens of thousands of people following an attack on a nearby junta base.
“We came back because the Kayan organisation said we could once the area had been cleared,” he said, referring to the Kayan New Land Army, an armed group allied to the Myanmar military.
He added that around half of the village’s roughly 300 inhabitants have returned, most of them living in makeshift shelters. Meanwhile, with junta forces stationed nearby, there is almost constant fear of renewed clashes, he said.
“We are always on the alert now,” he told Myanmar Now. “We don’t know if conditions are going to get better or worse.”
He said that while the military has assured them that they will be left alone if they mind their own business, residents still have to struggle to survive.
“We don’t feel safe yet, even though it’s more convenient to stay in our own homes. But we have to build our lives back up from scratch again. They didn’t leave so much as a spoon behind,” he said of soldiers that raided the village in May.
To get by, he said, some residents were helping the Kayan New Land Army build a security checkpoint in exchange for rice, oil and salt rations.
Sao Nang Khe is one of seven villages in the Lwal Paw village tract, located east of the Pekhon Dam, that saw some residents start to resettle in late October.
According to one other resident of the area, most remain tentative about the current situation.
“I don’t think many expect to stay here for good. Most are just tending to their fields and keeping their ears open, so they can decide what to do and where to go next,” he said.
IDP photo-op
Meanwhile, human rights workers in Karen (Kayin) State say that recent images of IDPs returning to their homes near a base that was taken back from resistance forces late last month were staged for propaganda purposes.
On November 28, the regime announced that it had regained control of the Thay Baw Boe base and the surrounding area after a prolonged aerial campaign.
The Karen National Union (KNU) and its allies had captured the base, located along the road from Myawaddy to Waw Lay in Myawaddy Township, in May.
When the military launched airstrikes in a bid to retake the base, residents of several villages in the area, including Thay Baw Boe, Waw Lay, Falu, and Kyauk Khat, were forced to flee.
Days after finally succeeding in this months-long effort, the regime filmed villagers returning to Thay Baw Boe to suggest that peace had been restored.
However, according to Saw Nandar Suu, the spokesperson for the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), most residents have not, in fact, returned to the village.
“The locals were just doing what they were ordered to do. They have no faith in the regime, and they know that they are not safe yet. They are still afraid to go back to their homes,” he said.
Only a handful of the people who were photographed returning to Thay Baw Boe were residents of the village, he added. The rest were IDPs from other villages who were sent back to their respective camps after the photo-op.
According to state media reports, 437 locals from Thay Baw Boe and other villages in the area returned to their homes in the last three days of November. They also claimed that the military was providing food, household supplies and healthcare for the locals.
