Burma’s pro-government Kachin militia leader grabs land for gold mining

Pro-government militia leader Padip Gam Awng wearing a Burmese military uniform in this undated photo. Padip Gam Awng is according to his critics behind the recent seizure of large amounts of farm land in Kachin state for toxic gold mining.

Padip Gam Awng (also Padip Gam Aung), the second highest ranking member of a Burmese government backed Kachin militia is behind the recent expropriation of large tracts of land in Kachin state from local farmers in order to carry out lucrative gold mining operations, the Kachin News Group has learned.

The gold project also involves Asia World, a firm controlled by the Steven Law and his late father Lo Hsing Han, dubbed the 'Godfather of Heroin' by US authorities.

According to local residents land has been seized north of Myitkyina along the shores of the N'Mai Hka, which further downstream merges to form the Irrawaddy. Over the past year dozens of families have been driven of their land in the area in order to make way for the mining. Most were given little or no compensation, according to a researcher who recently visited the area.

Padip Tu the younger brother of Padip Gam Awng is also actively involved in the gold operations including taxing small scale artisanal miners. The artisanal miners working at the site are taxed 150,000 Kyat each per day.

The gold mining process that is used involves mercury, cyanide and other toxic chemicals. Run off from the riverside mines flows directly into the local river, which environmental activists from the Kachin Development Networking Group (KDNG) say will have serious and long term repercussions.

Padip Gam Awng, who appears to be profiting handsomely from the gold project, was part of a small faction that split away from the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) in 2004. The split was prompted by a power struggle between his close ally the KIO's intelligence chief Colonel Lasang Awng Wa (also spelled Lasan Aung Wah) and other KIO leaders. Padip Gam Awng was a Lt-Col in the KIO at the time he fled from KIO territory.

The splinter group which came to be known as the Lasang Awng Wa peace group was quickly welcomed by Burma's military regime and within a year of the rupture granted territory north of Myitkyina, in the Gwe Htu (also Gwi Htu) Valley, an area previously controlled by the KIO.

In October 2009 Lasang Awng Wa's group was officially transformed into a government backed People's militia force. Its operations are based in Lawa Yang (roughly 20 miles north of Myitkyina) which is in Waingmaw township.

Residents in the area tell KNG that apart from driving people of their land to make way for gold operations members of the Lawa Yang militia extort money from local people at checkpoints. The militia has also worked closely with the firms involved in the officially stalled Myitsone dam project, China Power International and the aforementioned Asia World.

In September last year the Myanmar Times reported that the Lasang Awng Wa group was behind the forced eviction of 2000 people from a 15-acre site in Mandalay division. [I]See here [LINK=http://www.mmtimes.com/2012/news/641/news12.html]http://www.mmtimes.com/2012/news/641/news12.html[/LINK][/I]counterparts".

Official military ties between Burma and most western countries were frozen after August 1988 when army troops crushed a nationwide popular uprising, killing thousands of unarmed protesters in the process. It remains to be seen whether British military officials will actually be able to teach their Burmese counterparts much about human rights. The British military's own human rights record during recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan has often been criticized by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Last month Britain’s government was forced to issue a partial apology to veterans of the Kenyan independence struggle after a series of court victories by the last surviving Mau Mau fighters, many of whom claim to have suffered torture at the hands of their British military captors in the 1950's. After years of successive British government’s denying that such torture took place Foreign Minister Hague admitted in June that Kikuyu and other Kenyans had in fact been tortured and endured other horrific abuses during the Mau Mau emergency era.

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