KIO's Gun Maw arrives in Washington as clashes displace 3,000

Brig-Gin Gun Maw took a media interview at Chiang Mai before departing to United States.

Brig-Gen Gun Maw, vice chief of stuff of the Kachin Independence Organization's (KIO) armed wing arrived in Washington DC this week for meetings. On Monday Gun Maw who also serves as the KIO's foreign minister met with senior state department officials including Undersecretary for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, Assistant Secretary for Conflict and Stabilization Operations Rick Barton and Assistant Secretary for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Tom Malinowski. During a brief interview Gun Maw told the US funded Radio Free Asia (RFA) that he had traveled to the US to discuss developments in Burma.

Gun Maw, appears to be the highest ever KIO official to visit the US. During the late 1980's and early 1990's the KIO's late leader Maran Brang Seng traveled extensively around the world including to Britain, Canada, Thailand and Japan but he did not visit the US. Last year Gun Maw's colleague General N'ban La traveled to Japan as part of delegation of Burmese ethnic leaders. During the trip to Tokyo N'ban La and his colleagues from the United Nationalities Federation Council (UNFC) met Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.


Clashes displace 3,000 in south eastern Kachin state

General Gun Maw's arrival in the US coincided with an outbreak of clashes in south eastern Kachin state between KIO forces and the Burmese military. The clashes according to a statement issued by a coalition of Kachin relief groups displaced more than 3,000 people including Kachin but also large numbers of Shan and Palaung villagers.

The fighting which began last Thursday appears to have involved large numbers of Burmese troops who were dispatched to the area in late March to preform what state media described as “assistance” with census data collection. The national census, the first such census in 30 years did not take place in KIO controlled areas of Kachin and Shan states despite a push from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to make this happen.

The UNFPA's involvement in the census has been the subject of some controversy. Despite concerns expressed by many ethnic people across Burma and a range of international organizations including Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group, the UNFPA's most senior staff person in Burma, Janet Jackson, insisted on supporting the census which was officially carried out by Burmese government personnel but in fact organized and logistically planned by UNFPA. In addition to funding the census UNFPA arranged for several European countries including Norway, the UK and Switzerland to contribute funding for the census. The UNFPA and foreign donors in fact provided the majority of the census funding though the Burmese government also contributed US$15 million of the total US$74 million price tag.

Many ethnic people opposed the census because of the way in which it compelled people to disclose their religion and ethnicity. Respondents were barred from putting down more than one ethnicity and had chosen to the ethnicity from an official list that was used during the flawed 1983 census. The official list contained 12 Kachin subgroups, though most Kachin only acknowledge that there are 6 or 7. Many of the subgroups were listed twice, a move that Kachin critics claim was done intentionally to dilute the Kachin population figures.

It remains unclear why Janet Jackson and her UNFPA colleagues insisted on going ahead with the census even after Burma's government reversed a previous promise to allow members of the stateless Muslim minority to self-identify as Rohingya, a term that remains controversial throughout the country especially in Rakhine (Arakan) state. Census related riots broke out in Rakhine state just days before the census was to be carried out but Janet Jackson pressed ahead ignoring loud calls from many groups including Human Rights Watch who on the eve of the census urged the UN to postpone the proceedings.


UN avoids census questions as census troops engage KIO

During a daily press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York on Thursday April 10th Secretary General Ban Ki Moon's spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric declined to answer a question from reporter Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City press about the census.

According to an official transcript posted on the UN website, Russell Lee told the following to Dujarric: I wanted to ask you on Myanmar, you’d said a couple of days ago, or maybe it was even yesterday, that when the census was over that the UN would have something to say and there’s now… The headline today is: ‘Census wrapped up.  It’s finished’.  And so do you have anything to say?”

Dujarric responded “No”.

The exchange occurred just hours after government troops dispatched to south eastern Kachin state attacked KIO positions in Mansi township. According to the state owned New Light of Myanmar troops were recently deployed to the area to “assist” in census collection. The fact that the census was used as pretext to deploy more soldiers to a heavily militarized zone removed what little if any credibility the census had amongst many Kachin.

Inner city press has written quite frequently about conflict in Kachin state and its chief correspondent Matthew Russell Lee regularly asks questions about what the UN is doing in Burma and many other places including the much neglected Western Sahara.