Myanmar calls on China to strengthen border control
By Ye Mon and Guy Dinmore | Tuesday, 19 May 2015
Myanmar yesterday signalled its growing frustration with China over the border war in the Kokang region by calling on its neighbour to strengthen controls along the rugged frontier to prevent infiltration by insurgents.
Tatmadaw shells hit a hilltop held by Kokang rebels close to the border with China last week. Photo: Ministry of InformationTatmadaw shells hit a hilltop held by Kokang rebels close to the border with China last week. Photo: Ministry of Information
U Ye Htut, information minister and presidential spokesperson, told reporters that the government wanted to know how the ethnic Chinese rebels in Kokang were sourcing weapons and food supplies.
“Myanmar protects the border but our country can’t do it alone. China also needs to protect the border together with Myanmar,” the minister said after briefing foreign diplomats, including Chinese envoys, at the Myanmar Peace Center in Yangon.
“If China doesn’t, then it can happen again that shells fall [across the border]. China should protect the area so that Kokang rebels do not occupy the border,” U Ye Htut said.
The minister was referring to an incident on May 14 when five civilians inside China were wounded by artillery fire that Beijing suspects came from the Tatmadaw. Myanmar has agreed to investigate the incident. China warned Myanmar in March that it could face “resolute and decisive measures” after a Tatmadaw aircraft killed five Chinese villagers in a cross-border strike.
Fighting that began in Kokang in Shan State in early February has recently intensified along hills close to the border with China’s Yunnan province. Diplomats said U Ye Htut’s comments reflected Myanmar’s concerns that the ethnic Chinese insurgents of the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) were being aided across the border, possibly by local interests acting against the official policy of non-interference set by Beijing.
A source close to the MNDAA said the group’s fighters remained inside Myanmar and it was not sourcing food and weapons from China. The source said MNDAA forces did not enter Chinese territory and would be arrested if they did.
But the official Global New Light of Myanmar yesterday accused the Kokang rebels and their allies of using vast stockpiles of narcotics to pay the medical expenses of wounded fighters treated in a Chinese hospital in the border town of Nansan. Drugs were also sold to pay compensation for mercenaries killed in battle, the newspaper said.
The article’s main focus of attack, however, was the United Wa State Army (UWSA). An ally of the Kokang forces, the UWSA is the most powerful armed ethnic group in Myanmar with a reported 30,000 fighters and an economy closely integrated with Yunnan province.
Readers were reminded that eight UWSA leaders were indicted in the US in 2005 on heroin and methamphetamine trafficking charges.
The article carried distinctly anti-Chinese overtones with the author, believed to be writing under a pen name, noting that ethnic Chinese were occupying official posts in the Wa self-administered border zone, where “local culture is being swallowed and overwhelmed by the Chinese one”.
“Official language is Chinese and circulating money is Chinese renminbi while local dialect and literature are also becoming Chinese. Now is the time to monitor if they are all real ethnic Wa tribesmen or if they are Chinese people pretending to be Wa,” the article said.
The UWSA hosted a conference of select armed ethnic leaders in its border enclave of Pangkham in the first week of May, ostensibly to discuss the draft nationwide ceasefire accord signed by government representatives and negotiators for 16 armed groups on March 31.
The meeting ended with a communiqué reiterating UWSA demands for a separate state and for the inclusion of the Kokang groups in the nationwide ceasefire accord. Responding to the Wa demands for a separate state, the newspaper said it could be assumed that the UWSA was “willing to engage a military challenge”.
The source close to the MNDAA said fighting in Kokang had subsided yesterday. However, the Tatmadaw’s claim to have captured the Point 2202 hill post on May 14 after intense battles was disputed by the Ta’ang National Liberation Army, which is allied to the MNDAA. The group said its forces were still on the hill.
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