Word: shan
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...Today, Nang Nang lives on the rugged Thailand-Burma border in the hamlet of Loi Tai Leng, the headquarters of the Shan State Army (S.S.A.) and the refuge for hundreds of families fleeing the Burmese army's long-running campaign of terror against ethnic minorities such as the Shan. They include more than 200 orphans: Nang Nang, a shyly smiling girl in a grubby tracksuit, shares a tin-roofed dormitory with dozens of other girls who sleep on a wooden platform over a mud floor. For many, this has been home for five years, but not for much longer...
...Shan orphans are among the most vulnerable victims of policies hatched in faraway Bangkok and Rangoon. The Shan are the largest of Burma's eight main ethnic minorities, which form a third of the country's 43 million population. Many of the groups are fighting for independence from the rule of the military junta. In recent months, the Burmese army and its proxies have stepped up efforts against ethnic insurgents such as the Shan and the Karen, driving thousands of refugees into Thailand. There, they receive cold comfort. The Thai government does not grant official refugee status to the Shan...
...narrow and dishonorable, says Sunai Phasuk, a Thai academic and consultant for Human Rights Watch (HRW). "These people are not just fleeing war, but also forced labor, executions, mass relocations and systematic rape," he says. HRW accuses Thailand of "violating international law" for denying basic humanitarian assistance to the Shan. A recent report by the New York-based NGO also documents the murder, rape, enslavement and brutal displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians during the Burmese army's long-running assault on Karen insurgents; some 650,000 people, says HRW, have been made homeless in eastern Burma alone...
...Burma share a centuries-old enmity, and a porous, ill-defined border. Even in recent years there have been clashes between the Thai army and its Burmese and Wa counterparts, usually over drug smuggling. Today, Bangkok is pursuing a policy of closer ties with Rangoon. Besides sending back the Shan, the Thai authorities have cracked down on illegal Burmese workers, and moved Burmese exiles living in Thailand to overcrowded border refugee camps. Thai officials say better relations with the pariah regime will not only help solve cross-border problems, such as the trafficking of narcotics, but also encourage democratic change...
...ASEAN in mid-2006. The purge of Prime Minister and intelligence chief Khin Nyunt last October on corruption charges has caused hairline cracks to appear in a seemingly monolithic military, and the cease-fires he brokered with more than a dozen ethnic rebel organizations could crumble. Last month the Shan State National Army announced it was joining forces with the S.S.A., the first time in a decade that a group that had signed a cease-fire had broken with the junta...