No stopping the Wa exodus

No stopping the Wa exodus

Drugs

The forced relocations of Wa villagers to the Thai border that was interrupted by the brief war between the Shan State Army and the Burma Army in May 2002 have resumed despite assurances by Wa authorities to the contrary, said both Lahu and Shan sources along the frontier. 

The first wave of resettlers since 2002 appeared to have arrived soon after visiting researchers from Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute's Drugs and Democracy programme by the leadership in Panghsang on 12 September, "No further mass relocations are (being) planned." (Drugs and Conflict in Burma, December 2003) According to an insider source, 1,500 were resettled in Tangyan, 83 miles south of Lashio, the northern capital, and another 1,500 in the following towns along the Thai border: 

Hoyawd-Hopang, Mongton township 100 (opposite Chiangmai)
Mongjawd, Mongton township 800 (opposite Chiangmai)
Mongyawn, Monghsat township 600 (opposite Chiangmai)
[Tangyan is where Wei Hsuehkang, wanted both in Thailand and the United States on drug charges, was given a 2,000 acre land by Prime Minister Khin Nyunt in 2001.]

The exodus was briefly stalled by the outbreak of a number of diseases that included malaria, dysentery and other diseases that reportedly killed 147 people between late October and 5 December. However, since late December, 4-wheel trucks as well as 6-wheel Burma Army trucks have shown up in towns and villages along the border each day. "The usual number of trucks coming is 3 but on 28 January, we saw 12, and 10 on 30 January," said a Shan local source. 

A Lahu source however claimed to have witnessed 40 trucks on 30 December. Most of them were seen heading towards Mongjawd, the new town the Wa had wrested from a rival militia force in March 2003. The area was accordingly cleared off outsiders who were in fact first comers there long before the resumption of the resettlement program. A source from Nakawngmu told S.H.A.N. at that time that 4 of the villagers' rice fields near Mongjawd had been bulldozed off on 10 July. 

The target number for the season would be 10,000, according to a Shan businessman who was close to the Wa. 

Unsettling Moves: The Wa forced resettlement program in Eastern Shan State (1999 - 2001) http://www.shanland.org/HR/Publication/wa/contents.htm by the Thai-based Lahu National Development Organization had estimated that approximately 126,000 men, women and children, had been forcibly resettled from their homes near the Chinese border in areas opposite Thailand. But according to Bao Youxiang, supreme Wa leader, the scheme up to 2002 had involved some 65,000 people out of a projected 100,000, close to one fifth of the total Wa population. "We ought to finish this within two or three years," he was quoted by Jane's Intelligence Review, January 2003, as saying. 

Bangkok Post, 29 December 2003, also reported MR Disadda Diskul, Director of the Wa's Yawngkha drug-free project in Monghsat, opposite Chiangrai province, saying he had asked Burma to scrap plans to move the Wa villagers to the Thai Border, "as we are introducing a crop substitution program in the north." 

"What Bangkok says goes into their left ears and comes out of their right ears," commented an informed source from Chiangmai's Fang district. 

Related report: 

• Sickness and death hit Wa (7 December 2003) 

• Wa death toll goes up to 150 (9 December 2003)