SSA denies killing civilians

“The SSA isn’t active in the said area,” he said. “There are only two armed groups there: The Burma Army and the (ceasefire) Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO).”
 
According to The New Light of Myanmar, 31 May issue, some 25 rebels attacked a sawmill in Mawkmai township, Langkher district, seized 9 workers and slashed to death 8 of them.
 
Yawdserk claims the group has no policy of executing people without trial. “This kind of policy is only adopted and carried out by the Burma Army,” he said. “Their favorite ploy is to kill people, sometimes even by wearing SSA insignias, and then putting the blame on us.”

He counter-charged the ruling military junta of trying to stir up racial tensions. “Our quarrels are with the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council) headed by Gen Than Shwe only. Not with the Burman people.”
 
Ex-junta diplomat Aung Lin Tut, who is taking asylum in the United States, told the Voice of America (VOA) Burmese program on 25 May that Senior General Than Shwe himself had issued the order in 1997 that to relocate the villagers in Shan State, “extreme measures” were in order. “No one, even a fetus, should remain alive in the villages in order to move them,” he was quoted as saying.
 
From early 1996 to the end of 1998, the Burma Army forcibly relocated some 1,500 villages with a population of over 300,000 in southern Shan State into strategic relocation sites, according to Shan Human Rights Foundation’s Dispossessed report. At least 665 people were confirmed killed and 625 girls and women raped. The report License to Rape which came out in 2002 had provoked an uproar among the international community circles.
 
Col Yawdserk however acknowledged that the SSA had been on a recruiting campaign in the neighboring areas. “As citizens of Shan State, every able-bodied man, 18 upwards, are required to serve in the army for 5 years,” he said. “Some of the PaO young men are fleeing from the area in order to avoid being conscripted. Maybe we still need a lot of publicity to make the people understand their duties to the country.”