Kokangs Moving To Shan

Kokangs Moving To Shan-Burma Border

Are Chinese coming along too?

Reporter: Saeng Khao Haeng

While the Was are preparing to move yet another wave of resettlers from the Chinese border to the Thai border, Kokangs, the Was' neighbors in the north, appear to be set on moving 800 families towards the border between Shan State and Burma proper, sources in northern Shan State told S.H.A.N. recently.

On 21 June, an unidentified official from Peng Jiasheng's faction of Kokang met with local government surveyors in Nawngkhio, Kyawkme District, northern Shan State and requested them to set apart 1,000 acres of land near the village of Yewun, between Banbway and Ohn-mati for 800 families from Lao-Kai and Chinshwehaw, Special Region No.1 (Kokang). He said Lt-Gen Khin Ntyunt, Secretary 1, had already approved the project.

Sources told S.H.A.N. that although official policy was to encourage "development of fallow land", there were several instances where cultivated land from the local people was arbitrarily taken. No figures were available.

It was also predicted that Chinese nationals, at least 15-20%., would mingle with the Kokang resettlers who are of Chinese origin, although they speak a distinct dialect of their own. (Kokang means "9 village headmen". There is another area in Kengtung called Petkang "8 village headmen".) "It will be different to the Wa resettlement project only in scale," said a source.

There are already 500 plus families living southeast of Nawngkhio who were displaced by the internecine war between Yang and Peng clans that broke out on 29 November 1992.

Another two hundred families are to be found along the Thai border, said sources.

Resettlement of poppy growers to non-poppy growing areas is included in the 1998 master-plan of SCOPE (Strategy for Coca and Poppy Elimination) that aims to eradicate drug-linked crops by the year 2008.

However, it is feared that the planned movement will only result in the so-called balloon effect (drug-linked crop cultivation in previously untouched areas) that SCOPE seeks to prevent, given the situation in Burma, said observers in Thailand.

Kokang is due to be declared drug-free sometime this year, according to the New Light of Myanmar, 23 July issue.