He traverses the country in 34 days

He traverses the country in 34 days

Human Rights

A Shan who broke jail after being imprisoned on false charges in order to cover up the rape and subsequent killing of his teenage daughter recently told S.H.A.N. he has walked 600-miles across the country before reaching the Thai border. 

Tienkeow, 42, a KhÜn Shan from the now deserted Ban May village, Mong Inn Tract, Kengtung township, who was introduced to S.H.A.N. by admiring fellow migrants at the Piangfah displaced persons community, opposite Chiangrai province, said in simple language that he had walked most of the way from Meikhtila in the south where he was serving his term to Mandalay in the north and then back to the south and across southern Shan State to Piangfah from 26 November - 29 December 2003. "It was only in Mongtoom (about 20 miles from the border) that I was given a lift," he maintained. 

The former son of Hsarmkham and O-tip and former husband of Nang Tip, 38, revealed that he had formerly served in the Mong Tai Army of warlord Khun Sa from 1985 - 1996, the year Khun Sa surrendered and he was allowed to go home to his wife and family in Mongkok, now a sub-township of Monghsat, opposite Chiangrai. 

One day, he only remembered it was during the transplanting season in 2001, he was informed by an excited neighbor, Nang Oh, 48, that his daughter Nang Hawm, 14, who had gone fishing with her, had been taken by 6 Burmese soldiers at the Kok river. "When I got to the river, she was already dead, her naked body covered in blood," he recounted. "With the help of the neighbors, we buried her the same evening. The next evening, soldiers from the Infantry Battalion #244 came to my house and arrested me on charges of collaboration with the Shan State Army. They took me to their outpost and tried to extract a confession by beating and electrocuting me for two days and nights. I told them I was already demobilized, but they refused to accept it." 

On the third day, he was driven to Kengtung, where he was locked up a police station. "Every week, I was escorted to the township court, where they kept forcing me to declare that I was a member of the SSA. After doing that for a year, I was sentenced to 28 year imprisonment with labor." 

For 4 months, he along with other prisoners broke stones for road construction. Later he was given the job of tending horses and mules belonging to the prison. "Then the break I was waiting for came," he related. "The warder took pity on me and substituted the heavy chains on me with the lighter ones. A few days later, I escaped." 

Eight days later, he arrived in Mandalay. "The people on the way, knowing I had escaped from prison, were still ready to feed me when I asked for food," he recalled. "And I was never stopped by officials on the way." 

Learning there that he had headed in the wrong direction, he turned southwards again, asked people for directions, for he knew not how to read or write, and arrived in Taunggyi 15 days later. He marched on for another 11-days and at last was welcomed at the displaced persons village of Piangfah, which was established in 1999, after local residents in southern Monghsat township were ordered to move out to make way for the incoming Wa resettlers from the north. 

Tienkeow, apart from receiving rice and basic necessities from humanitarian agencies, say he is earning some pocket money by collecting and selling a kind of brush leaves from which are used for making brooms.

Piangfah, according to Shan Human Rights Foundation, has a population of 2,076 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). 

Recent report from Burma Border Consortium, established in 1984 to provide basic food and relief supplies to refugees from Burma, places the number of people who have been displaced in the border states of Burma since 1996 at 1 million.