Few relocated Wa returning to the north

Few relocated Wa returning to the north

Drugs / Human Rights

According to a Lahu source, fewer and fewer Wa who were resettled along the Thai border have chosen to return to their place of origin in the north along the Chinese border. 
Speaking at a meeting recently, Japhet Jakui, 56, who authored Unsettling Moves: The Wa forced resettlement in eastern Shan State, said, "This is a new phenomenon. In the past, many of the settlers were only too happy to walk back home (a distance no less than 200 up to 400 miles). It wasn't unusual for travelers to come across some Wa trekking along the road with their feet pointing north." 

The reason, he explained, was because their old homes and farmers had new owners "who were complete strangers to them but had authorization to reside in their stead." 

He claimed that in Mong Phen, south of Panghsang, alone, more than 500 household of Wa, ethnic Chinese and Lahu from the Chinese side had resettled in December 2002. 

In addition, 4-5 households are still coming to the south each day by trucks, although the mass relocations as those of 1999-2001 are no longer seen, according to Jakui, younger brother to the late and highly respected Lahu leader, Benjamin Ja-Oo. 

"It means", he concluded, "that more opium output in the south is likely, whatever Rangoon says". 

He argued that the Wa-Burmese leadership's announced rationale that the people had been moved to facilitate the drug eradication program did not ring true. "During the poppy season, you will find more and more Wa fields along the Thai-Burma border," he said. "It is easy to differentiate a Wa field from either Lahu or Shan. With Shans, they leave the big trees alone. They might cut down some of the branches but not the trunk. With the Lahu, a tree that is waist high and upwards is fell and burned. For the Wa, they even like to take home the roots for firewood." 

He also challenged the oft-repeated statement about the poverty of the Wa soil. "The poverty rests not with the soil but with the communications especially roads," he said. "A Wa carrot, naturally planted, can be as big as your calf." 

If 10 Wa were asked whether or not they agreed with the resettlement program, "two will whisper no while five will say 'I don't know'. The remaining three will refuse to answer, but few of them will say yes." 

According to Japhet, some 126,000 Wa people, about one-quarter of the whole Wa population, had arrived in the south as of the end of 2001. Bao Youxiang, the Wa supreme leader, however, gave a much smaller figure, 70,000, but added that the target number was 100,000 which he aimed to accomplish by the year 2005.