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BACKGROUND
BACKGROUND |
| Population displacement and forced relocation in
Shan State are not new. They have been common occurrences since the Burmese Army first
came to Shan State in 1950 on the pretext of driving away the Chinese Nationalist KMT, who
were pushed into Shan State from Yunnan Province of China by Mao Tse Tung's troops. All
kinds of human rights violations were committed by both the Burmese Army and KMT alike. The situation became worse after the military seized power in 1962 and resistance forces sprang up all over Shan State. In their attempts to crush the forces of the opposition, one of the strategies of the Burmese Army has been the "Four Cuts" operation, aimed at cutting the food, funds, intelligence and recruits provided by local villagers to the resistance armies. This often involved forcing whole village tracts to move to strategic sites which could be closely guarded. Throughout the past thirty years, large areas of Shan State have been repeatedly disrupted in this way. However, the massive forced relocation begun by the SLORC in Central Shan State in 1996 and continuing up to this day is totally unprecedented in scale. |
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