Meng Peng, August 30: Fighting subsided Sunday along China’s southern border after days of clashes between Myanmar government troops and ethnic rebels sent up to 30,000 refugees streaming into China.
Some rebels turned their guns over to Chinese authorities and swapped their uniforms for civilian clothes, tired of being out-manned by thousands of Myanmar troops.
“There was no way we would win,” former rebel Ri Chenchuan said as he shopped for new clothes.
The clashes have posed a major concern to Communist China and its goal of stability ahead of the sensitive Oct. 1 celebration of its 60th anniversary. At least one person was killed and dozens injured when a bomb was tossed into China on Saturday, a report said. Beijing has told Myanmar to end the fighting.
The violence also threatens to strain China’s close relationship with Myanmar’s military junta, which has been trying to consolidate control over several armed ethnic groups along its borders to ensure next year’s national elections, its first in nearly 20 years, go smoothly.
An official with the Public Security Bureau in China’s Zhenkang county, which oversees the border area, said Sunday there had been no reports of fighting since late Saturday. Like many Chinese officials, he refused to give his name.
In the Chinese border town of Meng Peng, several men who said they were rebels from Kokang in Myanmar’s northern Shan state told The Associated Press they had turned in their weapons to Chinese officials. Dozens of men wearing blue overalls, issued to them when they surrendered their uniforms, were seen shopping for civilian clothes.
Li Jiayun said he and others decided to retreat “so that more civilians didn’t get hurt.”
There was no way to tell how many people in Myanmar have been killed or wounded in the fighting. State-controlled media in Myanmar, also known as Burma, have not reported the violence.
The Kokang are an ethnic Han Chinese minority group that speaks Chinese and, according to exiled Myanmar rights activists, has received support for decades from China because of its traditional ties to the Communist Party.
The Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma said about 700 rebels from the Kokang ethnic minority’s militia had fled from thousands of Myanmar troops into China late Saturday, but tensions remained high.
“The majority of the Kokang troops have surrendered to China,” said Aung Din, the campaign’s executive director. There were conflicting accounts of whether militia leader Peng Jiashen was among them, he said.
Once the situation calms, Myanmar’s junta is expected to turn its attention to other ethnic minorities along the border, Aung Din said. Several ethnic minorities in Myanmar are armed and resist pressure from the junta to join with the military and become border guards.
“There will be more fighting, more tension and more conflict because the regime will continue to try to force these groups to surrender their arms” ahead of the elections, Aung Din said.
One person was killed and several were injured Saturday when a bomb was thrown across the border into China, the China Daily newspaper reported. It gave no details.
At least 25 people, most of them ethnic Chinese, had been admitted to Zhenkang County People’s Hospital for injuries related to the fighting as of Saturday, said a hospital official who refused to give her name.
The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said up to 30,000 people have poured into the Chinese border town of Nansan from Kokang since early this month after government troops were deployed there. Chinese authorities are providing emergency food, shelter and medical care, it said.
The Yunnan provincial government said about 10,000 people had crossed into China and authorities were housing some in seven camps in and near Nansan.
Late Saturday, a few hundred refugees remained in tents and several unfinished buildings in Nansan, guarded by Chinese police and paramilitary soldiers. The scene was calm, with police and officials apparently registering refugees and taking their temperatures before letting them into the area.
Li Hui, a local Foreign Affairs Department official, told AP reporters that media were not allowed in the refugee camps and ordered them to leave.
China has been known to seal off entire regions of the country during times of unrest.
—Agencies