From
Myitkyinar all the way down the river to the big Shan village of Sinbo the land
has been inhabited by mainly Red Shans (Shan Ni) and these Shan Ni villages
bore the brunt of KIA’s protection-money-collection and forced-recruitment of
cannon fodders to fight the Burmese for KIA.
Now they
said enough is enough and they are arming themselves and fighting back the KIA
Kachins with the help from Burmese Army.
Training of Second Militia
Unit in Tarlawgyi Shan-ni Village
Tarlawgyi village was the
first ever Shan-ni village to form a village People Militia unit which was
formed in May 2012. To expand the existing militia unit the People Militia
Training Number-2 was started on January 5 this year at Tarlawgyi Village on
the bank of River Irrawaddy.
“Over
200 men attended the first batch. This second batch has more than 320. Not just
people from Tarlawgyi, people from nearby Old-Khaung-phu and New-Khaung-phu and
Sankin villages too,” commented enthusiastically U San Wai the Chairman of Tarlawgyi
People Militia Unit.
Basic military training
has been provided by the soldiers of IB-37 from Myitkyinar and once the
training is over all the qualified attendees will be provided with small arms
from Burma Army Northern Command. First batch has already been armed with more
than 50 automatic rifles and over 6,000 rounds of ammunition.
“We
do not force our youth to join and arm and fight. We just told them we have
been put in shit by KIA since 1962. What you boys should do is in your hands.
We’re old now and the responsibility to protect our village is in you boys’
hands. You boys decide what you should do. After that they decided to join the
village militia,” added U San Wai.
The whole Talawgyi region
including the village of Talawgyi has been a Shan-ni ethnic region in the Kachin
State. Traditionally the ruthless KIA has been raiding the Shan-ni villages for
food, so-called protection-money, young women for their pleasure, and new
force-recruits to die for them.
In 2011 alone KIA units
kidnapped many under-aged boys and girls from the fields around Tarlawgyi. But
in April 2012 a group of 25 Shan-ni forced-recruits from Tarlawgyi surrendered
with their weapons back to the army. Other 27 forced-recruits kidnapped by KIA
from Tarlawgyi also surrendered individually to the army.
Current militia training in
Tarlawgyi will last for two weeks minimum and in addition to the villages along
the Irrawaddy other Shan-ni villages on the adjacent plains and valleys in
Kachin Land are also establishing their own people militia units with the help
from Burmese army.
Shan-ni Party Strongly
Condemn KIA Thugs
On January 7 this year Shan-ni
National Development Party has issued a political statement condemning strongly
any armed insurgent group bullying their Shan-ni people living peacefully in
the Kachin State their ancestral homeland for thousands of years now.
They specifically targeted
KIA (Kachin Independence Army) insurgents as ruthless thugs collecting
so-called protection money from them, kidnapping their youth as
forced-recruits, forcing the old and women and children as human-shields
against Army, planting land-mines near Shan-ni villages, and raping the Shan-ni
women.
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| Shan-ni Party's Original Statement in Burmese (7 Jan 2013). |
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