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Kachin Refugees Reported to Flee Myanmar to China Myanmar Announces Unilateral Cease-fire
(about 2 hours later)
BEIJING – Ethnic Kachin refugees fleeing an intensifying civil war in northern Myanmar have entered southwestern China and are living in hotels and the homes of family members and friends, according to reports by official Chinese news organizations. BANGKOK — After weeks of intense fighting near the border with China, the Myanmar government on Friday announced what appeared to be a unilateral cease-fire in their offensive against ethnic Kachin rebels. The government also said it would pursue peace talks.
The reports, which appeared this week, said the number of refugees in China was growing, but did not give estimates. An article published online by People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, said some hotels near the border between Yunnan Province and Kachin State in Myanmar were fully booked. The announcement, which was made on state television during the main evening newscast, came only hours after the Parliament approved a resolution calling for an end to a year and a half of fighting and as Myanmar’s actions have come under increased international scrutiny.
Officials in one county, Yingjiang, were setting up a refugee camp with running water and electricity in case refugees arrive with nowhere to live, according to the People’s Daily report, which was written by a journalist who had traveled to the scene. The Myanmar military has intensified its campaign against the Kachin rebels since the end of December, and witnesses described frequent shelling in and around Laiza, the rebel base. The rebels had been losing territory almost daily.
A large or sudden increase in the flow of refugees could pose a problem for officials in China, who have already expressed frustration that artillery shells from the Burmese war were landing inside China. Many questions remain about the cease-fire, including whether the military will comply with the order. President Thein Sein — who is not the commander in chief under the country’s new constitution — had suggested several times that the army was not supposed to go on the offensive, but only to act in its defense, but it was unclear in the past how strongly he was pushing the army to stop fighting.
Since June 2011, when a 17-year cease-fire collapsed, the Burmese Army has been pressing a campaign against the Kachin Independence Army, which has controlled a large swath of territory in Kachin State and protected it as an autonomous region. The fighting has disrupted Chinese hydroelectric projects in the region and jade mining, an important part of the border trade in Yunnan. Friday’s announcement was much more detailed, including a precise time (by 6 a.m. Saturday) when the cease-fire was supposed to go into effect.
Thousands of Kachin, who are mostly Christian, entered Yunnan after the breakdown of the cease-fire in 2011, and many took shelter in refugee camps. Chinese Christians showed up at the camps to provide aid, as did ethnic Kachin living in China, who are called Jingpo in Mandarin. Last August, officials in Yunnan forced most of the refugees to leave the camps and return to the war zone in Kachin State. Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups criticized the forced evictions. It was unclear what the reaction of the Kachin rebels would be. One leading Kachin voice, the Rev. Samson Hkalam, the general secretary of the Kachin Baptist Convention, said by telephone that he was skeptical of the announcement.
The Burmese are the majority ethnic group in Myanmar, which was long ruled by a junta. President Thein Sein, a former general, has been trying to move Myanmar toward democracy, but ethnic and sectarian conflicts, and the Kachin war in particular, have raised questions about his commitment to forging an inclusive political system. The Burmese Army began a new offensive against the Kachin in mid-December, and the military appears to be using heavy artillery, attack helicopters and other aircraft to overwhelm guerrilla positions around Laiza, the main administrative center of the rebels. “According to our experience, the declarations by the government are one thing,” he said. “What the army does is another.”
One person inside the war zone said Friday that he had seen at least two jets flying at 7:30 a.m. from the Burmese side of the border into China, but the significance of this was unclear. He also said the cease-fire was very limited in its scope. “There are many areas that Myanmar troops occupy,” he said. “The cease-fire applies to only one area.”
Laiza sits across a river from Yunnan, and many Kachin refugees have entered the nearby Chinese town of Nabang, according to an article on Monday in People’s Liberation Army Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese military. According to the announcement, the cease-fire applies to the area around the town of Lajayang, the site of the major fighting. It is unclear what that means for the rest of Kachin State, where the rebels control numerous pockets of territory.
Yunnan military leaders have set up a command center in the area, and security forces are present throughout Nabang town. The People’s Daily online article, which was posted Wednesday, said border guards and police officers could be seen everywhere checking identification cards of civilians. Many businesses have shut down because of transportation disruptions, and artillery fire could be heard through the night, the article said. The statement said the military had “concluded its conditional mission” in the Lajayang offensive and had secured the “safety of troops.”
“Chinese county and township governments are ready to pay for any damage the war might cause people’s property,” the report said. The government’s statement on Friday said there had been more than 1,000 “battles” between Kachin rebels and government troops since Dec. 10. It also said the military had suffered many casualties but did not give a number. A military officer, however, said 218 government troops have been killed and 764 injured since Nov. 15, according to an official tally. The officer requested anonymity because he was not authorized to make public the information, which came from a military report.
Four shells have landed inside China since Dec. 30, the most recent one on Tuesday, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Hong Lei, a foreign ministry spokesman, said Thursday that Chinese officials had expressed “grave concerns and dissatisfaction” to the Myanmar government and were calling for a cease-fire. The cease-fire announcement came as the commander in chief of Myanmar’s armed forces, Vice Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing, is on an official visit to Singapore and Malaysia.
The fighting has raised concerns that Myanmar is backsliding in its efforts at national reconciliation. Myanmar has faced a chorus of international concern, including from its ally China, which issued a sharp rebuke on Thursday after an artillery shell landed on its territory.
Inside Myanmar, there has also been increased tension among other ethnic groups, a point underlined by two documents issued by minority groups since the year began.
One of those statements was co-issued by the leaders of the Wa, a heavily armed ethnic group whose territory is also near the Chinese border. The Wa have thousands of men under arms but have a cease-fire agreement with the government.
The Wa statement, which was co-signed by two other groups, warned of a return to civil war in Myanmar. “The country will return backward” if the fighting does not stop, the statement said.
The debates leading up to the cease-fire have been notable for the relative absence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader and Nobel laureate, who earlier in the week was quoted as saying that she would not take a major role in seeking a halt to the fighting because it was not her purview in Parliament.
Instead, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament, Thura Shwe Mann, commanded the spotlight. He rushed the motion for an immediate halt to hostilities in Kachin State to a vote — without prior discussion — because he said the issue was “vital for the country,” according to the Myanmar media.

Wai Moe contributed reporting from Yangon, Myanmar.