25th March 2021
Armed resistance to the coup regime is building. The Kachin Independence Army have started to engage the Tatmadaw in limited actions.
The Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a major ethnic armed group based in Kachin State, has occupied a strategically important hill in Bhamo District held by Myanmar’s military, KIA information officer Colonel Naw Bu told The Irrawaddy.
KIA Battalion 30 attacked the military outpost on Alaw Hill on Wednesday at 5pm and had taken control of the hill by around 4am on Thursday, said Col. Naw Bu.
“Alaw Hill is relatively close to the Chinese border. From the military point of view, it is relatively strategic. British troops deployed there during World War II. The reports that we have occupied three outposts are untrue. The rest were just groups of sentries guarding the outpost,” said Col. Naw Bu.
The attack was made in retaliation to the military’s attacks on KIA outposts near Laiza, which are under the control of KIA headquarters, he said.
“The troops of the military regime fired at our outposts on Hpalap Hill [near Laiza] with artillery throughout the night on March 22. They fired again at Battalion 3 in Sadone the following day. They have been carrying out assaults for two to three days.
“Their artillery shells fell on our cantonment. What’s worse, artillery shells also fell on Hkau Sau [internal displacement] camp [on the Chinese border] and in Chinese territory,” said Col. Naw Bu.
The KIA claimed that two artillery shells fell on Chinese territory on Tuesday. Myanmar’s military has made no comment.
“We heard gunshots through Wednesday night. But everything is fine in the town. Everyone is safe,” said a Laiza resident.
In response to heightened tensions, residents at the Weichyai displacement camp dug bomb shelters this month.
The military and KIA were in the process of negotiating a ceasefire before the Feb. 1 coup. The Kachin armed group asked the military’s Northern Command not to harm peaceful Kachin protesters opposing the military regime.
Two civilians were shot dead in a crackdown by the security forces on anti-regime protesters in Kachin State’s capital, Myitkyina, on March 8. A third protester was shot dead in Hpakant on March 14.
Three days after the Myitkyina killings, the KIA raided a military outpost in the jade-mining hub, Hpakant, and attacked another military outpost in Injangyang Township on March 15.
Military tensions are also escalating in northern Shan State between the two sides.
Source the Irrawaddy 25th March 2021.
In Yangon, the police arrested NLD supporters suspected of travelling to join an EAO for explosives training.
The military regime said it arrested 14 people at the outskirts of Yangon on Monday who were trying to join “explosives training” in the area controlled by an ethnic armed group in the country’s southeast.
Military-control news media said security forces arrested 14 people between the ages of 21 and 47 in Hlegu and Htauk Kyant of Yangon Region and in Nyaung Khar Shey junction in Waw township of Bago Region on March 22.
The state-controlled media report added that the junta’s security forces are “tightening security in respective areas” following an informant’s tip that those people would be travelling.
The report said the detainees were planning to travel to Bilin, in Mon State, and from there they would join an ethnic armed organization. It did not identify which group.
In the country’s southeast, where Karen and Mon states are located, several Karen and Mon ethnic armed groups are active. They have been fighting with the Myanmar military for the last seven decades, aside from a ceasefire in the past decade.
On Tuesday, the regime’s spokesman also said that more than a thousand people have fled into the country’s southeast border areas.
Source the Irrawaddy 25th March 2021.
There has been a trickle of protestors travelling to join EAOs in other parts of the country for training.
Refuge sought in the conflict zones
Up to 7,000 refugees are expected to flee post-coup unrest in Myanmar’s cities by the end of April, an ethnic rebel group said Wednesday, claiming hundreds were already in militia-controlled areas.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from power in a February 1 coup, triggering a mass uprising that has seen security forces mount deadly crackdowns against protesters.
The anti-coup movement has garnered broad support across the country, including among some of the country’s armed insurgent groups which have for decades been fighting Myanmar’s military for more autonomy.
An estimated one-third of Myanmar’s territory – mostly in its border regions – is controlled by a myriad of rebel groups, who have their own militias.
Since the coup, the Karen National Union – one of the largest armed groups in the country – has seen hundreds of people flee to its territory in southeastern Karen state near the Thai border, an official with the group said.
“We think it could increase to between 6,000 and 7,000 people by the end of April,” the KNU’s general secretary Saw Tah Doh Moo told AFP.
He added that so far people fleeing anti-coup unrest had been activists, protesters and MPs with Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.
“Those who are now sheltering are more at the leaders’ level, but if they [the military] keep pressing … it could be the broader population,” he said.
The KNU has already seen fresh clashes with the military in its territory since the coup.
Source Frontier 25th March 2021.
The coup leaders whilst controlling the news releases have not managed to stop completely the flow of information. The Irrawaddy and Frontier are still managing to get news out. Once the stream of displaced people grows then they will set up communications via Thailand. They will also start paramilitary training and swell the ranks of the EAOs.
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