Kon Hadae : After a township meeting ordered the implementation of militia trainings last year, villagers in Yebyu sub-township have finally been forced to participate. While only two villages have currently participated, residents are afraid that all villages will eventually be included in similar trainings.
Trainings have been carried out in Yar Phuu village on February 17th and at Htan Janu village on February 4th. It is unclear how many members of each village were forced to participate.
Villagers had learned about the militia training plans in October of 2009 when Burmese government State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) authorities made announcements in Yebyu sub-townshp. “When we attended the meeting, the SPDC tactical commander said that they would implement a people’s militia training in November 2009,” a plantation owner who attended the meeting explained. “But it did not happen [at that time], it was moved to February 2010.”
At the meeting the tactical commander also told attendees at the meeting that even though villages would not want to serve in a people’s militia, Htan Janu village and Yar Phuu village would have to take responsibility and participate in the militia training. Other area villages not participating in the people’s militia training such as Rot Tama, Ong Janae, Lot Taing and other villages, were tasked with providing money to support the peoples militias instead.
A plantation owner from an undisclosed village commented, “In our village we do not have to serve as a people’s militia but we have to pay money for them. Right now our village has to pay 100,000 kyat. Other villages which did not need to serve as people militia had to pay money…too.”
According to another local source who attended a meeting in Yar Phuu village, the local SPDC tactical commander called meeting where, besides describing the planned militia trainings, justified the people’s militia trainings by saying that villagers would have to care for their village while their soldiers would not be in the villages. The two Burmese battalions closest to Yar Phuu and Htan Janu are Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) No. 408 and No. 282.
Despite the limitations of the trainings to just two villages, the recollection of past instances of forced training beginning with only a few villages, has trouble many villagers. The plantation owner from Yar Phuu explained, “They [SPDC] are going to do like they did before. In 2002 they [SPDC soldiers] just started the trainings with Htan Janu village and Yar Phuu villages. Other villages [at the time] had to pay money like now. But later, villages that could not pay the money [every month] had to serve as people’s militia. I am worried that this time will become like before.”
In the fall out from the people’s militia trainings in 2002, many villagers who could not pay the money left their village for either another village in territory controlled by the largest Mon political ceasefire group, the New Mon State Party (NMSP), or to work in Thailand as migrant workers.
After the 2002 people’s militia trainings, the militias from each village were disband in 2008 by order of the SPDC battalions. The reason given was a decreased threat from anti-government splinter groups in the area.
According to one man who has now worked in Thailand 6 years, after having fled after the 2002 militia trainings, “That is why I do not want to go back my village. We had to give a lot of money to SPDC soldiers. But we did not want pay the money. For that reason I left the village and am working in Thailand.”
