Intense Kokang Fighting Forces School For Refugee Children to Postpone Opening


2015.03.13
china-children-kokang-camp-march2-2015.jpg Children from the Kokang fighting gather at a refugee camp on the border between China and Myanmar, March 2, 2015.
(Photo courtesy of a Kokang volunteer)

Intensified fighting between rebels and government troops in the Kokang region of northeastern Myanmar has forced volunteers to postpone plans to open a temporary school for refugee children, and the drawn-out conflict poses a looming threat of food shortages, volunteers across the border in China said Friday.

The volunteers also warned of food shortages for tens of thousands of refugees as the 35-day-old conflict between an alliance of rebels and the Myanmar army drags on.

“As the battle is escalating, we are afraid that our school could suffer collateral damage, therefore we decided to suspend this school building plan,” a volunteer named Xiao Quan told RFA's Mandarin Service by telephone from the Nanshan Refugee Camp in China's Yunnan province.

“It has become impossible to open the school on March 16th as it was originally scheduled. We have to wait till the war is over.We don’t have any safe place to settle those kids," Xiao said.

Xiao told RFA there were more 200 small refugee camps in the Nanshan area housing more than 10,000 displaced people from Kokang in Myanmar's Shan state. One third of these refugees were children and the planned school had received donations of chalks and black boards, stationary supplies, backpacks and text books.

"We stopped receiving donations because we don’t have place to store these goods," said Xiao.

Food shortages loom

The protracted conflict, which that flared up on Feb. 9, also threatens refugees with food shortages, said a volunteer who gave only his surname Zhou. He said food could soon become a more pressing problem than schools.

“We should take care of their food issue before considering their education," he said. "I don’t know what will happen if they are run out of rice."

Zhou told RFA by telephone that refugees were showing impatience during food distribution in what appeared to be fear supplies might run out.

“We dispatched five tons of rice each day and that can feed over a thousand people, but we have 60,000 people out there to feed," he said.

“Volunteers come and go and at this time we only have a dozen volunteers here," added Zhou.

Fighting began on Feb. 9 in Laukkai between Myanmar government troops and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) rebel forces.

The MNDAA under ethnic Chinese commander Peng Jiasheng is trying to retake the Kokang self-administered zone, which it had controlled until 2009, forcing an estimated 100,000 refugees away from the conflict zone and across the border into China.

The MNDAA is allied with three other ethnic minority armies: the Ta'ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), and part of the Shan State Army (SSA), although the KIA has remained in the region it controls, rather than fighting alongside MNDAA troops.

Reported by Xin Lin for RFA's Mandarin Service. Translated by Xiaoming Feng. Written in English by Paul Eckert.

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