Ethnic Kachin Hkaraw Yaw, 102, sits in his hut in compound of Trinity Baptist Church refugee camp in Myitkyina, Kachin State, northern Myanmar, on Sunday. (AP photo)MYITKYINA, Myanmar: As the Myanmar army's bombs started falling near her home in Kachin state, Nlam Numrang Doi and her neighbours decided they had no choice but to grab what they could and scatter into the jungle. The onslaught is part of a decades-long government campaign to defeat Kachin rebels fighting for greater autonomy for the largely Christian minority group in Myanmar's far north. “What we are seeing in Kachin state over the past few weeks is wholly unacceptable, and must stop immediately,” Yanghee Lee, the UN's human rights expert for Myanmar, said last week. A 17-year cease-fire between the government and Kachin Independence Army was broken in 2011, when the army entered rebel territory and attacked one of their outposts.

Source: Bangkok Post May 08, 2018 07:07 UTC