May 2005

May 27 — More than fifty percent of Kachin youths in Myitkyina in northern Burma are becoming the victims of heroin and narcotic drugs as the negligence of Burmese authority to crackdown on local drug traffickers, according to a Kachin youth who is under hospitalized at a drug rehabilitation centre in Yangon. He said many youths are becoming drug addicts due to the cheap price, easy to buy and ubiquitous of drug peddlers.

May 25 — 160 Kachins from Thailand’s Mahachai area urged Kachins living in U.S. to help making plans for resettlement in third countries as their living and working conditions in Thailand have become severely deteriorating. Most of the Kachins in Mahachai are working at Thailand’s fishing industries.

May 20 — A Thailand-based Kachin women’s rights group has demanded the withdrawal of the Burmese Army from the ethnic states of Burma citing that their repressive military rule has contributed to the trafficking of many young ethnic women into commercial sex work by fostering extreme poverty and high unemployment.

The Kachin Women’s Association Thailand, KWAT, launched a report Driven Away: Trafficking of Kachin Women on the China-Burma Border on Tuesday, revealing 63 verified and suspected trafficking cases which involve 85 girls and women from the Kachin and Northern Shan states, who traffickers had promised better jobs. Most of the girls are between 14 to 20 years of age.

May 19 — Over 150 University students volunteered at a work camp which was organized by Myanmar Student Christian Movement. The camp was to plant trees around Jaw Bum, a holy mountain for Kachins, near Kachin State capital Myitkyina.

Myanmar Student Christian Movement, formerly known as University Christian Fellowship, is an organization under the Myanmar Council of Churches.

May 03 — The Kachin Independence Organization, KIO, has urged Kachins and other Kachin political organizations to unite under the guidance of the Kachin Consultative Assembly, KCA, according to a recent statement issued by the KIO.

“It is the best way to unite amongst Kachins and Kachin political organizations that all would follow the guidelines of the KCA with broad-mindedness,” said a KIO statement released on April 25. The KCA was established in October 2002, with the support of the Kachin Independent Organization to provide a common platform to represent the Kachin people.