While international attention has focused on the protests for democracy in Myanmar's cities, a hidden war has decimated generations of the country's powerless ethnic minorities, who have faced brutality for decades.
The Karen, the Shan and other minority groups who live along the Myanmar-Thai border have been attacked, raped and killed by government soldiers. Their thatched-roofed, bamboo homes have been torched. Men have been seized into forced labor for the army, while women, children and the elderly either hide out in nearby jungles until the soldiers leave or flee over the mountains to crowded, makeshift refugee camps.
Children from the Karen National Union insurgent army at the 51st anniversary celebrations of the army's rebellion."Many, many thousands of Karen have died in those 60 years," Karen National Union secretary general Mahn Sha said this week of his people's struggle for autonomy since 1947.
The military junta has denied reports of atrocities and says the ethnic rebels are "terrorists" trying to overthrow the government.
The Southeast Asian nation, formerly known as Burma, has more than 100 subtribes. Myanmar's diverse minority groups make up nearly a third of the country's 54 million population.
About two-thirds of the country belongs to the Burman ethnic majority, which is also known as the Myanmar. The other ethnic groups include the Shan, the Karen, the Chin, the Mon, the Arakan or Rakhine, and the Kachin.
Thousand of refugees, mostly from a Muslim ethnic minority known as Rohingyas, have fled over Myanmar's western border with Bangladesh over the years because of persecution by the military junta and economic hardship. The Kachin in the far north, along the border with China, have clashed with the central government, as have the Chin in the central western region bordering India, and the Mon in the south along the Andaman Sea.
But the military is most aggressive in the eastern states along Myanmar's 1,300-mile border with Thailand, a frontier longer than the Texas-Mexico border.
Mary Callahan, a Myanmar expert at the University of Washington, said the junta has signed 27 cease-fire agreements with rebels, many of them allowing ethnic groups to keep their arms.
The Karen National Union is the only major ethnic rebel group not to have concluded a cease-fire and its separatist struggle is one of the world's longest-running insurgencies.
The Karen struggle is concentrated in Karen and Kayah states in the middle of the Thai border region, but fighting also sometimes flares in Shan state to the north. Mon and Taninthayi states, which border Thailand in the south, have been quiet for more than a decade.
After the junta's brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1988, many Burmese fled to the Thai border. The ethnic minorities did not trust them at first, but after years of interaction and intermarriage, some of the students-turned-soldiers settled along the border.
Now minority groups wonder if there will be a new influx of Burmese because they led the recent pro-democracy protests in Yangon and other cities. The Karen have held meetings to express solidarity with the anti-government protesters.
The current protests began on August 19 after the government sharply raised fuel prices in one of Asia's poorest countries. But they are based in deep-rooted dissatisfaction with 45 years of repressive military rule.
"The people have decided never to stop and never to surrender. They [the government] cannot stop all the people all the time," said Mahn Sha of the Karen National Union.
Myanmar protesters will be welcomed by the ethnic groups, but the question remains how both can use the unrest to their advantage.
"We need to work together with the Mon, other groups, the students, to fight the [junta]. We have a common enemy and common goals," Mahn Sha said.
"It is the beginning of the crack that could bring down the dictators. Even if these protests are crushed, it will still be a big block out of that tower. We all look at this with hope," Dah Say, a Karenni who is a member of the Free Burma Rangers, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
The actor Sylvester Stallone, who just finished filming his "Rambo" sequel on the Salween River separating Thailand and Myanmar's Karen state, drew attention to the violence along the border.
He said his movie crew was shocked by the border situation, calling it a "full-scale genocide."
"I witnessed the aftermath -- survivors with legs cut off and all kinds of land mine injuries, maggot-infested wounds and ears cut off. We saw many elephants with blown off legs," he told The Associated Press on Monday.
"We hear about Vietnam and Cambodia -- and this was more horrific," he said.
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Dispatch's horrifying, yet informative report Burma's Secret War is linked HERE and embedded below. In Burma's Secret War, "Dispatches exposes the new surge in violence inflicted on the Burmese people by their own regime. Enslaved by a brutal military dictatorship which wields absolute power, Burma is a secretive state where suppression reigns and dissent is not tolerated.
Journalist Evan Williams, who is banned from entering the country after reporting on Burma for more than 10 years, goes undercover to investigate the mass ethnic cleansing, forced labour and vicious clamping down of political opposition which characterise the dictatorship." HERE is Investigative TV Journalism website Four Corner's synopsis of William's report.
Other videos can be seen on the left panel of the blog or at youtube.
If you haven't already, please SIGN THE 9 PETITIONS FOR BURMA HERE.
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