Myanmar junta to close Kachin IDP camps

Myanmar junta to close Kachin IDP camps

To prove that normalcy has returned ahead of polls in August this year, the junta in civil war-torn Myanmar is winding up shelter camps, leaving thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the lurch.

Nearly 25 camps in Myitkyina, the capital of Christian-majority northern Kachin State, are slated for closure as the army has reportedly ordered their inhabitants to leave by March-end, according to local sources.

The camps house more than 11,000 people and have been run by the Catholic and Baptist churches since 2011, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The inhabitants were given three options — to return to their places of origin, to move to a new resettlement area or make their own arrangements, the sources said.

“It is not conducive due to security concerns”

Mary Lu Ja (name changed), an inhabitant at a Catholic Church-run camp in Myitkyina township, said she has opted to make her own arrangements as she cannot go back to her place of origin.

 “We wanted to go back but it is not conducive due to security concerns,” Lu Ja, a Catholic and mother of seven children, told UCA News.

The 45-year-old said she had bought a piece of land on the outskirts of Myitkyina with the help of donors.

“I have asked the Catholic Church’s social arm,  Karuna [Caritas] Myanmar, to help build a house,” said Lu Ja.

She fled Gadayan, a village near Laiza, the headquarters of the Kachin Independence Army, when fighting broke out in June 2011.

Myanmar’s transition from full military rule started in 2011, spurring hopes of democratic reforms. But the military, known as the Tatmadaw, maintained control over much of the civilian government, and ethnic armed outfits, comprising Buddhists and Christians, resisted it. 

Nearly 60 families from Lu Ja’s camp have already returned to their respective places of origin despite security concerns and the unrest, according to Lu Ja.

Lucy Seng Ja, another displaced person from Kachin State, said she would be moving to the resettlement area arranged by the local authorities as it is not safe yet to return to her home village.

“Like in Kachin State, the camps in Shan State are also slated for closure”

“It is sure for us to leave the camps,” said Seng Ja, a mother of three.

More than 101,500 people are staying in camps in Kachin State, including 11,900 people who were displaced by the military coup in 2021, the UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, said in a report on Feb.16. The state’s 1.7 million people are mainly Christians, including 116,000 Catholics.

The military junta has also reportedly ordered IDPs in the camps in northern Shan, Chin and Rakhine states to return to their native places.

 A Christian social worker from Shan State said, “Like in Kachin State, the camps in Shan State are also slated for closure.”

After the coup in February 2021, the military launched a brutal crackdown on opposition forces. But it still has not been able to consolidate control over large areas of the nation.

More than 1,619,000 people have been uprooted across the country, with more than 328,000 people displaced since the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021, according to the latest UNHCR report.

Amid widespread condemnation of the coup and sanctions from the US and other Western nations, the military initially announced that it would hold new elections within a year of the coup in 2021. It then backtracked and said the country would go to the polls in August.

A local political observer, who sought anonymity fearing reprisals, said, “The military appears to be showing to the world that it [Myanmar] is back to stability by closing down the camps.”

But there is no guarantee over “the security of the returnees,”  the observer added.

Intense fighting has been raging in the predominantly Christian regions of Karen, Kayah and Kachin states along with Bamar Buddhist-majority areas of central Myanmar’s Sagaing and Magwe regions where the military has used airstrikes and heavy weaponry while burning houses and places of worship.

Aid groups have called for a safe environment for IDPs to return to their homes.

“IDPs have appealed to local authorities to give them more time, citing their children’s education,” a social worker, who wished to remain anonymous, told UCA News.