June 11: Bangkok: Attacks last week by Myanmar’s army displaced more than 4,000 members of the country’s Karen minority, bringing the number of homeless since the end of February to more than 18,000, a refugee relief organization said Sunday.

The Free Burma Rangers, a private group that sends food and other humanitarian supplies for displaced persons into eastern Myanmar from northern Thailand, said the current offensive by Myanmar’s military against Karen guerrillas is the largest since 1997.
Refugees and aid groups have said the offensive has been accompanied by killings, torture, forced relocations, the planting of land mines and destruction of food supplies.

Last month, British lawmakers called for urgent aid for Karen refugees, joining growing calls for the U.N. Security Council to act swiftly against the offensive. U.S. congress members, the European Union and human rights groups have launched similar appeals.

Myanmar’s critics also castigate the ruling junta for refusing to hand over power to a democratically elected government and continuing to detain political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Myanmar’s junta acknowledged last month that the army is targeting the Karen ethnic minority area, saying the offensive is necessary to suppress bombings and other anti-government attacks.

There were three major clashes between Myanmar troops and Karen guerrillas on Friday in Myanmar’s Kayin State also known as Karen State said a spokesman for the Rangers, who asked not to be named to protect his personal safety.

He said the fighting had displaced 1,100 people in the state’s Papun district, and another 3,000 people further north also were forced to flee their homes.

The Karen people have sought autonomy in Myanmar, also called Burma, for nearly six decades in one of the world’s longest-running insurgencies. The conflict has uprooted hundreds of thousands of Karen, including well over 100,000 now in refugee camps in Thailand.

“These attacks on innocent civilians in the Karen State, the largest in 10 years, constitute war crimes,” said Jeremy Woodrum of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. “With the U.N. Security Council about to weigh a resolution on Burma for the first time in history, they underscore the urgency of action.”

“The United Nations has been completely ineffective in blocking the destruction of 2,700 villages by Burma’s military regime in eastern Burma over the past 10 years,” Woodrum said in an e-mail.

The Washington, D.C.-based group lobbies to encourage democracy in Myanmar.