ABSTRACT
In February 2006, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)1 – as the ruling military junta in Burma2 is known – launched a major offensive against the ethnic Karen people in eastern Burma. Thousands of troops were deployed in the offensive, designed, according to the SPDC, to rid the area of insurgents and terrorists, carrying out hostile acts destabilising the nation.3 Little opposition was encountered by military forces as they swept through the region, destroying villages and farms, and uprooting an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people. Murder, summary executions, rapes, theft and pillage were the order of the day, as helpless and defenceless civilians were pursued through mountainous jungle terrain in their desperate bid to escape the onslaught. Those that succeeded in escaping to the Thai border joined the more than half a million displaced people already encamped along the border in a string of refugee camps – the casualties of offensives past. Having lost their homes, their lands, their nation, all have been left to contemplate a fate of squalor and dependency, at the mercy of Thai and international agencies.4
