Paramilitary training course to be opened in Chin State

DVB (August 6,2003)

As the SPDC is urgently giving nationwide military trainings to civil servants throughout Burma to fight ‘external enemies’, it is reported that military trainings are also to be commenced soon in Chin State by the order of the state authority chairman Colonel Tin Hla.

Civil servants and civilians are to be given trainings in two separate groups and the trainings are to be instructed by soldiers from Infantry Battalion [IB] based in Haka, the capital of Chin State. Moreover, the army is forcing people to buy religious images to raise funds for the military trainings.

DVB’s Khin Maung Soe Minn reports:

Khin Maung Soe Minn : The ‘anti-foreign aggression’ defensive military trainings to be given by soldiers of Haka-based IB-266 are initially to be aimed for departmental civil servants in Haka. Later, civilians will be given similar trainings. A Chin national from Haka told the DVB about the prospect of the military trainings as follows:

A Chin national from Haka : They say that people aged between 18 and 50 must join the militia. First, they are going to train civil servants and then the civilians’ turn will come. They could start within August.

The civil servants and civilians in Chin State are worried that they might be forced to buy their own uniforms like other regions in Burma. The soldiers from IB-266 are forcibly selling controversial religious images to Christians in Haka for 500 kyats for each picture, said the same man:

A Chin national from Haka : On one side, the picture is of Jesus Christ and on the other it is the picture of Shwedagon Pagoda. The soldiers from 266 show the pictures of Jesus Christ to Christians and sell the pictures to raise funds for military trainings. They are forcibly selling the pictures to all the houses.

At the end of last July, when General Thura Shwe Manh and team visited Haka, all the distant running cars in Haka were hijacked by the authorities for a week that the prices of goods are said to have rocketed and in short supply because of lack of transportations.