October 23, 2008	Thursday	Shawwal 23, 1429

BANGKOK, Oct 22: Up to 66,000 civilians have been forced to flee their homes in eastern Myanmar in the past year because of systematic abuses by the country’s ruling military, an aid group said on Wednesday.

The Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), which provides aid to hundreds of thousands of refugees who flee Myanmar, formally known as Burma, said in a new report that the junta’s actions could constitute crimes against humanity.

“The extent of persecution and suffering in the border areas has been largely unseen and under-reported for decades,” said Jack Dunford, TBBC’s executive director. “Yet the same brutal army that crushed protests on city streets last September marauds with impunity in rural Burma, bringing fear and disrupting the lives of villagers on a day to day basis.” The TBBC report accuses the military of systematically forcing villagers from their homes in Myanmar’s eastern Karen and Shan states.

Forced labour, land confiscation, and restricting people’s access to farmland and markets also has a devastating economic impact, it added.—AFP