Rebels clash with troops after Burma election

Clashes between rebels and Burmese government troops raged in a key border town today, a day after the country’s first election in two decades – polling which critics say will the cement the military-run government’s power.

Gunfire and clashes broke out along Burma’s border with Thailand yesterday in the first sign of post-election violence. At least 10 people were wounded and hundreds of panicked refugees fled into Thailand.

Sporadic gunshots and mortar fire in the border town of Myawaddy continued today.

Groups from Burma’s ethnic minorities, who make up some 40% of the population, had warned in recent days that civil war could erupt if the military tried to impose its highly centralised constitution and deprive them of rights.

Burma’s secretive government has billed yesterday’s poll as a step towards democracy, but most observers have rejected it as a sham engineered to solidify military control. US President Barack Obama called the vote “neither free nor fair”.

Nevertheless, some say having a parliament for the first time in 22 years could provide an opening for eventual democratic change.

There is little doubt that the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party will emerge with an enormous share of the parliamentary seats, despite widespread popular opposition to 48 years of military rule. It fielded 1,112 candidates for the 1,159 seats in the two-house national parliament and 14 regional parliaments, while the largest anti-government party, the National Democratic Force, contested just 164 seats.

As early results trickled in, state media and the Election Commission reported that 40 junta-backed candidates had already won their races. And regardless of the election results, the constitution sets aside 25% of parliamentary seats for military appointees.

Detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party won a landslide victory in the last elections in 1990 but was barred from taking office, had urged a boycott of the vote. Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were either in prison or, like Ms Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

Although the balloting passed peacefully in most parts of the country, the clashes in Myawaddy highlighted the unstable situation in Burma.

Khin Ohmar, a spokeswoman for Burma Partnership, said a faction of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, seized the town’s police station and post office yesterday. The group sides with the regime, but a faction has split off and along with other Karen rebels is fighting the central government.

Heavy fighting appeared to subside today but sporadic shots sent refugees streaming across the Moei River into Thailand, said Samard Lyfar, the governor of Thailand’s Tak province on the border. Some bullets landed on the Thai side of the frontier.

He said five Thais and five Burmese were reported wounded.

An Associated Press photographer at the border estimated about 3,000 refugees had entered Thailand.

A Japanese photographer, Toru Yamaji, 49, was detained in Myawaddy yesterday on suspicion of illegal entry after slipping across the Thai border to try to cover the election, Japan’s embassy said. He worked for APF, a Tokyo-based news organisation. Burma had barred foreign reporters from covering the polls.

The military has ruled Burma since 1962. Decades of human rights abuses and mistreatment of its ethnic minorities have turned the South-East Asian nation into a diplomatic outcast. The junta has squandered Burma’s vast natural resources through economic mismanagement and found itself allied with international pariahs like North Korea.

While yesterday’s vote was widely condemned in the Western world, it was met with virtual silence by Burma’s chief ally, China, and economic partners in India and South-East Asia.

Many voters said they wanted to cast their votes against the junta’s politicians.

“I cannot stay home and do nothing,” said Yi Yi, a 45-year-old computer technician in Rangoon. “I have to go out and vote against USDP. That’s how I will defy them (the junta).”

Voter turnout appeared light at many polling stations in Rangoon, the country’s largest city. Some residents said they stayed at home as rumours circulated that bombs would explode.

By late last night, some of the opposition politicians who took part in the elections were expressing dismay at what they called widespread cheating.

Several parties said many voters were already strong-armed into casting ballots for the junta’s proxy party in a system of advance voting.

Soe Aung, deputy secretary of the Thailand-based Forum for Democracy in Burma, called on the international community not to recognise the election results “because this is a sham election” that will create “rubber-stamp” parliament for the military.

Such criticism was echoed internationally.

A statement from Mr Obama, who is on a tour of Asia, said the elections were “neither free nor fair, and failed to meet any of the internationally accepted standards associated with legitimate elections”.

He said the United States would continue a policy of both “pressure and engagement” in seeking change in Myanmar.

Some voters and experts on Burma said that, despite the election’s problems, creating a parliament for the first time in more than two decades might provide an opening for eventual change.

“It seems likely that the very small public political space will be widened and this is probably the best outcome we can hope for from the election,” said Monique Skidmore, of Australian National University.

Democracy advocates are now looking toward the coming few days. Officials have indicated that Ms Suu Kyi could be freed from house arrest after the election.

Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win, said today that he was certain she would be released on Saturday, when her latest period of detention expires.

“We are making plans for a welcoming ceremony,” he said.

Ms Suu Kyi has been locked up in her Rangoon villa on and off ever since the ruling generals ignored the 1990 poll results. They hold a total of some 2,200 political prisoners.

One of her two sons, 33-year-old Kim Aris, applied for a visa at the Myanmar Embassy in Bangkok today in the hope of seeing his mother for the first time in 10 years. Mr Aris, who lives in Britain, has repeatedly been denied visas.

Asked if he was optimistic, he told reporters he had “not too much hope. But there’s always a little bit of hope.” He called the elections “a load of rubbish”.