By David Koch

Ottawa-based activists are condemning the Burmese government after a military clampdown on minority rebels sent thousands of refugees scrambling across the Thai border since Sunday.

The news of violence comes on the heels of an election in Burma on Sunday that has
been condemned internationally as marred by fraud and voter intimidation.

“If the regime takes a harsh approach, there will be more conflict, more bloodshed, more
refugees,” Tin Maung Htoo, Executive Director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Friends of
Burma (CFB), said Monday.

The junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) claimed victory in
the poll yesterday while the military cracked down on an uprising by rebel fighters along
the southeast border.

In Ottawa, pro-democracy activists and Burmese refugees gathered at the Human Rights
Monument on Saturday to protest the military junta and the election, which they called
a “sham.”

Burmese protestors. Photograph: David Koch / The ImmPression

Among the protesters was Naing Aung, the Secretary General of the Thailand-based
Forum for Democracy in Burma, which brings together various groups that are opposed
to the military junta.

He described the Burmese refugees as revolutionaries who would one day return
democracy to Burma.

“We are the future generation of the leadership in our country,” Aung said.

Htoo estimated that there are about 400 people from Burma living in Ottawa.

The protesters, many wearing red headscarves emblazoned with the words “Free Burma,”
said the elections were designed to prolong the rule of the military regime.

The elections were boycotted by the National League for Democracy (NLD), which is
Burma’s main opposition party.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the NLD, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while under
house arrest in 1991.

Although the NLD won general elections in 1990 under her leadership, the junta has
never let go of power.

As the junta-backed USDP claimed victory in the election yesterday, members of the
ethnic Karen minority living along the Thai border were forced to flee from fighting in
the town of Myawatt.

“Clearly this is not a democratic Burma,” said Nisha Toomey, a student at the University
of Ottawa who sits on the CFB’s board of directors and helped organize the protest on
Saturday.

The Irrawaddy, a news website based in Thailand, reported today that junta troops had
suppressed the uprising in Myawaddi.

The UN refugee agency estimated that 15,000 Karen refugees had fled Burma into
northern Thailand to escape the fighting between the military and rebels. But some
estimates go as high as 40,000.

“There’s a crisis situation where people need food and water and clothes,” said Toomey,
who worked in Thailand for three years in schools established by Burmese refugees.

“We don’t know how long this is going to last.”

She said that Canada should earmark money for emergency situations like this one.

She also called on the Canadian government to push Thailand to accept the displaced
people as refugees so that they would be able to access social services.