Thailand lodges protest with Myanmar over border violations

0 Comments | Asian Political News, May 21, 2001

BANGKOK, May 15 Kyodo

Thailand lodged a diplomatic protest with Myanmar on Tuesday over separate border violations by Yangon-backed ethnic minority armed groups early this month.

The Thai Foreign Ministry summoned Myanmar Ambassador Myo Mint to meet Krit Garnjana-goonchorn, director of the ministry's East Asian Affairs Department, to receive the protest.

It was the first government-level protest over border incidents since the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra came to power in February.

Krik handed the ambassador a note protesting the junta-controlled Democratic Karen Buddhist Army's May 1 attack on a Thai military inspection point in Ban Muean Rue Chai, a village in the border district of Phop Phra in Tak Province, northern Thailand.

Three Thai residents were killed in the incident, which also left four residents and two soldiers wounded and caused extensive damage to the homes and property of local residents, it said.

The note also protested a May 3 incident in which it said two units of another Myanmar military-controlled militia group, the United Wa State Army, seized a disputed hill in the northern province of Chiang Mai.

Thai military authorities in the area initially protested to Myanmar forces and demanded a withdrawal. They later resorted to force, driving the units away with shelling.

''To the disappointment of the Thai authorities, the Myanmar authorities disowned responsibility, claiming that they could not control the militias,'' the note said.

Thailand's protest came after its own diplomats in Yangon were summoned twice, on Wednesday and Thursday last week, over border incidents, including an alleged air incursion over Myanmar territory by Thai jets.

Krit told reporters that during his meeting with the Myanmar ambassador, he insisted that the F-16 jets in question flew only over Thai territory. He denied Yangon's claims that the fighters had bombed Myanmar government troops across the border.

Thailand and Myanmar have had frequent clashes over the years along their porous and ill-defined 2,400-kilometer boundary. Each side has also accused the other of supporting production and trafficking of illicit drugs along the border.