Tens of thousands of people who were trapped in Laukkai Town as fighting raged in Kokang region are now fleeing to Lashio in northern Shan State after the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) opened a route for the mainly migrant workers to return to their homes or at least find safety.
MNDAA units have encircled Laukkai as it prepares to retake the capital of Kokang Self-Administered Zone from the regime. Its goal is to regain complete control the zone, which is on the border with China.
Ko Win Kyi and his coworkers from a construction site began departed Laukkai Town on November 26 in a van provided by their employer. The road between Laukkai and Kunlong was jammed with hundreds of vehicles, however. Ko Win Kyi and his co-workers decided to join friends travelling through the forest on motorbikes.
“The MNDAA soldiers helped arrange all the routes that we can go through safely to reach Lashio Township. But they confiscated our mobile phones and they destroyed them in front of us for security reasons. And we were not allowed to look sideways while we were going through the forest,” Ko Win Kyi added.
On November 28, all the hotels, motels and monasteries in Lashio filled with the thousands of people fleeing Laukkai as thousands more remained stuck on roads.
Most were migrant workers from as far away as Ayerwaddy and Bago regions. Others were from Mandalay and Sagaing regions.
The routes that the MNDAA opened for them included roads as well as paths through forests in Laukkai, Kunlong, and Laukkai townships and Wa Self-Administrative Region. But all of the migrants fleeing Laukkai had to first reach Lashio before continuing on to their homes.
“The roads were jammed with cars and crowds. We couldn’t count how many precisely but there were tens of thousands of people. And we were doing our best to ensure their security,” said MNDAA spokesperson Li Jar Wen.
While tens of thousands of people are still being guided out of Laukkai, hundreds of ethnic Kokang people remain stranded near the border with China.
Video footage showed police from China firing tear gas cannisters on them as they approached a border fence on November 25. Clips of the incident spread online, triggering the anger of ethnic Chinese Myanmar citizens in northern Shan State.
A video clip showed ethnic Kokang people begging Chinese police not to shoot at them because they are internally displaced people seeking refuge. Still, Chinese police continued driving them from the area and ordered them not to get too close to the recently installed border fence.
Sources in Kokang region and Lashio said the hundreds of people seeking refuge near the border with China were ethnic Kokang people fleeing Laukkai and villages in Kokang region after clashes broke out between the junta’s military and Brotherhood Alliance, which launched an attack on regime forces in northern Myanmar on October 27.
“They are our Kokang ethnic people, and their situation is still very bad. They have no food, blankets and not even enough water,” said Li Jar Wen.
He said the group from the video footage had previously sought refuge near another area on the border (125 point) but fled to 127 point as the junta’s artillery shells got closer. (127 point is where the tear gas cannisters were fired at them).
The MNDAA has been warning residents inside Laukkai to avoid any junta offices since November 18. It also told Chinese citizens to return to China.
