UNFC Statement on Tatmadaw Current Offensives in Ethnic Areas

Statement by the United Nationalities Federal Council (UNFC) | October 10, 2015

U Thein government is making preparations for holding a grand ceremony of signing the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with 8 organizations, in Naypyidaw on October 15 of this month. At the same time, it has been launching military offensives in the Kachin and Shan States more and more ferociously, day by day.

Currently, in addition to launching major military offensives against the Shan State Progress Party (SSPP), with the declaration that it will advance up to Wanhai, the headquarters of the SSPP, launching widespread offensives against the Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF/TNLA) under various pretexts, and launching more intense offensives against armed forces of the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Myanmar Tatmadaw (Armed Force) is conducting probing attacks in some areas of the Karen State.

Launching military offensives against the organizations, which cannot still sign the NCA as all the organizations are not allowed to sign it, is like pressuring them to sign the NCA, which is but reviving a defunct strategy, which had been used without success, for nearly 70 years. If the government is going through the fake motions of building peace for show but continuing to use the outdated policy of total annihilation based on chauvinism, which had been used by successive governments, peace in the country would still be far and distant.

Declaring the agreement to be a Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA), the government held negotiations with the Nationwide Ceasefire Coordination Team (NCCT) and then the Senior Delegation (SD) for many months, but finally, without respect for both, the conspiracy of it to invite each individual organizations for signing the NCA, shows disparity between words and actions of it, a salient mark of the government.

On the other hand, naming the agreement as the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, but bringing up the plan to sign the agreement with only some organizations and exclude some organizations from signing the agreement is, as we have suspected, a scheme to divide unity of the ethnic forces and annihilate them, as attested by current military offensives against the organizations, which cannot still sign the NCA.

Moreover, the launching of military offensives in the ethnic nationality areas while the general election is drawing near, makes us wonder whether it is a conspiracy for winning the election by postponing the voting or at least declaring the areas to be unstable, using the fighting as an excuse, so as to deprive the people in the areas the right to vote.

Though the President and the government members have been broadcasting the refrain of ‘from nationwide ceasefire to resolution of political problem through negotiation peacefully’ and going through the motions, Myanmar Tatmadaw has been escalating the offensive war. We assume that the use of deceitful ‘Good-Cop Bad-Cop’ strategy to confuse the people, attest to the fact that it is a government that does not want genuine peace.

On behalf of the people, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the international community, political parties and the civil society organizations from various sectors of the society, for providing help by several means for the speedy establishment of peace and progress in the Union of Burma/Myanmar. In conclusion, we would like to urge all concerned to help the UNFC by standing on the side of truth and censuring U Thein Sein government and Myanmar Tatmadaw for stoking up the fire of the civil war.