As Min Aung Hlaing signed deals in Phnom Penh, his forces burned oil wells and pushed Into Karenni
Mizzima
While Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing was in Phnom Penh last week signing trade and investment agreements with Cambodia’s leaders, his forces were destroying oil fields in Magway Region and advancing on resistance-held territory along the Shan-Karenni border, continuing offensives that have run for months with no public mention in his office’s account of the trip.
Min Aung Hlaing traveled to Cambodia on 11-12 September, meeting Senate President Hun Sen and Prime Minister Hun Manet in what state media described as an effort to strengthen cooperation within ASEAN. The two governments signed four agreements covering the elimination of double taxation, reciprocal investment protection, an amendment to a cultural cooperation pact, and a memorandum of understanding on media and information. Cambodia is the fourth ASEAN member state after Laos, Thailand and Vietnam to host Min Aung Hlaing since he stepped up diplomatic outreach this year, following stops in Russia, India, China and Belarus outside the bloc.
Cambodia’s exiled opposition movement, the Khmer Movement for Democracy, condemned the visit, saying it should not become another way for Min Aung Hlaing to sidestep ASEAN’s diplomatic pressure.
On the same days, fighting entered its fourth consecutive month on the Shan-Karenni border, where junta forces pushed through Mobye town toward the foot of Lwe Yin Mountain in an attempt to retake territory in Karenni State, according to a source with resistance forces in the area.
“The fighting is intense and has been ongoing all morning. One of my comrades was injured,” the source said on 11 September, the day Min Aung Hlaing landed in Phnom Penh. The junta column involved is backed by drones and heavy artillery, the source said, and Karenni-based defense forces have repeatedly warned civilians to avoid roads near the fighting as clashes intensified through late August.
In Magway Region’s Myaing Township, junta troops spent the same period destroying hand-dug oil wells in villages along the Myaing-Pauk border, detonating landmines inside the wells and burning oil workers’ huts, shops and homes, according to local sources. The operations, part of an offensive by a Pakokku-based Light Infantry Division column that has run since May against resistance-controlled oil fields, continued through 9 September, days before Min Aung Hlaing’s departure for Cambodia. At least 20 villages have been displaced by the fighting, and junta troops burned roughly two-thirds of Te Gyi village, where they are stationed, in late August.
Min Aung Hlaing’s office and Cambodian state media, in their accounts of the visit, made no public reference to fighting in Magway, Shan or Karenni during the two days he was abroad.
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