Mong Ton News Today

According to reports, approximately 300 troops of the United Wa State Army (UWSA) have recently entered the Mong Yaw region of Lashio District, located in Shan State. Locals told the Shan Herald that a UWSA column of nearly 300 troops entered the Mong Yaw region of Lashio District on the west side of the Salween River from the east of the Salween River this week. "Wa troops

This morning at Sob Moei -- the confluence of the Moei and the Salween rivers on the Thailand-Myanmar border -- indigenous peoples and their supporters are attending a spiritual ceremony to express their collective stance to protect the Salween River from destructive dam projects.

A film director was repatriated from Myanmar on Tuesday morning after his family claimed that he had been kidnapped for ransom by the United Wa State Army (UWSA) since Jan 4. However, Myanmar authorities insisted that he had entered the UWSA's territory of his own free will.

When speaking about Shan refugees in Thailand it is impossible to leave out the migrants, legal, illegal, asylum seekers and last but not least the stateless without proper documentation from Shan State.

The mainspring of internally displaced people (IDPs) and refugees fleeing their homes in Shan State stems basically from internal armed conflict, a crisis with a long history.

Ethnic peoples in Myanmar and Thailand have been working for two decades to keep the Salween River flowing freely.

On a sandy beach by the Salween River on the Thai-Myanmar border in March 2006, boats carrying Karen villagers and other ethnic groups such as Karenni, Yintalai and Shan from various areas in the Salween Basin are arriving to join an important yet simple ceremony.

International isolation following the coup may now force the government to move closer to Beijing than it would like.

In mid-June, the Thai military government and its Myanmar counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding on energy, with an eye to expanding Thailands import of electricity from Myanmar, by up to 10,000 megawatts. The initial agreement also promotes overseas investment by Thai state-owned and public companies in numerous coal and hydropower projects in Myanmar, including the Hat Gyi, Ywathit, and Mong Ton dams on the Salween River. Significantly, these projects are all situated in ethnic stat...