The deaths don't stop at the border. More tribal lives are destroyed after they flee the war zone. Soldiers and innocent civilians are killed directly in a war, but the human cost of the war in Burma extends to the millions of tribal people whose lives were completely destroyed when they fled across the border. How many became prostitutes? How many became day laborers, struggling to earn $5 for 14 hours of backbreaking work? How many were sold into slavery? How many became drug addicts? How many became alcoholics? How many were sucked into crime? How many just disappeared, another undocumented death that makes those who know breath a sigh of relief. How many were arrested? How many died in front of hospitals that refused to treat them?

People of all faiths and spirituality from different communities and organizations in Sydney pray for peace and justice for the people of Burma.The National Council of Churches in Australia, in collaboration with Caritas Australia organized a National Day of Prayer of Burma this afternoon at Martin Place, Sydney. One of prayer rally organizer from Caritas, Tim O’Connor said “we show our solidarity to the many suffering people of Burma and particularly to the many courageous Buddhist monks and nuns.”

Recently, because the world’s attention has been on the peaceful protests and the bloodbath of monks and supporters in Yangon, the ethnic peoples’ ongoing abhorrent treatment by the regime has been placed in the backseat or just ignored.

There have been hundreds of thousands of Shans who have been displaced internally, thousands of Shans killed by the Burmese Military Regime, and this has been going on for decades which are far too long in any kind of world history.

In Burma the SPDC´s troops’ Human Rights Violations and War Crimes are very well documented. Particularly in the seven ethnic minority states, it seems that the junta-generals will continue with their Genocide strategy.

Hkun Htun Oo and the 8 other Shan leaders have now been unjustly incarcerated for 2 years, with the sad passing of Myint Than in May of last year. Despite an attempt by their lawyers in Burma to have the case reviewed by the high court in Rangoon, their appeal case was thrown out.

When SWAN issued the “Licence to Rape” report to the international community, it told a sad and true story of Shan State and Shan State peoples to the outside world. Later, the “Licensed to Lie” report of the SPDC appeared, and it rambles on slowly as though waking up from sin, and running with a limp, to shout their lie squarely, to the inside peoples of the so-called Union of Burma with a special hateful racist attitude.

SPDC Soldiers from Tong Lao Village Company situated in Nong Wo, Merng Kueng Township, Southern Shan State killed one villager and made an unprovoked attack on four others. Some villagers, according to the Buddhist tradition, went to make the alms offering during lent (the rainy season festival) at a local temple. Upon returning to their village, they were stopped, surrounded and sadistically tortured. Later, a fifth man on the same route was cruelly tortured and soon after died from injuries sustained during the attack. A ‘Tai Nation’ reporter gathered the information on this incident from eye-witnesses.

The recent news articles reveal that the SPDC will stop at nothing to torture and kill Shan people. As the result of the war the SPDC waged against the Shan State Army, the Shan civilians are undergoing inhumane war crimes perpetrated by the SPDC toward them.