About 15 people and 10 armed security guards arrived in Kongser Village on the Burmese side and raised a Chinese flag where they wanted to build a bridge while at least 500 local residents protested against them at 8am on the morning of 3 April, according to Nan Sam from Sel-Hine Village.

He said to S.H.A.N. News: “They seemed to have already recognised the territory as theirs and said they would raise their flag. At that moment the township administrator, U Zaw Min, and other officials arrived there and they [the Burmese officials] told them [the Chinese] that it was disputed territory and that if they forcibly claimed it the two countries friendly relationship with each other could be affected. Local resident also shouted from behind [the officials] that they rejected the Chinese claims and did not approve of them. The Chinese people took down their flag and returned to China at 11am.”

U Aik Pee the chairman of Teane-Cho Village in Nong Taung Township of Ruilli district in China recently told the administrator of Kongser village that they will build a bridge over the Ruilli River at Kongser Village and they will build the bridge irrespective of whether local residents approve of it or not.

Sai Aik Sai a youth from Kongser Village said: “Local people will mentally and physically reject the Chinese authorities’ project to build a bridge after they had confiscated local residents’ farmland.

Two grandmothers living in Kongser Village, 92 year old Nine Ngen Sai and 90 year old Nine Kham Hlam said: “Our grandparents owned the land in the disputed territory. We have grown paddy on that land since the Japanese occupation [during the Second World War from 1942 to 1945]. It is not Chinese land and we will be sad if they confiscate the land and build a bridge.”

Local residents said that the Chinese authorities had tried several times, using different techniques, to build the bridge in the disputed territory on the China-Burma border.

Translated by Aung Myat Soe English version written by Mark Inkey for BNI