Local authorities have erected security checkpoints to search vehicles in Mong Hsu, Kesi, Laikha, Namzang, and Loilem Townships in central and southern Shan State.
Entrance gates to towns in the region now also have to close at 6:00 p.m. and are only allowed to re-open at 6:00 a.m.
Relations between the Burma Army and the Shan State Progress Party/Shan State Army-North (SSPP/SSA-N) in the area remain tense following recent clashes.
According to Sai Than Sein, a member of Shan Nationalities Democratic Party (SNDP) in Namzang, security has been tightened throughout the region.
He said: “I think they want to check people entering and going out of the town. People are afraid to go out at night.”
He also said that locals are now staying in their houses after 6:00 p.m. and that the rules have caused difficulties for traders and forced many of them to temporarily stop working because they normally travel overnight between towns so that they can trade their goods each morning.
Sai Kyaw Ze Ya, a newly elected Shan Nationalities League for Democracy (SNLD) MP in Laikha, told SHAN that the Burmese authorities first placed time restrictions on the opening and closing of the town gate when internally displaced people (IDPs) from Mong Nong first came to Laikha in early November.
There are now an estimated 700 IDPs in Laikha.
Trucks which were filled with clothing and food donations for the IDPs were halted and checked near Mak Lung village in Laikha Township on 23 November by the Burma Army 64th Battalion.
Sai Kham, a volunteer with a local aid group said: “Five trucks were halted and checked. We were stuck there from 8:00 a.m. Youth and monks from Laikha came to vouch for us, and we passed the checkpoint by 11:00 a.m.”
The first new checkpoints appeared on 18 November in Mong Hsu Township when an MP was prevented from going to check on 1,500 IDPs that no one had been able to contact for over ten days.
Except for four days, there has been fighting in some part of central or southern Shan State every day since 6 October.
The fighting has forced over 10,000 people to flee their homes and 17 schools to shut.
By SAI AW / Shan Herald Agency for News (S.H.A.N)
Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI
