China deports Myanmar refugees amid fighting, says group

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has forcibly returned scores of ethnic Kachins who have fled Myanmar because of civil war, putting them at risk of armed violence and abuse by Myanmar's army, a human rights group said on Friday.

Up to 10,000 Kachins have sought refuge in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan after fighting between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Myanmar's government flared up in the middle of 2011 following a 17-year truce, according to aid groups.

Diplomats say the conflict in Kachin state is one of the biggest tests for Myanmar's new civilian government's reform effort. Myanmar's government is in talks with the KIA and more than a dozen other ethnic minority rebel groups, to try to end all its decades-old conflicts.

Chinese authorities forcibly returned at least 1,000 Kachin refugees to Myanmar's northernmost Kachin state in mid-August, where they face a shortfall of aid, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

China plans to deport another 4,000 refugees to Myanmar, also known as Burma, imminently, the rights group said.

"China is flouting its international legal obligations by forcibly returning Kachin refugees to an active conflict zone rife with Burmese army abuses," said Bill Frelick, director of the refugee programme at Human Rights Watch.