Myanmar’s military junta said on Sunday it wondered whether the US exemption of the Karen refugees from immigration laws presaged an invasion of the southeast Asian country. Information Minister Brigadier General Kyaw Hsan said the last time Washington allowed an exemption from laws aimed at keeping terrorists and their supporters out was before the “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba after the communist victory there. “The US government then provided these Cuban exiles with shelter and food and then military training and weapons,” he told a news conference. “After that, in 1961, the US had these Cuban exiles invade Cuba through the Bay of Pigs,” he said. “The recent exemption made by the US in their immigration law reminds us of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.” The exemption by the United States, which has imposed sanctions on Myanmar because of the junta’s detention of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, was for Karen in refugee camps on the Thai border. But Kyaw Hsan they were really relatives of rebels who have been fighting Yangon for decades. “Bearing this in mind, we now need to ask the US what makes them amend that law and what they want out of this?” Karen rebels say the people in the camps have been forced to flee junta forces who routinely kill rape or force people into slave labour.