Karen National League

Brief Remarks on 50-Years Plus Struggle of the Karen People by BaSaw Khin

The struggle of Karen people for freedom and democracy has now come to the half century mark with the tragic loss of countless lives, those of truly selfless and well meaning leaders to poor peasants, old and decrepit folk to innocent babies, all valuable and irreplaceable. There have been torture, murder, rape and all forms of injustice committed throughout these years. As of now, there seems to be no end in sight.

From the beginning, the Karens did not seem to have forged a clear and well-defined goal and this was due mainly to the overriding animosity of some of their leaders against the Burmans, with doubtless reciprocation. The Burman leaders, perhaps for reasons best known to them, have never demonstrated any sincerity on their part. In the political field, they have almost invariably outfoxed the Karens. Of course the Karen leadership was anything but united. They seemed to have lost a good chance of fair settlement at one point. In October 1947, with the British still having some influence and persuasive power over Thakin Nu, the AFPFL Cabinet was prepared to offer the Karens a state that would embrace the Karenni State, the Mongpai substate, the Salween district and the Part II areas of the Thaton, Toungoo and Pyinmana hill tracts. A Karen Affairs Council was also planned for the Delta Karens to represent their interests.1 The Karen leadership at that point apparently did not see any advantage in negotiating with the wily and mercurial Burmans led by Thakin Nu. Even if that offer turned out to be sincere without British supervision, that might or might not have solved the Karen problem in Burma, although it did merit serious consideration by the KNU. Subsequently, the KNU simply demanded too much territory, even though it was meant as a starting point for negotiation.

After Ba U Gyi?s death in 1950, the KNU leadership was erratic, ranging at first from leftist proclivity, if not quite outright Communism, led by the intellectual but pragmatic Mahn Ba Zan, somewhat concomitantly with attempts to seek support from the west by the pedagogic and pedantic Hunter Tha Hmwe, and subsequently to a more practical and conservative policy of the martial Bo Mya. On the military side, there have been obvious setbacks due largely to the stronger and usually ruthless Burmese ?Tatmadaw?, compounded by the collusion of greedy Thai government military leaders and their commercial partners.

To continue with the revolution, the Karens should remember that while it is desirable and important to preserve their identity and ethnic purity, the main thrust should be for an autonomous state with full guarantees for the people, and fair representation for all the Karens living in the Delta and lowland areas outside the state. Policies should be formulated toward that end. The current alliances with dissident groups, ethnic minorities as well as the proliferating Burman political and resistant parties, might be kept alive and strengthened constantly. There must be no religious issues involved in the struggle. Pragmatism ought to be the key word, and it should be remembered that incessant mouthing of ?democracy? could mean nothing but a slogan.

In their own way, sometimes malefic, usually mendacious, invariably minatory, and rarely meritorious, the SPDC generals claim to have every intention of improving the country, including the lot of ethnic minorities. Among the latest E-mails posted on the Internet was a paper on "Problems of Ethnic and National Identity in the Union of Myanmar" by Dr. Annemarie Esche of Humbolt University, Berlin.2 While her discussions on the root cause of the Karen problem is not really out of line and has all along been accepted, with some reservation, by this writer, she, stemming from Teutonic background, apparently could not help being mesmerized by the military ?might? of the SPDC and the superficial halcyon condition it maintains in the country, usually at the expense of human misery for the general populace, not to mention the barbarous activities of the Tatmadaw in rebel areas. She must be naive to think that all the dozen-plus ethnic groups that ?laid down their weapons? still have peaceful relations with the SPDC government. One can only hope that the Nationalitatenpolitik is an improvement and a quantum leap from the atrocious World War II German shenanigans. About Saw Ba U Gyi's trying in vain to submit ?the case of the Karen?, she has overlooked the fact that Saw Ba U Gyi was working within the bounds of democratic principles and had to side with the majority in the KNU leadership, while Mahn Ba Khaing remained in the Aung San cabinet. Both men, not enemies, came from the Delta and each, on his own conviction, represented the Karen cause.

An underlying factor about the majority Burman is that a good percentage of them is an amalgamation of the former Pyu, Mon, Shan, Indian and Chinese, and among the leadership there is a strong Chinese bias of which a vehement denial is almost always forthcoming. Based on this mixed ancestry of the average Bamar, the trend of thought would be in striving to build a nation where minorities are slowly and surely assimilated and melded into one homogeneous group of people, hopefully leaving religion out of the picture. (Religion should be strictly one?s individual choice and never be mixed with politics.) That homogeneity goal will always be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Witness the present-day Irish situation where even though a recent accord was signed (May, 1998), and trumpeted as a historic peace agreement that British PM Tony Blair helped to bring about, that might only mark a hopeful beginning.

But there is always hope. By now the Burmans, both the SPDC and the various dissident groups inside and outside the country, have come to recognize that, through the consequences of their ignorant and arrogant late-18th an early 19th century monarchs and, subsequently, as a byproduct of colonial rule, ethnicity in Burma is going to prevail, at least in the foreseeable future. We may hear Burman voices that appear to genuinely look for ways to guarantee the rights of ethnic minorities. Quite recently, one of them, Htun Aung Gyaw, who managed to get himself in the spotlight (PARADE magazine, August 23, 1998), posted an E-mail article on the Internet.3 In that article, ?Ethnic Issues in Burma?, he urges his fellow Burmans and the minority groups to work toward a genuine federal union. He stated that General Bo Mya told student leaders that his organization had no intention of seceding. Curiously, and hopefully sans personal agenda in mind, Htun Aung Gyaw asserts that the demand for secession by the ethnic minorities is what the Burmans dislike more than the military rule. That is an unusual and rather strong statement, coming from someone whom the Burmese military has targeted for execution. And he also alludes to the disintegration of Russia following Gorbachev?s permission of the multiparty system in the Soviet Union. But then, that is the essence of democracy. If one has any doubt, he or she simply has to ask the citizens of Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, etc., of what they think about their free countries that have seceded from the former Soviet Russia.

The idea of secession by ethnic minorities has not been based on hatred of the Burmans per se, or the Burman people in general; it has been demonstrated too often that the Burmans in power have not been sincere in their lip service of minority rights or State rights, having never loosened their complete central government authority. Given this situation, there seem to be minority leaders who still wish to remain in the federal system of government, and they usually come under two categories - those who wish to do so for their own benefit, and those who sincerely believe that remaining in the system will truly benefit the people of their own state. On the other hand, ethnic principals who wish to secede can also be classified into two groups - those who could not get anywhere or realize any benefit for themselves within the federal government, and those who are convinced that secession and attaining their own completely independent state will be the only way of protection, improvement and prosperity for their people. Therefore, no blanket blame can be made on the idea of secession until one makes a thorough study of the motives of the dissidents who are not always the kind that look for their own personal advantage.4

In the case of the Karen, I am not advocating secession at all. Knowing the Burmese mentality, the country needs a strong government, but definitely not the current deplorable SPDC, whose rule of law and peace efforts under a restrictive and stultifying atmosphere leave much to be desired. What Burma needs is a government of pluralism, and if the hitherto stubborn SPDC that takes pride in its ignorance of nearly every aspect of a competent ruling body, the glaring exception being expertise in the use of menace and might, can bend a little and cooperate with all dissident groups, including in particular the NLD, and will tone down their four-cuts policy, and not focussed on A-pyoke-taik or complete annihilation of the ethnic nationality movements and other opposition forces, and finally, if the peace offers to these groups are proffered with lesser condescending attitude and more of what can be ascertained as being honest and sincere, then there may still be hope.

Meanwhile, the aging KNU leaders and the upcoming younger generation may have to continue with its current options, to keep on engaging in military action against the Tatmadaw forces of an oppressive government while trying to avoid bloodshed as much as possible (a tall order), and cooperate and coordinate their efforts with other Burman and minority dissident groups. They might constantly work toward ?stimulating? their cause, in a manner of speech, to convince those, including sympathetic and concerned foreign sources, who are helping them, that their goal is toward democratic principles and lasting peace with justice, and that they are not clannish, but can look beyond their ethnicity. And it is up to the enlightened Karens and other ethnic minorities, in active cooperation with dissident Bamarn groups, outside and inside the country, to make every attempt to create, through peaceful means, a government of pluralism, that may still include more intelligent, far-sighted and truly patriotic elements of the current SPDC who could acknowledge their limitations, a government of authentic federalism that will be fair and stable with freedom and opportunities for every citizen.

BaSaw Khin is Director of Political Research Division, Department of Poilitical Affairs of the Karen National League (KNL).
( Click here to download the whole document in word ).

Released by: Communication and Information Division P.O Box 320 518 San Francisco, CA 94132 U.S.A. Email: KNLcomm@aol.com

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The Karen National League, as a non-armed Karen organization, seeks to uplift the lot of the Karen people and bring about the rule of law and true democracy to Burma. It engages in any and all lawful activities incidental to the foregoing purposes.

D O C U M E N T S D O C U M E N T S D O C U M E N T S D O C U M E N T S D O C U M E N T S	Brief Remarks on 50-Years Plus Struggle of the Karen People by BaSaw Khin The struggle of Karen people for freedom and democracy has now come to the half century mark with the tragic loss of countless lives, those of truly selfless and well meaning leaders to poor peasants, old and decrepit folk to innocent babies, all valuable and irreplaceable. There have been torture, murder, rape and all forms of injustice committed throughout these years. As of now, there seems to be no end in sight. From the beginning, the Karens did not seem to have forged a clear and well-defined goal and this was due mainly to the overriding animosity of some of their leaders against the Burmans, with doubtless reciprocation. The Burman leaders, perhaps for reasons best known to them, have never demonstrated any sincerity on their part. In the political field, they have almost invariably outfoxed the Karens. Of course the Karen leadership was anything but united. They seemed to have lost a good chance of fair settlement at one point. In October 1947, with the British still having some influence and persuasive power over Thakin Nu, the AFPFL Cabinet was prepared to offer the Karens a state that would embrace the Karenni State, the Mongpai substate, the Salween district and the Part II areas of the Thaton, Toungoo and Pyinmana hill tracts. A Karen Affairs Council was also planned for the Delta Karens to represent their interests.1 The Karen leadership at that point apparently did not see any advantage in negotiating with the wily and mercurial Burmans led by Thakin Nu. Even if that offer turned out to be sincere without British supervision, that might or might not have solved the Karen problem in Burma, although it did merit serious consideration by the KNU. Subsequently, the KNU simply demanded too much territory, even though it was meant as a starting point for negotiation. After Ba U Gyi?s death in 1950, the KNU leadership was erratic, ranging at first from leftist proclivity, if not quite outright Communism, led by the intellectual but pragmatic Mahn Ba Zan, somewhat concomitantly with attempts to seek support from the west by the pedagogic and pedantic Hunter Tha Hmwe, and subsequently to a more practical and conservative policy of the martial Bo Mya. On the military side, there have been obvious setbacks due largely to the stronger and usually ruthless Burmese ?Tatmadaw?, compounded by the collusion of greedy Thai government military leaders and their commercial partners. To continue with the revolution, the Karens should remember that while it is desirable and important to preserve their identity and ethnic purity, the main thrust should be for an autonomous state with full guarantees for the people, and fair representation for all the Karens living in the Delta and lowland areas outside the state. Policies should be formulated toward that end. The current alliances with dissident groups, ethnic minorities as well as the proliferating Burman political and resistant parties, might be kept alive and strengthened constantly. There must be no religious issues involved in the struggle. Pragmatism ought to be the key word, and it should be remembered that incessant mouthing of ?democracy? could mean nothing but a slogan. In their own way, sometimes malefic, usually mendacious, invariably minatory, and rarely meritorious, the SPDC generals claim to have every intention of improving the country, including the lot of ethnic minorities. Among the latest E-mails posted on the Internet was a paper on "Problems of Ethnic and National Identity in the Union of Myanmar" by Dr. Annemarie Esche of Humbolt University, Berlin.2 While her discussions on the root cause of the Karen problem is not really out of line and has all along been accepted, with some reservation, by this writer, she, stemming from Teutonic background, apparently could not help being mesmerized by the military ?might? of the SPDC and the superficial halcyon condition it maintains in the country, usually at the expense of human misery for the general populace, not to mention the barbarous activities of the Tatmadaw in rebel areas. She must be naive to think that all the dozen-plus ethnic groups that ?laid down their weapons? still have peaceful relations with the SPDC government. One can only hope that the Nationalitatenpolitik is an improvement and a quantum leap from the atrocious World War II German shenanigans. About Saw Ba U Gyi's trying in vain to submit ?the case of the Karen?, she has overlooked the fact that Saw Ba U Gyi was working within the bounds of democratic principles and had to side with the majority in the KNU leadership, while Mahn Ba Khaing remained in the Aung San cabinet. Both men, not enemies, came from the Delta and each, on his own conviction, represented the Karen cause. An underlying factor about the majority Burman is that a good percentage of them is an amalgamation of the former Pyu, Mon, Shan, Indian and Chinese, and among the leadership there is a strong Chinese bias of which a vehement denial is almost always forthcoming. Based on this mixed ancestry of the average Bamar, the trend of thought would be in striving to build a nation where minorities are slowly and surely assimilated and melded into one homogeneous group of people, hopefully leaving religion out of the picture. (Religion should be strictly one?s individual choice and never be mixed with politics.) That homogeneity goal will always be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. Witness the present-day Irish situation where even though a recent accord was signed (May, 1998), and trumpeted as a historic peace agreement that British PM Tony Blair helped to bring about, that might only mark a hopeful beginning. But there is always hope. By now the Burmans, both the SPDC and the various dissident groups inside and outside the country, have come to recognize that, through the consequences of their ignorant and arrogant late-18th an early 19th century monarchs and, subsequently, as a byproduct of colonial rule, ethnicity in Burma is going to prevail, at least in the foreseeable future. We may hear Burman voices that appear to genuinely look for ways to guarantee the rights of ethnic minorities. Quite recently, one of them, Htun Aung Gyaw, who managed to get himself in the spotlight (PARADE magazine, August 23, 1998), posted an E-mail article on the Internet.3 In that article, ?Ethnic Issues in Burma?, he urges his fellow Burmans and the minority groups to work toward a genuine federal union. He stated that General Bo Mya told student leaders that his organization had no intention of seceding. Curiously, and hopefully sans personal agenda in mind, Htun Aung Gyaw asserts that the demand for secession by the ethnic minorities is what the Burmans dislike more than the military rule. That is an unusual and rather strong statement, coming from someone whom the Burmese military has targeted for execution. And he also alludes to the disintegration of Russia following Gorbachev?s permission of the multiparty system in the Soviet Union. But then, that is the essence of democracy. If one has any doubt, he or she simply has to ask the citizens of Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, etc., of what they think about their free countries that have seceded from the former Soviet Russia. The idea of secession by ethnic minorities has not been based on hatred of the Burmans per se, or the Burman people in general; it has been demonstrated too often that the Burmans in power have not been sincere in their lip service of minority rights or State rights, having never loosened their complete central government authority. Given this situation, there seem to be minority leaders who still wish to remain in the federal system of government, and they usually come under two categories - those who wish to do so for their own benefit, and those who sincerely believe that remaining in the system will truly benefit the people of their own state. On the other hand, ethnic principals who wish to secede can also be classified into two groups - those who could not get anywhere or realize any benefit for themselves within the federal government, and those who are convinced that secession and attaining their own completely independent state will be the only way of protection, improvement and prosperity for their people. Therefore, no blanket blame can be made on the idea of secession until one makes a thorough study of the motives of the dissidents who are not always the kind that look for their own personal advantage.4 In the case of the Karen, I am not advocating secession at all. Knowing the Burmese mentality, the country needs a strong government, but definitely not the current deplorable SPDC, whose rule of law and peace efforts under a restrictive and stultifying atmosphere leave much to be desired. What Burma needs is a government of pluralism, and if the hitherto stubborn SPDC that takes pride in its ignorance of nearly every aspect of a competent ruling body, the glaring exception being expertise in the use of menace and might, can bend a little and cooperate with all dissident groups, including in particular the NLD, and will tone down their four-cuts policy, and not focussed on A-pyoke-taik or complete annihilation of the ethnic nationality movements and other opposition forces, and finally, if the peace offers to these groups are proffered with lesser condescending attitude and more of what can be ascertained as being honest and sincere, then there may still be hope. Meanwhile, the aging KNU leaders and the upcoming younger generation may have to continue with its current options, to keep on engaging in military action against the Tatmadaw forces of an oppressive government while trying to avoid bloodshed as much as possible (a tall order), and cooperate and coordinate their efforts with other Burman and minority dissident groups. They might constantly work toward ?stimulating? their cause, in a manner of speech, to convince those, including sympathetic and concerned foreign sources, who are helping them, that their goal is toward democratic principles and lasting peace with justice, and that they are not clannish, but can look beyond their ethnicity. And it is up to the enlightened Karens and other ethnic minorities, in active cooperation with dissident Bamarn groups, outside and inside the country, to make every attempt to create, through peaceful means, a government of pluralism, that may still include more intelligent, far-sighted and truly patriotic elements of the current SPDC who could acknowledge their limitations, a government of authentic federalism that will be fair and stable with freedom and opportunities for every citizen. BaSaw Khin is Director of Political Research Division, Department of Poilitical Affairs of the Karen National League (KNL). ( Click here to download the whole document in word ). Released by: Communication and Information Division P.O Box 320 518 San Francisco, CA 94132 U.S.A. Email: KNLcomm@aol.com Return to Documents

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