Karen National Union (KNU)
Websites/Multiple Documents
Description:
Our Policies:
"The Burmese military dictatorship spreads lies and misinformation about the KNU.
We don?t recruit child soldiers, we don?t attack civilians and we are not trying to break up Burma.
Read the truth about our policies here..."...Objectives:
"The KNU Mission Statement is to establish a genuine Federal Union in cooperation with all the Karen and all the ethnic peoples in the country for harmony, peace, stability and prosperity for all.
Read more here..."...Our Fallen Heroes:
"Many brave Karen have given their lives in our struggle for freeedom. Find out more about them here..."...Our Leaders:
"KNU leaders are democratically elected. Find out more here..."...Structure:
"The KNU has a democratic structure, with regular elections. We also provide local services and administration in Karen State.
Find out more about our structure and our democracy here..."...KNU History:
"The Karen National Union is the leading political organisation representing the aspirations of the Karen people.
The KNU was founded in 1947, its predecessor organisations date back to 1881..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of entry/update:
2011-03-28
Grouping:
Websites/Multiple Documents
Category:
Armed conflict and peace-building in Burma - theoretical, strategic and general, Karen National Union (KNU), Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports
Language:
English
more
Description:
Substantialsite...
News, photos, articles, links, "Karen Newsletter" - archive
Source/publisher:
Karen Information Center (KIC)
Date of entry/update:
2011-03-28
Grouping:
Websites/Multiple Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Burmese
more
Description:
Aims, statements, history etc. Last updated 1998
Date of entry/update:
2003-06-03
Grouping:
Websites/Multiple Documents
Category:
Armed conflict and peace-building in Burma - theoretical, strategic and general, Discrimination against the Karen, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
Home | About us | Departments | Peace Process | Statements | Human Rights | Karen Unity | Contact...Departments:
Agriculture Department;
Alliance Affairs Department;
Breeding & Fishery Department;
Defense Department;
Education & Culture Department;
Finance & Revenue Department;
Foreign Affairs Department;
Forestry Department;
Health & Welfare Department;
Interior & Religious Department;
Organising & Information Department;
Justice Department;
Mining Department;
Transportation & Communication Department.
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Date of entry/update:
2013-09-22
Grouping:
Websites/Multiple Documents
Language:
English
more
Individual Documents
Description:
"Regarding international concerns about online scam activities, including illegal casino gambling along the border of Karen State, the position of the Karen National Union (KNU) is as follows. 1. The emergence of online scam activities and illegal casino gambling is rooted in the poor system and corruption practiced by the successive governments of Burma (Myanmar) and is because of the lack of responsibility, accountability and rule of law of the successive governments. 2. The SAC is directly benefiting from these illicit businesses and are protecting and supporting them from behind. This has resulted in various social problems, not only for the Karen people in Karen State, but also for all those involved, and brings instability to the region, threatening global financial security and economic stability. 3. The KNU is absolutely opposed to any illicit business and is willing to combat the online scams and illegal casino gambling businesses. 4. The KNU is ready to cooperate with neighbouring countries and international organisations to clear out the online scam activities and illegal casino gambling businesses..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of publication:
2024-02-13
Date of entry/update:
2024-02-13
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies, Karen National Union (KNU), Illegal Economy - general, Gambling
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
192.08 KB
more
Description:
"၁။ ယနေ့သည် ကရင်အမျိုးသားတရပ်လုံး လေးစားတန်ဖိုးထား ဂုဏ်ယူရသည့် (၇၄) နှစ်မြောက် ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး(ကော်သူးလေ) တပ်မတော်နေ့ဖြစ်သည်။ ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး(ကော်သူးလေ) တပ်မတော်နေ့ကို ဂုဏ်ယူဝမ်းမြောက်စွာ ကြိုဆိုပါကြောင်းနှင့် ကရင်အမျိုးသားပြည်သူ တရပ်လုံး ဘေးကင်းရန်ကွာရှိကြပါစေဟု ဆုမွန်ကောင်း တောင်းအပ်ပါသည်။။
၂။ ၁၉၄၉ ခုနှစ်၊ ဇန်နဝါရီလ (၃၁) ရက်နေ့မှ စတင်ခဲ့သော ကရင်အမျိုးသား လက်နက်ကိုင် တော်လှန်ရေးသည် အဖိနှိပ်ခံပြည်သူလူထုနှင့်တကွ ရပ်တည်ပြီး အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ကို တွန်းလှန် ဖြိုဖျက်လာခဲ့သည်မှာ ယနေ့တိုင်ပင် ဖြစ်သည်။
၃။ ၁၉၅၆ ခုနှစ် ဇူလိုင်လ (၅) ရက်နေ့တွင် ကရင့်အမျိုးသားလက်နက်ကိုင်တော်လှန်ရေး လမ်းစဉ်နှင့်ကိုက်ညီသော ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်မတော် (Karen National Liberation Army) ကို အတည်ပြု ပြင်ဆင်ဖွဲ့စည်းခဲ့ပြီး ထိုနေ့ကို အစွဲပြု၍ ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး(ကော်သူးလေ) တပ်မတော်နေ့အဖြစ် သတ်မှတ်ဂုဏ်ပြု ကျင်းပခဲ့သည်။
၄။ ကရင့်အမျိုးသားတော်လှန်ရေးခရီးကြမ်းအတွင်း အသက်၊ အိုးအိမ်၊ စည်းစိမ် စွန့်လွှတ် ပေးလှူခဲ့ကြသော ကရင်အမျိုးသားအာဇာနည်ခေါင်းဆောင်ကြီးများ၊ သူရဲကောင်းများနှင့်တကွ ပြည်သူများအားလုံးကို အလေးအနက် အောက်မေ့ဦးညွှတ်အပ်ပါသည်။
၅။ ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး(ကော်သူးလေ) တပ်မတော်သည် အဖိနှိပ်ခံ တော်လှန်ပြည်သူများနှင့် ရပ်တည်လျက် အာဏာသိမ်းအကြမ်းဖက်စစ်တပ်အား နိုင်ငံရေး၊ စစ်ရေး အဘက်ဘက်မှ ပြင်းပြင်းထန်ထန် ခုခံတွန်းလှန်နေသည့်အပြင် ပြည်သူ့ခုခံတွန်းလှန်စစ် အောင်မြင်စေရန် နည်းနာပေါင်းစုံဖြင့် ပါဝင်ပံ့ပိုးကူညီလျက်ရှိသည်။
၆။ ယနေ့အချိန် အုပ်ချုပ်ရေး၊ စစ်ရေး၊ သံတမန်ရေး၊ စီးပွားရေး၊ စိတ်ဓာတ်ရေးရာ စသည့် မျက်နှာစာ အများအပြားတွင် ကြီးမားသော ထိခိုက် ဆုံးရှုံးမှုများနှင့် အကြပ်တွေ့လျက်ရှိသည့် အကြမ်းဖက် စစ်တပ်အား အမြစ်ပြတ်သည်အထိ ခုခံတွန်းလှန်ပြီး ပြည်သူလူထုတရပ်လုံး၏ မျှော်မှန်းချက် ဖြစ်သည့် ကိုယ်ပိုင်ပြဌာန်းခွင့်၊ တန်းတူရေးနှင့် တရားမျှတမှု အပြည့်အဝ အာမခံသော ဖက်ဒရယ် ဒီမိုကရေစီပြည်ထောင်စုကို အတူတကွ လက်တွဲညီစွာဖြင့် ကြိုးပမ်း တည်ဆောက်နိုင်လိမ့်မည်ဟု လေးနက်စွာ ယုံကြည်ပါသည်။ ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး (ကော်သူးလေ)တပ်မတော်သည် ကရင်အမျိုးသား တရပ်လုံး၏ အကျိုးစီးပွားကို မြင့်တင်ပေး နိုင်သော၊ ပြည်သူလူထု၏ အသက်၊ အိုးအိမ်၊ စည်းစိမ်ကို ကာကွယ်စောင့်ရှောက်နိုင်သော တပ်မတော်ကောင်း တရပ်အဖြစ် ဆက်လက်ရပ်တည် နိုင်ပါစေကြောင်း ဆုမွန်ကောင်း တောင်းလျက် ယနေ့ကျရောက်သော (၇၄) နှစ်မြောက် ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေး (ကော်သူးလေ) တပ်မတော်နေ့သို့ ဤသဝဏ်လွှာကို ဂုဏ်ယူစွာဖြင့် ပေးပို့အပ်ပါသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Ministry of Defence - National Unity Government of Myanmar
Date of publication:
2023-07-05
Date of entry/update:
2023-07-05
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
National Unity Government (NUG), Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, Karen National Union (KNU), Karen history
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
325.18 KB
more
Description:
"Message from Chairman Gen. Saw Mutu Say Poe on the 74th Karen National Day..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of publication:
2022-02-11
Date of entry/update:
2022-02-11
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Political History, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
715.59 KB
more
Description:
"Last week in East and Southeast Asia, Myanmar military forces clashed with the Karen National Union/Karen National Liberation Army (KNU/KNLA) in Kayin state. Meanwhile, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) barred the head of the Myanmar military regime from attending the ASEAN summit beginning on 26 October, instead offering an invite to a non-political representative. In Indonesia, state forces shot a Papuan miner during an eviction operation at a mining site. North Korea test-fired a new type of submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). In South Korea, workers affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) held mass rallies across the country to demand better work conditions. Lastly, in Taiwan, a series of rallies were reported ahead of a vote to recall a legislator on 23 October.
In Myanmar, clashes between the Myanmar military and the KNU/KNLA broke out in Kawkareik and Kyainseikgyi townships in northern Kayin state last week. On 20 October, military forces reportedly pushed into KNU-controlled territory in Kyainseikgyi township, prompting the firefight. The clash came as military sources confirmed reports that additional troops had been deployed to northern Kayin state to counter the KNU/KNLA, which the regime has accused of providing military training to People’s Defense Force (PDF) members (Karen News, 18 October 2021).
Meanwhile, ASEAN announced on 16 October that the regime chief, Min Aung Hlaing, would not be invited to attend the ASEAN summit starting on 26 October. ASEAN cites a lack of cooperation from the regime in taking action on the agreed points in the Five-Point Consensus reached between them in April (RFA, 19 October 2021). The Five-Point Consensus calls for an immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar, constructive dialogue among all stakeholders, the appointment of an ASEAN special envoy, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and a visit by the envoy to Myanmar. The decision marks a rare move by the bloc, known for its united decision-making, non-interference, and engagement (Reuters, 26 October 2021). The regime has since responded sharply to the decision, asserting its right to a ministerial representative at the summit according to the ASEAN charter. The regime vows to pursue “due processes under the ASEAN Charter and the Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement Mechanisms in resolving the differences on Myanmar’s representation at the ASEAN Meetings” (RFA, 25 October 2021)..."
Source/publisher:
Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project
Date of publication:
2021-10-27
Date of entry/update:
2021-10-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Karen National Union (KNU), ASEAN-Burma relations
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
252.42 KB
more
Description:
"Today is the 6th Anniversary of signing the Nationwide Ceasefi re Agreement. With the aspiration
to achieve sustainable peace, the Karen National Union signed the Nationwide Ceasefi re
Agreement and committed to solve the over 70 years long political problems peacefully through
political dialogue, which was not resolved by the successive governments.
In the NCA implementation we, the KNU. along with the implementation partners have firmly and
tirelessly overcome many challenges. W e achieved the gradual progressive trend of establishing a
federal democratic country beyond 2020 through the Three Steps and Three Phases Approach in
the Union Accord.
It is with great regret that we see the military coup on 1 February 2021 has breached all NCA's
principles and stopped the NCA implementation, so that the military returns to dictatorship with
the use of coercive force for solving what are political problems.
As a result of the military coup, all citizens and ethnic people arc suffering from many socioeconomic
related problems resulting from the various forms of oppression, and the country faces
collapse. The KNU stands on the principle of " solving political problems by political means" .
However, according to our experience in the implementation of the NCA. to achieve this it totally
depends on the stakeholder's honesty and commitment to comply with the agreements.
Therefore, to save the country from chaos, the KNU requests to all relevant stakeholders the
following:
1. To release unconditionally those detainees including political leaders detained following
the coup.
2. To withdraw police and military troops back to their stations/bases throughout the country
and to declare and practically implement a nationwide ceasefire.
3. Focus immediately on implementation of humanitarian activities freely with the help of
international support, remove restriction on all mcdical treatments including Covid-19
vaccination, protection, and treatment.
4. Release firm orders for the provision of civilian protection to be followed by the police and
military forces, and broad international monitoring process through international observers.
5. Accept UN-supported international mediation for the ending of the military rule, and
negotiation for transfer of power to an inclusive and participative unity government with
representation from all key stakeholders who are committed to federalism and solving the
over 70 years long internal political conflict, rooted problems and causes.
6. Tatmadaw to declare officially its commitment to a federal democra tic state, and its
withdrawal from politics.
The KNU firmly believes that with the country of Burma’s diversity of ethnicity and religions, its
history of chauvinism and dictatorship, the problems of Burma can only be solved, and a peaceful
society can only be achieved, by building a federal state and applying democratic practices..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of publication:
2021-10-15
Date of entry/update:
2021-10-15
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Karen National Union (KNU), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
Format :
pdf pdf pdf
Size:
50.52 KB 181.14 KB 226.76 KB
more
Description:
"The shadow National Unity Government’s (NUG) declaration of war earlier this week against the military regime has echoes of 1949, when armed organizations rebelled against the government, occupied half the country and fought the Myanmar military.
With NUG Acting President Duwa Lashila calling on civilian resistance fighters to target the junta and its assets and for ethnic armed organizations to join the fight against the regime, the NUG is hoping to unify anti-coup forces to fight the junta in more effective fashion.
But just a few months after Myanmar gained its independence in 1948, several armed organizations took up arms against the then Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) government over ideological conflicts and racial tensions. At that time Myanmar’s population was 17 million, compared to around 54 million today.
The Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), the then armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU) – which was established before independence – rebelled against the government after their demand to be allowed to secede from the Union was denied. The KNU was also at odds with the government over the Karen peoples’ territorial boundaries within the Union.
Two Karen battalions from the Myanmar military – one based in Pyay and the other in Taungoo in today’s Bago Region – as well as ethnic Karen police joined the KNDO. Other leftist units in Myanmar’s military including Battalions 1 and 3, based respectively in Thayet in today’s Magwe Region and Mingalardon in Yangon, and some Bago-based units also rebelled against the government.
The military-published history of internal insurgency in Myanmar said that there were only around 2,000 officers and men left in Myanmar’s military at the time.
Anti-government groups, which also included different factions of communists, were stronger than the Myanmar military because they had weapons left behind after World War II and also because the defecting units took their arms with them when they joined the revolt.
Troops from the Communist Party of Burma, which had a force of between 10,000 and 15,000 fighters, occupied towns in today’s Ayeyarwady, Bago, Mandalay and Magwe regions, including Hinthada, Pyinmana, Yamethin, Myingyan and Pakokku.
Meanwhile, the white-band faction of the People’s Volunteer Organization, which was formed by independence hero General Aung San from war veterans as his own paramilitary force for the independence struggle, occupied towns in central Myanmar.
The KNDO, which was believed to have at least 10,000 soldiers, occupied Mawlamyine and Thaton in Mon State, in collaboration with the Mon National Defence Organisation. By early 1949, the KNDO had taken control of Mandalay, Pyin Oo Lwin, Taungoo, Pathein, Meiktila and several other towns before its troops reached and occupied Insein Township in the north of Yangon.
Between February 1 and May 22 in 1949, the KNDO was able to retain control of Insein, posing a great threat to the central government in Yangon.
Amid the chaos, government employees went on strike across the country, which was ultimately counterproductive as it gave the government a breathing space. “At the time, the Union government was completely broke. Fortunately, government employees came out on strike across the country. We didn’t even have the money to pay their salaries,” said the then Prime Minister U Nu.
Yangon was surrounded by the vanguards of armed groups. The government was unable to control the rebellion around the country and was struggling to hold Yangon. Some international newspapers even started referring to the U Nu government as the ‘Yangon Government’.
“The Union of Myanmar (then Burma) was rocked violently throughout 1948 and until April 1949,” wrote U Thant, a civil servant in the U Nu government who would later become United Nations Secretary-General, in his book Journey to Pyithawthar.
As Myanmar’s military units were short of weapons, U Nu had to fly to New Delhi to seek help from his Indian counterpart Jawaharlal Nehru. Only after Nehru provided arms was the AFPFL government able to start reoccupying the towns taken by the rebels.
U Nu’s government was also helped by the fact that the different armed groups were no longer collaborating because of their different political objectives. By 1950, the government had retaken control of most of the occupied towns. But more armed groups would later emerge and, over the next 70 years, Myanmar would continue to suffer from insurgencies until today’s civil war..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
Date of publication:
2021-09-10
Date of entry/update:
2021-09-10
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Politics and Government - global and regional - general studies, strategies, theory, National Unity Government (NUG), The Communist Party of Burma (CPB), Political History, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Description:
"Today marks the 74th KNDO day. KWO sends our best wishes to all KNDO soldiers. We encourage all our Karen people to be happy and healthy and to be hopeful, despite the daily challenges we face. The enemy never sleeps. They look for ways to destroy the Karen people, but if we are strong and aware and work together, we will reach our freedom through encouragement and determination..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Women's Organization
Date of publication:
2021-07-16
Date of entry/update:
2021-09-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
188.44 KB
more
Description:
"We, KWO, send our best wishes to you all on June 14th which marks the day our founding father, President Saw Ba U Gyi, formed the KawThoo Lei government and announced to the world.Kaw Thoo Lei day was formed on 14th June 1949. We, the Karen people, fight for peace, freedom and equality. We formed our Karen revolution to protect our people and our land from any bad events to come. Our wishes for peace have still not been met. The Burmese soldiers still violate our human rights and threaten our livelihoods with weapons and airstrikes. Now there are many IDPs in our Karen State and all around Burma. KWO would like all our Karen people around the world to work together as we can for our Karen people to escape from bad things and to achieve our freedom. We will continue to do our best to achieve our goals..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Women's Organization
Date of publication:
2021-06-14
Date of entry/update:
2021-09-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
102.89 KB
more
Description:
"KWO sends our best wishes to all in the Karen Army and to all Karen around the world on July 5th which marks the day of the 72nd Karen National Liberation Army day. We may have different ideas and thoughts but we have the same goal to have our rights and freedoms and to decide our own political destiny. KWO calls for all Karen people to work together so we can understand each other peacefully, and to support our KNLA until we archive our goal. Peace means strength for our Karen people in this situation to overcome the enemy..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Women's Organization
Date of publication:
2021-07-05
Date of entry/update:
2021-09-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
209.33 KB
more
Description:
"1. On the 24th of August 2021, KNU Minister Saw Shwe Maung issued a letter to the Karen Military Brigades, Battalions, and Township Administration Offices. The subject letter advised that the Burmese Coup Military and Border Guard Force (BGF) would be entering the Karen liberated areas, to conduct unwarranted searches for those who identified as members of the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) and National Unity Government (NUG).
2. On the 19th of August 2021, Myanmar Military Coup Council’s Deputy General Soe Win attended at the Burmese Military Brigade 44 stationed in Thaton District to command the advancement of the major offensive on the Karen National Union (KNU). This resulted in the Burmese Military and BGF troops entering the KNU controlled areas with forced violence.
3. Upon attack, Karen villagers were threatened to vacant their homes within two days, when the offensive would be increased. The KNU has since reported there being more than 81 army clashes between its troops and the opposing BGF and Burmese Military, ascending within Thaton District, Taungoo District, Nyaunglebin Township, and Papun District, since the 1st of August 2021.
4. Notwithstanding Minister Shwe Maung’s repeated assertion that (as their representative) the KNU’s underlying objective is to succeed in negotiation by way of political solution rather than the Myanmar Military’s violent approach, his actions and blatant disregard for the present situation of the Karen has been to the contrary; further disdaining the genuine efforts of the democratic forces (including NUG and PDF) to end military rule and rebuild the future Federal Democratic Union of Myanmar. The Minister’s ill-intentions are evident in his cooperating with the Myanmar Military’s scheme for illegitimate control of the liberated areas and people.
5. Pursuant to the KNU Media Release of the 2nd February 2021, the Myanmar Military Coup has been strongly condemned, along with the Myanmar Police forces for their excessive violence against peaceful civilian protestors. The KNU has since allied with the entire population of Myanmar standing against the Coup in striving to transition to a democratic Burma.
6. The KNU’s condemnation of the Military Coup has been reaffirmed by the bodies which are also signatories to the Nationwide Cease Fire (NCA). These bodies have collectively undertaken to suspend their involvement in the National Peace Conference with the Myanmar Military junta for as long as the Coup persists. In expressing their full support for the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), the signatories have also confirmed their intent to assist the CDM by all means necessary, alongside the democratic forces within Burma, abroad, and the International Community.
7. The premise upon which Minister Shwe Maung’s letter of the 24th of August 2021 is based, together with his misconduct in cooperating with the Myanmar Military Coup, contradicts the principled objectives of the Karen National Union and their above-mentioned Media Release, entirely.
8. The Minister’s cooperation with the advancement of the Military Coup’s offensive including their plan to arrest and detain members of democratic forces, whilst assaulting any civilian who is seen to be in support of such, would constitute as crimes against humanity and war crimes, and deemed to be breaches of Articles 3 and 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
9. Despite being issued an order for provisional measures by the International Court of Justice to prevent genocidal acts, the Myanmar Military junta has continued to commit crimes against humanity. In assisting the junta and representing the KNU, Minister Saw Shwe Maung’s intentions and actions evidently misrepresent the founding principles of the Karen National Union on a global scale.
The Australian Karen Organisation Inc. continues to encourage the KNU, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO) in working with PDF, Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs), CDM, NUG (all inclusive of domestic and international democratic forces) to end the Myanmar Military rule, and strive for the future Federal Democratic Union of Myanmar..."
Source/publisher:
Australian Karen Organisation
Date of publication:
2021-08-30
Date of entry/update:
2021-09-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Anti-coup protesters, National Unity Government (NUG), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
162.47 KB
more
Sub-title:
Ethnic-army commanders confess to Fortify Rights on massacre of 25 men, deny wrongdoing
Description:
"International justice mechanisms should investigate the recent Karen National Defence Organization (KNDO)-led massacre of 25 unarmed men in Karen State, said Fortify Rights today. Two senior commanders of the KNDO—General Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lieutenant Saw Ba Wah—confessed to Fortify Rights that soldiers under their command and control detained and subsequently murdered 25 unarmed men in plainclothes on June 1, 2021.
Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya denied any wrongdoing, claimed the victims were Myanmar Army “spies” and said his soldiers “had to finish them up, otherwise they try to run away during the fighting and then they [would] come back, and it would be very bad for us.”
Senior leadership of the Karen National Union (KNU)—the political wing controlling the KNDO—confirmed to Fortify Rights on August 11 that they would cooperate with international investigators and share evidence related to the KNDO massacre and other atrocity crimes, including Myanmar-Army-led atrocities. The KNU committed to provide evidence to international accountability mechanisms, which should include the United Nations-mandated Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM). The KNU is simultaneously conducting its own investigation of the extrajudicial killings committed by the KNDO.
KNU leadership told Fortify Rights this marks the first time they have agreed to cooperate directly with international investigators and international justice mechanisms.
“This was a massacre, and it should be investigated and prosecuted,” said Matthew Smith, Chief Executive Officer at Fortify Rights. “The KNU is setting an important example in transparency, cooperation, and commitment to share evidence of atrocities with international justice mechanisms.”
On May 31, the KNDO detained 47 people—31 men, six women, and ten children—in Kanele (also referred to as Ka Ne Lay or K’Neh Lay) village in Myawaddy Township, Karen State near the Thailand border. On June 1, the KNDO massacred 25 of the detainees—all men—and between June 1 and 9, released the rest, including six men and all 16 women and children.
Fortify Rights interviewed KNDO Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya, KNDO Lieutenant Saw Ba Wah, two KNU officials, a representative of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)—the KNU’s other armed branch—a member of Karen civil society, and independent analysts about the June 1 massacre. Fortify Rights also reviewed and analyzed a mobile-phone video and photographs and, on August 11, met senior leaders of the KNU.
On June 11 and 12, the Myanmar junta reportedly discovered the bodies of the 25 men, some of whom reportedly had their hands tied behind their backs. Junta-run media Global New Light of Myanmar claimed the victims were engineers and road workers.
During an English-language interview with Fortify Rights on July 12, KNDO commander Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya said: “The people who were killed were Burmese military intelligence, and they are working on the road constructions [sic], and they [would get] all the information and pass over the information to their outpost leader near the construction.”
Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya told Fortify Rights the KNDO had been monitoring the men:
[B]efore the arrest, we sent our intelligence, and also we know about the whole situation of what they [were] trying to do. Mostly, military engineer teams are mostly military intelligence. They are not supposed to do military construction in Karen State, especially in close to our military base camp, and they have drones. They have the equipment. They were spying on us every night before the arrest took place.
When asked if the victims were armed, Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya said: “No, they didn’t have weapons, but they [are] always connected to the military outpost in Kanele.”
Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya confirmed that his soldiers asked him what they should do with the 25 men that they had detained. He told Fortify Rights that he instructed the soldiers: “‘Do what you can. Whatever you can do, you know, over there.’” He later added: “We just told them whatever is suitable that you think, because we are not in the area. Whatever is suitable, then whatever is appropriate. I think they did the right thing.”
“This is something [that] happens in a war zone,” he continued. “You have to understand this stuff [is] what happens in a war zone.” Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya added:
It’s not normal to kill prisoners of war. We never kill prisoners of war—only the intelligence spy. The Burmese, also, when they arrest the intelligence and spies, they kill them right away . . . The same as the enemy, you know? When we capture them, we kill them. Even during the Second World War, when they capture spies, they kill them . . . Military spies, intelligence, and prisoners of war are totally different. You got to know about this stuff . . . And also, the incident happened during the fighting, not during the calm-like period. During the fighting, they were shelling at the same time. They were captured, but they would try to run away when the ground troops tried [to] move close to us. Twenty-five [men were killed]. They were buried, and then the Burmese took [them] out. The Burmese soldiers got into the area, [and] they took [them] out . . . They dug them out [of the graves].
Describing the tactics of his soldiers, Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya told Fortify Rights: “They didn’t kill them brutally. They shot and killed [them]. [They did] not hit them with a stick or anything. This is something that happens in a war zone. You have to understand.”
Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya confirmed to Fortify Rights that KNDO Lieutenant Saw Ba Wah was the operations commander directing the forces who killed the 25 unarmed men.
On July 27, with Karen to English-language interpretation and, at times, directly in English, Lt. Saw Ba Wah told Fortify Rights:
Before we killed them, we asked them questions. We asked them questions and who they are and what they are doing . . . They responded [to] us [that] they are from the [Myanmar military] base . . . From, like, [the] general headquarters. They are not civilians. We got their rank. We got their uniform, the helmet, the rank, uniform, and remote control, drone remote control.
Describing the killing in detail, Lt. Saw Ba Wah said: “We killed them in our farm or field and gathered them and left them in groups . . . [We did] not [kill them] one by one. We killed them all at the same time . . . We tied them. We tied them to their hands with rope.”
When asked by Fortify Rights who gave the order to kill the men, Lt. Saw Ba Wah said he received orders from the KNU:
I was in the headquarter office, and [the KNU] just told me: “You have to do it because you don’t have any other option. If you don’t [kill] them, then they will [kill] us, since [the Myanmar Army] are close to you. So, if you want, do it. There is no place and food to feed them.”
Lt. Saw Ba Wah said that he received orders from the “captain of intelligence” at the KNU “to do what we must do,” and he provided Fortify Rights with the official’s name. According to Lt. Saw Ba Wah, the KNU is investigating that person and his role in the massacre and has yet to suspend him from his duties. His name is on file with Fortify Rights.
In a public statement on June 16, the KNU committed to investigate the massacre, saying the KNU “follows the provisions of the Geneva Convention” and “will conduct an investigation to take action on this incident in accordance with KNU’s rules and regulations.”
Throughout the months of August and July, Fortify Rights engaged KNU representatives about the investigation and killing. On August 11, Fortify Rights spoke with senior KNU Central Executive Committee officials who confirmed the organization’s readiness to cooperate with international accountability mechanisms on this case, as well as on other atrocity crimes, including Myanmar-Army-led atrocities.
On July 16 and 30, Fortify Rights also spoke with the investigation commission of the KNU Central Executive Committee and on July 13 with a representative from the KNU’s foreign affairs office.
On July 30, a lead member of the investigation commission of the KNU Central Executive Committee told Fortify Rights in a communication that the KNU is investigating the killings, adding: the “committee’s goal is [to] try to investigate the truth about what really happened. And then, we’ll report to the leaders [of the KNU].”
Earlier, on June 30, a KNU representative spoke to Fortify Rights about the investigation, saying: “[W]e have a deep commitment to the [Geneva] Conventions. Even though [Myanmar military personnel] are our enemy, we should treat them as humans . . . We recognize and respect [international] humanitarian law.”
On July 9, the KNU committee leading the investigation said it “suspended temporarily” the KNDO commanders Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lt. Saw Ba Wah. On July 11, Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya released a statement rejecting the suspension.
When asked about the KNU investigation, Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya told Fortify Rights: “We cannot comply [with the KNU investigation], because this [is] not the right approach . . . Because before these kinds of things happen, we should have [a] discussion.”
On July 22, in a statement, the Karen Human Rights Group—a Karen-led human rights organization—said it “strongly condemns this mass killing” and called on the KNU to conduct an “impartial investigation.” On the same day, the Legal Aid Network—an independent organization based in Kachin State, Myanmar—published a five-page briefing, calling on all stakeholders including KNDO to “ensure respect for, and comply with, the Geneva Convention.”
In June, junta-led media published the identities of those the KNDO had detained on May 31 in Kanele village. The list identified the names, ages, and home townships of the 25 victims of the massacre, aged 18 to 52, including also the six men and 16 women and children whom they released between June 1 and 9. Fortify Rights reviewed and translated the list into English.
Since the February 1 attempted coup, the Myanmar junta air force has bombed and strafed KNU-controlled towns and villages, displacing more than 100,000 civilians in Karen State, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Armed conflict between the KNU and the Myanmar military began in 1949, making the situation in Karen State the world’s longest-running civil war. The Myanmar military has perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians in Karen State with impunity for decades.
“There would be tremendous value in the KNU cooperating with international investigators to prosecute atrocities,” said Matthew Smith. “The KNU is in a position to help secure justice not only in the case of these recent killings but also regarding the Myanmar military’s crimes against Karen civilians over many years. We encouraged the KNU to do everything in its power to secure justice, and its leadership committed to do so.”
In September 2018, the U.N. Human Rights Council established the IIMM to “collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011.”
As Myanmar’s civil wars intensify, it is critical that all parties to the many armed conflicts are cognizant of their international legal obligations, said Fortify Rights.
Human rights law and the laws of war protect against the summary execution of spies and unarmed combatants in situations of wartime detention. Common Article 3 of the four 1949 Geneva Conventions, which applies in situations of non-international armed conflict and to state and non-state actors alike, protects “members of armed forces who have laid down their arms” and those no longer playing an active part in the hostilities by reason of injury, detention, or other cause. International law also prohibits torture, murder, and mutilation. Violations of Common Article 3 constitute war crimes and therefore incur individual criminal responsibility under international humanitarian law.
Moreover, under international law, those suspected of directly perpetrating war crimes, as well as their commanders and other superiors, can be held criminally responsible under various modes of liability.
Customary international humanitarian law—i.e., the laws of war that bind all state and non-state actors engaged in armed conflicts—demands that commanders and other superiors are criminally responsible for war crimes committed by their subordinates. The International Committee of the Red Cross (“ICRC”), widely viewed as an authority on the content and interpretation of customary international humanitarian law, has confirmed that “State practice establishes this rule as a norm of customary international law applicable in both international and non-international armed conflicts.”
According to the ICRC, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is one of the principal sources to inform this customary international legal obligation. Article 28 (a) of the Rome Statute establishes criminal liability for “a military commander or person effectively acting as a military commander” when international crimes take place “by forces under his or her effective command and control” or “as a result of his or her failure to exercise control properly over such forces.” Further, a commander must have known or should have known about the crimes and “failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures within his or her power” to prevent, repress, or report the crimes for criminal liability to be established.
As Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lt. Saw Ba Wah confessed, the KNDO detained and then killed-in-detention 25 men on June 1, 2021, whom they suspected of being Myanmar military spies. Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lt. Saw Ba Wah confirmed that the victims were unarmed, in plainclothes, and detained by KNDO forces when they were summarily executed. Lt. Saw Ba Wah confirmed the KNDO summarily executed the victims simultaneously in an assemblage setting and with their hands tied.
The acts described by Gen. Ner Dah Bo Mya and Lt. Saw Ba Wah amount to war crimes, said Fortify Rights. Individuals in the KNDO and KNU command structure implicated in these incidents should be identified, investigated, and prosecuted in line with international standards.
On June 17, the U.N. in Myanmar said in a statement in relation to murders by the KNDO that those responsible for human rights violations should be “held accountable, including the perpetrators and their chain of command.”
“The Myanmar military has perpetrated mass atrocity crimes for decades with impunity but that does not give any other party in the country the right to do the same,” said Matthew Smith. “Impunity must end wherever it rears its head.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Fortify Rights"
Date of publication:
2021-08-17
Date of entry/update:
2021-08-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Armed conflict in Karen State - the human rights situation
Language:
more
Description:
"Dear Patriotic Karen National Leaders, Comrades, Karen Nationals and the People,
Today, August 12, 2021 is the 71st Anniversary of the Karen National Martyrs Day.
It is the Karen National Martyrs Day designated for commemoration of President Saw Ba
U Gyi and Karen national leaders, soldiers and the entire Karen people, who have
sacrificed their lives for freedom of the Karen people from subjugation and oppression.
For the Karen people, today is a day of sorrow, as well as a day to feel pride in the
knowledge that there are patriotic leaders, soldiers and the Karen people, who would
readily sacrifice their lives, limbs, time, money, comfort and material riches for attainment
of the Karen national aspirations and goals.
Dear Patriotic Karen National Leaders, Comrades, Karen Nationals and the People,
Everything has its price. The martyrs' sacrifices, the shedding of blood and
accepting the losses, and participation in the struggle for national cause have paid for the
cost for national freedom. On such an occasion, I feel proud of the Karen martyrs, who
stood up firmly for the national aspirations and political goals, in accordance with
conviction, until the end of their lives.
In the successive eras, our national leaders have striven, by various means, for the
fulfillment of our Karen national aspirations and political goals. Inevitably, they have had
to resort to armed resistance in the defense of the lives and homes of the Karen people.
At the same time, effort has been made to resolve the political problems by political
means. However, the seizing of power on February 1, 2021, has been a political setback,
causing terror, atrocities and killing of the people to spread to areas of large cities and
human centers. Terror, atrocities and killing of the people are ongoing without end, up to
this day. So long as there is no political will for dialogue to resolve the political problems,
it is impossible to place our hope on political dialogue. For that reason, we have to act in
defense of our land, and the lives, homes and properties of our people while keeping the
door open for the political dialogue. I would like to urge our own nationals to uphold and
act in accordance with the Four Principles of President Saw Ba U Gyi.
1
nationals, there are weaknesses among the leaders due to lack of political knowledge,
educational training, skills and funds. These problems have adversely impacted selfconfidence and trust among ourselves, in addition to our unity and cooperation. Whatever
it may be, for the Karen nationals, there are still our national leaders and patriotic soldiers,
and additionally there are our people, heroes who will toil on and sacrifice their lives,
sweat and blood until the end. At home, we have our national leaders, patriot soldiers and,
in addition to our people, there are those who have gone to live in various countries and
who are loyal to our nation and stand firmly for our conviction and national goals. There
are leaders, soldiers and the people, who are struggling and holding hands with us, in spite
of poverty and difficulties. The patriot leaders at home and abroad who are true to our
conviction and our national goals, the soldiers and all the masses are our genuine and
main strength, and they are the patriots, who will uphold the convictions and fulfil
successfully the goals of our national martyrs.
Dear Patriotic Karen National Leaders, Comrades, Karen Nationals and the People,
The Karen people are a nationality having their own history, culture, customs and
traditions. They have the right and duty to protect their history, culture, customs and
traditions, and resist every attempt to harm, impede or ruin them. They have to defend
their peace, properties and development, and overthrow any move to upset them. They
have the absolute right to defend the lives of our Karen nationals and regions. I would like
to urge our Karen nationals on their part to strive on until the end, with unity and
steadfastness, for achievement of the goals of our nation and the Karen martyrs..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union
Date of publication:
2021-08-12
Date of entry/update:
2021-08-12
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Karen history, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies
Language:
Format :
pdf pdf pdf
Size:
41.83 KB 228.71 KB 671.04 KB
Local URL:
2021-08-12-KNU-president-Gen.Mutu-Sae-Poe's-Letter-sent-on-71st-Anniversary-of-Karen-National-Martyrs-Day-tu-en.pdf- 2021-08-12-KNU-president-Gen.Mutu-Sae-Poe's-Letter-sent-on-71st-Anniversary-of-Karen-National-Martyrs-Day-pio-bu.pdf
- 2021-08-12-KNU-president-Gen.Mutu-Sae-Poe's-Letter-sent-on-71st-Anniversary-of-Karen-National-Martyrs-Day-pio-karen.pdf
more
Description:
"NCA အတိုင်း လိုက်နာသွားမည်ဟု KNLA စစ်ဦးစီးချုပ် ထုတ်ပြန်
ဇွန်လ ၉ ရက်၊ ၂၀၂၁ ခုနှစ်။ ကေအိုင်စီ
ကေအဲန်ယူ-ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံး လက်မှတ်ရေးထိုးထားသည့် တစ်နိုင်ငံလုံးပစ်ခတ်တိုက်ခိုက်မှု ရပ်စဲရေး သဘောတူ စာချုပ် (NCA) အတိုင်း တိကျစွာလိုက်နာကျင့်သုံးသွားမည်ဖြစ်ကြောင်း ကရင်အမျိုးသား လွတ်မြောက်ရေး တပ်မတော်-KNLA စစ်ဦးစီးချုပ် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး စောဂျော်နီက ယနေ့ ရက်စွဲဖြင့် ၎င်း၏ သဘောထား ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သည်။
ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်မတော် -KNLA အနေဖြင့် KNU၏ နိုင်ငံရေး ဦးဆောင်မှုလမ်းညွှန် မှုကို ခံယူလျက် ဒီမိုကရေစီအရေး၊ တန်းတူရေး နှင့် ကရင်အမျိုးသားအရေးကို အစဉ်ဆောင်ရွက်လာခဲ့ရာ မေလ ၁၀ ရက်နေ့က ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သော KNU ဥက္ကဌ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီးစောမူတူးစေဖိုး၏ သဘောထားအတိုင်းလိုက်နာ ခံယူသွား မည်ဟုလည်း ဖော်ပြထားသည်။
ထို့အပြင် ကရင်အမျိုးသား လွတ်မြောက်ရေး တပ်မတော်(KNLA) တပ်ဖွဲ့ဝင်များအားလုံး အနေဖြင့်လည်း စစ်စည်းကမ်းများနှင့်အညီ တိကျစွာ လိုက်နာကြရန်လည်း ၎င်း၏ သဘောထားတွင် တိုက်တွန်းထားသည်။
ပြီးခဲ့သည့် မေလ ၁၀ ရက်နေ့က KNU ဥက္ကဌ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး စောမူတူးစေးဖိုးက သက်ဆိုင်ရာ အစုအဖွဲ့ များ အနေဖြင့် အပစ်ရပ် စာချုပ်(NCA) မူဘောင်များအတိုင်း တိကျစွာ လိုက်နာကျင့်သုံးပြီး ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေး ကို ထိန်းသိမ်းကြရန် တိုက်တွန်းထားသည့် သဘောထားထုတ်ပြန်ချက်တစ်စောင် ထုတ်ပြန်ခဲ့သေးသည်။..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Information Center -KIC via The Irrawaddy - Burmese Edition
Date of publication:
2021
Date of entry/update:
2021-06-10
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Armed conflict and peace-building in Burma - theoretical, strategic and general
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
181.83 KB
more
Description:
"Fighting between Myanmar's military and armed ethnic groups is moving so close to the border it can be seen from Thailand. While a leader from the Karen National Liberation Army says their small victories against the junta can help the country-wide push for democracy, it comes at a cost to people living near the border..."
Source/publisher:
"CNN" (USA)
Date of publication:
2021-05-01
Date of entry/update:
2021-05-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Armed conflict in Karen State - military activities and their impact on village life, including livelihood, health, education and land tenure security, Tatmadaw (Burma Army), Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians, Karen National Union (KNU), 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, ASEAN-Burma relations
Language:
more
Description:
"Thousands of ethnic Karen villagers in Myanmar are poised to cross into Thailand if, as expected, fighting intensifies between the Myanmar army and Karen insurgents, joining those who have already escaped the turmoil that followed a Feb. 1 coup.
Karen rebels and the Myanmar army have clashed near the Thai border in the weeks since Myanmar's generals ousted an elected government led by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi, displacing villagers on both sides of the border. read more
"People say the Burmese will come and shoot us, so we fled here," Chu Wah, a Karen villager who crossed over to Thailand with his family this week from the Ee Thu Hta displacement camp in Myanmar, told Reuters.
"I had to flee across the river," Chu Wah said, referring to the Salween river that forms the border in the area.
The Karen Peace Support Network says thousands of villagers are taking shelter on the Myanmar side of the Salween and they will flee to Thailand if the fighting escalates.
"In coming days, more than 8,000 Karen along the Salween river will have to flee to Thailand. We hope that the Thai army will help them escape the war," the group said in a post on Facebook.
Karen fighters on Tuesday overran an Myanmar army unit on the west bank of the Salween in a pre-dawn attack. The Karen said 13 soldiers and three of their fighters were killed. read more The Myanmar military responded with air strikes in several areas near the Thai border.
Thai authorities say nearly 200 villagers have crossed into Thailand this week. Thailand has reinforced its forces and restricted access to the border.
Hundreds of Thai villagers have also been displaced, moving from their homes close to the border, to deeper into Thai territory for safety.
"The situation has escalated so we can't go back," said Warong Tisakul, 33, a Thai villager from Mae Sam Laep, a settlement, now abandoned, opposite the Myanmar army post attacked this week.
“Security officials won’t let us, we can’t go back.”..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of publication:
2021-04-30
Date of entry/update:
2021-04-30
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Armed conflict in Karen State - military activities and their impact on village life, including livelihood, health, education and land tenure security, Armed conflict in Karen State - the human rights situation, Tatmadaw (Burma Army), Karen National Union (KNU), Internal displacement/forced migration of Karen villagers, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
more
Description:
"Ethnic minority Karen insurgents attacked a Myanmar army outpost near the Thai border on Tuesday in some of the most intense clashes since a military coup nearly three months ago threw the country into crisis.
The Karen National Union (KNU), Myanmar's oldest rebel force, said it had captured the army camp on the west bank of the Salween river, which forms the border with Thailand.
The Myanmar military later hit back against the insurgents with air strikes, the KNU and Thai authorities said.
The fighting took place as the junta, in a setback for diplomatic efforts by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), said it would "positively" consider the bloc's suggestions to end the turmoil in Myanmar but only when stability was restored.
The ASEAN leaders said after meeting on the weekend with the junta chief that they had reached a consensus on steps to end violence and promote dialogue between the rival Myanmar sides.
The outbreak of hostilities near the border shifted the focus of opposition to the junta away from the pro-democracy protests that have taken place in cities and towns across the country since the coup on Feb. 1.
The military overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, detained her and other civilian politicians, then cracked down with lethal force on anti-coup protesters.
Security forces have killed more than 750 civilians in the demonstrations, an activist group says.
The Karen and other ethnic minority forces based in frontier regions have supported the largely urban-based pro-democracy opponents of the junta......PRE-DAWN ATTACK: In Tuesday's fighting, villagers on the Thai side of the river said heavy gunfire started before dawn.
Video posted on social media showed flames and smoke on the forested hillside and KNU forces had captured the outpost, the group's head of foreign affairs, Saw Taw Nee, told Reuters.
The Myanmar military later mounted air strikes, Saw Taw Nee said. There was no word on casualties and 450 Thai villagers were moved away from the border to safety, the Thai military said.
The Myanmar army made no comment. It has historically portrayed itself as the one institution that can keep together the ethnically diverse country of more than 53 million people.
The KNU agreed to a ceasefire in 2012, ending its struggle for autonomy that began shortly after Myanmar’s independence from Britain in 1948.
But its forces have clashed with the army since it seized power, ending a decade of democratic reforms that had also brought relative peace to Myanmar's borderlands.
Fighting has also flared in the north and west, where the Irrawaddy news site reported 13 government soldiers were killed in clashes in Chin State over the past few days.
About 24,000 people are sheltering in the jungle after being displaced in recent weeks by violence near the Thai border, including military air strikes, Karen groups say.....'CAREFUL CONSIDERATION': Elsewhere in Myanmar, there have been few reports of bloodshed since the weekend meeting between the junta chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, and Southeast Asian leaders to try to find a way out of the crisis.
The junta, in its first official comment on the meeting, said it would give "careful consideration to constructive suggestions ... when the situation returns to stability".
The suggestions would be "positively considered" if they facilitated the junta's own "roadmap", and "serves the interests of the country", it said in a statement.
The junta did not refer to what ASEAN called a five-point consensus, issued at the end of the meeting, to end the violence and initiate talks.
ASEAN's points included appointing an envoy to visit Myanmar for talks with all sides. But Min Aung Hlaing, in comments reported in state media, said: "The visits to Myanmar proposed by ASEAN will be considered after stabilising the country."
U.N. Special Rapporteur Thomas Andrews called on Min Aung Hlaing to make a commitment to live up to the ASEAN plan.
"The people of Myanmar...need and deserve to know if it is your intention to honour this commitment," Andrews said in an open letter.
Activists have criticised the plan, saying it helped to legitimise the junta and fell far short of their demands.
In particular, it did not call for the release of Suu Kyi, 75, and other political prisoners. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners advocacy group says more than 3,400 people have been detained for opposing the coup.
Suu Kyi's party won a second term in November. The election commission said the vote was fair but the military said fraud at the polls had forced it to seize power.
Protesters against the junta were out in several places on Tuesday including the main city of Yangon, where hundreds surged down a street in a “flash mob” march, images on social media showed..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of publication:
2021-04-28
Date of entry/update:
2021-04-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Karen National Union (KNU), Anti-coup protesters, Spring Revolution, Political prisoners and other violations in Burma - reports, ASEAN-Burma relations, Freedom of opinion and expression: - the situation in Burma/Myanmar - reports, analyses, recommendations, Right to Life: reports of violations in Burma, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état
Language:
more
Description:
"Myanmar’s coup has brought war back to a remote Southeast Asian frontier after 25 years, sending a new generation of villagers in both Myanmar and Thailand running for their lives from bullets and bombs.
Ethnic Karen insurgents and the Myanmar army have engaged in heavy clashes near the Thai border in the weeks since the Feb. 1 coup, when Myanmar’s generals ousted an elected government led by democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Karen and other autonomy-seeking ethnic minority forces based in frontier regions have supported the largely urban-based pro-democracy opponents of the junta, offering refuge to some, and tension with the military has boiled up into new fighting.
Before dawn on Tuesday, Karen fighters attacked the Myanmar army's Thaw Leh Ta outpost on the west bank of the Salween River, which forms the border with Thailand as it cuts through steep, forested slopes on is way to the Bay of Bengal.
"I've never heard gunfire like this, I've never seen people needing to flee like this," said Supart Nunongpan, 44, chief of the Thai village of Mae Sam Laep, a small river port of wooden houses and shops strung out along the Thai side of the Salween.
The Myanmar army had held Thaw Leh Ta since 1995, the last time there was major fighting in the area when, after years of dry-season offensives, the Myanmar army captured the headquarters of the Karen National Union (KNU) guerrilla group, not far to the south.
Divided and driven from most of its enclaves in eastern Myanmar, the KNU agreed to a ceasefire in 2012, ending an insurgency that began soon after Myanmar gained independence in 1948.
Now war has resumed and the Myanmar military, equipped with more effective aircraft than it had 25 years ago, has launched repeated air strikes against KNU positions, sending some 15,000 villagers fleeing into the forest, with several thousand briefly seeking refuge on the Thai side of the border.
Myanmar launched air strikes on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, with fighter jets and helicopters, Thai authorities on the border said. There was no word on casualties.
About 100 villagers from Myanmar, most of them elderly, pregnant women or children, crossed to the Thai side on Wednesday to escape the air strikes, the Free Burma Rangers aid group said.....'STILL DANGEROUS': Hundreds of Thai villagers living too close to the border for comfort have also abandoned their homes and fled inland. One woman on the Thai side was wounded by a stray bullet on Tuesday, Thai authorities said.
Thai villagers are sheltering in a school and a church in the settlement of Huay Kong Kad, a safe distance from the border. They think the fighting is far from over and it is only a matter of time before Myanmar's powerful military tries to take back the lost outposts.
"I don't feel safe, it's still dangerous. I'm afraid of the air strikes," Amin, 40, another villager from Mae Sam Laep who goes by only one name, told Reuters.
The Myanmar junta has not commented on the latest clashes but the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper blamed a rogue KNU brigade for the attacks, saying most of the KNU still backed the 2012 ceasefire.
The head of foreign affairs for the KNU, Saw Taw Nee, rejected that as "nonsense", saying state media was trying to "divide and conquer".
Thailand, which played host to more than 100,000 Karen refugees for decades, has said it wants to stay out of the latest surge of fighting but will provide humanitarian help if needed.
For now, displaced Thai villagers wait. Several said they only dared slip back into Mae Sam Laep during the day to check on their homes, fearing more fighting at any time.
“I’m afraid because we live on the border. The villagers are also afraid,” village head Supart said..."
Source/publisher:
"Reuters" (UK)
Date of publication:
2021-04-29
Date of entry/update:
2021-04-29
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Armed conflict in Karen State - military activities and their impact on village life, including livelihood, health, education and land tenure security, Armed conflict in Karen State - the humanitarian situation, Karen National Union (KNU), Internal displacement/forced migration of Karen villagers, Thailand-Burma relations, 2021 Burma/Myanmar coup d'état, Armed conflict in Burma - attacks on civilians
Language:
more
Description:
"ၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခွဲးယာ်အတၢ်ဟူးတၢ်ဂဲၤတဖၣ်အပူၤသူၣ်ဘီၣ်သးစၢ်တဖၣ် ကဟူးဂဲၤပၣ်ဃုာ်အါထီၣ်၀ဲအဂီၢ် လိၣ်၀ဲအဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ် ကညီၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခွဲးယာ်ကရူၢ် KHRG ဟ့ၣ်သဆၣ်ထီၣ်၀ဲ ဖဲလါဒံၣ်စ့ဘၢၣ် ၁၀ သီလၢအလီၤဘၣ်၀ဲ ဟီၣ်ခိၣ်ဒီဘ့ၣ်ၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီ ခွဲးယာ်အမုၢ်နံၤအံၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
ကီၢ်ပယီၤပူၤန့ၣ်တုၤလၢအခဲအံၤ တၢ်မၤကမၣ်၀ဲၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခွဲးယာ်တဖၣ် ဆဲးအိၣ်ဒံး၀ဲဒီးႇ လၢၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခွဲးယာ်တၢ်တုၤသိး ထဲသိးအဂီၢ် တတုၤထီၣ်ထီၣ်ဘးဒံးဘၣ်အဃိႇသူၣ်ဘီၣ်သးစၢ်တဖၣ်ကဘၣ်ဟူးဂဲၤပၣ်ဃုာ်အါထီၣ်အဂီၢ်လိၣ်၀ဲအဂ့ၢ်န့ၣ် ကညီၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခဲွးယာ်ကရူၢ် ဟ့ၣ်သဆၣ်ထီၣ်၀ဲဖဲ တၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤ၀ဲ ၦၤဂ့ၢ်၀ီခွဲးယာ်အမုၢ်နံၤဖဲဒူသထူၣ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်ႇ ဘံလ့ကီၢ်ဆၣ်ကွံလ့သ၀ီအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2020-01-02
Date of entry/update:
2020-01-06
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Freedom of Movement, violations of in Burma/Myanmar, Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Title: Grassroots Karen Women Groups Call for Genuine Reforms and More Involvement in Burma Politics
Description:
"Karen women’s groups called for more women to be involved in Burma’s federal political and Karen National Union elections. The call was made in a statement issued after the 4th Grassroots Karen Women Seminar held during the last week of October, 2019.
The statement called for the abolishment of the 2018 Vacant Fellow and Virgin land law and for widespread land disputes to be settled fairly. The statement said women had to be included and involved in issues such as the enactment and enforcement of the women protection law, measure on refugee issue and support for cross-border aid, the abolishment of the 2008 constitution and amending to be a genuine federal constitution, to immediately stop large scale development projects in ethnic areas before genuine peace is achieved, to find solutions to overcome the deadlock on the current peace process, and to have free, fair and transparent elections with more women involved in the Burma’s 2020 general election and future KNU elections..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-10-08
Date of entry/update:
2019-12-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Various rights: reports of violations against several ethnic groups, Political analysis of Burma and the region
Language:
more
Description:
"The Karen National Union said the effectiveness and the usefulness of foreign funding has been nullified by need for ethnic armed organizations to seek permission from the government.
The National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC), formed by the President’s Office to set policies and guidelines for reconciliation and peace process taking place, sent an official letter to 10 ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) who are signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) on September 3, 2019, informing them of the procedure..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-11-12
Date of entry/update:
2019-12-02
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Funding, Karen National Union (KNU)
more
Title: GRASSROOTS KAREN WOMEN GROUPS CALL FOR GENUINE REFORMS AND MORE INVOLVEMENT IN BURMA POLITICS
Sub-title:
Karen women’s groups called for more women to be involved in Burma’s federal political and Karen National Union elections.
Description:
“The calls we made are important and need to be carefully taken into consideration. Our view is that a collective call is more effective than an individual one. Some of the points we made have already been communicated to the KNU, ethnic armed groups and the government. We have made these calls repeatedly so, we hope that the relevant government notices and implements them...”
Source/publisher:
Karen News
Date of publication:
2019-11-08
Date of entry/update:
2019-11-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
more
Description:
"The Karen National Union said the effectiveness and the usefulness of foreign funding has been nullified by need for ethnic armed organizations to seek permission from the government..."
Source/publisher:
Karen News
Date of publication:
2019-11-19
Date of entry/update:
2019-11-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Description:
"၀့ၢ်တကူၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ် (TA)ကၠိသရၣ်ႇ မုၣ်လၢအသိၣ်လိကညီလံာ်အိၣ် (၆၁ဂၤ)အံၤ ထီၣ်ဘၣ် တီၤဖုၣ်ကၠိသရၣ်တၢ်သိၣ်လိလီၤႉ ၦၤကိးဆိလၢၦၤဖျိထီၣ်ဖၠၣ်စိမိၤတဖၣ်ႇ ထီၣ်တၢ်သိၣ်လိမ့ၢ်၀ံၤန့ၣ် သိၣ်လိတီၤဖုၣ်န့ၢ်လံႉ လၢလံာ်တၢ်ဒုးသ့ၣ်ညါအပူၤ တၢ်ပာ်ဂၢၢ်ပာ်ကျၢၤအီၤကန့ၢ်အဂီၢ် ကဘၣ်ထီၣ်တၢ်သိၣ်လိအံၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ” အဂ့ၢ် မါသါ၀့အူသ့ၣ်ညါဘၣ်လီၤ..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-02-24
Date of entry/update:
2019-07-15
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Educational resources and materials (Burma- and non-Burma-related), Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Description:
"From February until early April 2019, intermittent confrontations between the Tatmadaw and the
KNLA resulted in the displacement of at least 108 people in Kheh Der village tract. The fighting
broke out because the Tatmadaw is undertaking controversial road construction works despite
the objection of local communities and the KNU..."
KHRG
Source/publisher:
Karen Human Right Group
Date of publication:
2019-04-30
Date of entry/update:
2019-05-13
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
“ပထံၣ်လၢပမ့ၢ်ဒီသဒၢလၢတၢ်ဆဲးကသံၣ်တခီ တၢ်ကီတၢ်ခဲတဖၣ်ပလဲၤခီပတာ်အီၤကန့ၢ်”
(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢ တၢ်ပၢ မုၢ်တြီၢ်(ဖၣ်ပူၣ်) တၢ်လီၢ်ဟီၣ်က၀ီၤအပူၤ စးထီၣ်ဖဲလါအီကူာ် ကတၢၢ်ဒီးလါစဲးပထ့ဘၢၣ်ကတီၢ်အံၤ ပှၤဖိသၣ်ကအိၣ်လၢ (၃၀၀)ဃၣ်ဃၣ်ဘၣ်၀ဲ တၢ်သမူးဖိတၢ်ဆါအံၤ န့ၣ်လီၤ. ဘၣ်ထွဲဒီးတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်အ၀ဲအံၤ ပှၤလၢအကူစါ၀ဲတၢ်ဆါအံၤ အဘူးကတၢၢ်လၢအမ့ၢ် (BPHWT)ပှၤနဲၣ် တၢ် စီၤ၀့ကၠီၣ်အံၤ ပထံၣ်လိာ်သံကွၢ်အီၤန့ၣ်လီၤ..."
စီၤ၀့ကၠီၣ်အံ
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2018-08-28
Date of entry/update:
2019-03-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Sgaw Kareb
more
Description:
"တကီၢ်ခါတၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်တၢ်လဲၤကျဲအိၣ်ကတာ်ထီသးတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်အံၤခ့ၣ်အဲးစံၣ်ကညီတၢ်ကစီၣ်ထံၣ်လိာ်သံကွၢ်သံဒိးဒီးကညီဒီကလုာ်တၢ်ထူၣ်ဖျဲးသုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ်ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်အဲလ်အ့ၣ်သုးရိၣ်မဲခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်(၂)သုးခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်စိ စီၤဘီကၠီၣ်ဟဲတဲ၀ဲဒ်အံၤန့ၣ်လီၤ..."
KIC
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-01-03
Date of entry/update:
2019-03-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Karen State - military activities and their impact on village life, including livelihood, health, education and land tenure security, Karen National Union (KNU), Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
"တကီၢ်ခါ တၢ်သူၣ်ထီၣ် ထံလီၢ်ကီၢ်ပူၤ တၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်တၢ်အိၣ်သးတဖၣ်၊ တၢ်ကတိၤ တၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်အပူၤ တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်တၢ်ကျိၤ လၢတၢ်အအိၣ်ကတာ်ထီအသးတဖၣ်ဒ်အမ့ၢ် တဘၣ်ထုးဖးသးဘၣ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်ဒီး တၢ်စံၣ်ညီၣ်ပၢလီၤသးခွဲးယာ်တၢ်ဂ့ၢ်တဖၣ်ဒီး တၢ်ကပာ်က့ၤ သုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ်ထဲတခါဧိၤတၢ်ဂ့ၢ်တဖၣ်အံၤ ခ့ၣ်အဲးစံၣ်=ကညီတၢ်ကစီၣ်ထံၣ်လိာ်သံကွၢ်သံဒိး၀ဲ ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ် အနဲၣ်ရွဲၣ်ခိၣ်ကျၢၢ် ပဒိၣ်စီၤတၤဒိၣ်မူ ဒ်အံၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2018-11-18
Date of entry/update:
2019-03-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Burma - Impact on village life, including health and education, Karen National Union (KNU), Other Tibeto-Burmese languages (Zo, Karen etc), Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
"Karen Poem"
(၁) ကညီဖိ မိၢ်ထံးပၢ်ထံး
ဆ့ကံၣ်ဆ့မိၢ်သူဖိလံၤ
တတူၢ်ဃီ ပမ့ၢ်ကညီ
မ့ၢ်သပၢၤဟၢတဖျၢၣ်ဃီ
ပြၣ်မါ,ပယီၤမၤသ့ၣ်ဖး.
ဖျိးကွံာ်ပ၀ဲဂၤပၤပၤ.
(၂) တနီၤလၢထံကွာ်ထံခံ
တနီၤလၢထံယံၤကီၢ်ယံၤ.
မ့ၢ်နၢ်သက့သပၢၤက့
သါပ့ၤနီၣ်လိာ်သးတသ့.
တစၢၤဃီမ့ၢ်ဘၣ်တၢ်ကီ
တဆ့ၣ်နီၤဒီးကွၢ်ကလီ.
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2018-09-18
Date of entry/update:
2019-03-26
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
"ဖဲတလၢၤကီၢ်စဲၣ်၊ ဘံလ့ကီၢ်ဆၣ်အပူၤ ကညီကလုာ်သးစၢ်သ့ၣ်တဖၣ် ဒ်သိးဟူးဂဲၤမၤတၢ်လၢ ကလုာ်ဂ့ၢ်၀ီတၢ်ဖံးတၢ် မၤတဖၣ် ဖီၣ်လိာ်သးစုအဂ့ၤထီၣ်အဂီၢ် တၢ်ဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်၀ဲဘံလ့ကီၢ်ဆၣ် ကညီသးစၢ်ဘျးစဲတခါန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
ကညီသးစၢ်ဘျးစဲ၀ဲန့ၣ် ဘၣ်တၢ်ဒုးအိၣ်ထီၣ်အီၤလၢ၀့ၢ်ဘံလ့၊ ဘိၣ်တ့ၣ်စၣ်က၀ီၤဒ့၊ စကဲပရံၣ်ယဲးတံၣ်သီခါဖၠၣ်အပူၤ ဖဲလါဖ့ၤဘြူၤအါရံၤ ၁၇သီ၊ တၢ်မၤ၀ဲဘံလ့ကီၢ်ဆၣ်သးစၢ်တၢ်ထံၣ်လိာ်တဲသကိး တၢတ၀ီတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-02-24
Date of entry/update:
2019-03-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
"ဧရၣ်၀တံၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်၊ ကၣ်ကၠံဒီၣ်ကီၢ်ဆၣ်အပူၤ ကီၢ်ခိၣ် စီၤဘးအူကၠံအိၣ်ဖျဲၣ်လီၢ် ဘဲကယဲးသ၀ီကျဲမုၢ်အံၤ ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢတီခိၣ်ရိၣ်မဲ၀ဲဒီး ဖဲလါယူလံ(၁၈) အနံၤန့ၣ် စးထီၣ်တ့န့ၢ်၀ဲကျဲမုၢ်လံန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
ကျဲမုၢ်၀ဲန့ၣ်(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်) ကရၢခိၣ် သုးခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်ဒိၣ်စိ စီၤမူးတူစ့ဖိအတၢ်နဲၣ်လီၤ၀ဲအဃိ တၢ်စးတ့၀ဲကျဲမုၢ်လၢမံၣ်ခၠီတယၤ(မိချောင်းတစ်ရာ)သ၀ီတုၤ ဘဲကယဲးသ၀ီလၢအဘၢၣ်စၢၤအိၣ်၀ဲ(၂)မံးလာ်န့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
"ဧရာဝတီတိုင်းဒေသကြီး၊ ကန်ကြီးထောင့်မြို့နယ်အတွင်းရှိ ကရင်အမျိုးသားခေါင်းဆောင် စောဘဦးကြီး၏ မွေးရပ်ဇာတိဖြစ်သည့် ဘဲဂရက်ကျေးရွာသွားသောလမ်းအား ကေအဲန်ယူ-ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံး မှ ဦးဆောင်ကာ ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၁၈ရက်နေ့တွင် စတင်ကာ ဖောက်လုပ်နေပြီး ဖြစ်ကြောင်း သိရသည်။
အဆိုပါ လမ်းကို ကေအဲန်ယူ ဥက္ကဌ ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး စောမူတူးစေးဖိုး၏ လမ်းညွှန်ချက်ဖြင့် ဖောက်လုပ်ခြင်းဖြစ်ပြီး ရန်ကုန်-ပုသိမ်လမ်းမကြီးဘေးရှိ မိချောင်းတစ်ရာကျေးရွာထိပ်မှ ဘဲဂရက်ကျေးရွာအထိ ဆက်သွယ် ဖောက်လုပ်မည့် အရှည် ၂ မိုင်ရှိသည့် လမ်းလည်းဖြစ်သည်။..."
နါဖီၤမွံၤရှါ
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-01-21
Date of entry/update:
2019-02-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Other forms of management, Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese မြန်မာဘာသာ
Font:
Unicode
more
Description:
"ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်ဖီၣ်စုက၀ဲၤကဒဲကဒဲအဘၢၣ်စၢၤတၢ်ဃူတၢ်ဖိးတအိၣ်အဃိ တၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအံၤ ဘၣ်ယံာ်၀ဲအဂ့ၢ် ကညီဒီကလုာ်တၢ်ထူၣ်ဖျဲးသုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ် (KNLA)သုးရိၣ်မဲခိၣ်ကျၢၢ် သုးခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်ဒိၣ်စိ စီၤကၠီၣ်နံၣ် စံးလီၤ၀ဲ ဖဲတနံၤအံၤယနူၤအါရံၤ(၃၁)သီ၊ ကညီတၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအမုၢ်နံၤၦဲၤထီၣ်၀ဲ (၇၀)နံၣ်အမူး တၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
သုးခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်ဒိၣ်စိ စီၤကၠီၣ်နံၣ် စံး၀ဲလၢ“တၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအတီၢ်ဘၣ်ယံာ်၀ဲတုၤခဲအံၤန့ၣ်ပ၀ဲကလုာ်တဖၣ်၊ ကလုာ်ဒူၣ်တဖၣ်၊ ကရူၢ်ဖီစုက၀ဲၤ တဖၣ်တၢ်ဃူတၢ်ဖိး စှၤစ့ၢ်ႉ ဖီလိာ်စုမၤသကိးတၢ် ဂံၢ်စၢ်အဃိ အခဲအံၤအိၣ်ၦဲၤဒူၣ်လဲၣ်န့ၣ် ပမ့ၢ်တဲသု၊ သုသ့ၣ်ညါလီၤႉ ကဲထီၣ်ခံကရူၢ် သၢကရူၢ်တုၤကတီၢ်အံၤ ပတၢ်ဃူတၢ်ဖိးတအိၣ် ဘၣ်အဃိန့ၣ်ပတၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအံၤၦဲၤထီၣ်၀ဲနံၣ်(၇၀)လံ”အဂ့ၢ် ကတိၤလီၤ၀ဲဖဲ တၢ်ပၢၢ်ဆၢအမုၢ်နံၤၦဲၤထီၣ် (၇၀)နံၣ်မူး တၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤ လၢဘၣ်တၢ်မၤအီၤ ဖဲသုးက့(၇) သုး၀ဲၤလီၢ်ခိၣ်သ့ၣ်၊ ကျိၣ်ယီၤလ့အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
"တိုင်းရင်းသား လက်နက်ကိုင်များအကြား စည်းလုံးညီညွတ်မှုမရှိ၍ တော်လှန်ရေးသက်တမ်းရှည်ကြာ ရခြင်းဖြစ်သည်ဟု ကရင်အမျိုးသားလွတ်မြောက်ရေးတပ်မတော်-KNLA စစ်ဦးစီးချုပ် ဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီး စောဂျော်နီက ယနေ့(ဇန်နဝါရီလ ၃၁ရက်)တွင် ကျရောက်သည့် နှစ် (၇၀)ပြည့် ကရင့်တော်လှန်ရေးနေ့ အခမ်းအနားတွင် ပြောဆိုခဲ့သည်။..."
KIC
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
1970-01-01
Date of entry/update:
2019-02-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Non-Ceasefire Groups, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese မြန်မာဘာသာ
more
Description:
"ကညီဖိတဖၣ် ကအိၣ်ဃူအိၣ်ဖိး၀ဲအဂီၢ် ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်-ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢ လီၢ်ခၢၣ်သးကမံးတံာ် ပဒိၣ်စီၤတီနံ သဆၣ်ထီၣ်အခံ ဖဲတၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤ ကညီဒီကလုာ်အမုၢ်နံၤ ၦဲၤ ၇၁နံၣ် ဖဲ ဧရၣ်၀တံၣ်ကီၢ်ခီဒိၣ်၊ ၀့ၢ်မၠီမၠးတၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤအပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
ဖဲလါဖ့ၤဘြူၤအါရံၤ ၁၁သီ၊ တၢ်မၤလၤကပီၤ၀ဲကညီဒီကလုာ်မုၢ်နံၤတၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤ ဖဲမၠီမၠးကီၢ်ဆၣ်၊ မံသွ့ခၠီသ၀ီကရူၢ်၊ စခဲကၠံသ၀ီအပူၤအံၤန့ၣ် (ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)လီၢ်ခၢၣ်သးထီဘိကမံးတံာ်ပဒိၣ်စီၤတီနံ ကတိၤဟ့ၣ်ဒုးသ့ၣ်ညါ၀ဲ ဘၣ်ဃး တကီၢ်ခါကီၢ်ဒီတဘ့ၣ်တၢ်ပတုာ်တၢ်ခးအလံာ်ဃံးဃာ်(အဲၣ်စံၣ်အ့ၣ်) ဒီး(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)တၢ်လဲၤကျဲလၢတၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်အဂ့ၢ်အကျိၤသ့ၣ်တဖၣ်အံၤအကတီၢ် အ၀ဲစံးလီၤ၀ဲဒၣ်ဒ်န့ၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
နါဖီမွံၤရှ
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-02-17
Date of entry/update:
2019-02-25
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
''ဟတ်ကြီးရေကာတာစီမံကိန်းနယ်မြေအား ထိန်းချုပ်နိုင်ရန်အတွက် ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဖေါ်ဆောင်မှုများလုပ်ဆောင်နေစဉ် မြန်မာစစ်တပ်နှင့် ၎င်း၏နယ်ခြားစောင့်တပ် တို့မှ ကရင်ပြည်နယ်အတွင်း ထိုးစစ်များဆင်ကာ နယ်မြေစိုးမိုးမှုရယူရန်ကြိုးစားကြပြီး တိုက်ပွဲများကြောင့် ဒေသခံပြည်သူလူထုထောင်နှင့်ချီကာ အိုးအိမ်စွန့်ခွာ ထွက်ပြေးထိမ်းရှောင်ရသည်။ ဤစာတမ်းတိုလေးကို ဒေါင်းလုပ်ကာ အချက်အလက်အပြည့်အစုံကို ဖတ်ရှုနိုင်ပါသည်...''
"While the Burmese government and Karen leaders are holding historic peace talks in Naypyidaw, the Burma Army and its Border Guard Force (BGF) wages war in Karen State to expand its control over Karen territories, in order to push for an environmentally and socially destructive hydropower project on the Salween River – the Hatgyi Dam. For detail, please read the briefer..."
KESAN
Source/publisher:
Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN)
Date of publication:
2018-11-15
Date of entry/update:
2019-02-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Armed conflict in Burma - Impact on village life, including health and education, Karen National Union (KNU), Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese ျမန္မာဘာသာ, English
more
Description:
"(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢ မုၢ်တြီၢ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် တၢ်ပၢ ဟီၣ်က၀ီၤ တၢ်လီၢ်တနီၤအပူၤ တနံၣ်အံၤ၂၀၁၉နံၣ်လါယနူၤအါရံၤအပူၤ(KNLA)သုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ်ဒီးကီၢ်ပယီၤသုးမုၢ်ဒိၣ်တဖၣ်အဘၢၣ်စၢၤတၢ်ခးလိာ်သးက့ၤကဲထီၣ်(၂)ဘျီအဂ့ၢ်(KNLA)သုးက့(၅)ၦၤဘၣ်မူဘၣ်ဒါတဖၣ်စံး၀ဲန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
တၢ်ခးလိာ်အသးန့ၣ် ဖဲလါယနူၤအါရံၤ(၅)သီ တဘျီဒီး ဖဲ(၁၃)သီန့ၣ် တဘျီခီဖျိတၢ်ခီပတာ်၀ဲတၢ်ပာ်ပနီၣ်လီၢ်အဃိ တၢ်ခးလိာ်သးကဲထီၣ်အဂ့ၢ်(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)သုးက့(၅) သုးဂ့ၢ်၀ီခိၣ် သုးခိၣ်ဒိၣ်ဖိ စီၤကျၢၤဒိၣ်စံးဘၣ် ခ့ၣ်အဲးစံၣ်ကညီတၢ်ကစီၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
KIC
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2019-01-24
Date of entry/update:
2019-02-18
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Various groups, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen
Font:
Unicode
more
Description:
"On December 18th, the indigenous Karen communities of Mutraw District officially declare the establishment of the Salween Peace Park. This declaration is to fulfill the collective vision for a grassroots pathway to peace and self-determination, and their responsibility to transfer our ancestral domain to the new generation with abundant forest and clean water.
Almost 1000 people, comprising representatives from our communities in Mutraw District, the KNU, Karen CBOs, ethnic representatives from across Burma/ Myanmar and journalists- both domestic and from abroad, joined the event..."
KESAN
Source/publisher:
Karen Environmental and Social Action Network (KESAN)
Date of publication:
2019-01-09
Date of entry/update:
2019-01-28
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Preservation of the environment in Burma/Myanmar, Community forests, Armed conflict in Burma - Impact on village life, including health and education, Karen National Union (KNU), Documents in Pwo-Karen and S'Gaw Karen
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese and English sub-titles
more
Description:
"The KNU released a statement on December 15 calling for the elimination of the newly enacted “Vacant, Fallow, and Virgin Land Management Law (VFV)” pointing out that it is not in line with the principles of democracy or federal standards.
The KNU statement said that the VFV law contradicts the KNU’s land policy and it violates the accords made in the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, especially Article 9, Chapter 3 on the protection of civilian and Article 25 (a-1) of Chapter 6. The KNU urges the government to review, amend, eliminate and rewrite the land law to make it comply with recognized principles of democracy and federal standards.
Padoh Saw Nay Thablay, a member of KNU’s Central Land Committee and head of the Karen Agriculture Department spoke to Karen News..."
Saw Thein Myint
Source/publisher:
Karen News
Date of publication:
2018-12-21
Date of entry/update:
2019-01-14
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
"The KNU released a statement on December 15 calling for the elimination of the newly enacted “Vacant, Fallow, and Virgin Land Management Law (VFV)” pointing out that it is not in line with the principles of democracy or federal standards.
The KNU statement said that the VFV law contradicts the KNU’s land policy and it violates the accords made in the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, especially Article 9, Chapter 3 on the protection of civilian and Article 25 (a-1) of Chapter 6. The KNU urges the government to review, amend, eliminate and rewrite the land law to make it comply with recognized principles of democracy and federal standards.
Padoh Saw Nay Thablay, a member of KNU’s Central Land Committee and head of the Karen Agriculture Department spoke to Karen News..."
Saw Thein Myint
Date of publication:
2018-12-21
Date of entry/update:
2019-01-14
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
English
more
Description:
"Decades of armed conflict, military dictatorship and economic hardship have driven Burma’s health and education services into the ground.
Struggling against successive military regimes in Burma, ethnic communities worked together to give their people education services that the Burma government failed to deliver.
As part of its education program Mobile Teacher Trainers (MTT) trek deep into conflict affected areas to provide critical frontline education services to communities.
Several ethnic groups including Karen, Kayan, Kayah, Karenni, Mon, Shan, Kachin, Naga, Wa, Zomi, Lahu, Pa’ O and Ta’ang, shared the MTT’s model aims to educate Burma’s future generations and provide hope to the people.
Following Burma’s tentative steps towards democratic the opport-unity to combine what has become two separate education systems– one for ethnic people and one controlled by the central Burmese government – is now possible. However, concerns over language and cultural identity have to be resolved if the education system
is to become one..."
Saw Eh Doh Wah
Source/publisher:
Karen Teacher Network Group (KTWG)
Date of publication:
2014-12-18
Date of entry/update:
2019-01-07
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Sgaw Karen, English, (Burmese မန်မာဘာသာ), (English sub-titles)
more
Description:
"ကရင္ျပည္နယ္အတြင္းႏွစ္ေပါင္း ၆ဝ ေက်ာ္ျဖစ္ပြားခဲ့တဲ့ ပဋိပကၡေတြ အဆုံးသတ္ႏုိင္ေရးအတြက္ ၂ဝ၁၂ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ကရင္အမ်ဳိးသားအစည္းအရုံး (KNU) က ျမန္မာအစုိးရနဲ႔ ပဏာမအပစ္အခတ္ရပ္စဲေရး ရယူခဲ့ၿပီး ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေဖာ္ေဆာင္မႈလုပ္ငန္းေတြ လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ စစ္မွန္တဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးအဆင့္ မေရာက္ရွိေသးဘဲ ေဆြးေႏြးေနဆဲအဆင့္မွာသာ ရွိပါေသးတယ္။ အျပည္ျပည္ဆုိင္ရာၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးေန႔နဲ႔ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ကရင္ျပည္သူတခ်ိဳ႕ရဲ႕ အျမင္သေဘာထားေတြကို ျမန္မာဘာသာစာတန္းထုိး တင္ျပထားပါတယ္။..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Women's Organisation
Date of publication:
2014-09-22
Date of entry/update:
2018-12-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
more
Description:
"KNU Transportation & Communication Department Explain about ASIA Highway and After Ceasefire..."
Colonel Kaukasar Nay Soe
Source/publisher:
Karen Education and Culture Department
Date of publication:
2017-12-06
Date of entry/update:
2018-12-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen
more
Description:
"The women discussed issues for two days and decided to form the new Grassroots Women’s Network. At the conclusion of the seminar the attendees jointly endorsed the following resolutions:
We call on the Burma Army to stop their military operations in all ethnic areas.
We want the 2008 constitution to be abolished and call on the Burma Government to begin a process whereby a genuine federal constitution can be drawn up.
We also call on all stakeholders to stop mega development projects in all ethnic areas until there is genuine peace and a political settlement.
There must be no forced repatriation of refugees.
We also call on the international community and donors to continue to support
humanitarian aid to refugees and IDPs according to international standards until peace is restored in the country..."
The Karen Women’s Organisation
Source/publisher:
Karen Women's Organisation
Date of publication:
2018-03-30
Date of entry/update:
2018-12-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Women and Politics in Burma/Myanmar, Various rights: reports of violations against several ethnic groups, Karen and other refugees from Burma in Thailand - general reports and articles, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese ျမန္မာဘာသာ, English
Format :
pdf
Size:
336.17 KB
more
Description:
"တၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ် တၢ်လဲၤကျဲအံၤ တၢ်တဲသကိးအီၤလၢအဖိးသဲးစးအလီၢ်န့ၣ် တၢ်ကတဲသကိးအီၤလၢသဘျ့အဂ့ၢ် (ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ်ကရၢဆၢတဲာ်လီၤ၀ဲဒၣ်လၢ ဖဲလါနိၣ်၀့ဘၢၣ်၁၀သီနံၤလၢထီဘိကမံးတံာ် ဂ့ၢ်ဂီၢ်အူတၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်(၆)ဘျီတဘျီ အပူၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ
ဘၣ်ဃးတၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ် တၢ်လဲၤကျဲအံၤ ကပၣ်ဃုာ် လၢကရူၢ်ဒီတဖုကန့ၢ်အဂီၢ် ကဘၣ်ဟံးတၢ်ဆၢကတီၢ်လိၣ်၀ဲအဃိ မ့မ့ၢ်လၢတၢ်ကထံၣ်လိာ်သးလၢအဖိးသဲးစးန့ၣ် ကအိၣ်ပတုာ်ပတြီာ်ဃာ်၀ဲတစိၢ်ဖိဒီးကဆဲးတဲသကိး၀ဲလၢသဘျ့လီၤ အဂ့ၢ်(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်) နဲၣ်ရွဲၣ်ခိၣ်ကျၢၢ်ပဒိၣ်စီၤတၢ်ဒိၣ်မူတဲဘၣ်ခ့ၣ်အဲးစံၣ်န့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
"
စးအဲၣ်ဆူ
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2018-11-14
Date of entry/update:
2018-12-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen, English
more
Description:
"ၢ်မုာ်တၢ်ခုၣ်တၢ်လဲၤကျဲအံၤအပူၤ ထံကီၢ်ဒီဘ့ၣ်တၢ်ပတုာ်တၢ်ခးအလံာ်ဃံးဃာ်(NCA)အံၤမ့ၢ်၀ဲကျဲအဂ့ၤကတၢၢ်တဘိ လၢကညီဒီကလုာ်အဂီၢ်လီၤအဂ့ၢ် ဒူပျာ်ယာ် ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ်ခိၣ်ပဒိၣ်စီၤရွ့ၣ်မီစံးလီၤ၀ဲဖဲ(ခ့ၣ်အဲၣ်ယူၣ်)ကညီဒီကလုာ်စၢဖှိၣ် ကရၢ ဒူပျာ်ယာ်ကီၢ်ရ့ၣ် ၀ီၢ်ရီကီၢ်ဆၣ် (၄)ဘျီတဘျီ တၢ်အိၣ်ဖှိၣ်ဖးဒိၣ် ဖဲနိၣ်၀့ဘၢၣ်၂၆သီအနံၤန့ၣ်လီၤႉ..."
Source/publisher:
KIC (Karen Information Center)
Date of publication:
2018-11-28
Date of entry/update:
2018-12-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Sgaw Karen, Burmese(ျမန္မာဘာသာ)
more
Description:
"On April 5th 2018, Saw O Moo was murdered by Tatmadaw forces on the edge of Htee Hsee Hta Plaw [also known as T?Ree Plaw] farm area, Ler Mu Plaw village tract, Lu Thaw Township. He was on his way back home from a meeting to organise humanitarian assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs). Until now, the Tatmadaw has refused to allow his family to retrieve his body and bury it according to the traditional Karen way. This News Bulletin will pay tribute to the important work that Saw O Moo did for his community, and will analyse how his murder violated the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) Code of Conduct..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG)
Date of publication:
2018-06-15
Date of entry/update:
2018-06-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
more
Description:
"The horrific treatment of Rohingya Muslims and their violent expulsion from Burma has shocked the world. As the Karen Community of Canada (KCC), an organization representing ethnic Karen refugees from Burma (Myanmar), we stand in solidarity with the Rohingya people who face the same brutal treatment that Karen and other ethnic peoples have suffered at the hands of the Burmese military for decades.
We welcome Prime Minister Trudeau?s appointment of Bob Rae as Canada?s Special Envoy to Myanmar. However, we are disappointed that Mr. Rae?s interim report overlooks the systemic nature of Burmese military oppression against all ethnic minorities in Burma. A more holistic approach is needed if Mr. Rae?s final report is to effectively guide Canadian policy toward Burma..."
Source/publisher:
Karen Community of Canada via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication:
2018-03-13
Date of entry/update:
2018-03-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
Format :
pdf
Size:
653.22 KB
Local URL:
more
Description:
"အပစ်အခတ်ရပ်စဲရေး အကောင်အထည်ဖော်နေဆဲကာလတွင် တပ်မတော်မှ မူထြော်ခရိုင် (ဖာပွန်)အတွင်း စစ်ရေးအမြင်ဖြင့် ကားလမ်းဖောက်လုပ်ရေးအတွက် တပ်အင်အားစေလွှတ်မှုနှင့်ပါတ်သက်သည့် စစ်ရေးလှုပ်ရှားမှုများအပေါ် KNU- ကရင်အမျိုးသားအစည်းအရုံး၏ သဘောထားထုတ်ပြန်ချက်..."
Source/publisher:
Karen National Union via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication:
2018-03-16
Date of entry/update:
2018-03-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Source/publisher:
Karen River Watch via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication:
2018-03-14
Date of entry/update:
2018-03-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Source/publisher:
Karen River Watch via "Progressive Voice"
Date of publication:
2018-03-14
Date of entry/update:
2018-03-24
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Description:
"On Thursday, February 14, 2008, the Network for the Environment and Economic Development (NEED) organized a little party, more of a friendly dinner for two or three dozen friends, in the garden behind its offices in Chiang Mai, Thailand. NEED, as an organization promoting land rights, better farming practices, and environmental conservation, worked very closely with an entire ecosystem of civil society organizations that were based in Thailand but made up of activists from all across Myanmar, and that developed many of their activities, and certainly their research, in Myanmar itself. Indeed, those who attended that dinner came from all parts of Myanmar, and worked for any number of civil society organizations.
At that time, everyone who was familiar with this ecosystem simply called it ?the border”. The border had a physical, geographic, aspect to it: the organizations that made up the border were based along the Thai-Burma border. But they worked inside Myanmar as much as they worked in Thailand, a country that was simply used as a base from where activities could be led inside Myanmar, in the refugee camps, and among migrant workers, and that allowed for easy communication with the world. Foreigners such as myself who visited organizations along the border, in Mae Hong Song, Mae Sariang, Mae Sot, Sangkhla Buri, or in Chiang Mai, and worked with them for a few months, for a few years, or for several decades, can be counted in the hundreds..."
Source/publisher:
Teacircleoxford
Date of publication:
2018-02-14
Date of entry/update:
2018-03-20
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
more
Description:
"As Myanmar?s government prepares for a long-delayed second round of its Union Peace Conference, also known as the ?21st Century Panglong?, it remains unclear which of the many conflict parties will actually attend. Some ethnic armed groups that did not sign the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) indeed remain locked in combat and are likely to abstain. To government officials and international donors, it thus seems all the more important that the country?s oldest ethnic insurgency, the Karen National Union (KNU), supports the government-led peace process. A closer look, however, casts doubt on the degree of this support and points to wider, significant shortcomings within Myanmar?s national peace process.
At first glance, the KNU indeed seems like an important champion of Myanmar?s official peace process. This is even more so after its conciliatory Chairman Gen Mutu Say Poe cemented his position by winning the internal leadership elections on the 16th KNU congress in April 2017 against a less-compromising internal opposition, led by Naw Zipporah Sein. That said, the KNU?s rapprochement with Naypyidaw is anything other than self-evident. In fact, the KNU has long been regarded as Myanmar?s least compromising rebellion. It has, for instance, continued its armed struggle at a time when most other ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar entered bilateral ceasefire agreements during the 1990s and 2000s. Only after Myanmar?s military leaders initiated wide-ranging political reforms in 2011, the movement agreed to a historic ceasefire on 12 January 2012.
Against the background of Myanmar?s transition, the movement?s changing outlook has often been regarded as the direct outcome of wider political change. While this seems intuitive, political transition cannot account for the simultaneous escalation of conflict with rebel groups whose own long-standing ceasefires collapse, most importantly with the Kachin Independence Organisation (KIO). It is also ill-suited to explain the mounting tensions that have emerged within the KNU between a pro-ceasefire leadership and an internal opposition that criticises the movement?s rapid rapprochement with the government.
KNU leader, Chairman Gen Mutu Say Poe (left), and leader of the internal KNU opposition, previous Vice-Chairman Naw Zipporah Sein (right). Photo: David Brenner..."
David Brenner
Source/publisher:
"New Mandala"
Date of publication:
2017-05-10
Date of entry/update:
2017-12-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
"Nerdah Bo Mya is a Major General and the Chief of Staff of the Karen National Defence Organization (KNDO), which was founded in 1947 to protect the Karen people and territory, and is under its mother organisation Karen National Union (KNU). Nerdah Bo Mya, 48, was born near Manerplaw—the former headquarters of the KNU as well as other ethnic nationalities and the pro?democracy movement—as the son of the late General Bo Mya who was the President of the KNU from 1976 to 2000. After being educated in Thailand and in the US, where Nerdah Bo Mya spent six years studying a Liberal Arts degree at a university in California, the young graduate turned away from a future in the US and soon returned to the Thailand-Burma border. For over 20 years, he has fought for ?freedom, democracy, and humanity,” against what is undoubtedly one of the most brutal military regimes in the world. This dedicated and empathetic ?rebel” leader emphasizes that it is not just the Karen people but a whole nation of 60 million people who are still suffering and need to be freed. Although the international community has enjoyed what some call a honeymoon with the Burmese government since the country started opening up in 2011, according to Nerdah Bo Mya, the government is still not showing signs of sincerity in peace talks nor genuine willingness to change. ?The government is playing the game,” he says, and the international community too often indirectly participating in ongoing atrocities. In this exclusive interview with Burma Link, Nerdah Bo Mya talks about the struggle, the current state of the ceasefire and the peace process, the role of the international community, and how to build a prosperous Burma for the future generations."
Source/publisher:
Burma Link
Date of publication:
2015-04-07
Date of entry/update:
2016-03-17
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen (cultural, historical, political), Karen National Union (KNU), Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports, Politics, Government and Governance - Burma/Myanmar - general studies
Language:
English
more
Description:
"Soldiers explained that mutual respect between all parties is
needed for the peace process to be successful. Mutual respect was
often mentioned in relation to the need for adherence to ceasefire
agreements, reports of breaches to ceasefire agreements and
concerns about the sincerity of the peace process.
Generally, foot soldiers identified the need for all parties to respect
the terms and conditions of agreements equally. Soldiers expressed a
desire to create stronger links between what is discussed and agreed
upon in peace/ceasefire agreements and implementation. Specific
points of contention included soldiers carrying arms outside of their
demarcated territory when agreements restricted this movement.
Soldiers voiced a need for Tatmadaw soldiers to ask permission before
entering their territory. One KNU soldier expressed: ?Tatmadaw
soldiers bring arms when they come into our regions. Don?t we have
the right to hold arms? We follow the rules”..."
Source/publisher:
Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS)
Date of publication:
2014-04-00
Date of entry/update:
2015-09-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Mon New State Party (MNSP), Various groups, Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
746.52 KB
more
Description:
Abstract:
"This thesis investigates the themes and society of displaced Karen identity on the border
between Burma and Thailand. The impact of the authoritarian military rule in Burma
cannot be underestimated. The government exercises tremendous power to shape the
social and economic environment. They determine whether a civil-society is prosperous
and functions in an appropriate manner. Governments are also responsible for societal
support and protection of all its populace. The population of Burma is essentially isolated
from the global society through regime censorship and restrictions. The inter-linking spiral
of humanitarian emergencies and continued to escalate, these include refugee, internally
displaced people, the spread of preventable diseases and the illicit narcotic production.
Recently, the Western governments had solidified their position towards the military junta
resulting in a stalemate of diplomatic interaction, with ultimately the people of Burma
being the victims of such actions. Current realities in the global sphere present the
powerful Western Nations an opportunity for a change in perspective. US policy
recommendations include a greater dialogue with the junta and the outcome of the election
is seen as crucial to fostering better relation. It is imperative that long-essential reforms are
undertaken if Burma if is to achieve lasting peace.
The international community must develop coherent and focused policies towards Burma
and make conflict resolution a priority. Humanitarian aid and displaced refugee support
will play a vital role, and in the 21st Century regional dimensions must be addressed. The
challenges of nation-state building must be made in conjunction with political,
humanitarian, and economic issues."
Source/publisher:
University of Manchester (thesis submitted in 2010)
Date of publication:
2010-00-00
Date of entry/update:
2013-06-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU), Karen history, Armed conflict in Karen State - general articles and reports
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
373.65 KB
more
Description:
Infighting and unsanctioned peace overtures with Burma?s ruling regime have left many wondering about the fate of the KNU, Burma?s oldest ethnic opposition group...
"As its 60th year of armed insurrection approaches, the Karen National Union is spending more of its time o?n internal skirmishes than in armed rebellion against its historic foe, Burma?s ruling military government..."
Shah Paung
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" Vol. 15, No. 3
Date of publication:
2007-03-00
Date of entry/update:
2008-05-04
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
"When news of the assassination of the Karen leader Mahn Sha broke, I was reminded of the advice he had once given me: ?Use your journalistic skill to help poor people.?
Two years ago, I visited Mahn Sha at his office in Mae Sot on the Thai-Burmese border. In our conversation, his left-wing enthusiasm was evident. It was an enthusiasm that he wanted to pass on to a younger generation—?We want more young people who will work for the sake of their country and people,? he told me..."
Violet Cho
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" Vol. 16, No. 3
Date of publication:
2008-03-00
Date of entry/update:
2008-04-27
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
Angesichts des britischen Verrats gründet der Karen Anwalt Saw Ba U Gyi am 5. Februar 1947 als ersten Schritt zur Selbsthilfe mit 700 Karen Delegierten aus allen Landesteilen die Karen National Union, KNU. Als politische Organisation soll sie den Einfluss seines Volkes hinsichtlich der Verhandlungen zur Unabhängigkeit Burma?s sicherstellen. Bereits im November 46 ist die mächtige kommunistische Partei aus der geeinten Front der Anti-Fascist People?s Freedom League, AFPFL Thakin Aung San?s ausgeschlossen worden. Aung San; Panglong Agreement;
The Karen during independence
Source/publisher:
Burma Riders
Date of publication:
2007-07-03
Date of entry/update:
2007-08-21
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Language:
German, Deutsch
more
Description:
Originally published as The Karens and their Struggle For
Freedom? in 1991 by the Karen National Union
Reprinted under the same title by the KNU in July 1992, 18 pages,
and in 1997 to include Peace talks in 1996/7, 42 pages.
This version reprinted and updated with a new foreword,
Chronology, colour illustrations, and images in 2006 by the Karen
History and Culture Preservation Society...PREFACE (To the original Edition):
"We, the Karens of Burma, have been cornered into
fighting against the ruling Burmese Governments
for the past fifty years.
Holding the reins of all organs of the state, and in
full control of the press radio, and television, the
successive ruling Burmese Governments from U
Nu?s AFPFL (Anti-Fascist People?s Freedom League)
to the present Military Junta headed by General
Than Shwe and his State Peace and Development
Council ( SPDC ), have always painted us as black
as they can. They have branded us insurgents, war-mongers, a handful of border smugglers, black-and stooges of both the communists and
the imperialists.
Even so, to the extent of our ability we have always
tried to refute the nefarious one-sided Burman
propaganda of false accusations and make the true
facts of our cause known to the world.
In fighting against the ruling Burmese Government,
we are not being motivate by narrow nationalism,
nor by ill-will towards the Burmese Government or
the Burman people. Our struggle was not instigated
neither by the capitalist world nor by the communists,
as some have falsely accused us. It has an originality
completely of its own. Throughout history, the
Burman have been practicing annihilation, absorption
and assimilation ( 3 A?s) against the Karens and they
are still doing so today. In short, they are waging a
genocidal war against us. Thus we have been forced
to fight for our very existence and survival.
In this document we venture to present a concise
outline of the Karens? struggle for freedom; the
Karen case, which we consider just, righteous and
noble. We hope that through it, the world may come
to know the true situation of the Karens, a forgotten
people who continue to fight for our freedom
intensively, single handedly and without aid of any
kind from anyone..."
Source/publisher:
Karen History and Culture Preservation Society (KHCPS)
Date of publication:
2006-08-00
Date of entry/update:
2006-08-22
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen Heritage, Karen history, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
Format :
pdf
Size:
1.48 MB
Local URL:
more
Description:
"After 57 years of fighting for independence from the Burmese, the Karen National Union is beset by internal divisions, a lack of resources and an aging leadership..."
Shah Paung, Harry Priestley
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" Vol. 14, No3
Date of publication:
2006-03-00
Date of entry/update:
2006-05-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Non-Ceasefire Groups, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
The troops of KNLA Battalion 101 stick to their guns... "...The KNU is one of Burma?s oldest and strongest armed ethnic opposition groups, and it has waged war with successive administrations of the Burmese government since 1949. Government troops overran KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in 1995, and since that time the group has lost ground in its fight for greater regional autonomy.
In the last decade, other political developments have weakened the KNU. Neighboring Thailand had for many years adopted a policy of tacit collaboration with the Karen and other armed ethnic minority groups along the Thai-Burma border, hoping that they would establish a buffer zone against any encroachment by Burmese forces. This policy has changed in recent years as Thailand seeks to strengthen its economic and political ties with Rangoon. Despite more than a half century of armed conflict, the KNU has since 1995 made several efforts to open diplomatic lines of communication with Burma?s ruling junta to negotiate an equitable ceasefire agreement. In 2004, then deputy chairman Gen Bo Mya flew to Rangoon to hold peace talks with ex-prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. The meeting—backed by some of Thailand?s top military and business leaders—produced a ?gentleman?s agreement? to end hostilities in Karen State. Khin Nyunt?s subsequent ouster later in the year, however, ended any momentum towards an official ceasefire..."
Shah Paung
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" Vol. 13, No. 11
Date of publication:
2005-11-00
Date of entry/update:
2006-05-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Non-Ceasefire Groups, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
Rangun hofiert Karen-Kommandeur. Verhandlungen mit Rebellen über Waffenruhe. cease fire talks with karen rebells.
Thomas Berger
Source/publisher:
AG Friedensforschung an der Uni Kassel
Date of publication:
2004-01-22
Date of entry/update:
2005-03-01
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
Deutsch, German
more
Description:
"After almost 55 years of resistance, the Karen National Union (KNU) is Southeast Asia?s oldest insurgent group. The Irrawaddy spoke to deputy chairman of the KNU, Gen Saw Bo Mya, 76, about Rangoon?s latest political gestures and the future of the Karen struggle..."
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy" Vol 11, No. 8
Date of publication:
2003-10-00
Date of entry/update:
2003-12-06
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
"The recently published memoirs of former Karen leader Gen Bo Mya offer a glimpse into the inner workings of Burma?s longest-running insurgent struggle..."
Aung Zaw
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy", Vol. 10, No. 5, June 2002
Date of publication:
2002-06-00
Date of entry/update:
2003-06-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Non-Ceasefire Groups, Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
"After more than half a century of struggle and nearly a decade of major setbacks, the Karen National Union remains defiant in the face of calls to lay down its arms.
By Aung Zaw
After 53 years of resistance against Rangoon, the aging leadership of the Karen National Union (KNU) is nothing if not defiant. Arguably weaker now than at any other point in its half-century-long struggle, the KNU and its military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), have faced numerous setbacks in the past decade. But asked about the prospects of the KNU entering the dubious embrace of Rangoon?s "legal fold", Padoh Mahn Sha, the KNU?s general secretary, did not mince words: "Surrender is out of the question," he told The Irrawaddy recently..."
Aung Zaw
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy", Vol. 10, No. 2
Date of publication:
2002-03-00
Date of entry/update:
2003-06-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Peace processes, ceasefires and ceasefire talks (websites, documents, reports and studies), Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more
Description:
The KNU leadership reshuffle looks to solidify internal support as well as present a more refined view to the rest of the world, report Aung Zaw and Moe Gyo.
Aung Zaw, Moe Gyo
Source/publisher:
"The Irrawaddy", Vol. 8. No. 2
Date of publication:
2000-02-00
Date of entry/update:
2003-06-03
Grouping:
Individual Documents
Category:
Karen National Union (KNU)
Language:
English
more