Kayin State

Kayin State is an administrative division of Myanmar and also know as Karen State. The capital city is Phaan (Hpa-an). Control of the area is disputed between the military government and Karen groups who consider it Kawthoolei (means the green land), although, according to Martin Smith in "Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity", it has a double meaning, and can also be rendered as the Land Burnt Black, hence the land must be fought for.

The ethnic Karen is organized into a political wing, the Karen National Union (KNU), and an army wing, Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA).

The Karen people in Myanmar are Christian, Buddhist and Animist. Most Chrostian Karens are Baptist. Karen people are very loyal. They are mostly Christians, and this is because the Kayin people worked together with the British Empire at a time when Myanmar was a colony of Britain and most Kayin converted to Christianity.

Many Karen consider the Karen National Union to be their true government and have joined the Karen National Liberation Army to fight the Burmese junta. However, the Karen are not the only ethnic minority fighting the junta; there are many different armies that are fighting against the military government of Myanmar. These irregular armies are not, however, politically or strategically unified because of different religious beliefs, political stands, social customs and organizational structures.

Kayin State has a hot and humid climate because of the mountain ranges that lie in its backdrop and its location, which is near the sea, in the tropics.

History

The Karen aided the British during World War II, when the Japanese occupied the region. As a consequence, many villages were destroyed and massacres committed by both the Japanese and the Burma Independence Army (BIA) troops who helped the Japanese invade the country. Among the victims were a pre-war Cabinet minister Saw Pe Tha and his family. A government report later stated the 'excesses of the BIA' and 'the loyalty of the Karens towards the British' as the reasons.

The Karen people aspired to have the areas where they were the majority formed into a subdivision or "state" within Burma similar to what the Shan, Kachin and Chin peoples had been given. A goodwill mission led by Saw Tha Din and Saw Ba U Gyi to London in August 1946 failed to receive any encouragement from the British government for any separatist demands. When a delegation of representatives of the Governor's Executive Council headed by Aung San was invited to London to negotiate for the Aung San-Atlee Treaty in January 1947, none of the ethnic minority members was included by the British government. The following month at the Panglong Conference, when an agreement was signed between Aung San as head of the interim Burmese government and the Shan, Kachin and Chin leaders, the Karen sent only observers; the Mon and Arakanese were also absent. The British promised to consider the case of the Karen after the war. While the situation of the Karen was discussed, nothing practical was done before the British left Burma. The 1947 Constitution, drawn without Karen participation after they had boycotted the elections to the Constituent Assembly, also failed to address the Karen question specifically and clearly, leaving it to be discussed only after independence. The Shan and Karenni states were given the right to secession after 10 years, the Kachin their own state, and the Chin a special division. The Mon and Arakanese of Ministerial Burma were not considered separately at all.

In early February 1947, the Karen National Union (KNU) was formed at an All Karen Congress attended by 700 delegates from the Karen National Associations, both Baptist and Buddhist (KNA - founded 1881), the Karen Central Organisation (KCO) and its youth wing, the Karen Youth Organisation (KYO) at Vinton Memorial Hall in Rangoon. The meeting called for a separate Karen state with a seaboard, an increased number of seats (25%) in the Constituent Assembly, a new ethnic census, and a continuance of racially exclusive Karen units in the armed forces. The deadline of March 3 passed without a reply from the British government, and Saw Ba U Gyi, the president of the KNU, resigned from the Governor's Executive Council the next day.

After the war ended, Burma was granted independence in January 1948, and the Karen, led by the KNU, attempted to co-exist peacefully with the Burman ethnic majority. Karen people held leading positions in both the government and the army. In the fall of 1948, the Burmese government, led by U Nu, began raising and arming irregular political militias known as Sitwundan. These militias were under the command of Major Gen. Ne Win and outside the control of the regular army. In January 1949, some of these militias went on a rampage through Karen communities. In late January, the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Smith Dun, a Karen, was removed from office and imprisoned. He was replaced by Burmese nationalist Ne Win. These events happened at exactly the same time a commission looking into the Karen problem was due to make its report to the government. The events effectively killed the report. The Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), formed in July 1947, then rose up in an insurgency against the government. They were helped by the defections of the Karen Rifles and the Union Military Police (UMP) units which had been successfully deployed in suppressing the earlier Burmese Communist rebellions, and came close to capturing Rangoon itself. The most notable was the Battle of Insein, nine miles from Rangoon, where they held out a 112-day siege till late May 1949.

Years later, the Karen had become the largest of 20 minority groups participating in an insurgency against the Government in Myanmar. The struggle continues to this day.

Images of Kayin State