တဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္လဿကလုာ္အခြဲးအယာ္ဒီးတဿ္သဘ်႕အဂီဿ္-အကူာ္တဿ

ယသးအိဢ္နီၯလီၯက့ၯတဿ္ဂ့ဿ္တဿ္က်ိၯဖုဢ္ဖုဢ္ဆူပ၀ဲကညီပွၯသးစဿ္ဖိသ့ဢ္တဖဢ္

အအိဢ္ဘဢ္ထြဲ ပပွၯကညီအတဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္တဿ္လဿကဒိးန႔ဿ္ဘဢ္ကညီဒီကလုာ္အ

တဿ္တဘ်႕အဂီဿ္စးထီဢ္၀ဲအခီဢ္ထံးခီဢ္ဘိဒီးအတဿ္ကရဿကရိထီဢ္သးအဂ့ဿ္အ

က်ိၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.ဘဢ္ဆဢ္ဒီးတုၯလဿပစိၯအံၯတမၯန႔ဿ္တဿ္သဘ်႕ဒ္ဘဢ္ဒီးအ၀ဲသ့ဢ္

တနီၯနီၯဟ့ဢ္လီၯကြံာ္လံအသးသမူဒီးမ့ဿ္မတၯကမၯ၀ံၯကြံာ္တဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္အံၯလဲဢ္

န႔ဢ္တုၯလံလဿပစိၯအံၯလံ..

လဿကညီဖိတဖဢ္အတဿ္ဂုၯထီဢ္ပသီထီဢ္ဒီးကလုာ္အတဿ္ခြဲးတဿ္ယာ္ဒ္သိးကအိဢ္

မူဘဢ္ဒ္ပွၯတကလုာ္အသိးအဂီဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္တ့ဿ္လံ၀ဲစးထီဢ္လဿ ၁၈၈၁ နံဢ္လံၯလံၯ

ဒီးတုၯလဿမုဿ္မဆါတနံၯအံၯန႔ဢ္တဒိးန႔ဿ္ဘဢ္ဒံး၀ဲဒဢ္တဿ္မၯနဿၯဘဢ္ဒီးတဿ္ကရဿ

ကရိလဿအဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯအဆိကတဿဿ္မ့ဿ္၀ဲဒဢ္-

ကညီဒီကလုာ္ကရဿ Karen National Association (KNA)

ကညီဒီကလုာ္ကရဿအံၯဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯဖဲ ၁၈၈၁ နံဢ္လဿကညီဖိလဿအ

လဲၯမၯလိဘဢ္တဿ္လဿထံဂုၯကီဿ္ဂၯဒီးမ့ဿ္စ့ဿ္ကီးပွၯကီဿ္ပယီၯထံဖိကီဿ္ဖိအဆိက

တဿဿ္တဖဢ္လဿအမၯန႔ဿ္ဘဢ္ဖႜဢ္စိမိၯမံၯလၯသဢ္ကပီၯတဖဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. မ့ဿ္ပွၯတဖဢ္လဿအတကြဿ္အနီဿ္ကစဿ္တဂၯဂီဿ္အဘ်ဳးဒဢ္၀ဲဘဢ္၊ညိကြံာ္လီဿ္ဒိဢ္လၯ

ထီဒီးဟံးထီဢ္ဖီဢ္ထီဢ္မူဒါလဿတဿ္မၯစဿၯ၊ တဿ္မၯဒိဢ္ထီဢ္ထီထီဢ္က့ၯအပွၯကလုာ္

တဖဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. ကရဿအံၯဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯလဿခိဢ္နဿ္လဿအမ့ဿခရံာ္ဖိတဖဢ္

ဘဢ္ဆဢ္ ဒီကလုာ္ကရဿအံၯဆဿထဿဢ္လဿကညီဖိခဲလဿာ္အတဿ္လဲၯထီဢ္လဲၯထီ၊

အတဿ္ဘဢ္ဘီဢ္ဘဢ္ညီအဂီဿ္တအိဢ္ဒီးတဿ္ပာ္တဿ္အဒူဢ္အဆဿနီတမံၯဘဢ္. ဖဲယ

ပဢ္ပဿကီဿ္ပယီၯတစိဿ္ဖိအဆဿကတီဿ္မ့ဿ္လဿ(BIA) Burma Independent Army သုးတဖဢ္အတဿ္မၯအဿမၯနးအဃိခိဢ္နဿ္တဖဢ္ဟူးဂဲၯက့ၯတဘူဢ္လဿၯအဃိကရဿ

အံၯအတဿ္ဖံးတဿ္မၯဆိကတီဿ္ကြံာ္အသးန႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ဘူးဒးခြါသးစဿ္ကရဿ Young Men Buddhist Association(YMBA)

ဘူးဒးခြါသးစဿ္ကရဿအံၯဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯဖဲ ၁၉၄၇ နံဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.  ဘဢ္ဆဢ္

ဟူးဂဲၯ၀ဲဒ္လဲဢ္ဒီးကတဿဿ္ကြံာ္ဒ္လဲဢ္အတဿ္မၯနီဢ္မၯဃါလီၯတံဿ္လီၯဆဲးတဿ္တသ့ဢ္

ထြဲအီၯဘဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ဘူးဒးကညီဒီကလုာ္ကရဿ Buddhist Karen National Association(BKNA)

ဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯဖဲ ၁၉၃၉ နံဢ္တခ်ဳးဟီဢ္ခိဢ္တဿ္ဒုးဖးဒိဢ္ခံဘ်ီတဘ်ီကဲထီဢ္

ဒ္ဘဢ္အခါဒီးပွၯတီခိဢ္ရိဢ္မဲတဿ္မ့ဿ္၀ဲသီခါဖးဒိဢ္အူပဢ္န၀ူဢ္သးဒီးဘူးဒးကညီခိဢ္နဿ္

တဖဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. ကညီခရံာ္ဖိတနီၯႏုာ္လီၯလဿကရဿအံၯအပူၯစ့ဿ္ကီးန႔ဢ္လီၯ. ကရဿအံၯစ့ဿ္ကီးဖဲယပဢ္ဟဲႏုာ္လီၯပဿကီဿ္ပယီၯအဆဿကတီဿ္န႔ဢ္တဟူးတဂဲၯ

လဿၯဘဢ္ဒီးအသးသမူကတဿဿ္ကြံာ္၀ဲဒဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ကညီလီဿ္ခဿဢ္သးကရဿ Karen Central Organization(KCO)

ကရဿအံၯဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯဖဲ ၁၉၄၃ နံဢ္ဖဲယပဢ္ဟဲပဿကီဿ္ပယီၯအဆဿအ

ကတီဿ္ဒ္သိးကက်ဲၯတဿ္လဿကညီပယီၯတဿ္ဃူတဿ္ဖိးအဂီဿ္ဘဢ္ဆဢ္ဟူးဂဲၯတသ့

စ့ဿ္ကီးဘဢ္. ကညီလီဿ္ခဿဢ္သးကရဿ အတဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ဖးဒိဢ္တဿတဘ်ီဘဢ္တဿ္မၯ

အီၯဖဲ၀့ဿ္တကူဢ္ဖ ဲ၁၉၄၆နံဢ္ လါဖ့ၯႀဘဴၯအါရံၯ၄သီ အနံၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.မ့ဿ္ဆဿကတီဿ္

ဖဲအဲကလံးဆိကတီဿ္ကြံာ္အသုးတဿ္ပဿဖဲ(CAS-B) ဒီး Sir Paw Tun ပဒိဢ္ထီဢ္ပဿ

တဿ္အစိၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ. ဖဲ KCO တဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ ္အပူၯတဿ္အဿဢ္လီၯတူဿ္လိာ္လဿကညီဖိ

တဖဢ္ကက်ဲးစဿးသကိးဃူဃူဖိးဖိးလဿတဿ္မၯန႔ဿ္ကညီကီဿ္အဂီဿ္ ဒီးလဿတဿ္ဃ့ဒ္

သိးအဲကလံးကဟ့ဢ္ကညီကီဿ္အဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. စီၯသဢ္ဒ့ဢ္၊ စီၯဖိခႜံး၊ စံးတနံဢ္လူဢ္နံဢ္္္ဒီးစီၯဘးအူကႜံပာ္ဖွိဢ္ဃုာ္သးဒီးကညီတဿ္ရ့လိာ္မုာ္လိာ္ခဿဢ္စးတဖု
လဲၯဆူကီဿ္အဲက

လံးဒီးပာ္ဖ်ါထီဢ္ကညီဖိတဖဢ္အဂ့ဿ္အက်ိၯဒ္သိးအဲကလံးကမ်ဿဿ္ထံဖိကီဿ္ဖိတဖဢ္

ကဆီဢ္ထြဲကညီအတဿ္ဃ့အံၯအဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ကညီသးစဿ္ကရဿ Karen Youth Organization(KYO)

ဖဲ ခ့ဢ္စံဢ္အိဢ္ တဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ဖးဒိဢ္၀ံၯအလီဿ္ခံန႔ဢ္ကညီသးစဿ္ခိဢ္နဿ္တနီၯဃ့၀ဲလဿက

ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္ကညီသးစဿ္ကရဿ (KYO) အဂီဿ္ဒီးစံး၀ဲလဿတမ့ဿ္လဿကထုးဖးအသးဒီး

(KCO) အဂီဿ္ဘဢ္မ့မ့ဿ္တခီဒ္သိး ကဆီဢ္ထြဲခ့ဢ္စံဢ္အိဢ္အတဿ္မၯဒီးဂုာ္က်ဲးစဿးလီၯ

ဆီဒဢ္တဿ္လဿသးစဿ္တဖဢ္အတဿ္ဆဲးတဿ္လၯ၊ တဿ္ကူဢ္ဘဢ္ကူဢ္သ့ဒီးတဿ္လိာ္ခိဢ္

လိာ္ကြဲအဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.ခ့ဢ္စံဢ္အိဢ္အဿဢ္လီၯအ၀ဲသ့ဢ္အတဿ္ဃ့ဒီး ကညီသးစဿ္ကရဿ

ဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ကညီဒီကလုာ္စဿဖွိဢ္ကရဿ Karen National Union(KNU)

အီဢ္ဆါ-အဲးတလံ အလံာ္ဃံးဃာ္လဿတဿ္မၯအီၯလဿကီဿ္အဲကလံးအပူၯန႔ဢ္တဿ္ကဲ

ဘ်ဳးလဿကညီဖိတဖဢ္အဂီဿ္တအိဢ္ဘဢ္အဃိကညီတဿ္ကရဿကရိဖဲဆဿကတီဿ္အ၀ဲ

န႔ဢ္လဿအမ့ဿ္ KNA,BKNA,KCO ဒီး KYO  အခိဢ္အနဿ္ဒီးခဿဢ္စးသ့ဢ္တဖဢ္မၯတဿ္

အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ဖးဒိဢ္ဖဲ၀့ဿ္တကူဢ္စးထီဢ္ဖဲလါဖ့ၯႀဘဴၯအါရံၯ၃သီတုၯ၇သီဒီးကတိၯကူဢ္လိာ္

သကိးဘဢ္ဃးကညီကလုာ္အတဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္ဆူညါလဿကညီကီဿ္အဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. တဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ထံဢ္၀ဲလဿကညီတဿ္ကရဿကရိတဖုစုာ္စုာ္မ့ဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္ဒဢ္အတဿ္လီၯလီၯ

ဆီဆီဒီးမ့ဿ္တမၯသကိးတဿ္ဃူဃူဖိးဖိးဘဢ္န႔ဢ္တဂ့ၯထဲသိးဒီး တဿ္ပာ္ဖွိဢ္ထီဢ္သးဒီး

မၯသကိးတဿ္တဖုဃီတကရဿဃီဃူဃူဖိးဖိးဘဢ္ အဃိအဿဢ္လီၯသကိး၀ဲလဿကညီ

တဿ္ကရဿကရိခဲလဿာ္ကပာ္ဖွိဢ္ထီဢ္က့ၯအသးတဖုတကရဿဃီလဿတဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္တဿ္

လဿကမၯန႔ဿ္ကညီကီဿ္သဘ်႕အဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. ကညီဒီကလုာ္စဿဖွိဢ္ကရဿ

Karen National Union ဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯဖဲ ၁၉၄၇ နံဢ္လါဖ့ၯႀဘဴၯအါရံၯ ၅ သီအနံၯဒီးတဿ္ဃုထဿထီဢ္ခိဢ္နဿ္တဖဢ္လဿကတီခိဢ္ရိဢ္မဲကညီဒီကလုာ္စဿဖွိဢ္ကရဿ

အံၯအဂီဿ္မ့ဿ္၀ဲ-

ကရဿခိဢ္-စီၯစဢ္ဖိသ့ဢ္၊ ကရဿခိဢ္ခံ-အူလးဖ့ဢ္၊ နဲဢ္႐ြဲဢ္-သရဢ္သဢ္ထိဢ္၊ နဲဢ္႐ြဲဢ္သ

ဃဲၯ-မါကႜ႔မစ္ထိအီဢ္၊ ပွၯပဿၯစ့-မါဘးခ့ဢ္၊ ဒီးကရဿဖိတဖဢ္မ့ဿ္၀ဲ-စီၯဘးအူကႜံ၊ စီၯ

သဢ္ဒ့ဢ္၊ မါ၀့မီဢ္၊ စီၯဟဿထဿဢ္သဢ္မြ႔၊ မါဘးဇဢ္၊ စီၯကႜီဢ္စ့ဢ္၊ ဖီလ္အ့ည့၊ စီၯစဲခ့ဢ္၊

စီၯအီဢ္၀့ ဒီးစီၯစံးတနံဢ္လူဢ္နံဢ္သ့ဢ္တဖဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ. တဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ဖဲ ၁.၇.၄၇ အနံၯလဿအဘဢ္ဃးဒီးတဿ္ကြဿ္ကဒါက့ၯအီဢ္ဆါ-အဲးတလံအလံာ္ဃံးဃာ္ဒီးတူဿ္

လိာ္၀ဲတန႔ဿ္ဘဢ္န႔ဢ္မ့ဿ္၀ဲ...

၁. တဿ္လဲၯထံဢ္လိာ္ဒီးအဲကလံးအခါကညီခဿဢ္စးတပဢ္ဘဢ္

၂. တဿ္ကမၯလံာ္ဃံးဃာ္အံၯအဂီဿ္တဿ္တကတိၯကူဢ္လိာ္သကိးတဿ္ဒီးကညီ

ခိဢ္နဿ္တဖဢ္နီတမံၯဘဢ္

၃. တဿ္ကဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္ထံကီဿ္သဲစးတဿ္ဘ်ဿခိဢ္သ့ဢ္လဿဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္အပူၯ ကညီခဿဢ္္စးစွၯမး

၄. ကညီသုးမုဿ္လီၯဆီလဿအအိဢ္ပာ္လံန႔ဢ္တဿ္တပာ္လီၯဆီအီၯလဿၯဘဢ္

၅. တဿ္တပာ္ဖ်ါဘဢ္ဃးကညီကီဿ္လဿကညီဃ့၀ဲအဂ့ဿ္န႔ဢ္နီတမံၯဘဢ္သ့ဢ္တဖဢ္

န႔ဢ္လီၯ.ဒီးတဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္အဿဢ္လီၯ၀ဲလဿကဆွဿထီဢ္ခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္အတဿ္အဿဢ္လီၯ

တဿ္ပာ္သးအံၯဆူအဲကလံးကိတိာ္ခိဢ္က်ဿဿ္အအိဢ္ဒီးအိဢ္ခိးအဲကလံးပဒိဢ္အတဿ္္စံးဆဿတုၯ
လဿ ၁၉၄၇ နံဢ္လါမာ္

႐ွး ၃၁သီအနံၯဒီးအဲကလံးပဒိဢ္မ့ဿ္တစံးဆဿမ့တမ့ဿ္မ့ဿ္တတူဿ္လိာ္ကညီအတဿ္ဃ့

တဖဢ္ဘဢ္န႔ဢ္

၁. ကညီဖိတဖဢ္ကပာ္ဖ်ါထီဢ္အသးလဿအထီဒါ အီဢ္ဆါ-အဲးတလံ လံာ္ဃံးဃာ္ဒီး

စီၯဘးအူကႜံကဟးထီဢ္လဿကိတိာ္အလီဿ္အဲကလံးပဒိဢ္မ့ဿ္တကြဿ္ဆိကမိဢ္ဒံးကညီ

အတဿ္ဂ့ဿ္ဘဢ္ဒီး

၂. ကညီဖိတဖဢ္ကထီဒါတဿ္ႏုာ္လီၯဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္ခဿဢ္စးတဿ္ဃုထဿန႔ဢ္လီၯ.

တကတီဿ္ဃီဖဲန႔ဢ္တဿ္ဆွဿထီဢ္စ့ဿ္ကီးလံာ္ဆူ ဖဆပလ ပဒိဢ္အအိဢ္ဒီးဃ့စ့ဿ္ကီး၀ဲ

၁. ၁-ကီဿ္ရ့ဢ္လဿတန႔ဿ္ဘဢ္အခြဲးလဿကဃုထဿကညီဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္ခဿဢ္စးတဖဢ္ဒ္အမ့ဿ္

္၀ဲအ့စ့ဢ္၊ပကိ၊ ဟဢ္သဢ္၀ံဢ္တံဢ္၊ ဖႜဢ္ပူဢ္၊ ဒ၀ဲဿ္ဒီးဘ်ံးတဖဢ္အဂီဿ္တဿ္ကဟ့ဢ္အါထီဢ္

ကညီဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္ခဿဢ္စးခဲလဿာ္ ၁၇ ဂၯ

၁. ၂-ကိတိာ္ကရဿခဲဘံနဲးအပူၯတဿ္ကပာ္ကညီကိတိာ္ခဲလဿာ္ ၂၅ မ်းကယၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.

၂. လဿတဿ္ဃုထဿထီဢ္ဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္ခဿဢ္စးအသီအပူၯတဿ္ကပာ္ကညီဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္ခဿဢ္စးခဲ

လဿာ္ ၂၅ မ်းကယၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.

၃. တဿ္ကပာ္လီၯဆီကညီသုးမုဿ္ဒ္လဿညါအသိး

၄. တဿ္ကအဿဢ္လီၯလဿကအိဢ္ဒီးတဿ္ပာ္သးလဿကဟ့ဢ္ကညီကီဿ္အဂီဿ္

၅. လဿတဿ္ပဿတဿ္ျပးအပူၯလဿ၀ဲၯက်ိၯခဲလဿာ္န႔ဢ္တဿ္ကဟ့ဢ္ကညီဖိတဖဢ္အလီဿ္ဒ္

ကညီဖိအအနီဢ္ဂံဿ္အိဢ္၀ဲအသိး

၆. တုၯမ့ဿ္တဿ္မၯဘ်ီဢ္ဒိဢ္တဿ္ဃုထဿ၀ံၯလံန႔ဢ္တဿ္ကထဿဖးဖီမုဿ္ပွၯနီဢ္ဂံဿ္စရီ

လဿတဿ္ဃ့ဃုဘီအံၯအက်ါ ဖဆပလ ပဒိဢ္အဿဢ္လီၯလဿကမၯ၀ဲထဲတဿ္ထဿဖးဖီမုဿ္

္ပွၯနီဢ္ဂံဿ္စရီတခါဧိၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ. ဖဆပလ ပဒိဢ္အတဿ္စံးဆဿတဖဢ္တမ့ဿ္တဿ္လဿအဒုး

သးမံခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္ဘဢ္အဃိစီၯဘးအူကႜံဆွဿထီဢ္လံာ္လဿကဟးထီဢ္လဿကိတိာ္အလီဿ္

ဖဲ ၁၉၄၇ နံဢ္လါအ့ျဖံး ၄ သီအနံၯဒီးတဿ္ကိးခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္ပဿဆွဿတဿ္ကမံတံၯတဿ္အိဢ္

ဖွိဢ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.ဖဲအတဿ္အိဢ္အပူၯန႔ဢ္ KYO ခိဢ္နဿ္တဖဢ္ဃ့၀ဲလဿတဿ္ကထုးကြံာ္တဿ္ဆွဿ

ႏုာ္တဖဢ္ဒီးတဿ္မ့ဿ္တထုးကြံာ္တခီအ၀ဲသ့ဢ္ကဟးထီဢ္လဿ ခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္ ပဿဆွဿတဿ္က

မံတံၯအပူၯန႔ဢ္လီၯ.KYOအတဿ္ဃ့တဖဢ္ခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္ပဿဆွဿတဿ္ကမံတံၯတအဿဢ္လီၯ

ဘဢ္အဃိအ၀ဲသ့ဢ္ဟးထီဢ္ကြံာ္၀ဲလဿခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္ယူဢ္ပဿဆွဿတဿ္ကမံတံၯအလီဿ္ဒီးလဿခံ

ကတဿဿ္စူးကြံာ္ညိကြံာ္ကညီဖိတဖဢ္အတဿ္မိဢ္န႔ဿ္သးလီဒီးအတဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္လဿတဿ္မၯန႔ဿ္

ကညီကီဿ္သဘ်႕အဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.

ကညီဒီလုာ္ဂဿၯသးကရဿ Karen National Defence Organization(KNDO)

ဖဆပလ ပဒိဢ္အိဢ္စ့ဿ္ကီးဒီးတဿ္ရဲဢ္တဿ္က်ဲၯ၊ တဿ္ကတီၯသးလဿကမၯဟးဂီၯမၯသဘွံး

ကြံာ္ကညီဖိတဖဢ္အဃိဖဲ ၁၉၄၇ နံဢ္လါယူၯလံ ၁၆ သီန႔ဢ္ မါဘးဇဢ္လဿအမ့ဿ္ ခ့ဢ္အဲဢ္

ယူဢ္ပဿဆွဿတဿ္ကမံတံၯဖိဒီးဟံး န႔ဿ္မူဒါဘဢ္ဃးတဿ္ဒီသဒဿန႔ဢ္ကိးတဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္ဖဲ၀့ဿ္တ

ကူဢ္သရဢ္၀ံးတူဢ္ကႜိကရဿဿ္ပူၯဒီးဖဲတဿ္အိဢ္ဖွိဢ္အပူၯန႔ဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္ ကညီဒီကလုာ္

ဂဿၯသးကရဿဒီးတဿ္နီၯဟ့ဢ္လီၯမူဒါဆူလီဿ္က၀ီၯတဖဢ္အဃိကညီဒီကလုာ္ဂဿၯသးကရဿ

ဘဢ္တဿ္ဒုးအိဢ္ထီဢ္အီၯသကုးဆးဒးဖဲတဿ္လီဿ္လဿကညီဖိတဖဢ္အိဢ္ဆိး၀ဲလဿအတဿ္က

ဟုကယာ္ဒီးဂဿၯက့ၯကညီဖိတဖဢ္အဂီဿ္န႔ဢ္လီၯ.

တဿ္ဂဲၯလိာ္လဿကလုာ္အခြဲးအယာ္ဒီးတဿ္သဘ်႕အဂီဿ္တဿ္ကြဲးန့ဢ္ဟံးန့ဿ္အီၯလဿတံထူ၀့ဿ္

အတဿ္ကြဲးလဿကညီဟံဢ္ဖိဃီိဖိပွာ္ယဲၯသန့အပူၯလီၯ. အိဢ္ခိးကြဿ္လဿအကူာ္ခံတက့ဿ္.

ဂံဿ္ခီဢ္ထံးသဲစးတဿ္ဘ်ဿခိဢ္သ့ဢ္ဒီးအတဿ္ဘ်ဿသဃဲၯ

တိုင္းရင္းသားၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီး၀န္ႀကီးဦေက်ာ္ဆန္းထံေပးစာ

လႈိင္းဘြဲ႕ၿမိဳ႕နယ္အမတ္က လႊတ္ေတာ္မွာ ေမးျမန္းတာကို စစ္အစိုးရရဲ႕ ေျပာေရးဆိုခြင့္အဖြဲ႕ ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ျပန္ၾကားေရး၀န္ႀကီး ဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္း ေျဖၾကား တာႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီးက်ေနာ္အနည္းငယ္တံု႔ျပန္ျခင္ပါတယ္။

၄င္းကိစၥႏွင့္ပတ္သက္ၿပီးေနာ္ေမဦး၏ေခ်ပခ်က္မ်ားသည္ လက္ေတြ႔က်သလို စစ္မွန္ေသာအေျဖဟု က်ေနာ္ျမင္ မိပါတယ္။ ဦေက်ာ္ဆန္း အဓိကစြတ္ဆြဲခ်က္မွာ ထိုင္းျမန္မာနယ္စပ္ရိွဒုကၡသည္စခန္း၊ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံေႀကာင့္ ကရင္ေတာ္လွန္လွန္ေရးမၿပီးဆံုးျခင္း ဆိုၿပီး အမည္မတပ္ေသာ္လည္း ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံ ကိုရည္ညြန္းေျပာဆိုထားပါ တယ္။

နအဖ သတင္းစာတြင္အျမဲေဖၚျပေလ့ရိွေသာ ၀န္ႀကီးေက်ာ္ဆန္း ႏွင့္ နအဖ ၏လက္သံုးစကားတစ္ခုမွာ-

“ လက္တစ္ဆုတ္စာသာရိွေသာ KNU အဖ်က္သမား” ဆိုၿပီးထပ္ကာထပ္ကာ ေဖၚျပေလ့ရိွပါတယ္။ နယ္စပ္တ ေလွ်ာက္ရိွဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းကို KNU စခန္းလို႔ေျပာလွ်င္ KNU ရဲ့စစ္သားအေရအတြက္ဟာ နအဖ စစ္သားအေရ အတြက္လို သိန္းဂဏာန္းထက္မနည္းႏိုင္တာ သိသာပါတယ္။ KNU ဟာ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံႏွင့္ ျပည္ပႏိုင္ငံေတြဆီမွ အကူအညီ ႏွင့္ရွင္သန္ေၾကာင္း နအဖ သတင္းစာ ႏွင့္ ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္း ၏ သတင္းစာရွင္းလင္းပြဲေတြမွာ အျမဲေျပာေလ့ရိွပါတယ္။ ဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္းေျပာသလိုသာ မွန္ရင္ သိန္းဂဏန္းရိွတဲ့ KNU စစ္အင္အား ဟာ ထိုင္းႏွင့္ျပည္ပအကူအညီေတြရရင္ ၿမိဳ႕သိမ္းတိုက္ပြဲေတြ မက တနသၤာရီတိုင္း ႏွင့္ ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ေတြကို အလြယ္တကူ သိမ္းႏိုင္ခဲ့တာၾကာပါၿပီ။

ကရင္ျပည္နယ္မွာရိွတဲ့စစ္ဆင္ေရးကိုၾကည့္ပါ။ နအဖတပ္ေတြရဲ့ က်ဆံုး၊ ထိအခိုက္ တပ္ေျပးစာရင္း ဟာ ပ်မ္းမွ် တစ္လလွ်င္တပ္ရင္း ၂ ရင္းစာကုန္ေနပါတယ္။ ဗိုလ္မႈးခ်ဳပ္ႏႈတ္ခမ္းေမႊး ရဲ့ KNU ႏွင့္ပူးေပါင္းတပ္ေတြကို တုိက္ခဲ့ တာ ၃ လေက်ာ္သြားပါၿပီ၊ ၃ လအတြင္း အဲဒီေဒသမွာ ဆံုးရႈံးခဲ့တဲ့ နအဖ တပ္အေရအတြက္ဟာ တပ္ရင္း ၁၀ ရင္းေက်ာ္ပါၿပီ။ ဒီတိုက္ပြဲေနရာတစ္ေလွ်ာက္ကိုၾကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ KNU တပ္ေတြ ဘယ္မွာရိွတယ္ဆိုတာ သိ သာပါတယ္။ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းေတြ ႏွင့္ဘာမွမဆိုင္ပါ။ နအဖ စစ္သားေတြရဲ့ေသြးေျမက်ေနတဲ့ ေနရာေတြကို ၾကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ KNU ဟာ ကရင္ျပည္နယ္ထဲမွာဘဲ ရိွေနတာ ထင္ရွားေနပါတယ္။

ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးႏွင့္ ပတ္သက္ၿပီး ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ျမ ဦးေဆာင္တဲ့ KNU အဖြဲ႔ ရန္ကုန္မွာ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့တာေတြ ျပန္ၾကည့္ပါ။ အဲဒီတံုးက KNU ဟာအပစ္ရပ္လက္မွတ္ထိုးရန္အဆင္သင့္ ျဖစ္ေနၿပီး စစ္မွန္ေသာ ၿငိမ္းျခမ္းေရးတြက္ နအဖ လက္မွတ္ထိုးရန္ ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သို႕ေသာ္လည္း ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးတြက္ နအဖ ဖက္မွ ပ်က္ကြက္ခဲ့ပါ တယ္။ လက္နက္ကိုင္အားလံုး ၁၇ ဖြဲ႔ အပစ္ရပ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးသေဘာတူၿပီးမွ KNU ကို အျဖည့္သေဘာ သာ စ ကားေျပာတာကိုၾကည့္ျခင္းအားျဖင့္ နအဖ အာဏာရွင္ဟာ KNU ႏွင့္ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရး လုပ္မွာ မဟုတ္ေၾကာင္း သက္ေသျပေနပါတယ္။

အႏွစ္ ၂၀ နီးပါး အပစ္ရပ္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးယူခဲ့တဲ့အဖြဲ႔ေတြရဲ့ ျဖတ္သန္းခဲ့တဲ့ခရီးကို ၾကည့္ခ်င္းအားျဖင့္ နအဖ ေပးတဲ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးဟာ အတုအေယာင္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးျဖစ္သလို ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ကတိေတြအတိုင္း ေဆာင္ရြက္ဖို႔နအဖ ဖက္ မွအၿမဲ တမ္းပ်က္ကြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒိျပင္ အပစ္ရပ္ေဒသေတြမွာ ေနထိုင္တဲ့ျပည္သူေတြဟာ လူေနမႈ႕ဘ၀ မတိုးတက္တဲ့ ျပင္ နအဖ အစိုးရတပ္ေတြရဲ့ အတင္းအဓမၼေစခိုင္းျခင္း၊ လယ္ယာေျမသိမ္းျခင္း၊ အႏိုင္က်င့္ျခင္း၊ ဌာနဆိုင္ရာ ေတြရဲ့မတရားသျဖင့္ အႏိုင္က်င့္ျခင္းေတြ ပိုမိုခံစားလာရပါတယ္။ ေဒသခံမ်ား၏ စား၀တ္ေနေရး ပိုမိုက်ပ္တည္း လာတဲ့ျပင္ ေဒသထြက္ သဘာ၀ သံယာဇာတအရင္းအျမစ္မ်ား သည္ တုိင္းျပည္အတြက္အက်ိဳးျဖစ္ထြန္းဖို႔ထက္ စစ္ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မိသားစု ႏွင့္ ေနာက္လိုက္ စီးပြါးေရးသမားေတြကိုသာ အက်ိဳးျဖစ္ထြန္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါ့ေၾကာင့္ ျမန္မာျပည္ ဆင္းရဲျခင္း ႏွင့္ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ျဖစ္ေနရျခင္းသည္ နအဖ တြင္သာ လံုးလံုးလ်ားလ်ား တာ၀န္ရိွပါ တယ္။

ထိုင္းျမန္မာနယ္စပ္တစ္ေလွ်ာက္ရိွဒုကၡသည္စခန္းေတြဟာ KNU ေတြေဆာက္ထားတာမဟုတ္သလို KNU အတြက္ ထိုင္းကေဆာက္ေပးတာလဲမဟုတ္ပါ။ နအဖ ကရြာေတြကိုဖ်က္၊ အရပ္သားေတြကို သတ္ျဖတ္ေနလို႔ ဒုကၡသည္ စခန္းေတြျဖစ္လာတာပါ။ အဲဒီဒုကၡသည္စခန္းေတြေၾကာင့္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံအ တြက္၀န္ထုတ္၀န္ပိုးျဖစ္ေနရသလို အဲဒီ ၀န္ထုတ္၀န္ပိုးေတြကလႊတ္ေျမာက္ေအာင္ ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံက နည္းမ်ိဳးစံုျဖင့္ႀကိဳးစားေနတာ ျမင္ေနရပါတယ္။ သက္ေသျပရမည္ဆိုလွ်င္ ၂၀၀၆ တုန္းက ေနျပည္ေတာ္ မိုင္ ၅၀ ပတ္လည္မွာရိွတဲ့ ကရင္ ႏွင့္ ကယား တုိင္း ရင္းသားရြာေတြကို ရွင္းထုတ္တုန္းက ထြက္ေျပးလာတဲ့ ဒုကၡသည္ ေတြကို ထိုင္းႏိုင္ငံက လံုး၀ ၀င္ခြင့္မေပးသ ျဖင့္ ကရင္အရပ္သားေသာင္းႏွင့္ခ်ီၿပီး ဒုကၡေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါေတြကို သတင္းႏွင့္ျပန္ၾကားေရး၀န္ႀကီးဦး ေက်ာ္ဆန္းဘယ္လို ရွင္းျပႏိုင္ပါသလဲ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ ဒုကၡသည္စခန္းျဖစ္လာတာဟာ နအဖ မွာသာလံုး၀ တာ၀န္ရိွ ေၾကာင္းထင္ရွားေနပါတယ္။

ႏွစ္ ၆၀ ေက်ာ္ၿပီျဖစ္တဲ့ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္စတင္သည့္အေၾကာင္းအရင္းသည္ ျမန္မာျပည္တစ္၀ွမ္းမွာ ေနထိုင္ေနတဲ့ တုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားကို တန္းတူရည္တူမဆက္ဆံဘဲ ႏိုင္လိုမင္းထက္ အႏိုင္က်င့္သည့္ စနစ္ေၾကာင့္ ျပည္တြင္းစစ္ စတင္ခဲ့ျခင္းပါတယ္။ လက္ရိွ နအဖ သည္ တိုင္းရင္းသားပါမကေတာ့ဘဲ ျပည္သူအမ်ားစု ကို မတရား ဖိႏွိပ္အုပ္ခ်ဳပ္မႈ႕ေၾကာင့္ ျပည္တြင္း ပဋိပခအဆံုးမသပ္ႏိုင္ျခင္းျဖစ္ေနပါတယ္။ အရပ္သားျပည္သူမ်ားကို အႏိုင္က်င့္သတ္ျဖတ္တဲ့ နအဖ မူဟာ ကိုယ့္အိမ္ကို ကိုယ္တိုင္ျပန္မီးရိႈ႔ေနတာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ၀န္ႀကီးဦးေက်ာ္ဆန္း ၏ေျပာစကားဟာ ကိုယ္တိုင္္ကျပန္ရိႈ႔လို႔ ကိုယ့္အိမ္မီးေလာင္ေနတာ ေဘးအိမ္က ရိႈ႕လို႕ေလာင္တာပါဟုေျပာေန တာႏွင့္တူေနပါသည္။

အမွားကိုျမင္ အမွန္ျပင္လ်က္ စစ္မွန္ေသာၿငိမ္းခ်ိမ္းေရးေဖၚေဆာင္ႏိုင္ပါေစ

ဖူးဒို

မတ္လ ၂၈ ရက္၊ ၂၀၁၁

http://www.karenunited.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1413:2011-03-27-15-05-41&catid=2:articles&Itemid=16

Ethnic Conflict and Problems of Insurgency

Forgotten Victims of a Hidden war

Ethnic Groups in Burma Development, Democracy and Human Rights

Karen People Life in Picture

A Lesson from the Past: the fate of the Karen Revolutionary Council

A year ago in April 2009, Burma’s military rulers proposed that all

seventeen armed cease-fire groups transform their armies into Border

Guard Forces (BGF) administered by the junta. Tension has increased in

recent months between the Burmese military and the New Mon State Party

(NMSP) and other ethnic resistance groups who have rejected the

regime’s order to transform their armies into a border guard force.

According to local news, the armed wing of the New Mon State Party,

the Mon National Liberation Army, has relocated all its ammunition and

military hardware to a more secure area obviously in preparation for a

conflict. Pressure from the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)

to coerce the cease-fire groups into the BGF unavoidably means that

the NMSP will be preparing for the worst. Now is a timely reminder

to look back on history.

The fate that the NMSP and other armed resistance groups have been

facing in recent months is quite similar to what happened to the Karen

Revolutionary Council (KRC) in 1965. All the old memories of those

days amazingly become new and fresh again in my mind as if it had

happened yesterday. The pictures of Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe, president of

KRC and General Saw Ohn Pe and Bo Lin Htin, the leaders of KRC,

clearly appear in my memory.

The current situation reminded me of the political developments after

the Revolutionary Council led by General Ne Win seized the state power

on 2nd March, 1962. As soon as it seized State power, the

Revolutionary Council detained all the cabinet members of U Nu’s

government, including Nai Aung Tun and most of the politicians

throughout the country. On 7 July 1962 to show its might, the

Revolutionary Council killed over 100 students from Rangoon University

who peacefully staged a demonstration in the university compound. The

next day, early in the morning of 8 July, 1962, RC ordered Major Sein

Lwin to blow up the Students Union Building with dynamite. All the

students, who were still sleeping inside the building, were killed. I

was lucky to be a student at Moulmein College at the time. Following

the death of the students, the sentiment of civilians against the

Revolutionary Council grew bigger and bigger day by day.

On 11 June, 1963, to everyone’s amazement, the Revolutionary Council

announced Peace-Talks with the armed resistance groups. It seemed to

everyone that, as Revolutionary Council desperately needed to buy time

during the early stages of the coup, calling the Peace-Talks was none

other than to quell the dissident civilians and to stall its

legitimacy.

Let me highlight the contrast between the Revolutionary Council Peace-

Talks and the Peace-Offer launched by Gen. Khin Nyunt in 1992. During

the 1963 Peace Talks every armed resistance group could freely take

part and raise their political issues. Above all these parties were

treated respectably with equal consideration alongside the government

representatives.

In contrast, the armed resistance groups which accepted the Peace-

Offer in 1992 had no rights to raise political issues; instead they

could only hope and bargain for some political rights and social

assistance from the government. In most cases the cease-fire groups

could only accept the terms provided to them by the government. For

instance, in 1995 the NMSP had no chance to raise any political issues

such as the right of self-determination for Mon people. They were

ordered to live in twelve designated places defined by the SPDC whilst

the NMSP could only retain their arms within these areas. In addition,

the NMSP received financial assistance and monthly rice quotas. Since

then no further political discussion has taken place between the

groups.

Now let us look back again to the 1963 Peace-Talks. Almost all of

armed resistance organizations came to Rangoon, including the Burma

Communist Party (BCP), Communist Party, Burma (CPB), Karen National

United Party (KNUP), New Mon State Party (NMSP), Karenni National

Progressive Party (KNPP) Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and

Karen Revolutionary Council (KRC) etc. Nearly all the prominent

leaders of the armed resistance groups, such as Thakin Soe, General

Secretary of CPB, Yeni Kyaw Win and Ma Ngwe San from CPB, Yabaw Htay,

Bo Zeya, Bo Yan Aung, Bo Pu and Thakin Aung Gyi from BCP, Mahn Ba Zan

of KNUP, Nai Shwe Kyin of NMSP and Saw Maw Rai of KNPP, came to

Rangoon for the Peace-Talks. Media outlets had their photos appearing

in all the major newspapers and periodicals. This is still fresh in

my mind and I remember clearly that Thakin Soe of CPB and Yebaw Htay

(BCP) wore their party uniforms. Nai Shwe Kyin wore a white shirt and

gray trousers. The KNUP representatives Mahn Ba Zan, Sakaw Letaw, Bo

Kyin Pe, Bogyouk Tanbala Paw, Saw Than Aung, and Padou San Lin wore

full western attire while KNPP leaders Saw Maw Rai wore their

Karenni’s national dress.

From the very beginning of military rule in Burma which began in 1962

there has been no sincerity on part of the government, the peace

initiatives in 1963 collapsed without any fruitful result. The

Revolutionary Council announced their failure on the 14th of November

1963 and in customary dictatorial fashion blamed the armed resistance

groups for their intransigence and duly arrested politicians and

student leaders that very same evening. Mon leaders, Nai Tun Thein,

Nai Ngwe Thein, Nai Thein Maung, Nai Chan Mon, Nai Nonlar, Nai Kyaung,

Nai Konbalai and Nai Tin Aung, from Mon People’s Front, were also

arrested. All the armed resistance groups, including BCP, NMSP and

KNUP were able to escape and return to their respective camps in the

deep jungle again. Student Unions, throughout the country, immediately

staged a demonstration demanding that the RC immediately resume the

Peace-Talks and release all political and student leaders.

Following the collapse of the Peace-Talks, to everyone’s surprise

among the parties which took part in the peace-talks, only the Karen

Revolutionary Council (KRC) led by Kawcasa Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe and Bo

Lin Htin, reached a peace-agreement with Revolutionary Council.

According to the political agreement, the name of Karen State was

changed into “Kawthoolei State” and the KRC could remain peacefully in

the areas Thaton District and had the right to retain their arms. As

an outcome of the peace-agreement, the members of KRC enjoyed social

assistance from the government such as rice and money. But as everyone

predicted there was no further political discussions whatsoever

between KRC and RC after 1963. Instead the only news heard was about

Kawcasa Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe who was appointed as a Special Education

Official while General Saw Ohn Pe was appointed as a government

official.

To get a clear picture of KRC we need to go back a few decades to

review the Karen revolution. Let me tell you a little bit about Bo Lin

Htin. At the time of peace-agreement, he was the commander of 5th

Brigade of KRC and was very popular during 1954-63 for his bravery in

the battlefields. He was the one person who could not only humiliate

the Burmese army but could at anytime derail the train which ran

between Moulmein and Rangoon. The train was totally at the mercy of Bo

Lin Htin in those days. He also humiliated the Thai’s authorities by

burning the town of Maesot in Tak Province 1954-55. Since then his

name was well-known among the civilians.

Then the KRC army split, one faction was led by Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe.

In 1951 Karen Leaders led by Mahn Ba Zan adopted a new political

strategy called the Second Path. This was a guideline for KNU to seek

self -determination Rights for the Karen People; however, apparently

some Karen Leaders who were not happy with this new strategy. Saw

Hunter Tha Hmwe and his colleagues had occasionally criticised the new

Political Strategy as left-leaning on communist’s political ideology.

In 1956 at the 2nd Kawthoolei Congress in line with the new political

strategy, KNU changed their name to KNUP. On the 26th of May, 1956, at

the Karen National Congress, eleven members of Karen Revolutionary

Council were elected and led by Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe. Literally the KRC

was functioning as an administrative body (government) while the KNUP

stood as the Political Party.

On 20 April, 1963, the leaders of KNUP and the members of KRC held a

joint meeting at Kasawa Camp. Ten members of KRC led by Saw Hunter Tha

Hmwe were not satisfied with the new political strategy called the

Second Path and openly broke away from KNUP. This is the background

history of KRC in a nutshell and during the 1963 Peace-Talks, the KRC,

led by Saw Hunter Tha Hmwe, separately negotiated with Revolutionary

Council. The KRC got a peace deal with the Revolutionary Council,

while KNUP and other armed resistance groups headed back to their

camps in the deep jungle.

After the KRC signed the peace-agreement, to every one’s surprise, Bo

Lin Htin was unusually respected by the Burmese Army Officers who

provided him with a military helicopter for his own personal use. By

helicopter he went back and forth from Thaton to Rangoon and to

everyone’s amazement he unexpectedly married a very famous young lady,

Naw Louisa Benson, who was Miss Burma and a movie actress at the

time. Their wedding ceremony was a celebrity affair held in Rangoon

in front of Gen. Ne Win and State Leaders with some observers saying

that their wedding was like a state wedding ceremony. Politicians

ventured to say that Bo Lin Htin was actually detained in Rangoon and

that the marriage would enable Bo Lin Htin to forget all the Karen

national interests and obligations except for his family affairs.

In reality, Bo Lin Htin never forgot his political obligations for the

Karen people’s self-determination. He always spent time with his

comrades in Thaton after his marriage and approached the Revolutionary

Council many times for the political rights of the Karen people, but

to no avail. He was pressured to transform his troops into a militia

group or Kakwaeye, but came to realize that he could do nothing for

his people according to his peace-agreement. Later he secretly set up

an arrangement and organised to go back to the jungle again. But Gen.

Ne Win soon detected his strategy and clandestinely planned to

eliminate him before he could return. Before his dream came true in

1965, Bo Lin Htin was assassinated by the Military Intelligence (MI)

soldiers in front of his comrades. But the newspaper headlines the

next day read: “Bo Lin Htin was accidentally killed” which appeared in

every daily newspaper, as I remember one paper reported: “The body

guards of Bo Lin Htin opened fire on MI soldiers who had honestly came

to see Bo Lin Htin to discuss some very important issues, and out of

self-defence the soldiers of MI returned fire. During the cross-fire

between the Karen soldiers and MI, a stray bullet hit Bo Lin Htin who

was killed on the spot.”

This story was obviously made up and a far cry from what actually

happened. As a result, the Karen Revolution Council was dismantled

with their soldiers being either killed or detained, but some managed

to escape to the jungle such as Naw Louisa Benson who fled to the Thai-

Burma border areas. Bo Hmu Win and Bo Hmu Phar Lu Kyaw, second

commanders of KRC, were sent to the Moulmein Jail and student leaders

of Moulmein Degree College, including me, were detained after the 1963

demonstration which urged the Revolutionary Council to resume Peace-

Talks.

The fate of the KRC highlights the fragility of all the cease-fires

with the Burmese Military Regime. When we consider the repercussions

of the Border Guard proposal, this is a timely reminder that we must

never forget our history.

Nai Pe Thein Zar

(Federal University)

April 9, 2010

Reference: Myanmar Pyi Chit Kayin National Leaders/ Maung Sin Kyai

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.culture.burma/2010-04/msg00064.html

The Karenni and Pa-Oh: Revolution in Burma

The Karenni and Pa-oh (also spelled Pa-O) indigenous groups of Burma share a traditional heritage, but have distinct styles of dress, rituals, mores, languages, and diets. Although both are cultivators, the Pa-oh live on the highland plateaus and open land most suitable for intensive agriculture. Karenni country is a rugged, mountainous terrain with difficult, steep trails, and its people live on slash-and-burn (swidden) cultivation. The Pa-oh are industrious, diligent, and independent. Self-sufficient in all their needs, the only item they import is salt. As Buddhists they have a written language, and their monasteries, the centers of community life, accentuate group consciousness.

Post-Independence Turmoil

Under the British rule of justice, Karenni State was a protectorate state. The Karenni were independent, but were neglected by their feudal chiefs. Further north, the highland Pa-oh were incorporated in the federated Shan states. They were subjected to abuse, neglect, and misrule. The lowland Pa-oh in lower Burma, however, were given opportunities for advancement, although they did suffer discrimination by the more numerous neighboring Burmans and were looked down on as lowly peasants.

When the British gave Burma its independence in 1948, they allowed the Karenni to be incorporated into the independent Burma; this, however, was done without the consent of the Karenni people. When the Karenni refused to cooperate with the new independent Burma, Thakin Nu (U Nu, Burma's first prime minister) sent in his military police force to occupy their area. On 9 August 1948, the military police attacked the Karenni National Organization headquarters, which ignited a war between the Karenni and the Burmese government that continues to this day.

The Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), a Karen tribal rebel force from Toungoo, rushed in to help defend the Karenni, and the Union Military Police, stationed in Shan State and composed mainly of Karens, Padaungs, and Pa-ohs, deserted their posts and returned to Karenni land to join the defense. (Both the Karenni and the Pa-oh are related to the Karen ethnic group.) The Pa-oh, under the command of Chan Zone, joined ranks with the Pa-oh guerrillas at Kyauk-ta-lone.

In 1949, on 31 January, Thakin Nu declared war on the entire Karen population. Although the majority of Karen are in lower Burma, the Karenni and Pa-oh are isolated in the north, occupied and holding all towns in Karenni (the Karenni State of Burma, also called Kayah State). In July 1951, from Toungoo, KNDO and Kachin troops seized Taunggyi, the capital of Shan State. This move was supposed to encourage the Shan chiefs to join in against the Burmese government. The Shan chiefs, believing that the Panglong Agreement would be binding, did not join KNDO. Their hopes were shattered when General Ne Win took over in 1962 and put them under arrest.

Fight Against Feudalism

Under the alien feudal authority, where there is no leader to stand up for the people, the Pa-oh continued to exist as a suppressed people. The only law over them was the law of the strongest.

Numerous public functions and festivals were organized to conduct public gambling, from which henchmen collected taxes and fees for their masters and took part for themselves. Opium cultivation was encouraged as a source of tax revenue. Every family was allowed to distill rice wine and whiskey for open sale. Gambling, drunkenness, and opium smoking were the roots of frequent and rampant robberies. Law and order as it existed under a democratic institution did not exist here.

The people lost all appreciation of social and moral values. Aimless and bewildered, they hoped for a better future and for social security for themselves. They wanted reform, but they needed leaders whom they could follow. The prime movers for reform were: Saya Daw U Thu Riya, the most influential abbot among the Burmese monks; Saya Daw U Htut Nandah, the noted scholar who recoined the Pa-oh written language; Saya Daw U Gandamah, the great national organizer and the torch bearer for the liberation from feudalism; and many reformists - lay people and monks alike-who joined the ranks in the fight against feudalism.

The Pa-oh set up a new headquarters at Kyauk-talone, where Pa-oh Hla Pe organized a new national organ, the Pa-oh National Liberation Organization (PNLO). An armed wing was formed. On 11 December 1949, PNLO declared war on the feudal lords of Nyaunghwe, Ban Yin, Hopon, Naung Mong, Ping Lone, Sanka, Mong Pong, Loi Lem, Mong Nai, and Mauk Mai.

Assisted by Phra Tan Nam Aw and Boh Chan Zone, Pa-oh Hla Pe, best known as Phra Bwah, soon rallied the people behind him. At first it was the Pa-oh against the feudal lords. In the early stages of the conflict, any PNLO member captured by the feudal levies was cruelly tortured and beheaded. The head was then displayed in the market for public view. This barbaric demonstration, instead of frightening the public, infuriated them. Soon all the peasants from the Shan, Taung Nyo, and In-tha ethnic groups joined the Pa-oh in the revolution.

Seeds of Discontent

The Burmese troops stationed in Shan State did not interfere in the fight between PNLO and the feudalists. They did, however, move south to fight the Karenni. With KNDO and mutinous Karen Rifles troops (formerly part of the Burmese Army) down from Maymyo in support, the Burmese enemy was defeated in the first two years. There was an esprit de corps among the defenders, many of them from lower Burma, until the enemy succeeded in infiltrating and sowing the seeds of discontent and suspicion through spreading a fifth columnist slogan that the "white Karen" were not wanted in the state. (Karenni is the Burmese appellation for "red Karen," and any Karen that is not red Karen is white Karen.) So KNDO and the Karen Rifles took leave of their posts and left Karenni State.

This disintegration of racial harmony was mainly due to the lack of responsibility and able leadership on the part of Saw Shwe, who was the chief of Karenni State and formerly of Kyet-po-gyi State. He was a weakling in spirit and very indecisive in principle. Richmond (KNDO), who had been with him from the start of the war, resigned from his commander post, and Boh Hla Win took over the military command.

As the relocation of troops and new defensive positions were set, a new military development occurred that upset Karenni stability. The Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang (KMT), which had "colonized" part of Shan State east of Salween, moved down in great numbers, each column containing an opium caravan of 200-300 animal transports. For a few months KMT occupied the Mawchi mines (massive tungsten and tin mines) and part of the Mawchi-Toungoo road as a token for taking over the defense of part of Karenni State. But when the Burmese Army in the north, from Kalaw, attacked Loikaw, the main town in Karenni State, these KMT deserted their positions and fled to Papun and southward to the Mon area. These KMT members for some years "colonized" Salween, the east sector of Shan State, right up to Laotian territory. They promoted opium trade and organized international markets. But as KMT strength decreased and their troops' morale grew low, gradually the Burmese government was able to control the whole country by 1956.

Saw Shwe and the Karenni stragglers, greatly diminished in number, retreated into the hills of Kyetpo-gyi State. Richmond (Tawplo), who had been exiled from Karenni, rejoined Saw Shwe. Once again dislocated persons were regrouped, a new military unit formed, and civil administration set up. During this period a group of KNDO remnants who had been fighting alongside PNLO rejoined Saw Shwe, who was also their chief. They were the Paku under Boh Special, elder brother of Tah Kaleh, presently chairman of the Shan State Nationalities Liberation Organization. This group brought down opium to open a market route through Kawthoolei. However, Saw Shwe and Richmond did not agree to this trade of opium in their jurisdiction, and a factional dispute developed into armed conflict.

In 1955 the enemy captured the Mawchi mines and for two years tried to reopen the Mawchi-Toungoo road. They did not succeed and the road is closed to this day, not due so much to the difficult terrain as the tenacity and determination of the people. Saw Shwe became ill with malaria and typhoid fever and died early in 1957. Richmond was made the head of Karenni State. Under him morale revived and the organization expanded among the other ethnics.

Brigadier Sein Win, commander of the Burmese Army in Toungoo, had some Karens trained in his military intelligence section. Two of these, Riki and Maw Taung Gyi, were dispatched to the Mawchi mines to lead the fifth column activity. Encouraged by the Burmese Army stationed in Mawchi, the two factions fought to control the area around the Mawchi mines. Richmond was assassinated one evening while resting on his portico talking to his family by a gunman hired by Maw Taung Gyi. In retaliation, Boh Special was killed in an ambush on the Mawchi-Pasaung road.

Then Saw Maw Reh, who had been captured in 1949, was released and rejoined Aung Than Lay. As a Karenni, Saw Maw Reh wanted to get in touch with his people and instill a progressive outlook. It was Aung Than Lay who rebuilt the fighting spirit of the people to continue the struggle against the enemy. This led to the formation of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP).

Political Illusions

Up north, in close proximity to Karenni, the Pa-oh feudal revolution raged on. The death toll inflicted on the Shan feudalists was high, but higher still was the toll suffered by the Burmese Army, which sided with the feudalists at their request.

A peace overture was arranged between the Burmese government and PNLO. Requirements were the abolition of feudalism in Shan State, and local administration for the Pa-oh people where the majority of inhabitants are Pa-oh. The two demands were found to be liberal and democratic; on the question of disposal of arms, however, a compromise was reached to avoid the term surrender. On this pretext an "exchange of arms for democracy" was agreed upon and a peace accord was made in December 1958. One year later, the Sao Bwas of Shan State surrendered their feudal authority to become common people, but to the Pa-oh people it was a compromised peace.

The reorganization of the Karenni mass moved forward as Saw Maw Reh asserted his leadership and was nominated president of the Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP). Although Aung Than Lay, being a Pwo Karen from the Delta, played second fiddle, he remains the prime mover in the Karenni armed forces to this day. Taking the cue from KNUP (the Karen National Union Party, a Karen rebel political group), KNPP adopted national democracy and made a covenant with KNUP, the latter being an elder brother of sorts.

When Ne Win seized full military power in 1962, all Pa-oh members of parliament were arrested and put in jail. Pa-oh Hle Pe was later arrested when he instigated a people's uprising in Mandalay. With nearly all the top-level leaders tucked away in jail, the junior leaders grew wary in their underground activities. The office of the United Pa-oh National Organization in Taunggyi stayed open, but this came to an end when Burmese colonel Aung Pe arrested the leaders in town during a meeting that he had convened. Boh San Thein, who was sick and did not attend the meeting, helped mastermind an escape to the jungles to start a new Pa-oh revolution from scratch.

In the reorganization of PNLO, Boh San Thein was handicapped when all the able leaders were arrested. He welcomed Sai Hla Mg, a Shan communist cadre who soon became friendly with Takaleh, a KNDO remnant from Karenni. Takaleh's prowess in military tactics lifted him to a position of military leader but made him vulnerable to political manipulation.

Then began a period of political illusion undermining Pa-oh national unity. Traditionally, the Pa-oh people have a strong attachment and a highly sentimental opinion toward the Karen, who in general aspect are their esteemed "big brothers." Right from the beginning these two tribal groups fought shoulder to shoulder in Nyaung Lay Bin and Diak-U (lower Burma), where together they occupied Taunggyi. After that, KNDO left the Pa-oh to fend independently. Alone and independent, they achieved victory over the feudalists and made peace with the Burmese government. When they could no longer tolerate the "Burmese Way to Socialism" (Ne Win's new economic system), they took arms and again fought the Burmese government separately from the Shan revolutionary groups, which had taken up arms against the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP).

In the early 1970s, a split occurred between the Pa-oh nationalists and the leftists, and fighting broke out. Soon the more than 1,000 Pa-oh fighting force was divided to eliminate one another. This went on for two years, after which, at last, Takaleh's group, reduced to a minimum number, fled to Pang Sang to become a satellite of the Burma Communist Party (BCP), a large insurgent group.

Eventually, Takaleh, with 200 BCP troops, came back to Pa-oh area. The fighting continued until 1988, when Takaleh offered a cease-fire and promised to merge with the Pa-oh National Organization (PNO), which was organized when lowland Thaton area Pa-oh troops joined with the highland Pa-oh. This faction later deserted and surrendered to the enemy. When Pa-oh Hla Pe died, Aung Kam Hti succeeded him as president. Although they could contain BCP incursion and made some progress at the border in international contacts, they refused to collaborate with the Shan United Army (SUA) (Khun Sa's group, a militia involved in narcotics trafficking). In the mid-1980s, SUA attacked and occupied the Thai border area (which is suitable for heroin manufacturing), pushing out PNO.

The Will of the People

The history of Karenni resistance against the Burmese occupation of their tiny land is heroic when compared to the disparity and wide proportion of population. The Karenni population, not more than 300,000, is a plural community of several ethnics of hill Karen. They had very little encouragement under their own chiefs in the fields of social progress and economic development. For 40 years, however, they have stood together against Burmese occupation. Against such great odds, what binds them together is the singleness of will and the loyalty to the land they claim as their ancestral domain.

Within KNPP, a leftist faction - the young Turks, led by Thein Aung - prepared for a coup while Saw Maw Reh, a man with the ability to manipulate in times of crisis, managed to rise above the political turbulence and lead KNPP to a victory over the attempted coup. Within a week the young Turks were wiped out.

For many years KNPP made progress in financial income, but met with adversity due to lack of proper planning, never an easy task in wartime. It, however, has to pass through some years of depression, which is normal to every revolution.

In 1982 Saw Maw Reh relinquished his office and Phyar Reh took over as the new president. In any organization, when there is a change of leadership there is always a change of personality. This is true, too, with KNPP. There was more incentive taken in the field of foreign contact and an increase in communication with foreign sources with Phyar Reh's ascent.

The struggle of the people goes on relentlessly in spite of the world's indifference. The 40-year-old struggle against the Burmese occupation is long enough to subject the people to any unconditional surrender to the enemy. Only the unwavering will of the people continues, as they deny themselves personal comforts and undergo untold suffering in their temporary jungle settlements. In the civil war in Karenni State, thousands of porters are forcibly recruited and hundreds die yearly. The situation in 1989 is worse than ever; the mounting number of refugees, many fleeing to escape being recruited as porters, leaves families destitute, fields deserted, and cries unheard. The tribulations, the diseases, the deaths, the anguish, and the tears continue as the Karenni and Pa-oh people pray to God to end their suffering. All peace-loving nations are urgently called upon to make peace proposals, and to quote a verse from the Christian Bible: "Blessed are the peace makers.

http://www.culturalsurvival.org/ourpublications/csq/article/the-karenni-and-pa-oh-revolution-burma

Original Karen Pa-oh History

Taungthu +  Po   Parachi +  Sakor

Taungthu + Po    Parachi    Sako

Mawlamyaing +  Puthein    Mawlamyaing +  Pathein

In research book on Karen tradition page 22,23- if is written that “according to Burma Ruling Acts, the announcement of the governor dates May 6, 1936, in eleven Karen tribes, Pa-oh are called Taungthu.”

In 1931, according to Burma census report account 17, paragraph 2, page 244, Taungthu are in the seventeen Karen tribes. In “Tribal People in Union of Burma” by U Min Naing, page 27, it is written that “Taungthu is called Pa-oh by some people. In ShanState they are called by both names. Pa-ohs ( Taungthu) are in Karen group who live in mountainous areas”.

As Pa-ohs are a separate group of Karen group a lot of their words are similar to Karen language as found in the following chart. Though their language are similar, their traditions are different. While some of their words are similar, some other words are totally unconnected.

Burmese                Karen                         Pa-oh

Teitei ngenge         Pi Pi                           PeiPei

Weta                     Taw-nga/Toya             Tawh-ya

Mainkalay              Munaw/ Munan            Munan

Sati                       Aw/Awng                    Ann

Yei                        Ti                               Ti

Yei tok ti                Awti                           Anti

Apei, Amei Apa,      Amo Pha,                   Moe

Pa-oh sentence construction is the same as Karen, but different to Burmese. Look at the following pattern.

Language             Subject            Verb             Object

Burmese               Kawnor ti         Sati              Tamin

Karen                   Ya                   Awng            Mei

Pa-oh                   Kway               Ann              Tyin

When study the research of Robert Jone on linguistics, it is seen that Pa-oh called Taungthu people are in Karen people group.

There is a story that tells the brotherhood of Karen and Pa-oh. It tells as follow:

"In ancient time, Pa-oh and Karen people were brothers and lived together. They shared the prey they hunted with each other.

One time Pa-oh people hunted and killed an elephant. They shared it with Karen people in equal share. On the following day Karen killed porcupine. And then they too shared it with Pa-ohs. But, Pa-ohs happened to see the big feathers of porcupine and thought the prey must be so big. Thinking that the prey was big but the share was so little, they misunderstood Karen to be unfair and cunning. From then Pa-ohs split themselves from Karen".

Since Pa-=oh people seperated from them, Karen people called Pa-oh “ta-aw-thu" in Karen language. Karen word 'ta-aw-thu" meand the people who do not eat porcupine meat or grievance or disgust. As time went by "ta-aw-thu" became tawthu and from that "taungthu". Karen people in Karen State still say that Pa-oh wereonce their close relative and brothers.

In census of 1921, Pa-oh people were included in Po Karen group. Po-Karen group was divided into Mon Karen group, Pa-oh Taungthu group, and Moepwa group. According to 1935Burma Ruling acts, in Karen ten tribes, Pa-oh were put as Taungthu in the announcement of the governor dated May 6,1936.

In the book of Willian Dunn Hackett's "The Pa-o People of The Shan State Union of Burma, Socialogical and Ethographic Study of the Pa-O(Taungthu) People, it is written that " In from 1901 to 1931 census, Pa-oh people are the third largest in Karen group. The people in authority like to put Pa-oh and Po Karen to be in the same status. In every book concerning Karen, there are references to Taungthu(Pa-oh). Evidences of cultural articles for Pa-oh are very rare. When study linguistics, it is doubtful to believe that Pa-oh language and Po Karen language are the same."

Pa-oh people were included in karen tribe till 1936. Pa-oh were put in karen tribe and given the same right as given to Karen. For example,when a tribal memberof Ruling committe was electedPa-ohmember was regarded asKaren member. In around 1939, Karen tribal member Thatung Hla Phay was Pa-oh. This was the cunning act of British government.

When Parliament Election Act was constituted, Election Act Consultant Commission was formed that there may be equality for all.

In the meeting of forming the consultant commission,Karen Council deligate Saw Aung included Pa-oh and Karenni in karen group according to 1935, Burma Ruling Acts. He proposed that in selecting karen deligates Pa-oh and Karenni should participate to be deligates.

But, in that meeting commission member U Kyaw discussed the purpose of 1935 Act and the history of the tribes. According to Burma Chronological History, Pa-oh Taungthu and Karenni were recognized as seperate tribes. So it was decided in the meeting that according to the purpose of constitutional Act ,paragraph 83,they should not be included in Karen tribe.

In Burma Encyclopedia Vol. 1 ,page 94,it is wtitten that "Karen has two seperate groups as Taung Por Karen and Kon Karen. In Kon Karen there are Sakor(5 Lakhs), Po(5Lakhs) and half Taungthu (1 Lakh)”.

In Burma Encyclopidia, vol.6,page 278, it is described that”Pa-ohs are Karen-related tribe. Each half of Taungp or Karen and Kon Karen are Pa-ohs. Because they initially lived in mountainous areas, they are called Taungthu. Karen people have their own names according to their clan. For example, Karenni call themselves Kaya. Pa-oh is the name called after their clan too. Pa-oh has the third largest population within karen".

Willian Dunn Hackett thought that "Pa-oh language is related to Karen language. Their descendants arerelated too. And they perhaps entered into Burma together." When looked at the description of each historian, it is presumed that Pa-oh and Karen were originally one tribe.

It is obvious that Pa-ohs have been living inBurma since ancient time for years. They have their own culture, tradition and language till now.

Accordidng to history, Pa-oh, Karen and Mon were living closely in unity and equality in ancient Thatung. Since they lived together and probably Pa-oh adopted karen words, some of their words are the same.

In his chronicle book,a Pa-oh wariter Pensung Sayataw described thatPa-oh resettled with their own king and palace and realm.

Zaputhaseik Chronicle described that in Burman seven tribes there were "That, Arakan, Taungthu, Pyu, Kanyan, Thawel and Myro." In Resarch dictionary, page 466,Taungthu is included inseven tribes of Burman.

In U Pho Myint's Chronicle, page282, it is described that there are Burman, Pyu, Taungthu,kanyan, Yaw, araken, Thawel in seven tribes of Burma.

Khin Maung Phyu( culture department) wrote that Pa-ohs are from Chinese-Thai group. In Thai-related Chinesegroup there are (a) Karen group and (b) shan group. In Karen group, there are Sakor, Pak, Pweh, Taungthu(Pa-oh), Karen Phyu, Po, Kaya(karenni), Padaung, Yinbaw, zaying, Baye, Yinthale, Geku, Keba groups. Pa-oh(Taungthu) were in touch with Burman since ancient time. In ancient Pagan carved letter on stones, Taungthu was mentioned.

There is a letter carved on inner wall of Laymyinthna pagoda at Minanthu village in Pagan. The letter was written in 585( itis supposed to be Burma Year). There is one obelisk and a letter is on its front side. The letter is about king Ananthathu and

the queen's good deeds. In the leter, written were the list of slaves. In line 43, it is described "Pa-oh ai ting". The letter dated back 585. Because there is "Pa-oh ai ting" in slave list, it seemed that Pa-oh slave was a potter. Pa-oh tribe is seen since 585 in that letter. Pa-oh existed even in that time.

The letter curved on stone of Zaypot pagoda in East Pagan, Phwasaw village, it was described that "Ngapyi's brother Ngakathu,Ngasakyaw, ngataungthu". According to the letter, Ngapyi's brother is a Burman. In Ngapyi's brother's house Burman,Kathu, Karen, Taungthu were living together in unity. When look at the above evidence, Pa-ohs called Taungthus were in Pagan era.They were called Taungthu or Pa-oh as a seperate people but lived in unity with other brother tribes.

In the Burma History of standard five curriculum, page 5, it is written that Burma in Pagan era was established by Pyu,Mon, Palong, Karen, Taungthu, That, Kadu, Kachin Chin, Arakan, Burman , Shan in unity. Therefore, it is known that Pa-oh were with other brother tribes in establishing Pagan and Pa-oh lived with other tribes together since Pagan era. Pa-oh(Taungthu) existed since Pagan era according to the word "Taungthu" written in Pagan obelisks.

When we look at above evidences, we can say that Pa-ohs were sperate tribe there in ancient eras for years. Therefore it is presumed that Pa-ohs are not from Karen and not Karen but separate tribe or people by themselves.

Pa-oh tribe became from his dynasty. From there Pa-oh people moved to Shan State. Pa-oh people call “Thatung distrist” “Big Thatung”and call “Sisaing” “Small Thatung” that is located in the South Shan. Pa-oh people live in these two areas.

It is a wonder. Is the legend real or not? The legend of their descendent is similar to the story found in the book of Mon Chronicle and Pagodas. It is similar to about Gawonpati found in Burma Buddhism by U Thawzin. According to historians, Mons existed before Pa-oh called Taungthu and Pa-oh called Taungthu people lived among Mons. It is thought that Pa-ohs took some of Mon’s chronicles into theirs.

In the book of ‘The History of Thatung Pagodas and Yangon Pagodas” written in Pa-oh language by Letthama-ok , it is written as follow:

“Thuwanabumi Thatung was thickly populated. King Thuriasandar who then reigned Thuwanabumi Thatung was in great glory. King Thuriasandar had 33 white elephants. In Thatung there were 384 kings of Pa-oh dynasty. Their forefathers established Thatung and lived there generation after generation.Therefore, their ancestors were unwilling to move away from Thatung. Pa-ohs still live in Thatung town.”

However, In Thatung Pagodas and Yangon Pagodas History, Thawthuwana Pakathani, Mon Chronicle and Pagodas History, Burma Buddhism, there is a slight difference to each other. In any way, from their ancestors to the present ones, Pa-oh people believe that their first father was a wizard and mother was a female dragon.

http://www.paokham.com/

Ethnic Unity The Karen and Mon peoples’ common ground

September 23rd, 2010

Editor’sNote:

Published here is the second installment of IMNA’s “Burma Transformed” commentary series, a discussion of various political, social, and human-rights related issues set within the context of Burma’s upcoming elections. In this segment, the writer discusses the past and future of Mon-Karen alliances and political relations.

This is a new era in Burma. Ethnic unity is the key to the victory for Karen and Mon people, who make up the two largest populations in southern Burma. The Karen people and the Mon people are close neighbors. We have been living within our respective traditional cultures in a common area. Both the Karen and Mon people are entering a new era under the rules of the military regime in Burma. The Karen and Mon leaders have been building and maintained a unity of purpose for over sixty years. Unity between the Karen and Mon peoples will be key for the success both political and military campaigns against the military dictatorship in Burma. In this long essay, I will explore what opportunities exist for re-building the unity among the Karen and Mon peoples. I will also advocate for closer relations between the Karen and Mon leaders within these critical times. The upcoming elections are not serving the common goals of the Karen and Mon peoples in our lower homeland.

The Karen people’s leading political organization, the Karen National Union (KNU) is respected for its military capacity and for being an ally to the Mon and other ethnic groups for over sixty years. The KNU’s leaders earned these credentials among former and current ethnic leaders in Burma. The leadership of the KNU and its longstanding political goal, to form a true federal union of Burma, is also widely praised among the Mon and various other ethnic political leaders in Burma. In terms of the Mon, they have a smaller sized population and capacity for armed resistance force than the Karen. The Mon leaders acknowledged the pioneering of the Karen leaders in the early 1940s, prior to the independence of Burma, and when the two groups joined forces against U Nu’s newly-formed government in 1948. The Mon leaders were assisted by the Karen military leaders at the early formation of Mon Armed Force in 1949, as an ally against Burma’s nationalist government after the Karen and Mon were denied guarantees under the new constitution, for formation their own state with legitimate executive powers. Some new generations are not fully informed of the unity of purpose of the Karen and Mon leaders over the last over sixty years, but are rather informed of current conflicts, including border demarcation or disputes on border trade for tax levies. This essay assesses both the conflicts and political conviction of the two sides’ leaders in new era.

According to the official statement of the KNU’s headquarters:

“The Karen National Union is a democratic organization, committed to human rights and democracy in Burma. We are working for a peaceful, stable, federal Burma. We stand ready to enter into genuine tripartite dialogue, as facilitated by the United Nations, at any time.”

Claiming ethnic self-determination under the new constitution of Union of Burma / Myanmar in the early 1950’s was not commonly accepted and supported by the new Burmese nationalists of the time, including General Aung San and his colleagues from the Burma Independent Army. The Karen and Mon leaders were the largest groups in the BIA’s troops struggling to against the British from 1920 until Burma gained independence. The Mon troop was smaller in size than the Karen, who had close connections with the local Christians. The Karen and Mon political leaders claimed that both of their ethnic peoples deserved equal rights and self-determination in each’s own federal state. The Burmese constitutions of both 1947 and 1974 granted states to both the Karen and the Mon, but executive powers continued to solely rest in the hands of the central Burmese nationalist government in Rangoon. The Karen and Mon people were united on both military and political fronts in order to fight for equal rights under the new constitution, however, the Burmese nationalist government accused them of being ‘insurgent groups’, or referred them as ‘rebel groups’ in the press. The Mon leaders agreed on a cease-fire to solve political problems with the ruling Burmese military 15 years ago, but the KNU’s leader could not reach such ceasefire agreement despite its preparations for dialogue. Regardless of the size of each other’s troops, trust must be built between the Mon and Karen for further dialogue. According to top leaders of the New Mon State Party (NMSP), the KNU secretly met with the Burmese ruling military, the SPDC, in 1993 to discuss a ceasefire without formally informing or consulting with the top Central Committee of the NMSP. The Mon leaders lost trust in their ally in early 1993, but remained with other allies until they reached the ceasefire agreement with the Burmese Government in 1995.

As Burma is moving toward political progressiveness in this new election, the joined history of the Karen and the Mon cannot be ignore for the sake of the general public in Karen and Mon State. However, a new political wisdom must be sought from both sides to confront major issues. The major issue is whether both the Karen and Mon should be allies or rival in common border areas. This is a blunt question that each, Karen and Mon, civilian and leader alike must find the answer for.

Historically, the Mon and Karen leaders were united on December 20, 1926 in Kappali village, Hlaing Bwe Township. According to a book written in Burmese by Nai Tun Thein, Chairman of Mon National Democratic Front, Mon leaders were invited to attended a conference held between Karen leaders and General Aung San via the invitation of Bishop West. Nai Ba Lwin, Nai Shwe Kyin, Nai Shwe Chang, and Nai Mon Sein Tun represented the Mon political organizations. The Mon leaders also attended an event held by the Karen Central Organisation (KCO) held in February 1947 in Rangoon, to promote further cooperation and unification in the struggle for self-determination. The Karen leader, Saw Ba Oo, valued the unity of the Mon and Karen people. He again invited the Mon leaders, Nai Hla Maung, Nai Ba Lwin and Mi Hongsa, to the Moulmein Karen Congress held in 1947.

The Mon youth were trained to form a unified military for the Mon people in late 1947. The Mon youth armed wing attacked a local police station near Moulmein city with back-up support from a Karen armed wing on July 20th 1948. Military Police officials were informed prior to the attack, and the military police agreed to turn a blind eye to the attack in order to avoid conflict with the two allies. Finally, after the successful of occupation of local police stations, and confiscating arms from the government police, the Mon youth formed “Mon National Defense Organization” soon after the victory. This event is strong evidence that in the past, Mon and Karen leaders worked in close spirit to claim self-determination under a common goal. It is not wise for new generations of the Mon and Karen youth to forget these historical accounts. We are well guided by the actions of past great leaders when planning our next battles. Unity is the victory for us.

According to Nai Shwe Kyin’s official statement in December 1951, the Mon and the Karen lived in peace for many centuries. The Karen, like the Burmese, obtained their alphabet from the Mon, and this kind of writing is in use in some Karen areas. So, we see that it is not possible to leave the Karen out when considering the Mon’s problems, nor it is wise to take up the Karen’s problem and overlook the Mon. Nai Shwe Kyin’s statement expressed equal concern for the plights of the Karen and Mon people, and their desires for autonomy within the newly formed Burmese parliamentary government.

The Mon leaders continually advocated for equal rights for the Karen and Mon peoples 1950’s. The Executive Council of the Mon People’s Front, the leading political organization of the Mon people, released a statement on March 27th 1953 in order to urge the government to create a Mon State under the new federal constitution. The statement said that the council would support and collaborate with all indigenous races, such as, Arakanese, Karens, Kachins, Pa-os, Shans, Kayahs and Chin in their struggles for the rights of self-determination, inclusiveness, and secession, till peace and the satisfaction of all was attained.

The Mon and Karen people worked closely within a grand strategy since the early 1950’s. The two ethnicities live in crossing territory in lower Burma, despite the fact that their cultures, customs, and religious beliefs are often different. However, the ultimate goal of the Karen and Mon leaders is the same: both ethnicities claim self-autonomy from the central Burmese government. According to the joint statement of the executive council of the Mon and Karen on July 6th, 1953 the two groups had made resolutions to ensure unity and mutual respect among the two groups. The statement reads as:

“We respect and recognize the individual rights of self-determination. Each of our peoples has our respective governments co-operating on equal footings. The relationship of our respective governments is sincere and wholesome, and despite Thakin Nu’s attempts to drive a wedge between our two peoples, we are more than ever united, fighting shoulder to shoulder. We are in unity, determined not to lose sight of the common goal until its final achievement.

Finally, this joint statement calls upon all Mons and Karens, wherever they may be, to fearlessly and unswervingly give their full support to the work which has been outlined by their leaders, and on which laid-out lines they must strictly adhere to.

In 1974, Burma’s socialist party’s constitution, amended by the military-led government, granted the existence of a Mon State, but allocated over forty-two Mon large villages as being within the boundaries of Karen State without public debate. These Mon villages came under the strict control of the Karen leaders, especially from the military factions who imposed heavy levies on land, farms and local trades, as annual money collections to support the functions of the KNU. Consequently, young Mon military leaders, in contact with local Mon community leaders, repossessed some of these villages in late 1980. The Karen and Mon leaders were led by the new constitution to break up their alliance, and then become rivals, as expected by the General Ne Win, the head of the Burmese army and the government at the time. The relations between the Karen and the Mon have never recovered since this incident. The Karen leaders struck out at the Mon in 1988, in a border dispute in Three Pagoda Pass, a major route for illegal trade in southern Burma. The 17 days of heavy fighting between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA) was the largest intra-ethnic conflict in modern Burmese politics. It is now time for both sides to forgive past wounds in favor of a future common purpose.

Ethnic minorities can play central political roles in Burma. The ethnic leaders can make greater political links with the public in the heartland by sending balanced message for public security. Relying on nationalism is not safe in modern politic unless the public backs the claim. The Karen and Mon leaders have been building the unity between themselves since 1950. The new Karen and Mon generations are strongly encouraged to read the old history of the Karen and Mon. The Karen and Mon youth will be playing key roles in the Burma’s future democratic transition, but they cannot find a the common ground unless they are informed by the true history of the two ethnicities. Building unity among the Karen and Mon leaders are sincerely encouraged by the general Karen and Mon communities both at home and abroad.

http://monnews.org

Displaced Karen Refugees in Jungle

The Road Trailer 2

The Road Trailer 1

In Memory of James Garwood

EU Commissioner Georgieva visits “Mae La” Camp Thailand

နီဿ္မုဢ္ယဲၯဖဲတဿ္ဂီၯမူ

KNU-KNLA မၯနဿၯပ်ီတဿ္ဟူးတဿ္ဂဲၯ

The Second Proposed Draft of Future Constitution of Kawthoolei (Karen State)

The Second Proposed Dratf Of Karen state

Vision Beyound Borders

Legal Issues on Burma Journal

Karen Cultural Profile

After the Storm Voices from the Delta

Revolution as Development

30 Days of Prayer for Burma

Karen refugees a 'forgotten story'

Refugees from Burma

နီဿ္နဲဢ္ဖ်ါတဲဘဢ္ဃးအတဿ္အိဢ္မူအဂ့ဿ္ဖုဢ္ကိာ္

The Karen people culture faith and history

Karen children in a refugee camp

the Karen people and thier struggle in the refugee camps along the Thia/Burma border

“Forgotten Allies”

ဒံဢ္ခ့ဢ္ဘံဢ္အ့ဢ္စီၯလါပွဲၯအတဿ္ကတိၯလီၯတဿ္

ကညီကမ်ဿဿ္တဖဢ္ပာ္ဖ်ါထီဒါထံတမဿဿ္

The History of the Bassein Karen Mission

Displaced and Misplaced or Just Displaced

ပာ္တ့ဿ္ကြံာ္ဖံဖုအတဿ္ဟ့ဢ္သါဒီးကဲထီဢ္ပွၯဘဢ္ကီဘဢ္ခဲ

ပဒိဢ္မါ၈ွဢ္လါဖါပာ္တ့ဿ္ကြံာ္ဒဲဟီဢ္ခိဢ္တဿ္ဂီၯမူတဿ္မၯနီဢ္

Edge of Burma 1982 တဿ္ဂီၯမူတဿ္မၯနီဢ္

ဟီဢ္ခိဢ္ကစဿ္အစိၯ ကညီဖိအတဿ္အိဢ္မူ

ကညီကလုာ္ဒူဢ္တဖဢ္အံၯအိဢ္ဆိးတ့ဿ္၀ဲယံာ္တ့ဿ္မးအနံဢ္လဿအကထိဒီးအိဢ္ဆိး

တ့ဿ္ဒီးအထံအကီဿ္တဖဢ္ဒ္အကလုာ္ဒူဢ္ဒဢ္၀ဲအသိးလီၯ.ကလုာ္ဒူဢ္တဖဢ္ကဒဲက

ဒဲဒုးလိာ္ယၯလိာ္အသး ဒီးသူဢ္ထီဢ္အထံအကီဿ္တဖဢ္လီၯ. ဖဲ A.D ၁၁ နံဢ္ယၯ

ဖွိဢ္္န့ဢ္ပယီၯစီၯပၯအနီဢ္ရထဢ္ဟဲဒုးန့ဿ္ဒီးဒုးကဲထီဢ္ထံကီဿ္ဖးဒိဢ္တဘ်ီ, ဖဲ A.D

၁၅နံဢ္ယၯဖွိဢ္တီအူအစီၯပၯဘယ့းနီဢ္အစိၯတဘ်ီ, A.D ၁၈နံဢ္ယၯဖွိဢ္ကိဘီဢ္

အစီၯပၯအလီဖယါအစိၯတဘ်ီစ့ဿ္ကီးန့ဢ္လီၯ.ပယီၯစီၯပၯလဲၯဒုးမၯန့ဿ္စ့ဿ္ကီးယိ

ဒယါ၊ အဢ္သဢ္၊ မနံးပူးရးတဖဢ္လီၯ.ဟီဢ္ခိဢ္ကစဿ္အစိၯထံကီဿ္ဆံးဖိတဖဢ္ကဲ

ထီဢ္အါမးန့ဢ္လီၯ.ဘဢ္ဆဢ္ပတထံဢ္ဘဢ္လဿပကညီဖိတဖဢ္ဒုးတဿ္ယၯတဿ္ဒီး

ထီဒါဟီဢ္ခိဢ္ကစဿ္သႏူတဖဢ္ဘဢ္.အ၀ဲသ့ဢ္မ့ဿ္ပွၯတဖဢ္လဿမၯကလုဿ္အီဢ္က

စုဒီးဖံးအီဢ္မၯအီဢ္ဒဢ္တဿ္မုဿ္မုဿ္ခုဢ္ခုဢ္န့ဢ္လီၯ. ပမွံၯပပွဿ္စံးတ့ဿ္၀ဲ  ႃႃသ့ဢ္ခိဢ္

ဆဿဢ္က်ဢ္၊ ကညီဖိဃ့ဿ္႗႗  အသိး ပနဿ္ပဿဿ္လဿဟီဢ္ခိဢ္ကစဿ္သႏူအ စိၯ

ကညီဖိတဖဢ္ဘဢ္တဿ္မၯနဿၯအီၯဒီး ဂုာ္န့ဿ္အဟီဢ္ခိဢ္ ကပံာ္တဖဢ္န့ဢ္လီၯ.


ဟံးန့ဿ္အီၯလဿကညီတဿ္ပဿဿ္ဆဿတဿ္စံဢ္စိၯတဲစိၯတဿ္မၯနီဢ္မၯဃါအဖုဢ္လဿ
ဖုစကီၯလဿဿ္တီအလံာ္တဿ္စံဢ္စိၯတဲစိၯပူၯလဿဘဢ္တဿ္ကတဲာ္ကတီၯအီၯလဿ
စီၯဒီးမုဿ္လ့

ကညီဖိအတဿ္ဟဲလီၯစဿၯလီၯသြဲဢ္ဒီးအဒူဢ္အထဿတဖဢ္

မုဿ္မဆါတနံၯအံၯကညီဖိအတဿ္ဒူဢ္အထဿ္ဘဢ္တဿ္သ့ဢ္ညါအီၯဒ္အမ့ဿ္- စွီၯ၊ပွိဿ္၊ဘွဲ၊ မီၯန့ဿ္ပွဿ္၊

ကကူ၊ ကဲၯခဿဢ္၊ ကဲၯဘါ၊ ကယါ၊ ပဒီဢ္၊ တီသူ၊ ယ့နဲးတဖဢ္လီၯ.ကညီဖိအဒူဢ္အထဿတဖဢ္အံၯ

ဟဲလီၯစဿၯလဿ မိဿ္ကိဿ္လြဲး (မြန္ဂုိလိြဳက္) ကလုာ္ဒူဢ္ဒီးအိဢ္၀ဲဖဲကီဿ္ဘံဢ္ဟီဢ္က၀ီၯ၀ံၯဟဲက့ၯ

လီၯဆူတရူးကီဿ္ဒီးတုၯလီၯ၀ဲဆူကီဿ္လဿပအိဢ္ဆိးအီၯခဲအံၯန့ဢ္လီၯ.ကီဿ္လဿပအိဢ္ဆိးအီၯခဲ

အံၯပမိဿ္ပပဿ္ပဖံပဖုဟဲလီၯတုၯအဆိကတဿဿ္တဖုဖဲ B.C (၁၁၂၅) နံဢ္ဒီးခံဖုတဖုဖဲ B.C (၇၃၉)

နံဢ္န့ဢ္လီၯ.တဿ္လီဿ္လဿကညီကမ်ဿဿ္အိဢ္အါ၀ဲန့ဢ္ပ့်ဢ္လိာ္က်ိအထဢ္၊ (ကိးထံထဢ္စြ႔) ကိၯလိာ္

က်ိဟီဢ္က၀ီၯ၊ ဃိဢ္လိာ္က်ိဟီဢ္က၀ီၯန့ဢ္လီၯ.လဿအခီဢ္ထံးကညီဖိတဖဢ္တအိဢိဃါဃုာ္ဒီးပွၯ

ကလုာ္အဂၯဘဢ္ဆဢ္ဖဲအဲကလံးဟဲႏုာ္လီၯပဿကီဿ္ပယီၯအခါန့ဢ္ပယီၯကလုာ္တဖဢ္ဟဲႏုာ္လီၯ

အိဢ္အါထီဢ္ဒီးစးထီဢ္အိဢ္ဃါဃုာ္ဒီးကလုာ္ဂၯတဖဢ္န့ဢ္လီၯ.မုဿ္မဆါတနံၯအံၯကီဿ္ပယီၯပူၯပွၯ

ကလုာ္အိဢ္အါကလုာ္ဒ္အမ့ဿ္ ကညီ၊ ကရ့ဢ္နံဢ္၊ ပယီၯ၊ ခႜီ၊ ကခႜ့ဢ္၊ ယိၯ၊ တလဿၯ၊ ရဿဢ္ခဿဢ္၊

တဖဢ္န့ဢ္လီၯ.လဿကလုာ္တဖဢ္အက်ါပယီၯမ့ဿ္၀ံၯန့ဢ္ကညီတဖဢ္မ့ဿ္ပွၯနီဿ္ဂံဿ္လဿအနီဿ္ဂံဿ္အါ

ကတဿဿ္လီၯ.ကညီဖိတဖဢ္အိဢ္ဆိးအလီဿ္အက်ဲန့ဢ္အိဢ္ပွဲၯဒီးန့ဆဿဢ္တဿ္ထူးတဿ္တီၯတဖဢ္လီၯ.



ဟံးန့ဿ္အီၯလဿကညီတဿ္ပဿဿ္ဆဿတဿ္စံဢ္စိၯတဲစိၯတဿ္မၯနီဢ္မၯဃါအဖုဢ္လဿဖုစကီၯလဿဿ္တီ

အလံာ္တဿ္စံဢ္စိၯတဲစိၯပူၯလဿဘဢ္တဿ္ကတဲာ္ကတီၯအီၯလဿစီၯဒီးမုဿ္လ့

ကညီဖိဒီးအတဿ္လဲၯဖးထီ