Thousands of people sporting traditional ethnic costumes and Karen rebel fighters showing off their guns marched, sang and danced last week to celebrate 70 years since the start of the struggle for greater autonomy from Myanmar.
Boasting more than 5,000 soldiers, the Karen National Union (KNU) is one of the most powerful and best-established of the country’s myriad militia groups that have fought the government since shortly after Myanmar gained independence in 1948.
The KNU’s parade served as a reminder that the biggest priority of Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration — ending decades of ethnic wars — remains elusive.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Aung San Suu Kyi has struggled to make progress with autonomy-seeking ethnic minority rebels, who have accused her government of a high-handed approach and ignoring their grievances and aspirations.
The celebrations took place at a remote base in the mountains straddling the Myanmar-Thai border.
“The history of the revolution for 70 years is a very rough one. As someone who has been involved in the revolution for 50 years, I can say it’s very tough and the sacrifices were very big,” Man Nyein Maung, one of the KNU’s executive members, told the Irrawaddy online news magazine.
The celebrations lasted several days and nights with a folk dance competition and theater performances before a military parade and speeches on a cloud-shrouded, dusty parade ground carved from the hills at the crack of dawn.
A banner hoisted above the grounds listed some of the group’s political demands, including calls to “retain our arms” and to “decide our own political destiny.”
One of the dance groups was made up of women wearing yellow scarves, with their hair tied in a bun and an exposed fringe. Their yellow shirts with green patterns contrasted with their white face powder and red lipstick.
The performers mingled with villagers and soldiers of the Karen National Liberation Army, the KNU’s armed wing. The men smoked cigarettes as they watched, some with heavy bullet belts draped around automatic rifles, and with insignia in red, white and blue displayed on their uniforms.
The KNU signed a ceasefire with the government in 2012 after more than six decades of conflict that had driven tens of thousands of refugees into Thailand.
Some have come back, although about 100,000 remain in the refugee camps on the other side of the border, according to the UN.
While major clashes have been avoided, the KNU’s relations with the Myanmar army remain tense.
Aung San Suu Kyi has struggled to secure peace elsewhere in the country and long-simmering conflicts in the north and the west have intensified in recent years.
In 2017, a military offensive drove out 730,000 Rohingya Muslims from the western state of Rakhine to Bangladesh, creating one of the world’s largest refugee crises.
Thousands gathered across New Zealand yesterday to celebrate the signing of the country’s founding document and some called for an end to government policies that critics say erode the rights promised to the indigenous Maori population. As the sun rose on the dawn service at Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was first signed between the British Crown and Maori chiefs in 1840, some community leaders called on the government to honor promises made 185 years ago. The call was repeated at peaceful rallies that drew several hundred people later in the day. “This government is attacking tangata whenua [indigenous people] on all
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
The administration of US President Donald Trump has appointed to serve as the top public diplomacy official a former speech writer for Trump with a history of doubts over US foreign policy toward Taiwan and inflammatory comments on women and minorities, at one point saying that "competent white men must be in charge." Darren Beattie has been named the acting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a senior US Department of State official said, a role that determines the tone of the US' public messaging in the world. Beattie requires US Senate confirmation to serve on a permanent basis. "Thanks to
‘IMPOSSIBLE’: The authors of the study, which was published in an environment journal, said that the findings appeared grim, but that honesty is necessary for change Holding long-term global warming to 2°C — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development and concludes that Earth’s climate is more sensitive to rising greenhouse gas emissions than previously thought. Compounding the crisis, Hansen and colleagues argued, is a recent decline in sunlight-blocking aerosol pollution from the shipping industry, which had been mitigating some of the warming. An ambitious climate change scenario outlined by the UN’s climate