34 http://www.earthislandjournal.org

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T IS BEFORE DAWN WHEN WE PA S S

the last checkpoint perched above

the Salween River, along the border

between Thailand and Myanmar.

As we wind north through a sparse

woodland up an unpaved track, the

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is the end of the dry season, and most

of the trees in the forest around us are

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the giant river below, a rushing torrent

even now at its lowest ebb.

As the sun rises, we scramble

down a steep embankment and board

a longboat piloted by a teenager in

army fatigues. After plying rough

currents upriver for hours — threading

powerful eddies that threaten to throw

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type of checkpoint. It is manned not by

Myanmar government border patrol,

but rather by soldiers of the Karen

National Liberation Army (KNLA).

We are cleared and enter the area that

local communities have declared as the

Salween Peace Park, a refuge for the

last holdouts of the Karen revolution,

the longest-running ethnic insurgency

on earth.

“Welcome to pure Indigenous

Karen territory,” says Saw Mabu

Htoo, 40, a Karen who works with an

environmental rights group here called

KESAN. “We have left Thailand, but

we are not in Myanmar,” he notes. “We

are in Kawthoolei.” He is using the

Karen name for their ancestral land,

which once covered a large swathe

of southeast Myanmar and western

Thailand, running down the Salween

River basin south to the Andaman Sea.

For more than 70 years, since shortly

after the country formerly known as

Burma gained independence, a low-

boil insurgency has fought for Karen

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the British and then the Burmese.

Over the intervening decades, far from

granting the Karen meaningful rights,

the Myanmar military has waged a

grinding war of attrition against them.

It has been devastatingly successful.

Thousands of Karen communities

have been displaced, and more than

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have failed. Meanwhile, the area

under Karen control has dwindled to

a small fraction of what it was when

the revolution began in 1949. As a

result, many Karen have accepted that

autonomy will never be realized.

But others continue the struggle,

some utilizing new, non-violent

strategies of resistance. The Salween

Peace Park is central to this agenda.

Covering more than 550,000 hectares

— nearly twice the size of Yosemite

National Park in California — the

park is located in a remote corner

of Myanmar’s Kayin State, which

is internationally important for

biodiversity conservation.

Although it is called a park, it

is not your typical protected area.

Rather than focusing strictly on nature

preservation, the reserve’s backers

promote Indigenous land management

Revolutio

the

Indigenous Karen volunteers document fauna within the 550,000 hectare Salween Peace Park.