Earth_Island_Journal_-_Spring_2020

EARTH ISLAND JOURNAL • SPRING 2020 37

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come to rule Myanmar for the better

part of 50 years. Under Ne Win, the

Karen and other ethnic armed groups

were the target of near-ceaseless

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(known as the Tatmadaw), including

regular attacks on civilians and the

destruction of whole villages.

After multiparty elections in 1990

— won by Aung San’s daughter, Aung

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— the KNLA gave shelter to dissident

Burmese student leaders. Tatmadaw

campaigns against them increased

further. By the 2000s, more than

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and were living in refugee camps; many

more were internally displaced.

Things seemed to begin looking up

during the 2010s with the introduction

of a series of ostensibly democratizing

reforms introduced by the junta.

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able to broker a real peace, the KNU

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the military in 2012. Nationwide

negotiations with the country’s armed

groups a few years later raised the

prospect of increased autonomy for

the Karen within an eventual federal

union.

Yet many in the KNU remained

skeptical. They were right to be. The

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put into Suu Kyi’s new civilian

government have not been repaid. The

peace process has not advanced. The

military still holds de facto control over

the country. It also has a controlling

interest in nearly all of the development

investment that has transformed the

country over the last decade, including

those in mining, oil and gas exploration,

hydropower, plantation development,

and real estate.

Many Karen don’t believe that the

military is interested in allowing true

democracy to take hold. A 2018 report

published by the Karen Peace Support

Network, an activist group, asserted that

the Tatmadaw is interested in reforms

only to “further entrench military rule

and expand their control into ethnic

areas.” Observers point to the military

regime next door in Thailand —

recently legitimized by elections — as

the guiding inspiration for what the

Tatmadaw wants in Myanmar.

Meanwhile, faith in Suu Kyi and

her civilian government to negotiate

a fair deal for the nation’s ethnic

groups has waned given the Nobel

Peace Prize winner’s defense of the

military’s campaign of ethnic cleansing

against Rohingya Muslims in western

Myanmar. Suu Kyi’s support of the

military rattled international observers,

but it did not surprise many Karen who

see the Myanmar government’s project

of state-making as one concerned

above all with making peripheral areas

“legible” and quashing their struggles

for self-determination.

As we plied upriver into the

heartland of what Mabu calls “pure

Karen Kawthoolei,” we were entering

a place the holdouts are trying to keep

“illegible.” Yet the project of taming

the periphery advances unabated.

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scores of military camps are tactically

spread out within the peace park.

Skirmishes have increased over the last

few years, with KNLA regulars resisting

military road building and associated

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claim civilian lives.

“Karen people have experienced

enough hardship to know that peace,

even if it can be achieved, may not be

in our favor,” says Saw Paul Sein Twa,

47, who founded KESAN with Mabu

and other Karen nearly 20 years ago.

“At the same time, we cannot ignore the

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HAT STRATEGY BEGAN TO

coalesce in the late 1990s in

a Karen refugee camp called Mae

Lama Luang in Thailand. Paul and

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during the waves of attacks by the

Tatmadaw, began working together

The park recognizes Indigenous land rights and traditional resource management systems.