I am sitting in a hotel in the Golden Triangle in northern Thailand waiting for an opportunity to cross into Burma and wondering what is happening at home. I live in Mae Sot and spend most of my time there, so it is strange to be hundreds of kilometers north of the war zone I dedicate much of my time to. In some ways it is a welcome release, but most of the time I spend wondering just what is happening with my friends back home. Are they safe as I kick back in front of the television in a cushy hotel, or has new fighting begun? My friends are members of the Karen ethnic group of Burma and are part of a war that has now spanned 62 years. It is the world’s longest-fought armed conflict.
***
I am sitting in the Navy Hotel and the establishment has a semi-nautical theme, mainly consisting of the odd print on the wall, but mostly refurbished shells of varying calibre lined up in displays about the place. There is weaponry outside the front door; there is weaponry in the lobby and weaponry takes centre stage in the dining room. It strikes me as odd that Mae Sai is home to the Navy Hotel. Mae Sai, even by conservative estimates after a quick glance at the map, would have to be at least 1,500km from the nearest ocean as the crow flies. The closest body of open water is the Andaman Sea, and to get there directly you would pretty much have to be a crow, for it would mean traversing Burma, across Shan and Arakan States. Any human being attempting such a journey would raise the suspicions of the foot soldiers of the paranoid military junta now ruling Burma.
***
The reason I am in Mae Sai is to renew my Thai visa. I have a 12-month visa, but Thai law requires that I leave the country every 90 days. That I must live in a neighbouring country to cover a war that has been a constant in my life for more than a quarter of my lifetime speaks volumes about the state of play in Burma. Along the border more than 100,000 refugees languish in camps, corralled by barbed wire and bamboo fences, mostly victims of a relentless campaign of violence by their supposed ‘government’. Some have never been to their home country; they were born in the refugee camps. An entire generation born after 1984 has not had the opportunity to go home. The Thais grudgingly accept the refugees’ presence, or at least have done so in the past. But time is running short for the illegal aliens, as Thai patience wears thin and they seek to put an end to hostilities once and for all.
***
The Thais want border hostilities done with, so they can get on with the business of making money. And there is easy money to be made from exploiting Burma’s natural resources. Thai traders buy Burmese raw product cheap, be it timber, gem stones or minerals and sell it on at a profit, often in a value-added form. At another level Burma’s human resource is exploited, with people willing to perform menial tasks for a rate of pay far less than the Thai minimum wage. Also, there are plans for great agricultural ventures in the border region, in which Burmese workers would farm crops for a pittance and the Thais would sell the produce. There is much cropping land available because most of the trees along the border have already been felled and sold off. It is understandable the Thais want to make money and further develop their economy and they have suffered refugees along at least one of their borders since the 1950s. What is more difficult to understand is how they can justify the exploitation of a neighbouring country having already exhausted their raw resources.
***
The first intelligence reports I receive after returning home to Mae Sot, having bid the Navy Hotel goodbye, are upsetting. I have just been told two people have been killed in a bomb attack against a restaurant in Myawaddy, about five kilometres from where I now sit typing. Sporadic gunfire has been audible from the Thai side of the ‘Friendship Bridge’ during my two-day absence. The town in which the latest round of fighting began in earnest on November 7 - Burma’s election day – is again an urban theatre of war. But does the outside world hear of this war? Very little news leaves Mae Sot, because foreign editors around the world predominantly don’t want to know about it. As I relay to family and friends news of the latest atrocity, or the fact there are 10,000 refugees stranded on a river bank to the south of here, they exclaim: ‘I can’t believe we hear nothing of this!’ Well the choke point is your news outlets - they’re not interested, so you don’t get the news.
ENDS
Daniel Pedersen is the author of Secret Genocide, which will be released in February 2011.
Showing posts with label Daniel Pedersen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daniel Pedersen. Show all posts
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Friday, 19 November 2010
Extract from Secret Genocide
The following is an extract from Secret Genocide by Daniel Pedersen, which will be published in December this year.
In 1949, the Karen people first declared to the world that they would defend themselves and their cultural identity. Since then, man has walked on the moon, television, Internet and satellite technologies have become part of everyday life, and Burma’s neigbours have taken their place on the world’s economic stage. And still, the Karen have not found their peace. Some would say the modern world has bypassed the Karen people, while others speculate they have become entrapped by it, cast as pawns while the rest of the world establishes new economic and political hierarchies.
In little bamboo huts hidden in the jungle, their barefoot children are taught their language, rudimentary mathematics, and history as the Karen know it. There is no Internet. There are mostly no telephones. Often, there are no books. Sometimes, backpacking medics turn up out of the blue and tend to festering bullet wounds and chronic ailments, reminding the Karen that they have not been completely forgotten about. At other times, however, Burmese troops or their allied soldiers turn up and burn down the Karen’s schools and churches, before turning their torches on their bamboo homes. Generally, the Karen have fled by the time the enemy arrives, and while their villages are being reduced to scorched earth and ash, they are already searching for a new place to live – preferably somewhere with a water supply and stands of bamboo from which they can carve a new settlement. But every now and then, the people give up, unable to take the constant threat of violence against their communities anymore, and make for the Thai border, where they become lost in the refugee camps a few kilometres beyond the frontier.
In the camps, they find a form of compromised peace, but freedom remains an elusive dream. They witness the freedoms enjoyed by their neighbours from behind bamboo fences and barbed wire. Through the slats, they see a country thriving, with flashy cars driving back and forth past their camps. They also see the soldiers, the one constant in their lives, penning them in and taking advantage of their plight. The Karen refugees are entirely dispossessed. They are not permitted to leave the camps, and they are not allowed to work because they don’t have the proper permits. Yet they must somehow be fed and, in many instances, they are sent on to a third country where they have to learn to make their own way, far removed from their customs and culture, their friends and family.
It was immediately after Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948 that this period of persecution against the Karen began, and it has now spanned more than sixty years. In the post-WWII period, Great Britain’s decolonisation programme sped forward, constantly gaining momentum. The British were determined to pull out of the colonies, and when it came to Burma, the decolonisation process had reached breakneck speed. There was virtually no period of winding down; the British simply up and left. When Burma was granted its independence, a relatively minor Burman (Burma’s predominant ethnic group) general, General Ne Win, was appointed vice chief of staff of the armed forces, or Tatmadaw. Ne Win was not a particularly prominent general, and there were others who could have been appointed just as easily. His appointment was a happenstance of history, and no one at the time could have predicted what he would become. The following year, in 1949, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the armed forces, replacing General Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen. Ne Win now had total control of the army, and by 1962, he had consolidated enough power to seize control of the entire country by armed force.
At the time of independence, David Tharckabaw was a mere boy of 13 years. David is Karen and was educated in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city and the country’s most important commercial centre. He is now, at the age of 73, the Karen National Union’s (KNU – the political organisation representing Karen interests) vice president. He likes a drink, smokes heavily, and speaks slowly and with great reserve, thinking carefully before answering any question. His election to his current position occurred in 2008, and he takes his role as vice president very seriously indeed. Some call him hard-line, while others say he is simply pragmatic, and a chorus within the Karen movement claim he lacks the charisma required of a leader of stature. But after several recent high-level defections from the KNU to Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the ruling military junta controlling Burma (sometimes referred to simply as ‘the generals’), David Tharckabaw was the man people turned to in their hour of need. He had been elected on the belief that he was morally sound, and the people now trusted him not to backflip on his policies in the face of enormous pressure and corruption from the junta, who routinely use bribery to get what they want.
I first met David through a mutual acquaintance, just days after he was elected. He came to my restaurant in Mae Sot for dinner, with the express purpose of being interviewed for this book. He and I have since become good friends. Over a post-dinner coffee, David relaxed a little, and as tired staff cleared our table of Burmese curries, we retreated from the banter of the other KNU executive council members and their supporters.
‘Very few people know that this war was started by the Burmese regime [now] in power, only a few know,’ he said quietly, as he laid down the fundamentals of my education, as he saw it. ‘Because, according to the propaganda of the ruling class, it was the Karen armed resistance [that declared war], and actually that is not true. It was started by Ne Win, who was vice chief of staff of the armed forces after independence, and he used his pocket army troops to attack Karen quarters in Maubin, right in Rangoon. There were also attacks in Insein and Moulmein. Well, when it got to Insein of course, the Karen could no longer just sit,’ he said.
Insein was at that time the headquarters of the Karen National Union, the political body representing Karen interests in the newly-independent Burma.
‘And that is how the Karen resistance against successive regimes started, and now we have had the 60th anniversary of the Karen resistance,’ he continued. ‘We sometimes call it the “Karen Revolution”.’
David told me that the four principles laid down by Saw Ba U Gyi, the first leader of the Karen Revolution, still form the basis of their revolution: ‘Those principles are non-negotiable, we will always maintain and uphold that principle,’ he said, matter-of-factly, and that is why the people have placed their faith in David Tharckabaw. According to him, ‘Ever since the military came to power in 1962, the ultimate goal of the military establishment has been to set up the fourth Burman empire.’ He went on to say that ‘…in this day and age, only fascists would think of setting up an empire in a multi-ethnic state like Burma, because the non-Burman ethnic peoples will never accept it.’
In 1949, the Karen people first declared to the world that they would defend themselves and their cultural identity. Since then, man has walked on the moon, television, Internet and satellite technologies have become part of everyday life, and Burma’s neigbours have taken their place on the world’s economic stage. And still, the Karen have not found their peace. Some would say the modern world has bypassed the Karen people, while others speculate they have become entrapped by it, cast as pawns while the rest of the world establishes new economic and political hierarchies.
In little bamboo huts hidden in the jungle, their barefoot children are taught their language, rudimentary mathematics, and history as the Karen know it. There is no Internet. There are mostly no telephones. Often, there are no books. Sometimes, backpacking medics turn up out of the blue and tend to festering bullet wounds and chronic ailments, reminding the Karen that they have not been completely forgotten about. At other times, however, Burmese troops or their allied soldiers turn up and burn down the Karen’s schools and churches, before turning their torches on their bamboo homes. Generally, the Karen have fled by the time the enemy arrives, and while their villages are being reduced to scorched earth and ash, they are already searching for a new place to live – preferably somewhere with a water supply and stands of bamboo from which they can carve a new settlement. But every now and then, the people give up, unable to take the constant threat of violence against their communities anymore, and make for the Thai border, where they become lost in the refugee camps a few kilometres beyond the frontier.
In the camps, they find a form of compromised peace, but freedom remains an elusive dream. They witness the freedoms enjoyed by their neighbours from behind bamboo fences and barbed wire. Through the slats, they see a country thriving, with flashy cars driving back and forth past their camps. They also see the soldiers, the one constant in their lives, penning them in and taking advantage of their plight. The Karen refugees are entirely dispossessed. They are not permitted to leave the camps, and they are not allowed to work because they don’t have the proper permits. Yet they must somehow be fed and, in many instances, they are sent on to a third country where they have to learn to make their own way, far removed from their customs and culture, their friends and family.
It was immediately after Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948 that this period of persecution against the Karen began, and it has now spanned more than sixty years. In the post-WWII period, Great Britain’s decolonisation programme sped forward, constantly gaining momentum. The British were determined to pull out of the colonies, and when it came to Burma, the decolonisation process had reached breakneck speed. There was virtually no period of winding down; the British simply up and left. When Burma was granted its independence, a relatively minor Burman (Burma’s predominant ethnic group) general, General Ne Win, was appointed vice chief of staff of the armed forces, or Tatmadaw. Ne Win was not a particularly prominent general, and there were others who could have been appointed just as easily. His appointment was a happenstance of history, and no one at the time could have predicted what he would become. The following year, in 1949, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the armed forces, replacing General Smith Dun, an ethnic Karen. Ne Win now had total control of the army, and by 1962, he had consolidated enough power to seize control of the entire country by armed force.
At the time of independence, David Tharckabaw was a mere boy of 13 years. David is Karen and was educated in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city and the country’s most important commercial centre. He is now, at the age of 73, the Karen National Union’s (KNU – the political organisation representing Karen interests) vice president. He likes a drink, smokes heavily, and speaks slowly and with great reserve, thinking carefully before answering any question. His election to his current position occurred in 2008, and he takes his role as vice president very seriously indeed. Some call him hard-line, while others say he is simply pragmatic, and a chorus within the Karen movement claim he lacks the charisma required of a leader of stature. But after several recent high-level defections from the KNU to Burma’s State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the ruling military junta controlling Burma (sometimes referred to simply as ‘the generals’), David Tharckabaw was the man people turned to in their hour of need. He had been elected on the belief that he was morally sound, and the people now trusted him not to backflip on his policies in the face of enormous pressure and corruption from the junta, who routinely use bribery to get what they want.
I first met David through a mutual acquaintance, just days after he was elected. He came to my restaurant in Mae Sot for dinner, with the express purpose of being interviewed for this book. He and I have since become good friends. Over a post-dinner coffee, David relaxed a little, and as tired staff cleared our table of Burmese curries, we retreated from the banter of the other KNU executive council members and their supporters.
‘Very few people know that this war was started by the Burmese regime [now] in power, only a few know,’ he said quietly, as he laid down the fundamentals of my education, as he saw it. ‘Because, according to the propaganda of the ruling class, it was the Karen armed resistance [that declared war], and actually that is not true. It was started by Ne Win, who was vice chief of staff of the armed forces after independence, and he used his pocket army troops to attack Karen quarters in Maubin, right in Rangoon. There were also attacks in Insein and Moulmein. Well, when it got to Insein of course, the Karen could no longer just sit,’ he said.
Insein was at that time the headquarters of the Karen National Union, the political body representing Karen interests in the newly-independent Burma.
‘And that is how the Karen resistance against successive regimes started, and now we have had the 60th anniversary of the Karen resistance,’ he continued. ‘We sometimes call it the “Karen Revolution”.’
David told me that the four principles laid down by Saw Ba U Gyi, the first leader of the Karen Revolution, still form the basis of their revolution: ‘Those principles are non-negotiable, we will always maintain and uphold that principle,’ he said, matter-of-factly, and that is why the people have placed their faith in David Tharckabaw. According to him, ‘Ever since the military came to power in 1962, the ultimate goal of the military establishment has been to set up the fourth Burman empire.’ He went on to say that ‘…in this day and age, only fascists would think of setting up an empire in a multi-ethnic state like Burma, because the non-Burman ethnic peoples will never accept it.’
Friday, 21 May 2010
Along the Thai-Burma border there is no justice; there is only money, the military and the oppressed.
For years now I have watched as the Karen civilians of Burma suffer at the hands of that country’s military regime. The Karen people, a Burmese ethnic minority, consist of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. These are people who are just trying to make a go of it, like you and I, and want only to be able to raise their families well.
Conservative estimates put the number of the Karen people in Burma at over seven million. In Karen State they are forced to run for their lives on a daily basis. They often find themselves just over the border in Thailand, homeless and removed from their gardens where they grow their food.
There is little doubt the Burmese military junta wants to eliminate the Karen bloodline, and it is grinding away at it on many fronts. As a Burma Army commander once commented before going into battle, ‘If you want to see the Karen in the future, you’ll have to go to a museum.’
Many of the people who call Karen State home are now displaced, and as you read this, they are looking for somewhere safe to begin building new shelters. Their houses go up fast, particularly if it’s raining, and grow bigger depending on how long they are allowed to stay in one place.
But their homes, their schools, their churches and their poorly-stocked medical clinics all come down quicker than they can ever be built. Burma Army units, or militia troops allied to it, regularly torch whole communities in just minutes.
For all of the talk and endless sparring at international forums, and despite the international community’s collective wringing of hands, the Burmese conflict is not a complicated one and is not the seemingly intractable situation it is made out to be. The country’s ethnic minorities are not savages intent on tearing each other apart should the military regime fall.
Civil war is not the only option.
The military junta holds all the power and oppresses the ethnically-diverse masses, plundering the country’s natural resources and keeping the profits for itself. The junta looks on the people as nothing more than a free labour force born to serve the Burmese master race. It is a feudal system rooted in racism and the generals lord over it. They become filthy rich as the people are forced to push their carts along dusty roads trying to eke out a living.
Education and religions other than Buddhism are viewed as unwanted outside influences and are considered threats to the status quo. Those who dare to challenge the junta are considered enemies of the state. Even the monks, supposedly revered by the generals, are thrown in jail if they step out of line.
In neighbouring Thailand the government builds schools – in Burma the ‘government’ orders schools burned down. In Thailand the Karen language is taught in Karen village schools – in Burma using the language is illegal.
Yet the majority of the Karen people live in Burma. The generals, who have had the run of the country since General Ne Win led a coup in 1962 that toppled the civilian government, insist their army employs a scorched-earth policy against the entire Karen population. They burn the staple food, rice, in the paddies and sow them with landmines instead. Thousands of people in parts of the country are starving and, in recent weeks, have run out of water at the end of a long dry season.
And yet to the outside world, the economic reports which are presented suggest Burma is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In reality, however, the junta has taken South East Asia’s most promising economy and ruined it. Burma is now officially one of the world’s least-developed countries. The world has watched as it regressed from being the world’s largest exporter of rice before military rule in 1962, to a country crippled by decrepit infrastructure and a lawless financial system charted by whim and fancy.
In spite of all this, the privileged world has not lifted a finger to help the stricken country.
The West might bay about China’s growing Burmese investments and influence, but for decades China has been the only country of consequence that has engaged with the pariah state. The rest of the world appears to have stuck its head in the sand. Throughout the decades of indecision and apathy that have dogged Burma, the Karen people have lived their entire lives at war - generations have come and gone.
Now their children are forced to fight on.
No matter how long you study the war here you will ultimately remain an outsider, but sometimes that can be an advantage. In journalism you are often considered an ‘insider’ among the people you travel with, and struggle to maintain your outside perspective, that most noble and reasoned of detachments. But there is no way to argue that what is happening in Burma today is for the best. So you report what is happening, atrocity after atrocity, attack after attack, and hope someone who can make a difference might read your story.
Daniel Pedersen, author of Secret Genocide: The Karen of Burma
Conservative estimates put the number of the Karen people in Burma at over seven million. In Karen State they are forced to run for their lives on a daily basis. They often find themselves just over the border in Thailand, homeless and removed from their gardens where they grow their food.
There is little doubt the Burmese military junta wants to eliminate the Karen bloodline, and it is grinding away at it on many fronts. As a Burma Army commander once commented before going into battle, ‘If you want to see the Karen in the future, you’ll have to go to a museum.’
Many of the people who call Karen State home are now displaced, and as you read this, they are looking for somewhere safe to begin building new shelters. Their houses go up fast, particularly if it’s raining, and grow bigger depending on how long they are allowed to stay in one place.
But their homes, their schools, their churches and their poorly-stocked medical clinics all come down quicker than they can ever be built. Burma Army units, or militia troops allied to it, regularly torch whole communities in just minutes.
For all of the talk and endless sparring at international forums, and despite the international community’s collective wringing of hands, the Burmese conflict is not a complicated one and is not the seemingly intractable situation it is made out to be. The country’s ethnic minorities are not savages intent on tearing each other apart should the military regime fall.
Civil war is not the only option.
The military junta holds all the power and oppresses the ethnically-diverse masses, plundering the country’s natural resources and keeping the profits for itself. The junta looks on the people as nothing more than a free labour force born to serve the Burmese master race. It is a feudal system rooted in racism and the generals lord over it. They become filthy rich as the people are forced to push their carts along dusty roads trying to eke out a living.
Education and religions other than Buddhism are viewed as unwanted outside influences and are considered threats to the status quo. Those who dare to challenge the junta are considered enemies of the state. Even the monks, supposedly revered by the generals, are thrown in jail if they step out of line.
In neighbouring Thailand the government builds schools – in Burma the ‘government’ orders schools burned down. In Thailand the Karen language is taught in Karen village schools – in Burma using the language is illegal.
Yet the majority of the Karen people live in Burma. The generals, who have had the run of the country since General Ne Win led a coup in 1962 that toppled the civilian government, insist their army employs a scorched-earth policy against the entire Karen population. They burn the staple food, rice, in the paddies and sow them with landmines instead. Thousands of people in parts of the country are starving and, in recent weeks, have run out of water at the end of a long dry season.
And yet to the outside world, the economic reports which are presented suggest Burma is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. In reality, however, the junta has taken South East Asia’s most promising economy and ruined it. Burma is now officially one of the world’s least-developed countries. The world has watched as it regressed from being the world’s largest exporter of rice before military rule in 1962, to a country crippled by decrepit infrastructure and a lawless financial system charted by whim and fancy.
In spite of all this, the privileged world has not lifted a finger to help the stricken country.
The West might bay about China’s growing Burmese investments and influence, but for decades China has been the only country of consequence that has engaged with the pariah state. The rest of the world appears to have stuck its head in the sand. Throughout the decades of indecision and apathy that have dogged Burma, the Karen people have lived their entire lives at war - generations have come and gone.
Now their children are forced to fight on.
No matter how long you study the war here you will ultimately remain an outsider, but sometimes that can be an advantage. In journalism you are often considered an ‘insider’ among the people you travel with, and struggle to maintain your outside perspective, that most noble and reasoned of detachments. But there is no way to argue that what is happening in Burma today is for the best. So you report what is happening, atrocity after atrocity, attack after attack, and hope someone who can make a difference might read your story.
Daniel Pedersen, author of Secret Genocide: The Karen of Burma
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