Tensions in Burma & the Karen

Protest in Nyaunghswe (Robert Bociaga Olk Bon / Shutterstock.com)

Now that the first deaths have occurred in Burma in the demonstrations against the military coup two weeks ago, tensions on the Thai-Burmese border have also started to rise. After all, it remains to be seen whether the military junta, just as it happened in 1988 and 2007, wants to nip the protests in the bud with a heavy hand.

In any case, the tanks have appeared in the streets and squares and live ammunition is already being fired here and there. However, many international observers believe that new strongman and army chief of staff Min Aung Hliang has learned some lessons from the past and that the regime will be a little more sensible this time around against the burgeoning opposition.

Let us at least hope that this is the case, because an escalation will inevitably lead to a lot of misery and new refugee flows towards the border. In this context, it should not be forgotten – and unfortunately this happens all too often – that some of the ethnic minorities in the multi-ethnic state of Burma have been persecuted for decades by the Burmese rulers. Since the Tatmadaw, the Burmese armed forces, put an end to a series of unsuccessful civilian governments that tried to run the country since independence in 1962 with a coup d'état in 1947, the Karen and the Karenni, among others, have been systematically targeted and This must be one of the longest-running military conflicts in all of Southeast Asia. A ruthless civil war that flares up again and again and always causes new flows of refugees towards the relative safety of the Thai-Burmese border. It is not for nothing that the Thai army in the border region and the paramilitary border troops in the region have been on high alert since the new coup. After all, nobody in Bangkok is waiting for an escalation of the already very fraught refugee file. These refugees have never been and never will be a priority for Bangkok, it is feared.

Karen children in Burma

It is not clear how many there are today, but it is estimated that there are about half a million Karen in the diaspora. 135.000 refugees from Burma are in camps along the Thai-Burmese border. According to a 2015 census, 79% of these refugees were Karen and Karenni. In Mae La, which is 60 kilometers north of Mae Sot, there are 43.000 refugees alone. Mae Lae is the largest camp in the region but has been around since 1984, so that a whole generation has grown up there. These refugees have been deliberately kept in isolation far from the centers for many years now and do not enjoy official recognition because they are considered and treated as stateless. They are under the direct supervision of the Thai security forces and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR).

It is therefore absolutely no coincidence that on February 17th the Karen National Union (KNU), the party political organization that claims to speak on behalf of the Karen in Burma, has announced that it will protect Karen who take part in demonstrations against the new regime. In Kawkareik, a town about 50 kilometers from Mae Sot, thousands of Karen took to the streets last week to demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. More than 5.000 demonstrators had taken to the streets in Myawaddy and an estimated 3.000 Karen took to the streets last week in Phayatongzu, which borders Thailand's Sangkhla Buri district of Kanchanaburi, to express their displeasure. If the Burmese security forces were to proceed to a more repressive approach to the opposition, there is a good chance that it would Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed branch of the KNU, again becomes actively involved in the conflict and violence flares up again.

Moreover, open unrest in Burma could also lead to a resurgence of inter-communal violence along the Thai-Burmese border, as it could offer an excellent opportunity for the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) to settle a number of old accounts with the KNLA. The DKBA tore off in 1994 from the largely Christian-led KNU. They soon concluded a truce with the Tatmadaw and according to many international observers they could count on the support of the Burmese army in their fight against the KNLA and the KNU. And I'm not even talking about the rivalry between the KNLA and the Mon National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military wing of the New Mon State Party (NMSP) that has regularly sparked violence in the Tanintharyi region and may now flare up again…