Marwaan Macan-Markar
If Burma’s military regime was hoping that the death of a long-time adversary - one they have called a ‘‘murderer’’ and a ‘‘village burner’’ - is going to change the outlook of the rebel movement he led, it could not have been more mistaken.
‘‘There will not be any change till we achieve our goal,’’ David Htaw, foreign affairs spokesman for the Karen National Union (KNU), said in a telephone interview from the Thai-Burma border. ‘‘We want equal opportunities and rights for the Karen people.’’
His comments came amid speculation that Rangoon was hoping to use the death on Sunday of the KNU leader Bo Mya to engage the rebels in reconciliation talks. The rare presence of a colonel from the Burmese army at Bo Mya’s funeral Tuesday at a KNU stronghold along Burma’s eastern border has also fed such views.
‘’There are some kind of moves for talks with the help of Thailand,’’ added Htaw. ‘‘The presence of a Burmese military representative at the funeral was also rare. This has never happened in the past.’’
Yet Burma watchers say that Rangoon’s junta should also stop its continuing assault on villages in the country’s Karen state, home to the Karen ethnic community, if such gestures are to be meaningful. The current phase, which began after the rainy season ended in November, reveals the policy of isolation that the Burmese military has been consistently pursuing -- trying to cut any contact the KNU fighters have with the mostly impoverished Karen communities.
A late December report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Burmese army of using landmines to ‘‘terrorise’’ civilians as part of this military strategy. ‘‘Since the start of the harvest season in November, Burmese army soldiers have been laying increasing number of antipersonnel landmines in front of houses, around rice fields, and along trails leading to fields in order to deter civilians from harvesting their crops,’’ the New York-based rights lobby revealed.
‘‘In order to separate ethnic armed groups from their civilian populations, the Burmese army lays landmines and other explosive devices in order to maim and kill civilians,’’ adds Brad Adams, HRW’s Asia director. ‘‘This is a concerted policy aimed at denying people their livelihoods and food or forcing them to risk losing limbs and lives.’’
Similar attacks on Karen civilians during the past years have created a humanitarian crisis, forcing tens of thousands to flee their villages and seek refuge in forests or in camps across the Thai border. Civilians who have been caught by the advancing Burmese troops have been shot at, tortured, raped and even compelled into forced labour.
Such violence against Karen civilians is what kept Bo Mya committed to leading the Karen rebels, say Burma specialists who have been reflecting on his contribution in shaping and sustaining the KNU till his death at 79 years. ‘‘In the eyes of his people, General Bo Mya is still the most renowned, respected and strongest symbol of their struggle for freedom,’’ writes Phil Thornton, an Australian who has authored books about life on the Thai-Burma border, in a commentary on Friday’s edition of a newspaper here, ‘The Nation.’ ‘‘His death leaves a void that will be hard to fill.’’
In an interview he had given to ‘The Irrawaddy,’ a current affairs magazine produced by Burmese journalists living in exile in Thailand, Bo Mya had said, ‘‘I understand that a revolution means opposing the wrong and constructing the right thing. Our revolution is one that must fight against evil and all wrongs.’’
And he had put those words into practice early in his life, when at the age of 21 years, he joined the Karen fighters who challenged the Burmese government’s authority over them, triggering Asia’s oldest ethnic conflict, now in its 57th year. Bo Mya’s spirit of resistance and fighting record -- first burnished against the Japanese army during World War II -- saw him take over the KNU leadership in the subsequent years.
During his nearly 25 years as the KNU’s leader, Bo Mya, frequently photographed wearing a beret and battle fatigues, also gained a reputation as a tough-talking strategist who was averse to criticism and openness within his organisation, the largest ethnic rebel group in Burma. ‘‘With nearly half a century of battle and revolutionary experience, Bo Mya won the respect of many exiled leaders and dissidents,’’ ‘The Irrawaddy’ noted this week. ‘‘His straightforward and often ruthless leadership was also respected by his troops.’’
The Karen uprising, which began in 1949, sparked a similar reaction among Burma’s other ethnic groups, also unhappy at moves by the country’s new government since independence from the British, in 1948, to cater to the interests of the majority Burman ethnic community. By the mid-1990s, however, the Karens, who make up an estimated seven million people in a country of some 50.5 million, were among the few who had a rebel movement still refusing to obey Rangoon’s commands. Seventeen other ethnic rebel groups had signed ceasefire agreements with the Burmese junta.
That Bo Mya and the KNU had judged well was borne out in the years after the ceasefire agreements, since the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the Burmese military regime is formally known, failed to fully meet its side of the deal. The SPDC’s attempt to bully the ceasefire groups into accepting the country’s on-going constitutional drafting process mirrors such an attitude.
Burma has over 130 ethnic communities, with the largest of them being the Chin, Kachin, Karen, Karenni, Mon, Rakhine and Shan, all of whom live in regions along this South-east Asian country’s borders.
But it was Bo Mya who stood out among the leaders thrown up by the many rebel groups, a challenge that has always meant Rangoon’s inability to be in complete control of the country. ‘‘He led the strongest ethnic armed movement and Rangoon considered him a fierce fighter,’’ Soe Aung, foreign affairs spokesman for the National Council for the Union of Burma (NCUB), an umbrella body of Burmese political and human rights groups in exile, told IPS.
