| Karen women at Kyaikkami Yele Pagoda | ||||||
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| 4,000,000 | ||||||
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The Karen or Kayin people (Karen: Pwa Ka Nyaw Poe or Kanyaw in Sgaw Karen and Ploan in Poe Karen; Burmese: ကရင်လူမျိုး; MLCTS: ka. rang lu myui:, pronounced [kəjɪ̀ɴ lù mjó]; Thai: กะเหรี่ยง, Kariang or Yang), are a Sino-Tibetan language speaking ethnic group which resides primarily in southern and southeastern Burma (Myanmar). The Karen make up approximately 7 percent of the total Burmese population of approximately 50 million people.[1] A large number of Karen also reside in Thailand, mostly on the Thai-Burmese border. The Karen are often confused with the Red Karen (or Karenni). One subgroup of the Karenni, the Padaung tribe from the border region of Burma and Thailand, are best known for the neck rings worn by the women of this group of people. Karen legends refer to a 'river of running sand' which ancestors reputedly crossed. Many Karen think this refers to the Gobi Desert, although they have lived in Burma for centuries. The Karen constitute the biggest ethnic population in Burma after the Bamars and Shans.[2]
Some of the Karen, led primarily by the Karen National Union (KNU), have waged a war against the central government since early 1949. The aim of the KNU at first was independence. Since 1976 the armed group has called for a federal system rather than an independent Karen State.
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The Karen people live mostly in the hills bordering eastern region and Irrawaddy delta of Burma,[3] primarily in Kayin State, with some in Kayah State, southern Shan State, Ayeyarwady Region, Tanintharyi Region, Bago Division and in western Thailand.
The total number of Karen is difficult to estimate. The last reliable census of Burma was conducted in 1931. A 2006 VOA article cites an estimate of seven million in Burma. There are another 400,000[4] Karen in Thailand, where they are by far the largest of the hill tribes.
The Karens have been divided by ethnologists into Red Karen and White Karen.[5]
According to a 1983 census, the Red Karens (Karenni) consist of the following groups: Kayah, Geko (Kayan Ka Khaung, Gekho, Gaykho), Geba (Kayan Gebar, Gaybar), Padaung (Kayan Lahwi), Bres, Manu-Manaus (Manumanao), Yintale, Yinbaw, Bwé, Paku, Shan and Pao.[6] Several of the groups (Geko, Gebar, Padaung) belong to Kayan, a subgroup of Red Karen.
The largest and most widely scattered Karen group. Many live in Yangon Division, Bago Division(Taungoo District, Bago District and Tharyarwaddy District), Mandalay Division(Pyin Oo Lwin and Kalaw), Tanintharyi Division(Myeik and Dawei), Ayeyarwaddy Division(Hintharda District) , East Karen State (Thanton), Kayah State (Mawchi) and Thailand (Chiang Mai Province). S'gaw Karen language is a common language for most of the Karen People. In Karen, S'gaw Karen are called Bar Htee.
East Pwo Karen live in western Thailand and Kayin State, Burma; West Pwo Karen live in Irrawaddy Division, Burma. In Karen, Pwo Karen are called Mo Htee.
Most of the White Karen live near Pyinmana, Mandalay Division. S'gaw and Pwo Karen are not White Karen. In Karen, White Karen are called Ka Nyaw Wah.
Paku Karen live in Taungoo, Bago Division, Kayah State, Mawchi and east Kayin State, Thandong. Paku Karen Baptist Association is headquartered in Taungoo.The association operates Paku Divinity School. The Paku Karen speake S'gaw .
In 1881 the Karen National Associations (KNA) was founded by western-educated Christian Karens to represent Karen interests to the British. They argued at the 1917 Montagu-Chelmsford hearings in India that Burma was not "yet in a fit state for self-government", but 3 years later, after submitting a criticism of the 1920 Craddock Reforms, won 5 (later 12) seats in the Legislative Council of 130 (later 132) members. The majority Buddhist Karens were not organised until 1939 with the formation of a Buddhist KNA.[7]
In 1938 the British colonial administration recognised Karen New Year as a public holiday.[7][8]
During World War II, when the Japanese occupied the region, long-term tensions between the Karen and Burma turned into open fighting. As a consequence, many villages were destroyed and massacres committed by both the Japanese and the Burma Independence Army (BIA) troops who helped the Japanese invade the country. Among the victims were a pre-war Cabinet minister, Saw Pe Tha, and his family. A government report later claimed the 'excesses of the BIA' and 'the loyalty of the Karens towards the British' as the reasons for these attacks. The intervention by Colonel Suzuki Keiji, the Japanese commander of the BIA, after meeting a Karen delegation led by Saw Tha Din, appeared to have prevented further atrocities.[7]
The Karen people aspired to have the areas where they were the majority formed into a subdivision or "state" within Burma similar to what the Shan, Kachin and Chin peoples had been given. A goodwill mission led by Saw Tha Din and Saw Ba U Gyi to London in August 1946 failed to receive any encouragement from the British government for any separatist demands. When a delegation of representatives of the Governor's Executive Council headed by Aung San was invited to London to negotiate for the Aung San-Attlee Treaty in January 1947, none of the ethnic minority members was included by the British government. The following month at the Panglong Conference, when an agreement was signed between Aung San as head of the interim Burmese government and the Shan, Kachin and Chin leaders, the Karen were present only as observers; the Mon and Arakanese were also absent.
The British promised to consider the case of the Karen after the war. While the situation of the Karen was discussed, nothing practical was done before the British left Burma. The 1947 Constitution, drawn without Karen participation due to their boycott of the elections to the Constituent Assembly, also failed to address the Karen question specifically and clearly, leaving it to be discussed only after independence. The Shan and Karenni states were given the right to secession after 10 years, the Kachin their own state, and the Chin a special division. The Mon and Arakanese of Ministerial Burma were not given any consideration.[7]
In early February 1947, the Karen National Union (KNU) was formed at a Karen Congress attended by 700 delegates from the Karen National Associations, both Baptist and Buddhist (KNA - founded 1881), the Karen Central Organisation (KCO) and its youth wing, the Karen Youth Organisation (KYO), at Vinton Memorial Hall in Yangon. The meeting called for a Karen state with a seaboard, an increased number of seats (25%) in the Constituent Assembly, a new ethnic census, and a continuance of Karen units in the armed forces. The deadline of March 3 passed without a reply from the British government, and Saw Ba U Gyi, the president of the KNU, resigned from the Governor's Executive Council the next day.[7]
After the war ended, Burma was granted independence in January 1948, and the Karen, led by the KNU, attempted to co-exist peacefully with the Burman ethnic majority. Karen people held leading positions in both the government and the army. In the fall of 1948, the Burmese government, led by U Nu, began raising and arming irregular political militias known as Sitwundan. These militias were under the command of Major Gen. Ne Win and outside the control of the regular army. In January 1949, some of these militias went on a rampage through Karen communities.
In late January, the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Smith Dun, a Karen, was removed from office and imprisoned. He was replaced by fanatic Burmese nationalist Ne Win.[7] These events happened at exactly the same time a commission looking into the Karen problem was due to make its report to the government. The events effectively killed the report. The Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), formed in July 1947, then rose up in an insurgency against the government.[7] They were helped by the defections of the Karen Rifles and the Union Military Police (UMP) units which had been successfully deployed in suppressing the earlier Burmese Communist rebellions, and came close to capturing Yangon itself. The most notable was the Battle of Insein, nine miles from Yangon, where they held out in a 112-day siege till late May 1949.[7]
Years later, the Karen had become the largest of 20 minority groups participating in an insurgency against the military dictatorship in Yangon. During the 1980s, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) fighting force numbered approximately 20,000. After an uprising of the people of Burma in 1988, known as the 8888 Uprising, the KNLA had accepted those demonstrators in their bases along the border. The dictatorship expanded the army and launched a series of major offensives against the KNLA. By 2006, the KNLA's strength had shrunk to less than 4,000, opposing what is now a 400,000-man Burmese army. However, the political arm of the KNLA - the KNU - continued efforts to resolve the conflict through political means.
During 1994 and 1995, dissenters from the Buddhist minority in the KNLA formed a splinter group called the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), and went over to the side of the military junta. The split is believed to have led to the fall of the KNU headquarters at Manerplaw in January 1995.[9]
The conflict continues as of 2006[update], with a new KNU headquarters in Mu Aye Pu, on the Burmese–Thai border. In 2004, the BBC, citing aid agencies, estimates that up to 200,000 Karen have been driven from their homes during decades of war, with 160,000 more refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, living in refugee camps on the Thai side of the border.
Reports as recently as February, 2010, state that the Burmese army continues to burn Karen villages, displacing thousands of people.[10] Many Karen, including people such as former KNU secretary Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan and his daughter, Zoya Phan, have accused the military government of Burma of ethnic cleansing.[11][12][13][14][15] The U.S. State Department has also cited the Burmese government for suppression of religious freedom.[16] This is a source of particular trouble to the Karen, as between thirty and forty percent of them are Christians.[17][18]
The Karen languages, members of the Tibeto-Burman group of the Sino-Tibetan language family, consist of three mutually unintelligible branches: Sgaw, Pwo, and Pa'o.[19][20] Karenni (Red Karen) and Kayan belong to the Sgaw branch. The Karen languages are almost unique among the Tibeto-Burman languages in having a subject–verb–object word order; other than Karen and Bai, Tibeto-Burman languages feature a subject–object–verb order. This anomaly is likely due to the influence of neighboring Mon and Tai languages.[21]
Karens were Animists originally, but today the majority is Buddhist in conjunction with Animism. The Buddhist influence came from the Mon who were dominant in Lower Burma until the middle of the 18th century. Tha Byu, the first convert to Christianity in 1828, was baptised by Rev George Boardman, an associate of Adoniram Judson, founder of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society. Today, Karen Christians belong to the Catholic Church or to the different Protestant denominations. Some of the largest Protestant denominations are Baptist and Seventh-day Adventists.[22][23] Persecution of Christians by the Burmese authorities has continued to this day, fueled by previous attempts by Western imperialists to divide the country not only on ethnic but on religious grounds.[24]
The Karen Baptist Convention is established in 1913 and the HQ is located in Yangon, Myanmar. The KBC has 20 members association in Myanmar.The KBC operate K.B.C charity Clinic in Insein Yangon. The KBC also operates Karen Baptist Theological Seminary, [1] in Insein, Yangon.The seminary is not only run theology program but also run secular degree programs to fulfill young Karen intellectual and vocational needs. The Pwo Karen Baptist Convention located in Ahlone, Yangon and also operates Pwo Karen Theological Seminary [2]. There are other schools for Karen people in Myanmar, such as Paku Divinity School in Taungoo, Kothabyu Bible School in Pathein, Yangon Home Mission School. The Thailand Karen Baptist Convention is located in Chaingmai, Thailand.
The Seventh-day Adventists have built several schools in the Karen refugee camps in Thailand to Christianize the Karen people. Eden Valley Academy in Tak and Karen Adventist Academy in Mae Hong Son are the two largest Seventh-day Adventist Karen schools.
Kawthoolei is the Karen name for the state that the Karen people of Burma have been trying to establish since the late 1940s. The precise meaning of the name is disputed even by the Karen themselves; possible interpretations include Flowerland and Land without evil, although, according to Martin Smith in Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, it has a double meaning, and can also be rendered as the Land Burnt Black; hence the land that must be fought for. Kawthoolei roughly approximates to present-day Kayin State, some parts of Pegu and Tanintharyi Division, although parts of the Burmese Ayeyarwady River delta with Karen populations have sometimes also been claimed. Kawthoolei as a name is a relatively recent invention, penned during the time of former Karen leader Ba U Gyi, who was assassinated around the time of Burma's independence from Britain.
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