Wa people

Wa
(Va, Ava, Parauk, Ba rāog)

Burmese depiction of the Wa in the early 20th century
Total population
approx. 1.2 million
Regions with significant populations
Burma	800,000 Kachin State Shan State
China	400,000 Yunnan Province
Languages
Wa language Southwestern Mandarin
Religion
Animism Buddhism

The Wa people (Wa language: Vāx; Burmese: ဝလူမျိုး [wa̰ lùmjóʊ]; Chinese: 佤族; pinyin: Wǎzú) live mainly in northern Burma, in the northern part of Shan State and the eastern part of Kachin State, near and along Burma's border with China, as well as in China's Yunnan province.

Their de facto capital is Pangkham in the unofficial Wa State within the northeastern Shan State. The majority of the Wa live in Burma.

Cultural history

The Wa language belongs to the Palaungic branch of the Austroasiatic language family. In China, a written language was created for the Wa people in 1956.

The Wa have animist religious beliefs.^[1]

Headhunting

The Wa were known as the "Wild Wa" by British administrators during Britain's colonial control of Burma due to their practice of headhunting.^[2] They were were left alone by the British, whose colonial officials steered clear of the severed human heads staking out the Wa hills.^[3] Their last reported ritual beheadings were in 1976.^[4]

Post World War 2

After remnants of Chiang Kai-shek's Chinese Nationalists fled the 1949 communist revolution, the Wa took up arms and in 1968 became the backbone of the Communist Party of Burma's militia, with opium sales paying for a steady supply of Chinese arms.^[5]

After a new international border was defined between Burma and China in the 1960s, the Wa people have been divided between Burma and China. In 1999 the Wa were recruited by the former Burma's military junta to wage a proxy guerrilla war against ethnic Shan rebels on the Thai border.^[6]

Drug production

During the 1990s, the United Wa State Army was one of the world's largest narco-armies, with up to 10,000 men under arms.^[7] During the 1990s they were principally involved in heroin production.^[8][9] During the 2000s, the United Wa State Army shifted focus into amphetamine production.^[10][11]

Records of official seizures compiled by the United Nations suggest that in 2006 Myanmar was the source of half of Asia's methamphetamine, or yaba, as it is known in Thailand.^[12] Most of the drug labs are under Wa control, experts believe.^[13]

Geographic distribution

A map of Burma showing the Wa Self-Administered Division, coloured brown.

China

In China, the Wa live in compact communities in the Ximeng (in Wa: Mēng Ka or Si Moung), Cangyuan, Menglian (Gaeng Līam), Gengma (Gaeng Mīex or Gaeng Māx), Lincang (Mēng Lām), Shuangjiang (Si Nblāeng or Mēng Mēng), Zhenkang, and Yongde counties in southwestern Yunnan Province in China. Their population in China is estimated at around 400,000.

Benren

The "Benren" 本人 of Yongde County and Zhenkang County, Yunnan are officially classified as Wa by the Chinese government, but consider themselves to be a separate ethnicity from the Wa.^[14] Their autonym is "Siwa" 斯佤. The Benren are distributed in:

• Menggong Township 勐汞佤族乡 (recently incorporated into Dejue Township 德党镇), Yongde County:^[15] in Menggong 勐汞、Daba 大坝、Songlin 松林、Dapingzhang 大平掌、Hunai 户乃、Xiaodifang 小地方、Lielie 列列. There are 10,289 Benren in the township as of 2010.
• Desili Township 德思里彝族佤族乡, Fengqing County
• Mangka Township 芒卡镇, Cangyuan County

Burma

The Wa are one of the 135 officially recognized ethnic groups in Burma. Their proportion to Burma's total population is 0.16.^[16] The Wa are also one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China.

In Burma, the Wa have formed the Wa State, with the United Wa State Army (UWSA), based on the remains of the former Burmese Communist Party rebel group that collapsed in 1989. The Wa State and the UWSA are in a fragile cease-fire agreement with the Burmese military government. They have been accused by Western governments of involvement in drug trafficking but have banned opium production since 2005 and have received United Nations aid in improving legitimate agriculture.

As stipulated by the 2008 Burmese Constitution, on 20 August 2010 the Wa Self-Administered Division has been estabilished.^[17][18] It is set to be administred by the Wa people and its territory is between the gorges of the Mekong and Salween rivers, in the east part of the Shan State, near the border with the Chinese province of Yunnan.

See also

• Wa State
• Pangkham
• United Wa State Army
• United Wa State Party

General:

• List of ethnic groups in Burma

References

External links

• A Dictionary of the Wa Language with Burmese (Myanmar), Chinese, and English Glosses and Internet Database for Minority Languages of Burma (Myanmar)
• ワ語の発音と表記 (Pronunciation and spelling of Wa; in Japanese)
• The Wa ethnic minority (Chinese government website, in English)
• Wa page from China Style site
• Wa page from Ethnologue site
• The Wa

Bibliography

• A Bibliography of materials in or about Wa language and culture
• Journal of Burma Studies 17.1 (2013), a special issue on the Wa people
• Harvey, G. E. Wa Précis. Rangoon, 1933.
• Lintner, Bertil. Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948. Chiang Mai, 1999.
• Marshall, Andrew. The Trouser People: a Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire. London: Penguin; Washington: Counterpoint, 2002. ISBN 1-58243-120-5.
• Mitton, Geraldine Scott of the Shan Hills. London: John Murray, 1936.
• Scott, J. G. Burma and Beyond. London, 1932.
• Scott, J. G. Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States. 5 vols. Rangoon, 1900-1901.
• Winnington, Alan. The Slaves of the Cool Mountains. Berlin: Seven Seas, 1959.
• Winnington, Alan. The Slaves of the Cool Mountains: The Ancient Social Conditions and Changes Now in Progress on the Remote South-Western Borders of China. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1959.
• Fiskesjö, Magnus. "Introduction to Wa Studies." Journal of Burma Studies 17.1 (2013), 1-27.
• Fiskesjö, Magnus. "The autonomy of naming: Kinship, power and ethnonymy in the Wa lands of the Southeast Asia-China frontiers." In Charles Macdonald & Yangwen Zheng, eds. Personal Names in Asia: History, Culture and Identity. Singapore: Singapore University Press, 2009, pp 150–74. ISBN 9971-69-380-1.
• Fiskesjö, Magnus. "Slavery as the commodification of people: Wa 'slaves' and their Chinese 'sisters'." Focaal-Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 59 (Spring 2011), 3-18.
• Fiskesjö, Magnus. "Mining, history, and the anti-state Wa: The politics of autonomy between Burma and China." Journal of Global History 5.2 (June 2010), 241-64.
• Fiskesjö, Magnus. "Participant intoxication and self-other dynamics in the Wa context." The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology 11.2 (June 2010), 111-27.
• Takano, Hideyuki. "The Shore Beyond Good and Evil: A Report from Inside Burma's Opium Kingdom." Tokyo: Kotan Publishing, 2002. In English.
• Kramer, Tom. "The United Wa State Party: Narco-army or ethnic nationalist party?" Washington, DC: East-West Center Washington; Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2007.
• Kramer, Tom. "From golden triangle to rubber belt?: The future of opium bans in the Kokang and Wa regions." Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2009. http://www.tni.org/

Fiction

• Scott, J. G., and Mitton, Geraldine. In the Grip of the Wild Wa. London, 1913.
• Winnington, Alan. "Kopfjäger" [ins Deutsche übertragen von K. Heinz]. Berlin: Verlag Volk und Welt, 1983. Series: Roman-Zeitung; Heft 398. [German translation of the novel "Headhunters"].