Karen People: Their Plight and Marginalization the Research Paper

Karen People: Their Plight and Marginalization

The Karen people encompass an ethnic group living in Thailand and Southeast Asia which speaks the Sino-Tibetan language. The Karen are an ethnically diverse group of people: many of them are Skaw Karen and still others are Pwo Karen and Bwe Karen. This group makes up around 7% of the Burmese people and many of them live on the border between Thailand and Karen. Approximately seven million Karen live in Burma and around 500,000 Karen live in small villages in Thailand, with even smaller pockets of the Karen in south Asian countries like India as well as other Southeast Asian nations. There are also populations of the Karen living as refugees in a number of western nations. In terms of survival, the bulk of the Karen peoples work as subsistence farmers, living within small villages, raising livestock and growing rice and vegetables. They are a group of people who are guided by beliefs in spirit worship (Animism) often intermingling it with Animism in a harmoniously fashion. When it comes to Buddhism, the Buddhist monastery generally acts as a pillar of the community in Burma and the monks there are often leaders within the community while doubling as teachers, human rights activists, counselors and others. The influence of Christian missionaries has had a marked effect on the Karen, causing them to become Christian (in amounts currently around 15%) and acting as a catalyst for many in giving up their traditional values and belief systems.

For many decades, the Karen have been organized and led by the Karen National Union (KNU) with engaging in war against the central Burmese government since the late 1940s. This war was waged for the sole means of achieving independence for the group. This is based on the historical condition of Burma, as they were colonized by the British in the 19th century, and the Burmese did not achieve their independence until decades later in 1948. However, the eventually receiving their independence did not make the situation instantaneously better, as the years of colonization led to disorganization and marginalization of certain groups, and a generally fractured state which led to civil war breaking out between the government, the Karen and other ethnic minority groups in large and small ways. In fact, post-independence marked the period of growing pains and discord that are bound to occur with the removal of the British government, while the nation figured out where they stood; thankfully to many fascism could not rise to power as there was no military force to support it (Furnivall, 1949).

Ultimately the Burmese Army got to power, and keeps the nation in Burmese dictatorship. This has lent itself to creating and even more complicated situation as the government of Aung San Suu kyi has been elected in a democratic fashion, but cannot receive power as the Burmese army refuses to give it to them. Even the most recent election was viewed as fixed as so many of the spots reserved in the new Parliament go to leaders within the military; largely this was viewed as an empty attempt to create a "discipline flourishing democracy" and people like the Karen who live in remote villages have seen little difference there. In fact, unrest continues throughout this region and in the Karen state and is manifested through extortion and forced labor by the Burmese army and which is exacerbated by a landmine problem, forcing many of the Karen to migrate to refugee camps within Thailand. At this time, minimal conflict has occurred within the Karen State, but just last year the Burmese Army engaged in yet another offensive against the people of this area.

If one looks at history, the "Four Cuts" policy comes into play with relevancy and strategy, as a means for pushing the insurgents from the middle of Burma to the nation's more remote mountainous areas, thus, removing them from the help of the local population (which can offer them the help of food, money, intelligence, along with new recruits: the military leaders thus mapped the nation into designated zones (black, brown and white) which were thus guerilla-controlled, mixed government-insurgency controlled, and then government-controlled (Falise, 2010). In the black zones, the soldiers were given the freedom to shoot at will (Falise, 2010). The result was ethnic cleansing at a rate which continues even to this very day: "Burmese soldiers, emboldened by a system that ensures total impunity, have engaged in murder, rape, torture, destruction, looting, forced labour, and child conscription.The army's daily oppression also prevails in the brown zones, although with a less brutal but more insidious facade, dubbed 'Burmanization' -- the gradual replacement of local tribes by ethnic Burmese settlers. Life in the brown zones depends entirely on local commanders' good, or more often bad, moods. Reports of forced labor, economic exploitation, and all varieties of harassment are ever present" (Falise, 2010). Thus, it becomes clear that being free from political oppression is now one of the fundamental desires of the Karen people. They are now on the receiving end of clear and unadulterated oppression and it's a practice that absolutely must stop. For the Karen people, their freedom also now means being free from persecution. The problems that are being experienced in Burma and in the surrounding areas have long been predicted and noticed by scholars (Fairbairn, 1957) and are currently reaching an exacerbated fervor.

This paper will examine the primary political demands of the Karen ethnic minority along with the primary political organizations used by the Karen and the strategies they employ.

Problems of the Karen

Another massive problem that the Karen face is that Burma is now playing a larger figure in the war against terrorism. There's a strong connection between the significant Muslim population which lives in Burma and the wider Islamic world (Selth, 2003). While this has been deliberately misrepresented at particular times, the impacts of this misrepresentation have been formidable and dire. In fact the needs and disfranchisement of the Muslim population in Burma has sparked the attention and interest of Bin Laden, and the impact of insurgent groups forging lines with such extremist organizations like Al Qaeda have been coming up more and more -- and are essentially, a growing phenomenon (Selth, 2003). How this spells out a clear problem for the Karen should be obvious. Al Qaeda is one of the most formidable terrorist organizations on the planet. The fact that Burmese insurgent groups are joining forces with this highly powerful and well-organized terrorist organization is intimidating. It means that the Burmese Army will become more powerful, more violent and more heartless in its mass extermination of the Karen.

Furthermore, the likelihood that it will join forces with various Al Qaeda cells is entirely likely. Moreover, any alliance with Al Qaeda is likely to act as an "educational experience" for the Burmese army, as they learn new tactics of violence and destruction -- new strategies for harming people and for annihilating ethnic groups.

"According to the relief organization Thailand Burma Border Consortium, between 1996 -- the year of the first comprehensive survey -- and 2009, some 3,506 villages in eastern Burma, the area most deeply affected by military oppression, were destroyed, abandoned, or forcibly relocated into communities under the army's control. Over 600,000 people have been displaced. Pursued relentlessly, 13 armed ethnic groups agreed on a cease-fire with the junta from 1989 to the mid-1990s. Today, only a handful of armed organizations -- mainly the Karen National Union, the Karenni National Progressive Party, and the Shan State Army-South -- are still resisting the regime. But 'cease-fire groups,' among them the powerful Wa and Kachin along the Chinese border, are increasingly ill at ease with the junta's new strategy to transform them into militias under its control before the general election planned for the end of this year" (Falise, 2010). Thus, the Karen are thus some of the innocent people who have been left to survive and endure this miserable existence. While there are some humanitarian relief groups at work, who are providing medical treatment and counseling to these groups and some material relief, the melancholy destiny of violence, bullets and barbed wire is a truly horrible one for the Karen people and is the responsibility of the entire international community to rectify (Falise, 2010).

The realities of living as a member of a marginalized and at risk Karen village is captured by one journalist, Robert Young Pelton, in his famous essay, "The Black Zone": "democracy may have pushed Burma from an isolated nation to potential partner to the rest of the world. But a trip deep inside the rebel camps tells a different story. Most villages within Karen state are only accessible through a network of jungle paths. Supplies are carried in by porters, many of them young women who carry up to fifty pounds up and down steep mountain routes. Medical supplies, as well as basic necessities, are smuggled in.....