Peace mediator Rev. Dr. Lahtaw Saboi Jum has thrown himself headlong into defusing the political and military tension brewing between the ethnic Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) and the Burmese junta in the country's capital Naypyitaw, said local sources.
Rev. Dr. Saboi Jum, former general secretary of the Kachin Baptist Convention (KBC) and current director of Shalom Foundation (SF) is mediating for peace between the junta and the KIO by shuttling between Napyipyitaw and the Kachin State's capital Myitkyina, said sources close to the pastor Rev. Saboi Jum.
On the suggestion of Rev. Saboi Jum, the junta’s Northern regional commander Maj-Gen Soe Win, twice met all Kachin Christian church leaders from different denominations on transforming the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), the armed-wing of KIO to Border Guard Force (BGF) last month. However, the palpable tension remains between the junta and the KIO, said KIO officers.
At the meeting between Kachin church leaders and Commander Soe Win on July 29, Rev. Saboi Jum reassured him that he will continuously mediate between the junta and the KIO for peace in his native Kachin State and the country to the best of his ability. He has mediated in the past also.
He also promised the Commander that he would keep trying till he achieves the junta's desire that is transforming the KIA to the junta-proposed BGF, because the implementation of BGF was for peace, said those who attended the meeting.
As church-based mediators, the Kachin Baptist pastor Rev. Saboi Jum and Roman Catholic Father Lawt (Jau Lawt in Kachin) tried to achieve a ceasefire between the KIO and General Ne Win's Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) in 1981. They successfully helped in signing a ceasefire agreement between the KIO and the junta in February 24, 1994.
A senior Kachin politician Duwa Zau Awng, member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and people's representative of Waingmaw town in Kachin State, who currently lives in Florida in the United States said, "The KIO using Saboi Jum as a peace mediator has been and is wrong even now. Because of his suggestion, the KIO went for a ceasefire agreement without limitation and gurrantee of political talks, which took Kachins away from their self-determination goal".
During the early days of the ceasefire agreement between the junta and KIO, many Kachin people saw Rev. Saboi Jum as a saviour from civil war but it was obliterated soon given his moral corruption and use of financial aid for Catholic churches from European countries to the Kachin Catholic churches in Kachin State for his personal business ventures, according to KBC pastors.
It is because of this, Rev. Saboi Jum is being seen now as a pro-junta, agent, into covert activities for selfish reasons and working for his personal prosperity rather than liberation of the Kachin people under military rule, according to church sources.
Now, the junta is making a list of Kachin churches with its leaders and listing all Kachin school teachers in all grades of government schools in Myitkyina and Bhamo, said residents of the two towns.
