August 12th is a solemn day in the history of the Karen people. On this day we mourn the deaths of our national heroes, or martyrs if you will, and remember their sacrifices. It has been almost 60 years since the glorious Karen armed resistance commenced in 1949, and our dead heroes – San C. Poe, Saw Pay Thar, Synedy Loo Ne, Saw Ba U Gyi, Saw San Kay, Mahn Ba Zan, Skaw Ler Taw, Gen. Bo Mya and countless others – have indeed persisted in our collective memory. The persistence of our memories for them, however, may not be in exactly the way they anticipated.
Most of those who claim to admire Saw Ba U Gyi and are vehemently against reviewing his principles have only the sketchiest knowledge of his life and goals. Somewhat surprisingly, the apotheosis of Saw Ba U Gyi's four principles is accompanied by a parallel disappearance of the real understanding of his intellectual insights and the unmatched sacrifices he made. Gone is the educated, intellectual and selfless Saw Ba U Gyi, who sold thousands of acres of his inherited land to compensate the government for money stolen from a government bank by his unruly followers. Gone is the confident warrior who trusted his people, refusing to accept a platoon of personal bodyguards offered to him and as a result ambushed and killed by enemy troops. To date, the principles he laid down and the future he wanted for his people have not been realized. Confined mainly in the Thai-Burma border area, the movement has been gradually losing its strength and consequently, to some extent, its relevancy.
In fact, it is troubling to note that there is a huge gap between the magnitude of our challenges and the smallness of our politics - our chronic avoidance of answering tough questions, our remarkable inability to build a viable consensus to tackle the critical problems confronting our people and our singular lack of confidence and skills in engaging the international community in an increasingly interconnected world.
The first step to solving our people's predicament and advancing our cause is to confront the naked realities before us as they really are, not as we fancy them to be. Imperative is the need for us to recognize the gap between our professed ideals as a people – the imagined Karen community – and the reality we witness everyday. The Karen as we would like to imagine ourselves is a homogeneous assembly, concentrated in one geographic area, speaking the same language, and subscribing to one religion. But such is not the case. The reality, whether we like it or not, is that there are three major Karen sub-groups, each with its own distinctive spoken and written language. While almost 35 percent of Sqaw Karen subscribe to Christianity, a large percentage of Pwo Karen remain faithful to Buddhism. And a small percentage of both Pwo and Sqaw still practice animism.
Having settled in a wide range of geographic areas with notable concentrations in the Mergui/Tavoy region, Irrawaddy delta, Toungoo hill tracks and Pa-pun district, Karen people within and beyond Burma intermingle with other ethnic nationalities. Although there are some exclusively Karen enclaves in different parts of Burma, it is hard to point to a single geographic region inhabited only by Karen. This demographic reality demands that we seriously rethink the issue of how we define a Karen state. How can the recognition of a Karen state be completed, until and unless we establish a consensus on what a Karen state should constitute?
Equally important, and no less complex and sensitive, is the question of what should be the official Karen language. Of course we must have the right to speak, read, write and be educated in our own language. But in actuality, we have three distinctive Karen languages, belonging to three different Karen sub-groups. Which one do we want to use for official communication? These are fundamental questions that need to be addressed in the broader national context with utmost rationality and sensitivity.
Establishing a collective consent of Karen people in response to these questions will be a crucial step toward deciding our own political destiny. Only this critical process of questioning and reviewing our movement will allow us to see that there is an urgent need to restructure the increasingly fragmented Karen national identity and for a realistic and articulate Karen voice in national and international politics.
Undoubtedly, the Karen need a new generation of political leadership that can articulate a national strategy that goes beyond the same voices recycled from the old framework. The new and younger political leadership must be able to grasp the complex dynamics of ethnicity and yet be attuned to the regional political situation of an increasingly interconnected world. After more than half a century, there is no doubt about the Karen determination to fight militarily. But on this long and painful path that the Karen people were and still are compelled to tread, it takes more than a strong will to reach our goal. As part of our struggle, we will need to come up with a strategy that goes beyond regular press releases that simply expose atrocities committed by the Burmese military regime against the Karen.
If the Karen struggle is to gain national and international support, intellectuals, few though they may be among the Karen, will have to look beyond their narrowly specialized disciplines, and play their own role within the struggle. Many western-trained Karen intellectuals – such as Dr. San C. Poe, Saw Ba U Gyi, Saw Pay Thar and Saw Sydney Loo Ni – participated at the forefront of the struggle when the Karen began their movement. It is now time for the Karen to gather their strength from all walks of life, including the exiles and the urban intellectuals – whose voices must play a critical role in promoting awareness and raising the profile of the Karen in general – and the rural populace and internally displaced, whose steadfast resistance to forced relocation and cultural assimilation has always been crucial to the very existence of the Karen. In order to accomplish this task, the Karen need a leadership that is not only committed but also skillfully creative in policymaking and competently attuned to international political dynamics.
As much as the Karen quest for their collective right to self-determination is theoretically justified, the practicality of having such a right can be complicated at best, but not impossible. The salience of ethnicity in Burmese politics, after all, is a reality imposed by history that must be confronted with the consideration of appropriate political and cultural measures that are at least recognizable and responsive to the basic human needs of identity, security and equal participation. Inasmuch as the Karen are resolved in armed resistance, they must also learn to compete, compromise and cooperate with their adversary at the political table. It is hoped that the Karen, if and when opportunity presents itself, will be ready to engage in a national political dialogue not only with the Burman but also with the other ethnic nationalities in mapping out the details of both a future Karen state and our country of Burma.
