In Myanmar, Karen Rebels Deny Signing a Cease-Fire
By THOMAS FULLER
Published: February 3, 2012
TAY BAY HTA, MYANMAR — When Myanmar announced a cease-fire last month with one of the
country’s most prominent rebel groups, images of longstanding enemies shaking hands across a table
were beamed around the globe and touted as evidence of further reconciliation in a country emerging
from decades of military dictatorship and interethnic strife.
Now, three weeks after the deal was announced, the leadership of the rebel group is denying that a
cease-fire was signed.
“We can’t say there’s a cease-fire yet,” Naw Zipporah Sein, the general secretary of the Karen National
Union, said in an interview. “We still need to discuss the conditions.”
There have been no reports of clashes between Karen rebels and government troops in recent weeks.
But the defiant stance of the Karen leadership appears to be a significant setback for the government’s
efforts to end the grinding civil conflicts that have divided the country for decades.
Reconciliation with the country’s armed ethnic groups has been one of the conditions that the United
States and other Western countries have put on Myanmar before economic sanctions and other punitive
measures are lifted.
The day after the cease-fire announcement, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, said
that the United States would reward “action with action” and announced that Washington would
appoint an ambassador to Myanmar after more than a decade without one. She called the cease-fire an
“important step forward” for the country.
The confusion over the cease-fire remains murky and appears to be a mix of misunderstanding and
backpedaling by the rebel group’s leadership.
Ms. Sein said the delegation sent to negotiate with the government was not authorized to sign a cease-
fire. A document was signed, but all that was agreed upon in January, she said, was that the two sides
would “meet again” at the end of February. She declined to release a copy of the agreement.
Top officials of the Karen National Union, a cash-strapped organization with a ragtag army of several
thousand troops, also admit that they underestimated opposition from the organization’s rank and file to
a deal with the government.
“The grass roots are very much concerned that it went too quickly — they thought it was a sellout,”
said Saw David Tharckabaw, vice president of the Karen National Union and chief of its foreign affairs
section. “There is a feeling that we have been cheated.”
The organization must now “move more slowly” in dealing with the government, Mr. Tharckabaw said.
He portrays the cease-fire announcement in January as part of a public relations campaign by the
government for the benefit of foreign nations.
“The government wanted to show the world that the longest-running war between the government and
a rebel group was over,” Mr. Tharckabaw said. He said the Karen delegation came under “high
pressure” to sign an agreement.
The government of President Thein Sein has pushed ahead with a raft of changes in recent months, including the
release of hundreds of political prisoners and a loosening of restrictions on the news media.
Page 1 of 2
But ethnic strife remains a key challenge, one that has dogged Myanmar, also called Burma, from the
first days of independence in 1948. E-mails to Mr. Thein Sein’s office seeking comment on the status
of the Karen cease-fire were not answered.
About one-third of Myanmar’s population are members of minority groups arrayed along the borders
with Bangladesh, India, China and Thailand.
In the impoverished hills that make up the Karen homeland, tensions persist between rebels and
government troops, according to Bo Aung Hang, a battalion commander in charge of a region along the
Moei River, which separates Myanmar from Thailand. The area is strewn with land mines.
In Tay Bay Hta, a hamlet along the river without electricity or running water or roads, there is a
palpable pessimism that is in stark contrast to the rekindled hopes for democratic reforms in some of
Myanmar’s biggest cities. The mood here is for defiance, not reconciliation.
During a ceremony this week to commemorate 63 years of fighting against the central government, Mr.
Bo Aung Hang told an assembled group of about 150 villagers that the Burmese Army wanted to
“eliminate the Karen people.”
“All that will remain of the Karen is a picture in a library,” he said.
As he spoke, rebel soldiers stood guard, carrying a variety of assault rifles and a grenade launcher.
“Over the past 10 years, 40 soldiers have been killed in my battalion,” Mr. Bo Aung Hang said. “Those
of us still alive are still leading the revolution.”
Rebels call the central government the “enemy.”
The leadership of the Karen National Union said that no date had been set for the next meeting with the
government but that they are ready to respect the deadline and convene before the end of this month.
The organization has submitted a sweeping list of 11 demands, including a call for a simultaneous
cease-fire encompassing all ethnic groups. (Fighting has flared in recent weeks between ethnic Kachin
rebels and the government along the border with China.)
Mr. Tharckabaw, the vice president of the Karen National Union, summarizes the Karen demands as
wanting “equality and self-determination.”
“In short, we want a genuine federal system where the states will have their own autonomy,” he said.
Villagers who over the last few decades have been in the cross-fire of one of Asia’s longest-running
conflicts, are skeptical that a deal can be reached, said Bothien Thientha, a long-serving officer in the
Karen National Liberation Army who was wounded in a battle with a pro-government militia two and a
half years ago.
“No one trusts the government,” he said. “We’ve been cheated so many times.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/04/world/asia/in‐myanmar‐karen‐rebels‐deny‐signing‐a‐cease‐
fire.html?_r=1&ref=world
Page 2 of 2