Country: Myanmar

Group: Karen

Date Finalized: 4/5/2020

Group: Sophia Agne (lead), Giselle Chavez Lopez, Aracely Esquer

The Karen are an ethnic group that predominantly reside on the Southeastern region of Burma.

In 1949, the Karen liberation group began an armed campaign to gain autonomy from the Burmese government (Kaicome, 2019). The 70 years that followed have been filled with constant conflict, earning the title of the “world’s longest-running civil war” (Kaicome, 2019). Myanmar military forces have engaged in a continual offensive that have resulted in: forced conscription (of the Karen People), forced displacement, destroyed villages, and a lack of access to humanitarian assistance (HRW, 2006).  The government has also implemented a series of policies that strip the Karen of economic, social, and political power that have amounted to “internal colonisation and ethnocide” (Clarke 2001; Wessendorf 2001; Fong, 2008). Some of the policies include: taking over the Karen’s economic and political power, and forcing the Karen into “strategic hamlets” (Clarke 2001; Wessendorf 2001; Fong, 2008). There is strong indication that the tactics used by the Burmese government to suppress the Karen amount to ethnocide. The data quality was determined to be a 3, based on the amount of evidence that was presented on the Karen conflict.

Sources

  1. Clarke, G. (2001). From ethnocide to ethnodevelopment? Ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia. Third World Quarterly, 22(3), 413-436.
  2. Fong, J. (2008). Revising the ethnodevelopment model: addressing Karen self-determination within the context of the failed ethnocratic state of military-ruled Burma. Ethnic and racial studies, 31(2), 327-357.
  3. Human Rights Watch (2006, May 3). Burma: U.N Must Act to End Attacks on Karen. https://www.hrw.org/news/2006/05/03/burma-un-must-act-end-attacks-karen#
  4. Kaicome, J. (2019, February 8). Marking 70 Years of War in Myanmar. The Diplomat. https://thediplomat.com/2019/02/marking-70-years-of-war-in-myanmar/
  5. Wessendorf, K. (2001). Challenging Politics: Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences with Political Parties and Elections. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.