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          Rethinking KNU Principles Rethinking KNU PrinciplesBy Aung Naing Oo March 2007 “Until the Karen go to Rangoon and surrender, the Karen revolution will never disappear”——Ba U Gyi Less than a month before he was killed in a Burmese army ambush in August 1950, Ba U Gyi, a former colonial-era Burmese cabinet minister and then leader of the Karen resistance, gave the above admonition to a gathering of Karen leaders from Papun District. As the father of the Karen liberation movement, Ba U Gyi outlined four basic tenets of the resistance, which he urged his fighters and followers to adhere to resolutely. He said: “Surrender is out of the question; 關鍵字行銷” “We shall retain our arms;” “Recognition of Karen State must be complete;” and “We shall decide our own political destiny.” The Karen National Union, the mainstream Karen resistance group once led by Ba U Gyi, adopted these maxims as the guiding principles of their fight for autonomy from the Burman-dominated military and government. After Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948, the Karen were convinced that the only way to protect their rights was to wage war against the government in Rangoon. They seized Insein, a town on the outskirts of Rangoon, on January 31, 1949. It was 小型辦公室the first dramatic armed conflict that triggered a wider civil war. Fifty-eight years on, unlike most of Burma’s other armed ethnic groups, the Karen are still fighting. And the KNU has refused to agree on an armistice with the Burmese junta, despite the military’s numerous overtures. The Karen’s determination to stick to their guns has irked the Burmese military and evoked a strong desire to bring them into the legal fold. Such unwavering resistance to uncertain peace overtures has also earned the KNU critical recognition in Burmese and ethnic politics. But despite more than half a century of valiant 租房子 struggle, Ba U Gyi’s dream of a free Karen State, where the Karen can decide their own destiny, remains unfulfilled. Instead, conditions inside the state are a worsening humanitarian disaster for Burma’s ethnic Karen minority. For more than 30 years, the KNU has endured numerous breakups, often ending in bloodshed. Internal conflict within the movement intensified in the last 12 years, resulting in four major splits and culminating in the total surrender of some factions to the military junta. But the KNU’s woes continued. The remnants of what was once Burma’s largest rebel group has just undergone another excruciat 酒店經紀ing split. Recently the KNU’s 7th brigade commander, Maj-Gen Htain Maung, held talks with the Burmese junta without the approval from central leadership and subsequently agreed to a ceasefire. The saga raised tensions within the KNU and resulted in his sacking. Although the recent breakup avoided bloodshed, it revealed the Karen’s inherent weakness in countering the junta’s well-known tactics of “divide and conquer.”  And as the junta wages a war of attrition with the last of Burma’s ethnic insurrectionists, the Karen areas remain underdeveloped, and the resource-strapped and weakened KNU is unable to pay proper attentio 襯衫n to the health and education of its people. More than 130,000 Karen refugees are languishing in camps along the Thai-Burma border without hope of returning home and with bleak prospects for the future. Conditions for the estimated 200,000 internally displaced Karen inside Burma, according to the Thai-Burma Border Consortium, are far worse, as they live on the run and are constantly threatened by Burmese troops. On the ground, KNU-controlled territory has shrunk dramatically. Today, the organization is relegated to a few pockets of “liberated areas” along the border. Revenues from black market custom duties, which once financed the struggle, ha 21世紀房屋仲介ve long ago dried up. There is no foreign power backing up the Karen fight for freedom, and the dream of a united front of all Burma’s ethnic minority groups was shattered a decade ago, when individual ethnic groups forged truces with the junta. Moved by the suffering of the Karen, a relative of Ba U Gyi once advised the KNU to “reinterpret the four principles in light of changing political and socioeconomic conditions,” suggesting their rigidity had cost the KNU an effective strategy in their struggle against the Burmese military. David Taw, the KNU’s foreign affairs secretary, agrees. “They are dogmatic and impractical in this day and age,” he said, adding, 酒店經紀“These principles should have been reconsidered a long time ago.” A Karen intellectual from Rangoon said on condition of anonymity: “How would Ba U Gyi reinterpret his own principles if he were alive today? Self-analysis is important and the KNU should no longer live in the past.” He wants the KNU to rethink them, if not reinterpret them. However, one KNU leader, David Takapaw, disagrees. He believes that rethinking the principles is not consistent with revolutionary tenets. “Even the DKBA [Democratic Karen Buddhist Army] has held onto these principles,” he said, referring to a breakaway faction of the Karen resistance. “The KNU will continue to work under these principles.” 酒店工作Ba U Gyi’s principles are, of course, not solely responsible for fading KNU fortunes. The Burmese junta’s continued pressure and atrocities have played a major part. However, as his principles have formed the kernel of the KNU’s very existence, holding on to them means that they have left the group little room to maneuver in their dealings with the junta. Such a self-imposed restriction essentially precludes the possibility of any negotiated settlement with Naypyidaw. Rethinking Ba U Gyi’s principles is no easy task. The Karen armed struggle originally aimed to forge an independent Karen State. It has since modified its aims to seek self-rule within the union under a federal setup. “It to 情趣用品ok almost half a century for the Karen to change,” said the Karen intellectual from Rangoon. Given such reluctance to change, rethinking Ba U Gyi’s principles will amount to a revolution for the KNU. However, it is crucial for the group to rethink Ba U Gyi’s principles in order to pay greater attention to unity and the long-term interests of the Karen people. The KNU need not surrender to the junta. However, a critical policy review may allow the organization greater flexibility in ongoing ceasefire talks with the junta. Perhaps this will enable the KNU to approach divisions within the party in a much broader manner. Aung Naing Oo is a Burmese political analyst in exile http://www.irrawaddy.org/aviewer.asp?a=674 結婚西裝1&z=144  .