Karen News

Authorities in Chin State have arrested eight protesters following peaceful protests condemning the alleged attempted rape of a Chin woman by a Burma Army soldier on June 10. The protests were in response to an alleged attempted rape of a 54-year-old woman by a soldier from Light Infantry Battalion 269 near the town of Razua, Chin State. According to a…

Mae Tao Clinic and the Burma Children Medical Fund, on the Thai Burma border, welcomed the arrival of more than 140 wheelchairs, donated for young children in need. The Burma Children Medical Fund organized the wheelchairs for the cross-border community with the help of several other organisations including Wheelchairs for Kids in Perth, Australia, Allied Pickfords Thailand, the Rotary Club…

Starting in July Thai authorities are to start recording the refugee population in an attempt to verifying the number of refugees living in camps on the Thai-Burma border in Tak province. Saw George, vice chairperson of the Karen Refugee Committee, confirmed to Karen News about the process. “We’ve learned that the verification process will start on 8th July. Since this…

Fighting between Karen soldiers and Burma Army troops broke out in Papun District last week killing one and wounding one Burma Army soldier. Sources from the Karen National Union’s Papun district office confirmed to Karen News that soldiers from a Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) 5th Brigade unit clashed with a Burma Army patrol. The Burma Army troops were based…

Mu Mu, 28, stirs thin soup inside her small, two-roomed bamboo house on the Thai-Burma border, and speaks of the day the Burma Army soldiers came to her village a more than a decade ago. “The soldiers used us as [forced] porters. They would come to our village, Mae Ta Waw, and arrest men and women. They kept coming back…

More than 20 Karen lawyers from all over Burma held an initial meeting in Rangoon last week to discuss the founding of a lawyer network that would provide legal assistance to the Karen community facing legal issues related to human rights, women’s right and land disputes. The Karen lawyers’ meeting was hosted at the office of the Karen Women Empowerment…

As monsoon rains sweep across Burma from India, villagers in Karen State and along the Thai Burma border are prey to malaria. In the last 10 years, the fight against the malaria parasite has seen dramatic decreases in deaths. The World Health Organisation estimates that there has been a 42% reduction in mortality rates from the parasite in the last…

A legal appeal by the human rights advocacy group to make public details of the Britain’s training of Burma’s military has succeeded. The human rights advocacy group, Burma Campaign UK, said it had been notified by the British Ministry of Defence that they had won their appeal against a decision not to release details of training in which members of…

An estimated 38 million people are living with HIV globally. Half a million of those are in Thailand and a further 200,000 in Burma. Yet HIV is treated with harsh stigma in the two countries, where people suffer discrimination, are abused – some kill themselves. People from Burma and Thailand who had HIV spoke to Karen News of how they…

Ma Ohn Kyi, 44, leans on one foot against a wall inside Mae Tao Clinic on the Thai Burma border. “It took three days by car and one month’s wages to get here,” she says, “it will cost another month’s wages to get back home when I am better.” What should have been a routine operation to fix a broken…