Karen News

Rumors are circulating that the trade crossing between Mae Sot on the Thai side and Myawaddy on the Burma side is about to officially open after 13 months of closure. Myawaddy residents are convinced the Friendship Bridge linking the two countries will reopen in a matter of days. A Myawaddy resident told Karen News that there has been discussion between…

For the first time in 15 years the Karen National Liberation Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army stood side-by-side to commemorate their fallen comrades at the 61st anniversary of Karen Martyrs’ Day. The historic event took place on August 12 at an area under the control of the Karen National Union in Kawkariek Township, Karen State. The DKBA broke…

The ethnic people of Burma are having a hard time. Burma Army soldiers are targeting women in the Kachin and Shan State for rape. Villagers are used as forced labour for the Burma Army. Development projects mean forced relocation and slave labour. Half a million ethnic people are displaced in eastern Burma. Village schools have been burnt, health care is…

In a rare statement read out on the national state-controlled television last week, Burma’s government urged ethnic groups engaged in armed conflict to contact regional governments to start the process for ceasefire talks. Saw Khar Su Nyar reports. Naing Han Tha, secretary general, of the newly formed ethnic armed groups alliance, United Nationalities Federal Council, said the Burma government would…

The Karen National Union denied reports in Burma’s state controlled newspapers that claimed that on August 8 an attack by Karen fighters had wounded two children in Karen state. Major Saw Kler Doh, an office manager with the Karen National Liberation Army in Brigade 5, based in the Papun District blamed the incident on the Burma Army. Major Saw Kler…

I don’t think many people in the west have any real understanding of what it is like to be driven out of your country, to have to flee for your life, leaving your possessions, friends, everything you know behind you, and never knowing if or when you will ever being able to go back. As if that horrible experience isn’t…

Karen people gathered in the US, UK, Norway, Sweden, Asia, Canada and Ireland and in jungle bases back in their homeland on 12th August, to commemorate their 61st Martyr’s Day. Saw Ehna reports from Karen State. In a jungle base in Southern Burma, 400 supporters from the Karen National Union’s Mergui-Tavoy District office commemorated the 61st Karen Martyrs’ Day with…

Recent fighting between a breakaway Border Guard Force faction and a group under the control of the Burma Army drove more than 130 villagers in Hlaingbwe Township region from their homes. The villagers are now seeking temporary safety along the Thai Burma border. The fighting in Hlaingbwe Township area is the latest in a series of clashes between the two…

Forcibly recruited, Maung Lwin Soe served 10 years before he escaped from the Burma army. He tells Karen News reporter, Chamu, his story. In 2002, Maung Lwin Soe (not real name) from Bo Ga Lay town, in the Irrawaddy Delta visited his aunt who lived in Rangoon. When he arrived in Rangoon he was stopped by a plainclothes officer and…

Residents of Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camp in northern Thailand are bracing themselves against further flooding that has already swamped 400 houses, made 2,000 people homeless, destroyed 2,000 sacks of rice and hundreds of bags of other essential foodstuffs. Heavy monsoon rains lashed the north of Thailand last week and earlier this week breaking the banks of the Mae…