To that end, the park - which Karen have proclaimed as a self-governed, independently administered territory within Myanmar - puts development into Karen hands while conserving the forest that generations have called home. Rather than focusing strictly on nature preservation, the reserve’s backers promote Indigenous land management systems like traditional swidden agriculture and forest management. Photo courtesy of KESAN.Īlthough it is called a park, it is not your typical protected area. The Salween Peace Park covers more than 550,000 hectares in Myanmar’s Kayin State, an internationally important region for biodiversity conservation. Covering more than 550,000 hectares - nearly twice the size of Yosemite National Park in California - the park is located in a remote corner of Myanmar’s Kayin State, which is internationally important for biodiversity conservation. The Salween Peace Park is central to this agenda. As a result, many Karen have accepted that autonomy will never be realized.īut others continue the struggle, some utilizing new, non-violent strategies of resistance. Meanwhile, the area under Karen control has dwindled to a small fraction of what it was when the revolution began in 1949. Multiple efforts to negotiate peace have failed. Thousands of Karen communities have been displaced, and more than 200,000 Karen have fled the country. Over the intervening decades, far from granting the Karen meaningful rights, the Myanmar military has waged a grinding war of attrition against them. “We are in Kawthoolei.” He is using the Karen name for their ancestral land, which once covered a large swathe of southeast Myanmar and western Thailand, running down the Salween River basin south to the Andaman Sea.įor more than 70 years, since shortly after the country formerly known as Burma gained independence, a low-boil insurgency has fought for Karen self-determination, promised first by the British and then the Burmese. “We are not in Thailand, but we are not in Myanmar,” he notes. “Welcome to pure Indigenous Karen territory,” says Saw Mabu Htoo, 40, a Karen who works with an environmental rights group here called KESAN. We are cleared and enter the area that local communities have declared as the Salween Peace Park, a refuge for the last holdouts of the Karen revolution, the longest-running ethnic insurgency on earth. It is manned not by Myanmar government border patrol, but rather by soldiers of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA). After plying rough currents upriver for hours - threading powerful eddies that threaten to throw us off course - we reach a different type of checkpoint. It is the end of the dry season, and most of the trees in the forest around us are leafless, allowing us to catch glimpses of the giant river below, a rushing torrent even now at its lowest ebb.Īs the sun rises, we scramble down a steep embankment and board a longboat piloted by a teenager in army fatigues. As we wind north through a sparse woodland up an unpaved track, the first signs of daylight begin to appear. “Regarding the contention raised on behalf of the petitioners about the present state of affairs in Myanmar, we have to state that we cannot comment upon something happening in another country,” he added.IT IS BEFORE DAWN WHEN WE PASS the last checkpoint perched above the Salween River, along the border between Thailand and Myanmar. “It is not possible to grant the interim relief prayed for,” the judge said in his order. Two refugees petitioned the Supreme Court for the release of Rohingya men and women detained in the northern Jammu region last month, and block the government from deporting them.īut Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde said the deportations could go ahead as long as officials followed due process. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has been trying to send back Rohingyas, a Muslim minority from Myanmar who have found refuge in India after fleeing persecution and waves of violence over the years. FILE PHOTO: People hold placards during a protest rally against what the protesters say are killings of Rohingya people in Myanmar, in front of Myanmar consulate in Kolkata, India, September 4, 2017.
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