as early as the 1740s, and by the mid-eighteenth century, they were well integrated in the regional economy in Burma, and paid tribute to the Burmese on the periphery (Hayami 2004). Clive Christie suggested that the Karen status was changed by two stages in the nineteenth century (Christie 2000). In the 1820s, American Baptist Mission successfully converted some Karen people in eastern Burma into Baptist. The missionaries created their educational and religious networks within the Karen region. In the same decade, a war between British in Bengal and Burma ended in 1826 with a peace treaty, and the British annexed Tenasserim region, where the colonial administration had negotiated with the Karen. The Karen supported the British during the next two Anglo-Burmese wars, thus, the
antagonism between the Karen and the Burmese in Burma had risen in the modern history of Burma (Christie, ibid.).
In Art of Not Being Governed, James Scott discussed the relationship between ethnic minority peoples in the remote mountains and the central areas of Southeast Asia. He
suggested that highland peoples in Southeast Asia moved further up into the hills and mountains to avoid being included within the state and to avoid the central powers. As a result of their “state-evading” strategy, one can find that Karen villages highly dispersed in
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the highlands, and they relied on subsistence agriculture strategies found in the hidden in mountainous areas (Scott 2009:182). This view has been contested by historians and
anthropologists in Southeast Asia because the hypothesis views that the highland people has an agency.
The annexation of Burma by the British in India was completed after the three Anglo- Burmese wars (1824-1826, 1852-1853, and 1885). Throughout the nineteenth century, British colonization shaped the modern history of Burma (Charney 2009). Colonial rules disrupted traditional social relationships among peoples in many ways. During the British colonial period, the administration used Indians and ethnic minority groups such as the Karen to control Burmese independence activities. The British strategy of “divide-and-rule”
suppressed the Burmese by appointing ethnic minorities to elite positions in the education, civil service, and military sectors in the country (Than 2005). However, this strategy also resulted in resentment toward the ethnic minorities from Burmese people during the colonial period.
In January of 1942, the Japanese invaded in Burma and conquered Mandalay. Believing in the Japanese propaganda, many Burmese believed that the Japanese would free their country from the British colonialism and they subsequently fought against the British army. On the other hand, the Karen and other ethnic groups supported the British and some engaged in guerrilla warfare in the mountains to attack the Japanese army. This historical relationship between Burmese and the Karen under the British colonialism and the Japanese occupation of Burma during World War II shaped the contemporary antagonism between the two groups.
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years (1939-1940), a few radical patriotic Burmese nationals, which included Aung San, established Burma Independence Army (BIA), which received military training by Japanese army, and then came back to Burma along with the fascist Japanese army. However, Aung San and his comrades found the true intention of the Japanese army, thus, they turned the Burma National Army (BNA), a successor of BIA, against the Japanese army from 1944 through early 1945 (Christie ibid.:110). After the war, Britain maintained control over the Burmese politics, but gradually relinquished the colonial power to the self-government by Burmese. Before Burma attained independence from Britain in 1948, there was an important agreement between Burma and ethnic minorities of the Kachin, Shan, and Chin (Christie 2000: 113). The Panglong agreement was reached in February 1947, and granted autonomous regions in Shan, Kachin regions. However, being suspicious of the Burmese intention, and so much hostility in between the two groups, Karen did not send their representative to the Panglong meeting. The Karen felt betrayed by the British, and they gathered mass meetings for the subsequent years and called for the Karen independent state in the Union of Burma. In 1949, some Karen formed its political organization, the Karen National Union (KNU) to designate the claims of an autonomy in the Karen State in eastern Burma. The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) was formed shortly thereafter (Christie 2000).
The nationalism and separatism of the Karen were clearly influenced by the idea of ethno-nationalism, which assert claims on territory, sovereignty, and political rights by the autonomous ethnic people who share cultural commonality and traditions based on myths of origins (Rajah 2002).
After the war, the Karen people’s self-determination and anti-government movement was met by a backrush by brutal oppression by the tamadtaw (Burmese army). As such, tens
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of thousands Karen people were forced to abandon their land and properties in their
homeland in eastern Burma to seek temporary shelters in various villages along the border, and refugee camps (Karen Human Rights Group 2001). The complexity of the ethnic conflict further intensified when there was a separatist movement and the creation of a pro-Burmese Karen army group, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA).
In the early 1980s when the Burmese government marched into the eastern border regions governed by ethnic minorities such as the Karen, Karenni, and Hmong (Mon), the army persecuted their ethnic minority regions. The Burmese government has become known for having one of the worst histories of human rights violations in the world (Bowles 1998).
Persecuted ethnic minority peoples fled to the border villages and refugee camps in Thailand from forced labor, forced relocations, military draft, murder, robbery, rape, and violence, such as armed attacks and landmines (Karen Human Rights Group 2001). The ethnic conflict between the ethnic minorities and the Burmese government became one of the longest internal civil wars in the world (Lee et al. 2007). Since the 1980s, more than 120,000 refugees from southern part of Burma fled to temporary shelters in Thailand, and another 2-3 million have left their homelands in Burma to live in the borderland in vulnerable situations for threats, disease, and exploitations (South and Jolliffe 2015: 4). The refugee camps in Thailand have been accepting various ethnicities, including Burmese, but the largest group in the refugee camp inhabitants has been ethnic Karen (UNHCR 1996).
Meanwhile, the Burmese government declared that the ethnic conflict areas were labeled “black zones” and no humanitarian relief activities were to be allowed in such areas. Lee et al. (2015) points out that the United Nation agencies provided $47 million in 2000, the European Union 11 million euros from 1996 to 2000, and thirty international
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nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also provided $7 million per year to humanitarian relief purposes to Burma. Despite the huge monetary flow, none of the SPDC-sponsored or international non-governmental organization (NGO) health activities have been reported in the black zones (Lee et al. 2015: 34). As such, international relief did not reach the
population in need. Although the disturbance of humanitarian aid activities by the SPDC became gradually alleviated under the peace negotiations between the ethnic minority groups and the Burmese government in post-conflict areas, Karen people in the borderland were still facing structural violence and inequalities due to scarce resources and vulnerability because of their non-citizenship status and long-term internal political conflict. Only recently has the Burmese government started allowing international groups to conduct their activities in the fields of health services, education, medical research, and infrastructure, which brought more safety-net to some returned internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Burma.49
Since 2011, most of the anti-Burmese Ethnic Armed Groups in Burma, including the KNU, have either agreed or negotiated a ceasefire with the Burmese government (UNHCR 2015). The 2015 election in Burma further accelerated the ceasefire negotiations, and many IPDs who used to live in refugee camps or border villages without citizenship gradually started moving back to their homeland in Burma. However, recently returned Karen migrants reported that they were afraid of landmines in their newly settled villages, and the presence of tamatdaw in and around their villages threaten the returned Karen people (Karen News 2018). In that sense, the precarious political status among the Karen IDPs is still an ongoing issue. As the UNHCR and the Thai government project toward resettlement among the IDPs of all remained nine refugee camps in Thailand gradually, the officials expect that these
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international humanitarian aid activities would move to Burma; yet without basic
infrastructures such as schools, hospitals, water systems, electricity, not to mention clearance of landmines, the resettlement process has been slow. In the next section, I shift my focus from the social history of the Karen in the borderland to their contemporary life
circumstances as undocumented migrants and refugees in the borderland.