Journey to a Forbidden Land
We are soon on the road again before dusk set in to Hpa-an, the capital of Kayin (Karen) state. The road is surprisingly in a better condition than the road to Mandalay and is lined on both sides by street lamps. Our route to follow first brought us to Thaton, the ancient centre of the Mon people. I find it hard to believe that this sleepy, leafy town once was a capital. The place has a very tropical appearance; the thoroughfare is lined with old, often decaying colonial buildings. A few guesthouses greeted us by the road-side, the distinctive Burmese alphabets grabbing whatever available spaces on the sign-boards. If we are unable to put up at the village during the June trip, we may have to stay overnight at Thaton, the nearest town to Bilin which provides accommodation for foreign visitors. The nice atmosphere is what makes it attractive and possibly a comfortable dwelling for a few days, but there are no signs of any remnants indicative of its glorious past. There's hardly anything left.
Beyond Thaton the scenery becomes quite spectacular. In the distance rise hazy rock formations with unusual shapes from the wide, green expanse. We were looking towards the Kayin state, which is the Burmese name for Karen state. Shortly before the border there's an army checkpoint where military intelligence officers scrutinise passports. Surprisingly there's no checkpoint at the border itself, just a sign to welcome visitors. Military check-points were common along the road but we breeze through them without stopping. The sun had since set and I was unable to make out the landscape outside.
We crossed the Thalwin river which marked our entry into Kayin state. The Thalwin river is one of the four major rivers, the “life-blood” of Myanmar which cut across its central plains from the mountains in the north, the other three being the Chindwin, the Ayeyarwady and the Sittaung. The Karens are always in the headlines because of their protracted bloody civil war with the Myanmar government. I was secretly captivated by the mystique enshrouding the place and the potential dangers lying in store for us. This sounds like a real adventure to me and I cannot help feeling a fleeting chill moving down my spine.
The Karen National Union has been fighting for an independent Karen state – Kawthoolei, and the right to self-determination for the past 40 years. Hpa-an itself was only recently recaptured from rebel forces in 1997. The lieutenant told us in one fierce battle, as many as 4,000 Burmese soldiers were slaughtered. Type in the word “Karen” at a search engine and you will find many websites dedicated to the Karen cause and depicting in gross detail the atrocities committed by the Burmese army.
The Karens fought a guerilla war, hitting the Burmese army when they are on patrol and then running off to avoid direct conflict with them. The Burmese army, frustrated at not being able to flush out the guerillas embarked a systematic genocide campaign to burn down Karen villages supplying food and medicine to the guerillas. There were also reports of forced pottering for the military, relocation of entire villages to the cities and conscription into the military.
As many as a million people were displaced in the past three years,
most of them fleeing to the Thai-Myanmar border where they now languish in
refugee camps, not being able to return to their homeland while not granted
political asylum by the Thai government, making this one of the greatest
humanitarian crisis in Southeast Asia. Yet, there was little mention of the
plight of the Karens at ASEAN summit meetings, of which Myanmar is a recent
addition. Member states adhere to a policy of non-interference in another’s
internal affairs, a mutual agreement to turn a blind eye to the wrongdoings
committed by their respective governments. In the pitch-black darkness out
there, an eerie silence unfolds as I strained my ears to hear a gun-shot. There
were ominously none.
We were putting up for the night with the family of U Sanda’s brother, U Tin Aung. The television was showing the international news. An hour later when we returned from our meals, the national news was on with video-clips of one general chairing a conference and another general presiding over the opening ceremony of a hospital. I took a bath and unpacked my luggage after which it was news by the Ministry of Social Work Department. It ended with a “recitation” of the four political, economic and social objectives the government has spelled out for the people and ironically, a list of people’s desires.
It was
intriguing how our Burmese hosts manage to stay glued to the television set for
so long. Do they seriously believe every single news reported without a
slightest bit of skepticism? I recalled a big sign board at the junction of a
road with the words “May the Tatmadaw (the military) unite with the people
eternally and crush the common enemy!” I was tempted to laugh at the stupidity
of the writer, but this is Myanmar, where reality is a threat and logic
doesn’t always make sense. It is a police state reminiscent of Stalin’s
Soviet Union and Mao's China, both of which have now walked out of the shadows
of its revolutionary past and embraced modernity either openly or tacitly. In
Myanmar, only one voice is allowed to exist. The rest are either eliminated or
exterminated.