Confident To Continue Our Fight

How often do Indigenous Peoples find spaces where they can share their suffering, feel safe, and freely learn and build hope?

Naw Paw Pree, Indigenous Karen from the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), joined the International Festival for People’s Rights and Struggles (IFPRS) with IPMSDL as one of the co-organizers, and felt the comfort of being with fellow brother and sisters in struggle for self-determination.

“The “People Power Hour” organised during IFPRS was a global platform where Indigenous Peoples and other marginalised groups were able to make their voices heard at a global scale,” she shared.

In an event organized for Indigenous activists from Karen, Manipur and CHT in Bangladesh, Naw Paw Pree expressed how different victims of oppression around the world gathered to learn and share their experiences, suffering and struggles for their rights to land, culture, tradition, freedom, and self-determination.

“It was a safe space for all people to enjoy freedom of expression, share their feelings, and demand for change,” Paw Pree said.

For her, she learned the similarity between different Indigenous Peoples from around the world: having diverse cultures, traditions, beliefs and social practices, but the same struggles and oppression.

She also felt a deep honour for community members from the indigenous Karen peoples of Southeast Burma to attend the event to learn about the struggles of other Indigenous Peoples and minority communities, and to share the struggles of the Karen peoples.

It was a very touching moment for her as she presents and the participants listened to her peoples’ pain and understood about the Karen people’s struggle to fulfill their basic human rights, to defend their people and land, and for self-determination.

According to her, “their sympathetic response and respectful reflections show the international understanding of our struggles, so it made Karen people feel dignified and it honoured the 75 years of revolutionary struggles.”

“The People Power Hour event made us feel confident to continue our fight, without feeling the burden of other international views that often accuse us of being rebels, terrorists, and dangerous people,” she said with a firm and enlightened smile.

“We need more international solidarity to support the voices of indigenous and minority people and to stand firmly with us,” she added.

Below is her presentation and sharing:

The struggle of the Karen people from Kathoolei, Burma

Locally-defined Karen State, in Southeast Burma (Myanmar), has been affected by ceaseless armed conflict and human rights abuses since Burma’s independence in 1948.

Since then, the Karen peoples have been targeted by the Burma Army, which has persecuted and oppressed other ethnic minorities around the country, seeking to impose their rule and spurring conflict with ethnic armed groups.

As early as the 1960s, the Burma Army was already targeting villagers as part of their “four cuts” strategy, to destroy the links of ethnic armed groups with food, funds, recruits and intelligence. Teaching ethnic languages and cultures was also prohibited and customary rules, such as those of land ownership, were violated.

Although the conflict diminished after the National Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) in 2015, with some economic and human rights improvements, many Karen villagers perceived this as a means of ‘Burmanisation’ and still faced abuses at the hands of the Burma Army.

In February 2021, the Burma Army staged a coup d’état against the democratically elected civilian government, and self-proclaimed the State Administration Council (SAC). Civilians around the country opposed the coup with street demonstrations and a civil disobedience movement and were met with violence throughout.

In response to such violence, and the re-militarisation in ethnic areas, ethnic armed groups and newly formed armed resistance forces confront the SAC and their affiliated groups. Villagers in Karen State conduct their daily lives in a theatre of war.

Throughout this conflict, the Burma Army has frequently directed widespread and systematic shelling and bombing into civilian areas, reinvigorating the ‘four cuts’. The systematic targeting of civilians encompasses extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, torture, forced displacements, looting and extortion, sexual violence, and forced labour.

Buildings protected under international law, such as schools, clinics, religious buildings and houses, are equally targeted. Due to the intensity of the conflict, and to the level of organisation of the armed actors involved, international humanitarian law (IHL) must be applied. The SAC violations of IHL of non-international armed conflicts, as well as of customary international law, amount to potential war crimes.

Furthermore, given the widespread and systematic nature of the SAC attacks committed against civilians, the abuses by the Burma Army may amount to crimes against humanity, punishable under international criminal law. The human rights violations being perpetrated in Burma give rise to an obligation erga omnes binding all States, to prosecute and punish all those responsible and enact universal jurisdiction.

Recommendation to international stakeholder:

• Support coordinated and targeted sanctions on the supply of weapons and aviation fuel to the military junta, on oil and gas revenues, and sanctions against junta officials.
• Supporting ongoing investigations and trials and seeking additional ways to hold the Burma Army leaders accountable for their many crimes, including those against the Karen.
• Increasing financial support for local organisations working on the ground to assist the civilian population in need.
• Do not legitimize the military junta and do not collaborate with them in any way.
• Take these and other decisive actions to end the military dictatorship in Burma and end SAC’s military aggression against civilians, especially in ethnic areas, including by seeking the complete withdrawal of SAC troops from ethnic ancestral territories.
• Give full recognition and realisation of the self-determination rights of Indigenous Peoples locally, nationally and internationally. #

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