Thomas Fuller, NYTimes.
April 4, 2013
When residents of this northernmost
region of Myanmar talk about the tremendous changes of the past two years, they
are not referring to the media freedoms or the economic liberalization
transforming other parts of the country.
They mean the
radicalization of the Kachin ethnic group, whose members inhabit the foothills
of the Himalayas near the borders with China and India and have become more
militant than at any time in living memory, Kachin leaders say.
As a measure of
the difficulties of national reconciliation in Myanmar, a visit to the Kachin
region is a sobering reminder of how much hatred and mistrust exist between the
majority Burman and the ethnic minorities who live in the country’s highlands.
After 22 months
of resurgent fighting with Myanmar government troops, young people openly talk
of independence. Churches across the Kachin region are organizing prayers and
24-hour fasting periods in support of the Kachin Independence Army, which has
been retreating in the face of attacks by the Myanmar military.
“People are
committed to this fight,” said the Rev. Samson Hkalam, a leader of the Baptist
church in Myitkyina. Young men who were previously skeptical of the Kachin
Independence Army are volunteering to join, Mr. Samson said. “It’s a miracle —
the people’s spirit and motivation,” he said.
Two years ago,
when President Thein Sein inaugurated Myanmar’s first civilian government in
five decades, he announced he would give top priority to national unity. Butreligious rioting in central Myanmar in
recent weeks andthe pessimism expressed by many minority leaders have
underlined the depth of the fissures in Myanmar society.
The resumption
of fighting in Kachin in June 2011, breaking a 17-year cease-fire, aggravated
longstanding grievances, snuffing the flickers of hope that the end of military
rule would bring greater autonomy to the Kachin region.
“We are angry,
we are sad, and we feel alone,” said Tsin Ja, a teacher in a village outside
Myitkyina, the capital of the region. “Democracy has been a loss for us.”
Ms. Tsin says
the numbers of students in her Kachin language classes have swelled over the
past year as both parents and children champion their Kachin identity.
She teaches the
Kachin language at a church in the village because the government bans
Kachin-language instruction at state schools, a major source of resentment.
“My students
say, ‘We are not going to speak Burmese anymore,”’ Ms. Tsin said. “Young people
have so much hate and acrimony toward the Burmese people. It’s dramatically
different from when I was growing up.”
Like other
minority groups in Myanmar, the Kachin have relatively little in common with
the Burman. Their languages are not mutually comprehensible. The Kachin are
mostly Christian, while the Burmese are overwhelmingly Buddhist. The Kachin
inhabit hills and the Burman the lowlands. They celebrate different holidays.
The Kachin were only loosely governed by the British during colonial days,
while the Burman areas were integrated into the British empire.
Manam Hpang,
author of an English-Kachin-Burmese dictionary, said the Kachin had an acute
sense of persecution as Christians in a Buddhist land. During military rule,
the government built Buddhist pagodas across the state and tried to censor a
Burmese version of the Bible, including a ban on the Burmese word for
“Proverbs,” because it was the same word used in Buddhist texts.
“We have
different background, different culture — we’re incompatible,” Mr. Manam said.
“We have no connection with these people,” he said of the Burman.
“The Kachin have
realized that we must have independence. Without it, we will be swallowed up,”
he said.
Analysts are
divided on what the deteriorating relations between the Kachin and central
government mean for the country’s overall moves toward democracy and economic
liberalization.
A number of
countries in Southeast Asia, including the neighboring Thailand, have become
prosperous despite ethnic or religious conflicts.
The Kachin make
up a small slice of the Myanmar population — about 1 million out of a population
of 55 million. But the Kachin Independence Army, with more than 4,000 men under
arms, is a significant threat for the Burmese military, especially if the
Kachin rely more on their specialty, guerrilla tactics. Until now the Kachin
army has fought a type of trench warfare, retreating mountain by mountain as
Burmese troops advanced near its headquarters outside the town of Laiza.
The Kachin have
a potential alliance with a neighboring ethnic group, the Wa, who have about
20,000 soldiers and are armed with sophisticated weaponry. A wider war that
included the Wa and other ethnic allies would be potentially debilitating for
Myanmar.
“There are
always going to be tensions, rival nationalisms, debates about discrimination
and at least the possibility of communal violence,” said U Thant Myint-U, a
scholar of Burmese history and an adviser to President Thein Sein. “But that’s
very different than having a significant part of the country being fought over
by tens of thousands of armed men, belonging to dozens of different militia.”
There have been
attempts by private groups to help reconcile the Burman and Kachin in recent
months, including a “Peace March” across the country of about 100 people.
Led by Ashin
Thon Data, a 30-year-old Buddhist monk, the peace marchers arrived in Myitkyina
in March and traveled to refugee camps scattered around the city, where some of
the 90,000 people displaced from the fighting live in thatch huts.
Among them was a
72-year-old Kachin woman, Mahkaw Lu, who still appeared rattled by the rushed
exit from her village in October as fighting approached. “We couldn’t take
anything with us,” she said. “They burned everything.”
Mr. Thon Data,
draped in crimson robes, addressed Ms. Mahkaw and the other assembled refugees.
“As a monk I do
not normally get a chance to talk with you — you are from a different
religion,” he said.
“But you are our
brothers,” he said. “We do not differentiate between highland and lowland. We
are one flesh.”
As members of
the peace march read poems and sang songs, some refugees wept.
The visit by the
peace marchers offers a small measure of hope that Myanmar can overcome its
religious and ethnic divisions. But they have had very little support in Burman
areas. Many Buddhist monasteries refused to house Mr. Thon Data and his peace
activists as they marched through the Burmese countryside, he said. And the
march came at a personal price: He was expelled from his own monastery for
leading the march.
“People say we
are crazy,” he said. “Yes, we are crazy for peace.”
Arrests in
sectarian riots
Myanmar’s
government has arrested dozens of people for their role in an outbreak of
sectarian violence in central Myanmar last month, officials said on Thursday,
and some of them will go on trial within days, The Associated Press reported
from Yangon.
The city of Meiktila was
swept by several days of anti-Muslim unrest in which armed Buddhist mobs burned
Muslim-owned homes and shops. At least 43 people died and more than 12,000
others, most of them Muslims, were driven from their homes after the violence
began on March 20. State prosecutors are putting together 13 separate cases,
and the first two will include three people who worked at a Muslim gold shop
where an argument broke out, setting off the unrest, Attorney General Ye Aung
Myint said.
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