49, bookshop owner, former SPDC 2nd lieutenant, and current KNLA trainer
ETHNICITY: Karen
BIRTHPLACE: Rangoon, Burma
INTERVIEWED IN: Thailand
Saw Moe met us for interviews in the evenings, after closing up his bookshop in Thailand. He methodically described his time in Burma’s army, giving matter-of-fact descriptions of battle after battle, and eventually the event that forced him into exile. Saw Moe works part-time as a trainer for the Karen National Liberation Army, one of the armed opposition groups he spent much of his career fighting.
My parents are Karen, but I cannot speak the language because I grew up in a community of mostly Burman people in Rangoon, which is far away from Karen State. When I enrolled in school I had to say I was Burman—if I said I was Karen, people would discriminate against me. There were around sixty students in my class, and more than fifty of those students were Burman, so there were very few ethnic students. I couldn’t use “Saw” at the beginning of my name because that is what Karen people use, so I used a Burman name instead. But the students knew I was Karen anyway, so I was called “rodent Karen” and “smelly Karen.” That’s what they called all the Karen students.
When I joined the military, I still could not say I was Karen because I felt like I would not be promoted if they knew I was Karen. The Burmese military is dominated by the Burman ethnic group, and other ethnicities usually cannot advance in the military.
I joined the military voluntarily when I was seventeen. I joined because I liked fighting. As a young man, I wanted to be in battle, going from place to place. I planned to be a brigadier general or a colonel. It was 1979 or ’80 when I joined. My family didn’t like that I was in the army because they were afraid I would die in battle.
When I joined the army, the training course was six months long. In our course, there were about two hundred and fifty trainees. We had to train to have strong bodies first, so we could defend ourselves. For example, we had to run many miles each day. We had to learn how to shoot guns—we had to learn the “one enemy one bullet” system. When we practiced shooting targets, we had to search on the ground for every bullet that had missed the target. If you were missing even one bullet, you were not allowed to have lunch. If we made mistakes, the trainers beat us. We had to learn to follow all commands in order to avoid the beatings.
As soldiers, we were automatically members of the Burma Socialist Programme Party—the party of the former military regime—so we had to learn about party policies.11 During that time, the enemies we had to fight were the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the Shan State Army (SSA), the Communist Party of Burma (CPB)’s army, and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA).22 The CPB was our main enemy.
We had to learn about our enemies’ backgrounds and histories, how they started, what their aims were, and what type of fighting force they were—their artillery, their mines, and defense strategies.
We were also trained in psychological warfare—propaganda. We had regular training until six o’clock, and then we had the psychological warfare training. There were two main things that they trained us to do: one was to believe in the propaganda, in the policies of the socialist party, and the other was to follow orders. You could not ask any questions, you could only listen. They trained us very well. The military trains soldiers how to do psychological warfare campaigns—how to persuade someone who dislikes you to like you, and how to make things unclear. For example, if we did bad things in a certain area, we would make the people believe that we didn’t do those things—that was part of the army’s strategy in areas where we were active. It was important for us to understand how to make other people or groups look bad too. We had a very rational way of lying to the people for our benefit. We would be very friendly with some people and show them a lot of things they could believe, while we had a hidden purpose.
We had to train and study very hard, but we had enough food and we were all learning together.
All the trainees had the same spirit and we were all very happy, because we had chosen to join the army. Now it’s different—now the army has to force young people to join. Leading up to 1988, fewer and fewer soldiers were joining the army. Then after the ’88 uprising, we started forcing young people to join the Burmese army because they didn’t wish to join anymore—they hated the army.33
WE HAD NO FEAR
After training, I was sent to Moulmein, which is the capital of Mon State. At the time, there were a lot of battles happening. First we had to go from Moulmein to Mong Hpayak in Shan State.
Mong Hpayak is the region where the United Wa State Army—formed after the Communist Party of Burma collapsed—is now based.44 It was a very long trip; it took us one week to get to Mong Hpayak. There were no villages nearby, only the forest and some army bases. I had wanted to go there, but then I became scared when we started fighting.
I was so afraid when I first heard the gunfire and the artillery. But after a month, I learned the sounds of the bullets so I could recognize whether or not they were dangerously close. I also realized that it’s human nature—all human beings are scared to die, even our enemies.
Whenever we started to shoot, we would first find a place to hide ourselves and then we’d start shooting. Then, when we started fighting, our blood would get hot and we didn’t care if we lived or died. After gaining experience with many battles, our minds became stronger—we had no fear.
When we were fighting the Communist Party of Burma, our strategy was to first fire artillery to clear them out of their fighting positions, and then we would play music. It was propaganda, to soften their hearts and change their minds. I don’t remember the name of the singer, but it was a classic song by a very famous singer in Burma. While we played the song, both sides would listen, but some of our troops would secretly be sneaking up on the CBP soldiers. It was part of our strategy, and we’d fight again after the music ended. We were very happy in these battles.
Our operations in Mong Hpayak lasted six months at a time. During the operations, we would have about eighty to a hundred soldiers, but sometimes only thirty soldiers would survive the operation. Many, many soldiers died because of landmines.55 A lot of people on both sides died when we seized control of a Communist Party base, so we held a lot of funerals.
If someone is injured by a landmine on the battlefield, then we have to take a knife and cut his leg above or below the knee. Then we have to sew up the wound right there on the battlefield; otherwise, if the wound is left exposed, this person can die from infection. The powder in the landmines was poisonous, so it could kill a soldier easily. When I’ve had to cut a soldier’s leg like this, I felt very uncomfortable. Whenever I saw a fellow soldier dying, I felt sad, of course, and I would wonder when it would be my time to go.
One time a bullet grazed my head during a battle. While I was fighting, I thought it was just sweat on my head—I didn’t realize it was blood. But there was a lot of blood, and my friends noticed. After the battle, they sewed up the wound with thirteen stitches. If the bullet had hit one millimeter deeper, it would have entered my brain and killed me. I was lucky to survive.
I think dying is also about karma. For example, I would step on a mine and it didn’t explode, but then it exploded when another person stepped on it. One time, we were shot at while we were eating, and a bullet hit my plate but it missed me. Karma is interesting; I had good luck.
After the fighting, we didn’t feel afraid, only hungry. I would fight and then I would eat—just like that. We would bury the dead bodies and say that it was just their turn to die. I’d think about how my turn would come sometime too, but how I could not be sure of when. I was only eighteen at that time, and fighting was the only thing I knew.
After we completed a six-month operation, we would take a one-month rest, and then return to the battlefield. During the rests, I would get permission from the army to go to Rangoon and visit my family. I went back and forth like that for three years.
NO FEAR, NO WORRIES
After three years in Mong Hpayak, I was sent to another part of Shan State that is west of the Salween River. There, we were fighting the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA)—which no longer exists—and the Shan State Army (SSA).
The battles felt different there. There were villages in the area, so sometimes battles happened in the village. Both sides had army bases, and we had to use mobile tactics and ambushes—this included using machines to listen to the enemies’ communication. Sometimes we found out that the enemies had gone to the village, so we would go there to fight them. By the time battles started, the villagers had already run away. If we thought that a particular village was supporting our enemy, we would fight them with mortars and artillery and then burn down the whole village.
During that time, I didn’t believe the enemy was bad. They were doing their own thing, and we were doing ours. I just wanted to be a soldier; I wanted to be in the army and go to new places. So I felt very happy. The unhappiness would come later.
All the battles in this part of Shan State were very, very intense. Sometimes we lost, sometimes we won—it was always different. If many of our fellow soldiers died and we lost, then we felt very sad. If many enemy soldiers died and we won, we were happy. If we had to run away—for example, if the enemies had more soldiers than we did—then we felt very disappointed. But by that time I had no fear, no worries. Nothing. We spent three years in that area.
WE WERE TRAINED TO DISTRUST THE U.S.
In 1986, I went to Mogaung in Kachin State. We were fighting against the KIA—the Kachin Independence Army—which is part of the Kachin Independence Organization.66 For these battles, we were also moving around. There were a few villages in that area, but it was mostly forest.
The people in Kachin State were satisfied with their lives, even though they weren’t rich. They had enough food and they had their traditions. I cannot speak Kachin, but sometimes I could speak with people there who understood Burmese. They were afraid of us. We associated with them, but we weren’t so friendly, because we were Buddhists and they were Christians. In the army, there were few Muslims or Christians, and we stayed in Buddhist villages.
It was difficult to associate with the people there, because we were suspicious that they had contact with Western countries. Colonel Seagrave from the U.S. Army had been a missionary in Kachin State, and he had trained the Kachin people.77 In the army, we only trusted in socialism, which is why we were worried about the West. We were trained to automatically distrust the West, and we were worried about U.S. attacks on Burma. That’s how the Burmese generals controlled their soldiers, by persuading us that we had to be prepared for a U.S. attack. They turned our feelings against Western countries. They used an enemy that was far away from Burma, because maybe if you can’t see the enemy, you will be more afraid. America had been in Vietnam, and they had a joint training program—Cobra Gold—with Thailand, so we thought it was possible for the U.S. army to attack us.88
Like everyone else in Burma, we got our news from the military government’s state-run media, so as soldiers we had very poor knowledge. We didn’t get information from outside the country, which is still a problem. Only later, when I went to Thailand and learned about international law, I realized a U.S. attack wasn’t really likely.
WE WOULDN’T BURN THE WHOLE VILLAGE
In 1986 I was made sergeant. I was head of a platoon, which usually had about twenty-five soldiers. I was still young, and at the time I just wanted to fight.
When we launched military offensives, we needed villagers to carry our ammunition—if only the soldiers carried it, we couldn’t carry enough and we’d run out very quickly. We couldn’t use helicopters like the U.S. army, so we had to use people. We would ask the village head for a certain number of men and a certain number of women. We had the men carry weapons and ammunition, and the women carried rice for us. When we asked the villagers to carry ammunition for us—to be porters99—they were supposed to get wages equivalent to 10 baht per day, but the high-level officials would keep their wages.1010 However, the porters did get to eat the same rations that we ate.
If the villagers ran away and the village head couldn’t provide the number of people we asked for, we chased the villagers. The Burmese military didn’t persuade the villagers to be on their side—they just made the villagers afraid.
The situation for porters has changed a lot over the past twenty years. Now, instead of going to the head of the village to recruit people for work, the Burmese army abducts villagers and forces them to be porters. In the past, there were many soldiers who joined the army voluntarily; they were educated and had good minds, so they didn’t treat the villagers so rudely. But people hated the army after the ’88 uprising, so we had to start forcing young people to join.
When I first joined the army, most of the soldiers joined voluntarily and supported it. We went to many places and learned many things in these new areas—everywhere in Burma is very beautiful, so we were very happy. When we visited places, I would learn some of the local language and try to tease the many beautiful ethnic girls there. But now, the soldiers in the army aren’t educated and they don’t have good minds—they don’t know how to treat the villagers, and so the situation is worse.
When we were in Kachin State fighting the KIA, our superiors told us that the KIA were separatists—they wanted to separate from our union. We believed that if we eliminated the KIA, then Kachin State would be peaceful.
Most of the fighting happened in the jungle, but the KIA would go to the village when they needed rations. Twice we got news that they were going to the village, and we sent around fifty or sixty of our soldiers to fight them close to the village. But the KIA soldiers had to retreat because there were only a few of them, and they also didn’t want the village to be destroyed. Both times, the villagers knew that the two groups were coming, so they had run away.
We had to walk all day when we were in Kachin State, searching for the KIA soldiers. We were climbing up and down mountains from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., looking for them according to the intelligence we received from local villagers or from high-level army officials. The KIA soldiers would usually stay in the jungle, maybe near a natural pool of water somewhere deep in the valleys, so we tried to guess their locations. It wasn’t easy to find them—I was only successful maybe one out of every ten tries.
Usually we slept under the trees, on top of plastic bags and with blankets to cover our bodies. We carried seven days of rations at a time—rice, yellow beans, and oil. We cooked in the forest. Sometimes we would cut down banana trees, take out the core, and then cook it with the beans to make a curry. The food was always very delicious to us because we were very hungry and tired. Sometimes we ate more than our rations because of our hunger, so our rations would run out after only five days. In order to survive for the next two days, we had to ask for rations from the villagers—we demanded the rations through the village heads. The villagers could not refuse us because we knew they gave rations to the KIA.
We didn’t have much meat in the jungle; we usually only found vegetables. When we found animals, like snakes or geckos, we would kill them and eat them. There were tigers in the area, so sometimes we would chase after a baby, a female, or an older tiger. One time, we caught a small tiger and sent it to the Rangoon Zoo, but I’m not sure if it’s still there.
THEY JUST BURN EVERYTHING
When we were near villages for military operations, we would sleep in there. If the villagers didn’t like us, they would run away when we arrived—in this case, they would be shot dead, because the army officials would think they were insurgents.
Some officials would burn down a whole village if they saw the villagers run away, because they’d say it was a rebel village. But I tried to understand the villagers. If the villagers ran away, I would ask the head of the village why. I understood that the villagers were caught in between the Burmese military and the rebels, but it was our order to burn the village if the villagers ran away. We knew not to argue with an order or to ask for the official written order, because in the Burmese army you cannot go against any order you get from someone higher than you. However, officials are able to carry out orders in different ways.
In my platoon, for example, we would burn only three or four houses and then report that we had burned the whole village. But some groups from the military would burn whole villages, even the rice fields and the livestock—everything. Some officers aren’t patient; they don’t have good hearts. If they get the order to burn, they just burn everything.
Some of my fellow soldiers weren’t very educated, so they were very brutal. They would drink too much alcohol, so we had to control them and tell them not to do that. Some of them also really liked to chase girls, so we had to tell them not to do that either.
THEY DIDN’T TELL US THE PEOPLE WANTED DEMOCRACY
In ’87, I came back to my battalion in Moulmein in Mon State, and then I was sent to southern Shan State again. We had to fight against many groups: the Shan State Army (SSA), the Shan United Revolutionary Army (SURA), the Pa’O National Organization (PNO) army, and then the Mong Tai Army (MTA).
On August 16, 1988, we had to return to our base in Moulmein, because there were major demonstrations throughout Burma, and rumors of a coup. We drove for three days straight—day and night on the truck—to return to Moulmein. Throughout August and in September, the demonstrations got very big. They spread to many cities and towns. There were different types of people demonstrating, including rich people, poor people, monks, and students. We were told by our superiors that the people were rising up against the system because they didn’t like the Burmese Way to Socialism.1111 They told us that the people were rioting and we had to control them—they didn’t tell us that the people were actually asking for democracy.
We only had one battalion in Moulmein, and we were responsible for controlling the demonstrations, but we didn’t get any specific orders about what to do to the demonstrators.1212
There were five groups of soldiers in our battalion, and our officers sent us to the areas where we had relatives or where we knew people. If we were friendly with the locals, we could talk to them and ask them to be calm. When the people didn’t listen to us, we demonstrated how powerful our weapons were—we didn’t shoot, but we showed them how big they were and told them how many people would be killed if we fired them.
We told the demonstrators that if they wanted democracy, they couldn’t cause riots. They had to negotiate with the new government, which would come, because at that point the military coup had taken place.1313 We told them that the soldiers couldn’t give them democracy. We said it was their choice, but that if we had to use our weapons to control them, they would die—we had to follow our orders. Then the people listened to us. Since I was in Moulmein, I didn’t know what was going on in Rangoon.1414 But in Moulmein, only two or three people died during the demonstrations.
At the time, the soldiers didn’t actually know why the military had executed the coup. We were very young, and we just knew what the military leaders told us—that the military had to be responsible for the country, to lead the country. They told us the demonstrations were not good. We didn’t want an unstable situation, and we had to listen to our orders. Our leaders told us that the military would hold elections, and would no longer be in control after the elections. We didn’t actually think about anything critically—we just knew that we had to follow orders. It was not really socialism; it was more like a dictatorship using the cover of a socialist system.
I NEVER THOUGHT ABOUT THE FACT THAT I WAS KAREN
On January 10, 1989, after the demonstrations had died down and the coup had taken place, our battalion was sent to Karen State. We started an operation against the insurgent groups there—the KNLA, the New Mon State Party, the Karenni Army, the SSA, and the SURA. We realized they were very active in illegal trading along the border, so we wanted to eliminate their sources of income. After every six months of doing an operation, we got one month to rest, and then we were sent to a different area.
Then we were sent to attack the KNLA base at Maw Poe Kay. We called the KNLA soldiers “insurgents” because we wanted to make them look worse, like they were even lower than rebels. We considered thieves to be the lowest level, then robbers, then insurgents, then rebels, and then revolutionaries.
Our brigade had five battalions. We attacked the Maw Poe Kay KNLA army base on March 25 at 5 p.m. We didn’t finish fighting until the 27th, at 5 p.m. So many soldiers died on both sides. We were shelling them and there was also fighting on the ground. Some of the Karen soldiers were in trenches, and the vibrations of the shelling exploded their eardrums. I saw so many casualties, and I kept wondering when I would get shot, when I would get injured or killed. But I just continued fighting.
The Karen used a lot of landmines, and they shot with a type of bullet that can tear your body apart. There were a lot of casualties, a lot of soldiers who lost their legs. Also, there was no cover at the KNLA base because they had cleared out the trees. The Karen had very good defense. We had about 3,000 soldiers and they probably had around 500. I think we lost about 450 soldiers, but we didn’t have time to bury them.
Some of our soldiers were so hungry that they were crying. We joked that we didn’t want to be Burmese soldiers in our next lives, because we were so tired and hungry, and we had to fight so heavily. Our joke was that we prayed to become U.S. soldiers—they can use helicopters for fighting, and after they fight, they can eat really good food. Soldiers in poor countries like Burma have to carry all their artillery and food rations, but soldiers in developed countries can use vehicles or helicopters. We had seen a movie with U.S. soldiers, and we saw that they were given food after fighting. We had to cook our own food, and sometimes we couldn’t cook anything because the enemy would see our smoke.
After the battle, we took ten days rest, and then we continued to fight. Our next battle was at the Mae La KNLA army base. At the time, the Karen villagers had already fled to the Thai side of the border, so there were no villagers there. The villages were already destroyed, so I didn’t see any houses when we arrived, only rotting posts. The civil war had been going on for about forty years already, so all the villages in that area had relocated.
At the Mae La KNLA base, we were fighting the KNLA, the ABSDF, and the “Three P’s”—the People’s Patriotic Party—at the same time.1515 The PPP was in Karen State because U Nu had fled to that area. There were so many groups working together, because our military was very big. They needed help from each other.
The battle took twenty days, and then we took over the Mae La army base.
While we were fighting against the Karen, I never thought about the fact that I was Karen too. I didn’t think about anything—I just wanted to be a soldier. We were taught that the KNLA were rebels, and we were the good people, so we had to fight against them.
WE HAD TO KNOW OUR ENEMIES
Saw Moe attended Officer Training School (OTS), where he studied military strategy, including psychological warfare, counterinsurgency tactics, and the strategies and weaponry of foreign nations, including the U.S., Germany, and England. He graduated in June 1993 and became a second lieutenant, sharing responsibility for a company with two other officers. In September 1993, Saw Moe’s platoon fought the KNLA for three intense months before taking over the Kway Ee Toung KNLA base. In 1994, he was responsible for overseeing soldiers involved in construction projects in Pyay, Taunggyi, and Irrawaddy Division.
In 1995, we were asked to go to Pathein, in the Irrawaddy Division, to practice fighting alongside the air force and the navy. The army, the navy, and the air force were all training together and showing each other their tactics. We wanted the enemy to think we were all just practicing, so then we could surprise them by all going to fight. After training, three divisions went to Karen State to take over Manerplaw.1616 This was known as a “liberated area” because many opposition groups had their headquarters there, like the KNLA and the ABSDF.1717
At the time, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) had recently split from the KNLA, so we were cooperating with them.1818 The DKBA knew the geography of the area, so they showed us how to get to Manerplaw while avoiding landmines. The DKBA also showed us how to enter Manerplaw through a back route, so that if the KNLA soldiers ran away they would run into Burmese soldiers again. The KNLA retreated when they realized we were blocking both ways, so it was easy for the Burmese army to take over Manerplaw. Because of the DKBA’s assistance, the fighting was easier for us and there were fewer casualties.
After Manerplaw, the opposition groups no longer have big liberated areas.
I BELIEVED EVERYTHING I TAUGHT
After Manerplaw, my battalion moved to eastern Shan State, to a place called Mai Ton. We spent six months there training new soldiers, including child soldiers.1919 I didn’t have any feeling about the child soldiers; I just saw that they were recruited. Many of the young soldiers were very homesick and they always asked to go back home. But the older soldiers like me never felt homesick, because we’d been in the army for a long time already.
In January 1997, I went to Mai Sat, where I had even more responsibility because I had become a captain at that point. I was in a very difficult position, because the upper-level officials would give me orders—to burn certain villages, for example—which I had passed on to other officials. Sometimes the officials who had good hearts would tell me they couldn’t do it; they were friendly with me, so they would tell me if they didn’t want to carry out the orders. But then the upper-level officers told me I had to follow orders and that complaints were not allowed, so I was stuck in the middle. I realized I could not have compassion in this position—I had to just give orders and the other officers had to follow those orders.
If something went wrong, I was also in a difficult position. For example, if I was told to give the order to burn a village and there was some kind of problem afterward, we would say, “You ordered us to burn that village.” But the officials would say, “Where is the official order?” The orders were not written down, so there was never any official proof that the directive came from above.
They also trained the upper-level officials to understand how soldiers behave, to control them and make them accept certain things. The Burmese army has a strict system of control—they use it to maintain their one-order system, to change people’s minds and make people follow their orders. It’s how they mold the soldiers so that they don’t think critically about anything—they just follow orders. Usually their strategy is very successful in getting people to do what they want them to do.
The system in the Burmese army is to just follow orders—we didn’t think or feel, we just followed orders. We had been soldiers since we were young, so it became normal for us to see death and injuries. I experienced a lot of difficult things while in the army, so now that I am in Thailand, I have heartache.
HUMAN BEINGS MAKE MISTAKES
Once, I was patrolling a rebel area with my soldiers. I was sleeping on the ground in the valley, and my soldiers were staying in the mountains. I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard a noise, but I thought it was a car wheel bursting or something like that. We had never had a battle there, so we weren’t expecting any rebels to come. But when I woke up in the morning, the villagers came to inform me that some of my soldiers had died—they had been ambushed. Several soldiers died, and a few were injured. We tried to search for the rebels, but we couldn’t find them. They could have been hiding in the village in plainclothes.
I think it was my fault. I’d deployed the soldiers too far from each other. The area was normally quiet and peaceful with no rebels, so I’d gotten careless.
During my twenty-five years in the army, I’d never had any problems with the higher-ups; that incident was the first time. But I knew many officers who had gone to prison because of similar incidents; sometimes officers went to prison if they lost a battle. If a case is brought to the military courtroom, it’s certain that the person will go to prison. All of the judges are military officers.
The military officials launched an investigation into the incident, and then my friend, another officer, called me and said the division commander had signed a sentence saying I had to go to prison for more than five years. When I heard the verdict, I felt really upset. At that time, other people didn’t know yet. My friend told me, “Well, you can flee or you can go to prison.” I told him I wouldn’t go to prison—I would run away.
I think normal human beings make mistakes, and it’s normal that you win some battles and you lose some. You can’t say what will happen. But even though I had been in the military for a long time, they couldn’t forgive my mistake.
I got on a motorbike and decided to escape to Thailand.
I THOUGHT I COULD CONTRIBUTE SOMETHING FOR MY PEOPLE
I didn’t have any plans when I arrived in Thailand, so I stayed with a friend and worked in a shop. When I got to Thailand, I had the chance to read books about human rights and democracy, and I started to see that the Burmese military does many bad things. I realized that things needed to change in Burma; people must be allowed to complain. The more I read these books and spoke to people here about democracy, the more I could analyze the situation.
Since I am Karen, another Karen person here contacted the KNU/KNLA, and they asked me to teach and write the curriculum at their training school. It may seem strange that I’m working for the KNLA after twenty-five years in the Burmese military, but I don’t think about the past—that’s just my nature. I didn’t think about any of that, I just made the decision to help people. I thought that by working with the KNU, I could contribute something for my people.
When I train the KNLA soldiers, I talk about the different battles I was involved in. I analyze the battles for my students so they can understand why the KNLA lost, and learn how to win in the future.
When I was young, I couldn’t say I was Karen at school or in the military because I would be discriminated against. But here in Thailand, you can say who you are. It’s open. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a Karen spirit in Burma, but I couldn’t express my feelings until I got here. I have a strong Karen spirit, but I don’t discriminate, so I will help other ethnic groups if they ask—I feel like we should help each other. I think a federal union would be best for Burma, because then the ethnic groups would have their own states, their own autonomy. But if the ethnic groups separated from the union, it wouldn’t be good for Burma. It’d be like if New Mexico and Hawaii separated from the United States and started their own governments.
I don’t think it’s fair for people to hate all SPDC soldiers. Even if we hate a group of people, we have to learn about them and try to understand them, so we can negotiate with them. It’s normal for an ethnic group or any group of people to make mistakes. If you want to be educated, you should learn about other people; you should learn about your enemies and make peace with them. I don’t want people to be racist. Teachers play a very important role, because they can show students different ways to see things. They can show them the right attitude.
I believe that most of Burma’s ethnic armed groups are racist—they only want to fight for their own group. The Karen only want to fight for the Karen, the Mons fight only for the Mons. But now the ethnic groups want to cooperate more, which the Burmese military doesn’t like. A lot of groups here say bad things about the SPDC, but they will never find solutions until they understand what the SPDC is doing and how they think. The ethnic groups have to be very united. Right now, even the different Karen groups are not united.
I am staying with a friend now. Even though I’m not very worried about my security here, I still have to be very careful when I travel here in Thailand. I don’t have official documents to be here, so I could be deported and then arrested when I’m brought back to Burma.
For the first six months that I was in Thailand, I was worried that the Burmese army would find me and abduct me. The Burmese army will only come for people here if they think that person’s important—for example, Pa Doh Mahn Shar was shot dead on the border.2020 So if they think I’m important, I will have to die. But if I’m not important to them, they won’t think about me.
I recently met another Burmese soldier here in Thailand who had also fled the army, and I had to tell him not to be afraid of me. Because of how the army system is in Burma, even soldiers who have both fled the army and live in another country still fear each other.
IF AMNESTY IS OFFERED
From the outside, people are very surprised with the big changes I’ve made in how I live my life. They ask how I could do all those things with the SPDC in Burma and then come here and work for a group opposing the SPDC.
I’m surprised by the changes too, but I don’t think about it, so I don’t care so much. I talk to someone, and then it’s finished, I don’t think about it anymore. If I see them again, we start new. It’s just my nature.
I feel much better here in Thailand, because I don’t have orders from above and I don’t have to order anyone else around. Before, I was a soldier, and now here in Thailand, I’ve opened a bookstore because I like reading a lot. Now I have many books in the shop so I can work there and read. I’m trying to learn new things, so I read a lot. I only have my own schedule that I make; I feel free. Most of the books I sell are in Burmese, so it’s Burmese people who come and buy.
About three-quarters of my customers are girls. I don’t think boys read many books.
In an hour, I will go buy books and bring them to my shop. I sell so many types of books: philosophy, English-learning, dictionaries, journals, and other kinds. I want to have a bigger bookshop, so I can put more kinds of books in it and people can go there to read and drink coffee. It would be okay if they didn’t buy a book—they could come and read, and maybe another day they would come and buy.
I’m happy to live here in Thailand. I don’t miss Burma very much, because I am settled here and I want to stay. If change happens in Burma, I would go back, at least to visit. But I am worried that even if change happens, and even if amnesty is offered, as a former SPDC soldier I may not be okay.
If democracy comes to Burma, I don’t think the soldiers in general should be held accountable for human rights abuses. Some specific officers should be accountable if, for example, they carried out an order too strongly and attacked people. I think the person who is the most accountable is the Commander-in-Chief of the Burmese Army, Than Shwe, because it is a one-order system—all orders come through the ranks from him.
Maybe when I get very old, I may go back. When I die, I want to be in Burma.
1 The Burma Socialist Programme Party was the only legal political party in Burma during the years 1962–1988. In 1971, the BSPP changed from a small cadre to a mass party with around 1 million members. The party congress met periodically and repeatedly “elected” Ne Win as its chairman. For more on the Burma Socialist Programme Party, see appendix, pages 462-463.
2 The Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the Shan State Army (SSA), the former Communist Party of Burma (CPB), and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) are among Burma’s most active and well-organized militias. They controlled considerable amounts of territory in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s and 2000s, internal conflict and increased regime advances greatly diminished their capacities. See the appendix for further information about non-state armies and their protracted conflict with Burma’s central government.
3 In 1988, there was a nationwide popular uprising against Ne Win’s one-party rule. For more on this student and worker uprising, see the 8-8-88 section of the “A Brief History of Burma” in the appendix, pages 463-465.
4 The United Wa State Army formed after the collapse of the Communist Party of Burma in 1989. Along with many other ethnic armed opposition groups in the early 1990s, the United Wa State Army signed a ceasefire agreement with the military junta.
5 Both the Burmese military and many non-state armed groups have used landmines as part of their strategy in the long-running civil war. According to the Global Health Access Program, “Eastern Burma is the most heavily mined area in the world, with approximately 1500 landmine casualties annually, accounting for 5 percent of deaths.”
6 KIA (Kachin Independence Army) is the armed wing of the Kachin Independence Organization, which rose to power in the 1960s. The KIO signed a ceasefire agreement with the State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1994. For more on Burma’s ongoing civil war, see the “A Brief History of Burma” section in the appendix.
7 During World War II, the Allies armed and trained some ethnic militias to fight against the Japanese occupation. Colonel Seagrave was a famous doctor who worked in Kachin State during the war.
8 Cobra Gold is a U.S.-Thai military exercise held annually in April and May. The United States funds Thai civilian and military professional development. In return, Thailand hosts U.S. Navy ships that often port in Phuket and Pattaya.
9 Portering is a form of forced labor in which the military forces citizens to carry supplies, weapons, food rations and equipment for soldiers traveling from one area to another in Burma.
10 Approximately US$0.30.
11 The Burmese Way to Socialism was Ne Win’s plan to build the Burmese nation post-independence. For more on the Burmese Way to Socialism, see pages 461-462 of the “A Brief History of Burma” in the appendix.
12 A battalion is a unit of soldiers. In Burma’s armed forces, the Tatmadaw, there are approximately 200 to 500 soldiers in a battalion.
13 On September 18, 1988, a small groups of generals overthrew the Burma Socialist Programme Party and sent the army to crack down on the demonstrators.
14 It is typically estimated that 3,000 people were killed during the crackdown. However, some estimates run as high as 10,000. For more on the uprising and crackdown, see the “A Brief History of Burma” in the appendix.
15 The All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF) was a guerilla army formed by students who fled the 1988 military crackdown and fought alongside many of the ethnic groups against the dictatorship military junta. The People’s Patriotic Party (PPP), originally the PDP, was a political party/armed group founded by former President U Nu, which fought alongside the ethnic militias against the Ne Win–led government.
16 Manerplaw is the former headquarters of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the All Burma Students Democratic Front (ABSDF). For more on Burma’s civil war, see pages 460-461 of the appendix.
17 Burmese dissidents use the term “liberated area” to describe those places along the borders where the opposition groups continue their activities.
18 The DKBA broke with the Karen National Union and signed a ceasefire agreement with the government in 1994. The leaders of the group complained that as Buddhists they did not have enough of a voice in the Christian-dominated Karen National Union. For more on Burma’s civil war, see appendix pages 460-461.
19 Burma is frequently cited as being one of the countries with the most child soldiers in the world. The Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child sets eighteen as the minimum age for direct participation in hostilities, for recruitment into armed groups, and for compulsory recruitment by governments.
20 Pa Doh Mahn Shar, then General Secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU), was shot in his home in Mae Sot, Thailand in February 2008. Many speculate that his assassination was the result of his refusal to comply with the Burmese government in the run-up to a constitutional referendum.