Karen Resistance Poetry translated and introduced by Violet Cho

Transnational Literature, 2014

2015

There is an established narrative about Burmese poetry from the central plains of Myanmar. It begins with written inscriptions from the eleventh century and develops into court verse: the first surviving poem being a cradle-song written in 1455 in honour of Princess Saw Shwe Kra of Arakan. A range of traditional forms continued to be used down to the final imposition of British rule after 1885. During the 1930s, the 'university wits' created a more modern style of writing, hoping to broaden the subject matter of traditional literature and deepen its psychological content. When Burma became independent in 1948, many of these new trends continued to be popular but writers also sought competing models in Soviet as well as in US and English writing. Following the army coup in March 1962, the Printers' and Publishers' Registration Act of August 1962 required that copies of all books and magazines be examined by the Press Scrutiny Board, usually after publication. Explicit guidelines issued in 1975 forbad the publication of anything detrimental to the Burmese Socialist Programme, the ideology of the state, the socialist economy, national unity and the rule of law. A further army coup in September 1988 led to the installation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC, after 1997 the State Peace and Development Council, SPDC) and the imposition of even stricter censorship regulations. The laws were slightly modified but not removed in August 2012. Contemporary Burmese poetry has been well represented in an outstanding recent anthology Bones Will Crow (ed. and trans. ko ko thett and James Byrne, Arc Publications, Todmorden 2012). The present volume, Poems of Mya Kabyar, Tin Nwan Lwin & Khaing Mar Kyaw Zaw, is also translated from the Burmese language. However, these three authors are not ethnically Burmese. Mya Kabyar (born 1974) is a member of the Chin ethnic minority in western Myanmar, who has lived in Yangon since 1994. Tin Nwan Lwin (born 1955) is a poet of Shan State origin who has lived in Myitkina, the capital city of the Kachin State, northern Myanmar, since the 1970s. Kyaw Zaw is Karen, an ethnic minority group in southern and southeast Myanmar; a former member of the insurgent Karen National Union and women's activist, she is now based in the United States. They belong, as Cho and Gilbert suggest, to 'the counter-narrative of Burmese poetry [which] takes account of oral literature, non-Burmese languages and writers in the periphery of the country and the diaspora' (page ix). The two poles of Mya Kabyar's writing are the Chin Hills and 'the city'. His sense of nostalgia for the Chin environment, culture and identity is very strong. The hills are beautiful: a place of rivers, mists, trees, upland rice, rice wine, bamboo shoots, mushrooms, flowers, and even snow: in Winter, 'at the mountain range/ the snow is laying its eggs/ with a sense of white longing/ blowing forcefully into my chest' ('to the snowy mountain range'). They are rich in wildlife, and especially birdsthe poems make frequent references to coucals (a bird in the cuckoo family) and hornbills (the state symbol). The hills are a site of 'stories, music/ blood and sweat' ('our stone inscriptions'). They are an ancient setting for human rights, which 'were in my grandfather's village before I was born', and, in fact, 'not just human rights/ the forest spirits and the mountain spirits/ have spirit rights/ we've lived together' ('old Chin man'). But the hills are under pressure: 'shifting cultivation, soil erosion/ deforestation exacerbated/ streams dried out/ biodiversity drying out/ rare orchids rarer' ('panorama of hornbills'). The people too are under pressure: 'poverty at 73%/ consciousness fading/ an overseas influx/ where in the world/ blooms for our Canaan?' ('panorama of hornbills'). The innocence of those who remain is suspect. The poem entitled 'unbelievable story' recounts that, 'the story begins/

International Journal of Creative Research Thoughts, 2020

The research aims to explore the 1980s phase of the Burmese Civil War written from the perspective of the Burmese exilic writer, Tin Moe. His poetry specifically focuses on the human rights violations perpetrated by the Burmese government and the majoritarian state's persecution of minorities. In order to explore this, the research has interpolated exilic methodology and historiographic accounts that have represented the dominant perspective. The research also aims to analyze the exilic position of the writer that enabled him to provide alternate accounts of history to question and challenge the hegemony of official narratives.

(Excerpt) The people of Burma, in Southeast Asia, (now known as Myanmar) have been victims of a sixty year civil war. One ethnic group in particular, the Karen, are of interest and will be the main focus of this paper. Fuertes (2010) points out the country of Burma was renamed Myanmar, however the Karen choose not to use this name as it lends credibility to the Burmese army who were responsible for renaming the country, as well as other cities within Burma . The Karen people have been fighting against the Burmese Army in an attempt to get their country back and thousands of lives have been lost. Approximately 150 to 200 years ago there was fighting among the Burmese and the British Army. The Karen people felt they could trust the British and had confidence the British Empire would assist their country in separating from Burma (Kenny and Lockwood-Kenny, 2011). The Karen people formed the Karen National Union (KNU) and acted as a de facto government. The native Burmese army pushed the Karen people into the hills of Burma during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Kenny and Lockwood-Kenny (2011) report there have been numerous human rights offenses against the Karen people, continuing today.

Pacific Affairs, 2021

Although Burma's civil wars rank among the world's longest-they began in 1948 and continue to the present-there are few memoirs about life during the war by people directly affected by the conflict. Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma helps fill in this gap by offering two people's firsthand accounts of the long-running armed conflict between the ethnic Karen resistance movement and the Burmese military. The personal narratives are from a married couple, the titular soldier and teacher. Naw Sheera, a Karen woman born in 1932 in a small village in southern Burma, became a schoolteacher and later served as a woman's advocacy organization leader. Born in 1930, the soldier, Saw Ralph Hodgson, is an Anglo-Karen man. At the age of 18, he joined the nascent Karen resistance movement during the Battle of Insein. Ralph rose through the ranks to become a Brigadier General in the Karen National Liberation Army, the military branch of the Karen National Union (KNU).

Karen. Parts 1 and 2 can be found here and here.

Counterview.in, 2022

This solidarity piece is regarding a development-induced displacement of the Karen Ethnic community in Ban Mae Ngud, Chiang Mai, Thailand (Yuam-Salween-Water Diversion Project). Having the opportunity to engage in a short-term field visit, this discusses the struggle of the Local ethnic group to fight for their rights to reject the project, which has already displaced them once and will re-displace them owing to river floods.

臺灣國際研究季刊, 2007

Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 2011

2014

Discursive representations of refugees on the national and global arenas are centred on how they are “aberrations” from the system of territorial states and consequently depict them as “threats”, “problems”, and “victims” (Grundy Warr and Wong 2002, 112). Contrary to these depictions, this paper argues that refugees can be active agents of empowerment. They are involved in the dynamic process of negotiating and coping with displacement and are capable of affecting changes on not only the interstitial spaces of the camp but also the surrounding borderscapes. Central to my argument is that refugees are fundamentally political agents who resist the dominant logic of sovereignty and its processes of inclusion and exclusion.