In the jungles of Karen State, Burma/ Myanmar the Karen people have been fighting since 1949 for their very right to exist, in what is now considered the world’s longest ongoing conflict. They have been in a continuous struggle for survival against the extremely repressive Burmese junta. The junta has tried pushing the Karen off the map through a brutal and systematic policy of murder, rape, forced labor and the wholesale destruction of their villages. The Karen are forced to live a fragile and tenuous existence, often on the run, hiding deep in the jungle while their villages are burned, crops and livestock destroyed.
At any one time there are an estimated 85,000 internally displaced people in Karen State, with a further 200,000 having lost their lands or too afraid to return, corralled in vast refugee camps on the Thai side of the Burma-Thai border, where many have lived for generations, persona non grata, with no rights to move more than a few hundred meters from the camp, living a life of suspended paralysis.
In Karen State, the Karen people rely on an unpaid volunteer army, the KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army), with only antiquated weapons and little ammunition to protect and keep at bay the powerful and well- equipped Burmese government forces, SPDC (State Peace and Development Council). For nearly three generations many Karen men have known no other life than to bear arms to protect their people and culture
Published in Virginia Quarterly Review Words by Robert Young Pelton and photographs by Jason Florio
Published in Burn Magazine