The People!

This month our ministry is sharing God’s love to the Karen
(kuh-REN) people group. I felt that it may be a good idea to give you a little
bit of information on this people group. So thanks to Ray and Candace, here’s
some info to give you a background to the people I’ll be talking a lot about
this month.

The Karens are a large ethnic group spread throughout
Southeast Asia. They trace their origins to the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, or
Tibet. Karens settled in southern and eastern M/yanmar as far back as the seventh
century. In the 1700’s, Karens also began living in neighboring Siam (now
called Thailand).

There are numerous Karen subgroups. These varied people
lived mainly in tribal societies, governed by chiefs or princes. They sometimes
came into conflict with the Burmese dynamic rulers, or with other ethnic groups
inclined to wage war.

The British colonization in the mid-to-late 19^th
century brought a new sense of security to the Karens. Contact with American
and European Christian missionaries, who brought literacy and education, was
welcomed. The British administrators recruited many Karens into their police
and armed forces. When World War 2 came to Burma, those Karens became loyal
guerilla fighters for the Allies against Japanese occupiers.

As Brittan granted B/urma independence after the war, Karen
politicians hoped for their own nation. The Karen people, along with many other
ethnic populations, were absorbed into the new Union of B/urma. Problems began
almost immediately, when troops of the predominantly B/urmese government killed
Karen villagers. A Karen insurgency sprang up and rapidly gained momentum until
it threatened to seize control of the B/urmese capitol, Rangon. The Karen
rebels were driven back by the government troops, and the military came to dominate
the country, eventually taking over power in 1962. The military government
pledged to quell rebellion and unify the country by force.

Government forces sent to subdue the rebellion actually
drove more Karens into joining the rebels. A consistent pattern of deliberate
human rights violations by the government against ethnis minority civilians has
continued to this day, driving tens of thousands of Karens to Thailand as
refugees and making the Karen conflict the world’s largest running rebellion!