Word: karens
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Karen question might have been settled peaceably last year if both sides had shown a little more trust, cooperation and coolheadedness. "The trouble with us," said Socialist U Kyaw Nyein (who became a cabinet minister at 32), "is that we are all young and inexperienced." Finance Secretary U Kyin echoed him: "We are free but we don't yet know how to rule ourselves...
Quotes from the Left. Burma's Communists are the chief beneficiaries of this Karen-Burmese hatred. Burma probably has less than 10,000 convinced Communists (split into two major groups), but it has millions of ardent leftists. Prime Minister Thakin Nu himself was long a disciple of Marx, and he depends for his chief parliamentary support on the Socialists, who are militantly nationalist and anticapitalist...
...Communists were not the only ones who could wage successful rebellion in Asia. Last week Karen tribesmen, mostly Baptist, held much of Burma's richest land. They had taken Mandalay, and were in control of the Irrawaddy valley; their guns ringed the capital, Rangoon. Two months ago whole regiments of Karens rose in open rebellion against the government. The tough hill tribesmen, led by a handsome ex-Rangoon lawyer, Saw Ba U Gyi, had grown tired of waiting for the infant Burma Union to grant their demand for a separate state. They planned their attack for a propitious time...
...Karen control of the Irrawaddy had cut off rice shipments from Rangoon.
The bankrupt government hoped anxiously for a ?25 million British loan
($100 million). In London, talk revived that Burma, after 15 months of
chaotic independence, would apply for readmission to the British
Commonwealth. In Rangoon, Premier Thakin Nu had moved into a thatched
hut behind his house, and taken a vow of chastity (he has eight
children). Thakin Nu's friends said that he was devoting himself to
becoming a Buddha 999 worlds from now. Recently, Thakin Nu and
thousands of other residents
...Karens have always been a separate people; their conversion to Christianity intensified their division from the Buddhist Burmans. The first Karen convert was Ko Tha Byu, a Karen bandit bought out of slavery by Dr. Adoniram Judson, a Baptist missionary from Maiden, Mass, who had arrived in Burma in 1813. Ko Tha Byu learned to read the Scriptures, was baptized, and set out to convert his fellow tribesmen. Karens, who had a myth that one day their "lost white brother" would return over the great waters with a "lost book," made willing listeners. When bands of Karens began to arrive...