in the heart of the Karen jungle, resistance takes root – Liberation

After two years of guerrilla warfare against the military junta, the People’s Defense Forces have become hardened in contact with Karen troops in the east of the country. The inhabitants of this state, they had to take refuge in the forest to survive the bombs of the army.

At the bend of a peaceful path that runs along a tributary of the Salween River, in the north of the Karen State in Burma, three pick-up vehicles arrive whirring and park near a deserted house, protected by a barrier. On one of them is inscribed in red letters the word “Revolution”. About twenty armed men get out. They are very young – around 25 on average – and wear on their camouflage caps a red flag adorned with a yellow star in the upper left corner: the insignia of the PDF, People’s Defense Forces. Small groups of fighters made up of young people, mostly from the majority Bamar ethnic group, who came from Yangon and other major cities in the country to fight under the command of the Karen Ethnic Army (KNLA), in eastern Burma. They would be at least 3,000 in Karen State.

Kyaw A. was a first-year geology student at East Yangon University. When the military took power just two years ago, he quickly took to the jungle, at 19, to fight, against the advice of his parents. But during the first months he first came up against, like everyone else, the lack of resources of the ethnic armies: “We had no uniform, no weapons and barely enough to eat.