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 paperback £7.99 Monarch Books Paddyfield.com More reviews by Paul French Readers may purchase reviewed books from Paddyfield.com, Asia's online bookseller. North American readers may prefer to buy US editions from Powells.com. |
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A Land Without Evil by Benedict Rogers BENEDICT ROGERS is a journalist; he is also a human rights activist and a committed Christian. As an activist with the human rights organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) Rogers has taken the movement's motto -- "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves" (Proverbs 31:8) -- to heart in writing A LAND WITHOUT EVIL. Rogers writes with an agenda that is open and obvious but no less persuasive for that. The book, subtitled Stopping the Genocide of Burma's Karen People, is a powerful piece of investigative journalism vividly documenting the catalogue of atrocities committed by Burma's ruling military regime (the State Peace & Development Council or SPDC) against the Karen people as well as being a vital piece of evidence in the case demonstrating the human rights abuses of the military junta. Burma, once one of Asia `rice bowls', is now one of the least developed countries in the world -- in a recent Corruption Perceptions Index report from Transparency International Burma ranks 129th out of 133 countries globally. The clampdown on freedom, individual rights and the press in Burma has rendered the Karen people, along with the other ethnic groups of Burma such as the Chin, Kachin, Karenni, Mon, Arakan and Shan, not to mention the Burmans themselves, all too often invisible to the outside world. The approximately three million Karen people have been left to fight a civil war with the Rangoon government, a government that has now been a military dictatorship for over 40 years. The result for the Karen has been a formidable struggle but also impoverishment, displacement, early death and exile. The Karen face a Burmese government that has remained impervious to foreign criticism, steadfast in its determination to stamp out resistance while continuing to drag the country down into a pit of economic collapse -- in just one telling statistic the SPDC's last budget apportioned 50% of government finances to military spending and just 0.5% to education. Rogers is clearly drawn to the Karen due to the impact of Christianity on the people. He recounts the successes of the early Christian missionaries to the Karen who found a people with a startlingly similar tradition. Conversion rates were high, missionaries helped developed a written form of the Karen language and then, of course, produced the Bible in Karen. The modern history of the Karen, according to Rogers, seems to be largely one of fortuitous meetings with committed Christians. The first missionary to reach the Karen was Adoniram Judson, an American who got his first Karen convert in 1819. Later the Karen were confronted with British Colonel and committed Christian Orde Wingate who formed the `Chindits' and organised resistance to the Japanese occupation of Burma during the Second World War. Wingate was followed by Major Hugh Seagram who, after the British retreated to India, stayed behind in Burma to organise resistance among the Karen with a Bible under one arm and a gun under the other apparently. One can only wonder what the Karen who rallied to the resistance call made of leaders like Seagram and Lieutenant-Colonel Cromarty-Tulloch who organised the anti-Japanese struggle from the jungle in silk pyjamas and a monocle. Certainly two things become clear in Rogers' fascinating history of the interaction between the Karen and various Christians that crossed their path. First, when the Karen opt to do something they do it in numbers. The rate of conversion to Christianity among the Karen was extremely high while during the Japanese occupation the Karen responded rapidly and en-masse to the British call to join the resistance -- 500 joined the British forces on the first day, 1,000 the next. The second point is how forgiving the Karen have been. The Karen sided with the British during the war (who were after all also their colonial masters). After the war when the Atlee government rushed to dispose of the empire, with what some called `unseemly haste', the Karen were rapidly deserted by London. This betrayal incensed the British officers who had worked with the Karen during the war though the Karen themselves accepted it seemingly stoically. Despite appeals for a separate Karen homeland or guarantees of Karen rights in the newly independent Burma, London resolutely ignored all pleas. A certain Colonel Osborn, another British officer that fought with the Karen, lobbied fruitlessly in London on their behalf and was later to declare "I didn't think for a moment that we (the British) would let them down as we did." And let the Karen down the British did, spectacularly and largely offhandedly. The British had already agreed to hand Burma to Aung San after the war despite his long anti-colonial stance and siding with the Japanese. Still things got worse for the Karen in 1947 when Aung San was assassinated and the new Prime Minister U Nu declared himself resolutely against a Karen homeland. By 1948 the British were assisting in trying to disarm the Karen while simultaneously the Burma Army was slaughtering Karen Christians on Christmas Eve. The formation of the Karen National Union (KNU) and the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the start of an armed struggle for survival were by then inevitable. Rogers details the extent and the depth of the British betrayal of the Karen and London's repeated ignoring of the Karen struggle ever since. With the coming to power of Ne Win (the mastermind behind Aung San's assassination) things went from bad to worse for the Karen and drove a seemingly insurmountable wedge between the Karen and the ruling Burmans. As Rogers' says "The wounds of history were too deep for the Karen to consider being ruled by the Burmans." The Karen struggle quickly became ever more deadly with the killing by the Burma Army of Saw Ba U Gyi in 1950, one of the fathers of the Karen struggle. Since then the struggle has intensified, and according to Rogers, the Karen's Christianity (at least among the leadership of the KNLA) has meant that a desire for liberation has remained strong while the movement was able to resist the pull of Maoist communism that attracted so many liberation struggles in the 1960s. By then there was no going back anyway following Ne Win's coup and the complete departure of any semblance of democracy from Burma. Rogers recounting of the Karen struggle is detailed and covers the lives and motivations of the rank and file fighters (often Buddhists rather than Christians) as well as the leaders. Rogers also tackles the problems that have been created for the Karen struggle internationally with the brief rise of the headline grabbing Johnny and Luther Htoo, the child soldiers who led the strange "God's Army". The twins, aged eight at the time, claimed to have had a vision from God commanding them to lead the Karen against the Burma Army. For those less inclined to Christianity than Rogers, the issues of such phenomena as the Htoo brothers and the extreme beliefs of some Karen Christians as well as the problems of Christian-Buddhist relations within the Karen people are worthy of more discussion. For non-believers the seemingly frequent occurrence of miracles, messages from God and heavenly signs can appear bizarre. Where Rogers is more convincing is in reminding us that in a world seemingly awash with good causes it is crucial not to forget the Karen, Burma and the entire Burmese people. Rogers is also keen to show that the ultimate resolution of the struggle lies in a widespread realisation of the common purpose of all the ethnic groups of Burma. Contacts between Burman pro-democracy activists and the Karen have been ongoing since the 1980s and the identification of the common enemy as the regime rather than the Burmans is essential. The sham elections of 1990, the house arrest imposed on Aung San Suu Kyi and the mass arrests of political activists, students and union leaders by the junta should all build unity between the Burmans and the other ethnic groups. Rogers call for unity is succinct: "The army must be taken out of politics, and placed under the control of an elected, civilian government. All the forces of opposition to the evil regime in Rangoon can unite around that goal, to bring an end to tyranny and build a new, free and just Burma." BENEDICT ROGERS's book is an activist's book and an advocate's text. It is also a historical record of the travails of the Karen people over their 50-year struggle (and as such would have benefited from the inclusion of an index for reference purposes) and their continuing problem as a largely displaced people. Rogers declares that the Karen "...may be displaced, but they are undoubtedly not misplaced." His book goes a long way to reminding us all of the cause of the Karen and the help they need.
Paul French
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