Min Aung, a freelance correspondent for the Mon News Agency, interviewed Padoh Saw Tah Doh Moo, KNU General Secretary about the current peace situation in Burma. Their discussion also addressed a letter sent from the Chair of the Karen National Union (KNU) regarding the 83rd Karen National New Year celebrations.
Question: How effective is it for some ethnic armed groups to stop fighting and resume political dialogue?
Answer: This is a situation that has not yet arrived. We are negotiating with each other. But we need to have a fair and just dialogue to make it happen. We have been killing each other for 60 – 70 years but we do not get an answer. In the end, only the country is in trouble. Now that the new government is in power, it’s a good idea for us to see how much the new government wants real peace.
Question: How will the resumption of hostilities affect the peace process?
Answer: The basic reason behind the fighting is due to a decline of trust. There is a breakdown of trust. They should rebuild it. We do not really want to fight. But the political arena is a space where solutions are limited. Once space exists, we need to expand that space. We have been committed to bilateral talks with the military since 2012 but so far we have not seen much progress.
Question: Do you think it works in both constructive and practical ways?
Answer: Building trust is needed by both parties. The reason we build trust is that we want peace. Peace means peace in this world. Peace is built on the foundations of peace. For example, just look at the United States. Peace is the only way to achieve peace in this world, where human beings can live in harmony only with the practice of consensus laws and mechanisms that set out the problems that arise when they are in harmony with one another.
That tradition does not exist in our country. We need to accept the first point that all must be built in order for problems to be resolved with the rule of law peacefully. Without that foundation, do not call it peace if one side wins. The sound of gunfire has disappeared due to the defeat of one side does not mean peace. Because peace is in the hearts of the people. In terms of how to build, if we want real peace, we have to build trust between our organizations and our individuals, and we have to follow these mutual agreements.
So building trust is not about building personal relationships. But we do not see it that way. We understand that building trust is about how far we can go and how we can implement the agreements we have reached. So what we are talking about is trust building. We signed a bilateral agreement in 2012, according to this bilateral agreement, we can not do anything further. Then we signed the NCA in 2015. The trust-building we are talking about is not friendship. It depends on the policy and the position of our organizations and the outcome of the bilateral agreement.
Question: How are you going to deal with the recent protests by the Karen people demanding the withdrawal of military bases in Hpapun and Will top, when leaders meet?
Answer: The first is that people have come up with the idea that they should stand up for themselves. We can say that this is a development for the people as an organization that believes in democracy. We supported the people’s protest and also announced the statement. To be able to build such mutual trust is to go from the first ceasefire to the next peace process.
A ceasefire is not just about the disappearance of gunfire. A ceasefire is about putting an end to the tensions in the ceasefire area where the two sides are located first, and finally opening the way for our people to move from a defensive position. Now that there is no such thing, I do not know if we should consider it as avoiding such discussion because we do not want to accept such an idea. In any case, this is something we need to meet and resolve. We have already sent letters to our military coordination group to resolve these issues.
Question: How long will it be? In the message sent for the Karen New Year, by the KNU Chair, he wrote that real peace must be achieved by respecting the ethnic nationalities living in the Union, equality. You stated this will be possible only when self-determination is granted. Can you comment?
Answer: These are things that need to be built. What we want to say is that the first step in building these things is to have a situation that needs to be discussed in order to build them. Once we have a negotiated situation, we need to come up with solutions that will move from the negotiated situation to the constructive side.
Once the answers come out of the discussion, depending on the outcome, we are talking about technical solutions that all of us have a common goal, so what we want to say is that nothing will change immediately after 1-2-3 rounds. But what we want to say is that where did this equality and self-determination first come from? We need to stop our current struggles and find a solution through these issues through a genuine dialogue process. To find such a solution, we need to hold political talks.
Those political talks need to be fair and just. We need to be free from any group domination or control based on the mechanism and policy influence. We need to come up with a fair solution through that model. We need to re-implement justice through justice. These things need to be implemented and we need to continue to change the way our institutions change. In other words, reform needs to go step by step.
Therefore, we can not do this with one or two organizations. Involvement of all people Only after our respective group and political parties, government forces, political parties, and ethnic minority leaders can go about an inclusive reform to prevent our long-standing political crisis from erupting.
Question: Is there anything else you wish to say?
Answer: The main thing we want to say is that if we really want the reform of this country and the peace of this country, we must first turn our negative conflicts into positive ones, rather than just meeting resolutions. Then reforms between the two sides gradually began to change, from personal relationships to inter-organizational relations. We also accept the fact that we need to move towards the nature of political dialogue and the development of the political dialogue environment, and then move on to the path of peace-building, so we want to tell our people that the KNU believes in peace, not gunfire, but how to transform our conflicts and move towards a peaceful society together?
