Hpa-An, Burma: A 24-hour taste of the minority, conflict-ridden Karen state

Hpa-An, the only part of the Karen state that the Burmese military allows you to travel to.

Very hard to see, but this is a Burmese military checkpoint at the border of the contested Karen state. There is a man with a machine gun behind the barrier there. I tried to not-so-subtly sneak a picture of the checkpoint from the inside of our van, while the military was assessing whether or not to let us into the Karen state.

Tamadaw refers to the Military Junta. The people refers to the Burmese people, who are expected to be obedient and not rebel against the military. This propoganda sign was put up in the middle of Hpa-An, a part of the disobedient Karen state, to send a message to "the people" -- If you side with the Karen ethnic minority rebels, then you are our enemy. So, you become an enemy of the military. This is a threat to not be part of the rebel group.

Government elementary school in the Karen state. The poorest school we'd seen.

Wide view of the school

School sign

The walled military compound housing the military children who, it turns out surprisingly, go to this Karen state school.

I thought I was going to be taken by the guide to a ethnic minority school filled with Karen children. Turns out, he apparently only felt safe enough to take me to a school filled by the majority group children coming from low-level military families. Click HERE to see what the one-room school climate was like.

The only Karen ethnic minority child in this age-group.

This is the only teacher who is from the Karen ethnic group in this school in the Karen state.

All of these teachers, except the Karen teacher on the left, are from the majority Burman group

The Karen teacher I interviewed, practicing the traditional teaching method of having the students come to her individually for corrections.

My guide translating for me while I interviewed the teachers.

June 17, 2011

The U.S. embassy human rights officials in Thailand and Malaysia, among others, were not able to tell me how to get close to an oppressed ethnic region of Burma, safely. They couldn’t suggest a town to go to that was in the safe zone, but close to the restricted zones, filled with Burmese from ethnic groups who typically flee Burma. The military control tourist travel to these contested ethnic areas very tightly.


But, our main guide was able to find a city called Hpa’An in the Karen state -- the Karen being the ethnic group I visited in a Thailand refugee school in Mae Sot in March. And, my guide said she could arrange for another guide to take me to a school in the Karen state, near Hpa’An. I was surprised and couldn’t wait to see it. I pictured the school filled with Karen students in their colorful, hand-woven vests and sarongs. And, maybe I could get a sense of how a school is different in Burma if it’s filled with an oppressed minority, compared to a more well-resourced majority at the government schools filled with students who do not rebel against the military government. I got the opposite of what I expected in this school in the Karen state.

We drove east from Yangon to get to the Karen State. It took 6 long hours in the van to get there, and we were put into a car coma from the long ride. The terrain did change towards the end – it was filled with limestone cliffs bursting unexpectedly out of flat rice paddies once we hit the Karen state, accompanied by glorious mountains further afield in the off-limits zone.

The human terrain changed too. In other unrestricted parts of Burma, the military removes itself from the fray, almost hidden away in the background. Once we entered the Karen state, the military was prominent. In fact, you could not move anywhere into or out of the Karen state without a thorough check of your car and people in it. There was illegal black market trading from Thailand into Burma via this route. Our guide explained that the military were doing a thorough check of our van because many “democracy activists” came into the Karen state via this route. He gave a bit of a hard look at us at that moment as if he was concerned that we might get him into trouble because we were activists in sheep’s clothing.

We first saw a military ship as we crossed the Mekong River into the Karen state. No Burmese boat traffic can go up into Thailand or down into other countries. That is to prevent black market trade of the MANY items the military prohibit in Burma, like affordable cars or cellphones, as prohibition speculated to be a means of keeping the people down, and less connected to the outside world.




We imagined that years ago, pre-military, there had been vibrant, bustling boat trade here to other countries on this river as wide as the Mississippi River. Tight military control was what we saw now. There were sand bunkers with military men wielding rifles on both ends of the bridge. And, there was a sign about the death penalty for drug trafficking. So, it’s not just Karen National Union (KNU) rebels the military are worried about, but they also worry about the drug trade that they cannot control or benefit from – word is the military government encourages the addiction to heroin among its gem mine workers, similar to pimps promoting addiction among their prostitutes to better control them and foster dependence. And, the military makes real money off of the drug trade.

A serious military checkpoint was situated right after the bridge. We’ve never been through such a well-fortified checkpoint with sand bunkers, machine guns, barricades slowing you down, and many military officials from different departments, with one in an “Immigration” uniform. He talked a lot with our guide, making our guide get out, show him who and what was in the van, taking down information about what country we were from and sticking his head in to look for himself. He did not ask for our passports though, mostly because the guide already had our passport numbers ready for him, and maybe because us adults were pretty nonthreatening with tired kids draped across us. Then, he waved with a smile and let us pass through. You can see the picture I snuck of the “immigration” officer above. It's very illegal to take photos of such military checkpoints in Burma. On our way out, I tried to take a picture of the soldier manning the machine gun, but I was stopped before I could get a decent picture by our guide who said “No pictures allowed here.”

Ken and I got a charge out of the whole military checkpoint experience. Sounds absurd, I know, but it’s a safe brush with danger for us and made us appreciate how safe and how much freedom of movement there is in the U.S.

Thus far on our Burma trip, we had only traveled to well-touristed locations, without many tourists because it was monsoon season. This one small part of the Karen state, including Hpa-An was only opened in the past decade. In contrast, a military sign in the more well-touristed Golden Rock area, before this one, said “Please aid international travelers” as if training the locals how to host a tourist industry. Six years ago, no tourists or even other Burmese could visit this part of the Karen state without a serious vetting and permission from the government. Our guide explained that a couple groups of Karen military rebels had struck a cease fire with the Burmese government, saying they would not fight the military in Hpa’An city area. The Karen National Union does not seem to have struck any such cease fire in their territory, especially further along the border with Thailand where there is lots of KNU conflict with government soldiers, not to mention some nasty human rights abuses by Burmese government soldiers like using rape as a weapon.

An undeveloped tourist industry means undeveloped hotels and sites to see. Our hotel was nestled at the base of a limestone cliff with views of the rice paddies, but it was almost like roughing it compared to the hotels we’d been to the rest of the trip, like Inle Resort which had been downright magical. Our hotel was pretty barebones clean but had ants and a roach that freaked Alice out. The next morning, we drove into Hpa’An and realized that the guide really had no idea what to show us in Hpa’An. In fact, he only drove us into and around Hpa’An, without stopping the van once. The guide was our only guide from Burma who was not from the local region, realizing we were the blind being led by the blind. We were later told that the Karen state is so untouristed that there are not any guides from that area.

We saw the river next to Hpa’An, but mostly we noticed the strong military presence, with the huge sign you see above which the military put into the middle of Hpa’An saying -- Anyone against the military is everyone’s enemy. I may have confused and concerned our fearful driver when I asked him to stop so I could take a picture of the sign. He came out and held an umbrella over my head, nervously, as I stood next to the small police outpost with a confused policeman standing nervously inside. Then, we left Hpa’An quickly, and returned through the military “immigration” checkpoint. It seemed like the guide was happy to get out of the Karen state, and that he didn’t have much interest in it either. All I can say is that the Karen state is ripe for Thailand-style eco-tourism, homestays, and treks, Chiang-Mai style, especially if there is continued progress in cease fires in the Karen conflict zone.

We went to see a “Karen” school just inside the Karen ethnic minority territory. This was the only planned school visit I had on the whole early, unofficial draft of our travel itinerary sent me by my coordinating guide. I now understand, in Burmese communication, that there was a deliberate omission of the Karen state school visit on the official, final itinerary. I’m sure the military government vets every official tourist itinerary, so the travel agency must omit any “illegal” visits, like to schools from its official itinerary and only communicate about it via email or verbally.

Our Karen state guide, who was not Karen, was VERY fearful and avoidant of taking us to a school in the Karen state. He repeatedly said it was “very, very risky” for him to take us to any government school, that guides are not allowed to take tourists to any government schools or hospitals. All the other guides indicated it was safe for them to take us to a government elementary school but not to a government middle or high school. The reality was that in the more isolated rural areas, when you ask a government school teacher if you can come visit their school, the teachers let you visit the elementary schools without a problem. In fact, outside of well-touristed Bagan, we had the impression that there is a school tourism industry, with our guide seeming like she had taken many tourists to the Bagan school before and the teachers were very welcoming of us, like they had hosted tourists previously.

Our guide in the Karen state warned me numerous times that he did not know if he could get us into a school. He seemed like he’d never done it before and kept repeating how “risky” it was, making us wonder if it was riskier in the Karen state, maybe. But, after some pushing from my end, even having to remind him that we need to make it to the school while the students are in class, not when they go home for lunch, which seemed eye-opening for him, we finally saw a school.

Our guide waited to search for a school until we left the military checkpoint, and I asked him “How can we see a Karen school if we pass through the checkpoint?” He said we could still see a Karen school after the checkpoint. I found this annoying since I wanted to see Karen children in the Hpa’An area, but he argued that he couldn’t look for a school there since Hpa’An was not rural and isolated enough. I started getting downright agitated and resorted to Buddhist mindfulness breathing.

Our guide finally found an isolated school along a quiet part of the main road, and he made us wait in the van while he asked permission to visit the elementary school. He got permission then we visited the school, finally. On the way we saw that he’d unknowingly dropped his cellphone (valuable and expensive in Burma!) into a deep puddle, maybe in his nervous focus on getting permission and not getting in trouble.

Unlike the teachers outside of well-touristed Bagan, the teachers on the road to Hpa’An seemed bewildered and shy in our presence. Even though they were teaching English, they were too embarrassed by their English to practice it with us. Almost all Burmese learn English from a young age but none can speak it. They may have even studied English in college, like the only Karen teacher at this school did, but you don’t learn how to speak English in Burma. Why? The rest of Asia learns English through watching TV and illegal Hollywood movie DVD’s, with a select few learning it from conversations with expats or tourists. The Myanmar government does not allow English-speaking TV or movies, because it’s concerned about democracy and other influences from the west, like Voice of America and BBC which it calls “killing” speech in its newspaper, encourageing the Myanmar people to avoid.

I asked what ethnic group the students were from. The teacher said the age 9 students were all Burmese, one Mon, and only one Karen student. The teachers were all Burmese with only one Karen teacher, see her photo above. I was stunned that my guide managed to take us to a Karen state school without any Karen students. I was really angry at our guide, maybe unfairly so since he was fearful due to government-induced fears. Maybe I should have been more understanding, but my main guide, this guide, and the unofficial itinerary had all said that I’d see a Karen school and now I was just seeing a school barely inside the Karen zone with only one Karen student and teacher, out of 67 students and 5 teachers. I felt duped. My attitude would change by the end of our visit.

The students were shy at first then competed over who could get their photo taken by me. They proudly showed me their notebooks filled with copying, word-for-word what was in their paperback English textbooks. Their English textbooks were covere in fill-in-the-blank phrases which had been adapted for Myanmar like, “Zaw Zaw and Aung Lee went to have tea and coffee on ________ way to school.” No American textbook would have students drinking coffee or tea. It seemed like the students didn’t get to keep their textbooks because they were forced to write down each word in the textbook, without being allowed to write in the textbook itself. It was striking how poor this school and area was. In fact, our kids continue to conjure up this school when they give examples of deep poverty in Asia.

I can only imagine how hard and boring it would be to be a smart kid with a rich fantasy life, sharp critical thinking, or capacity for deep conceptual manipulation of ideas. There would be no room in the Burmese education system for you.

The Burmese education is a good example of how you can have an excellent teacher-child ratio with a poor education. This school had a teacher-child ratio of 1 teacher for 13 students. Wow, New York City public school parents would KILL to get their kids into a school with that ratio. Maybe they’d even ship their kids to Burma, from Brooklyn. But, that would be a mistake. Without well-educated teachers, the promotion of critical thinking, and textbooks enrichened by an open, international perspective, then you have poorly education students, even with a ratio of 1 teacher to 1 student. 

I asked the teacher of the oldest students, the 9-year-olds, my typical questions at every Burmese school: “What are the behavior problems here? How do you manage or give consequences for those behavior problems?” By this, the last of the 5 schools I visited in Burma, I can tell you the first response you’ll get to the question “What behavior problems do you have here?” is “None,” with a light laugh from the teacher. But, if you gently probe or go in through the backdoor, with a question like “So, what behaviors do you use the cane for?” then you get a real answer like what was given to me at this poor government school -- “We use the cane for children who do not pay attention to the lesson. We use the cane for children who squabble with each other.” 




Some Burmese teachers in Burma, Thailand, and Malaysia also use the cane for children who have the worst grades. In Thailand, the head teacher would cane the shins of the 3 children with the worst grades in the Karen Burmese school in Thailand along the Thai border. The teacher here in the Karen state in Burma said they do not cane the worst students here but, rather, try to persuade the child to do better, and my guess is, scold the student too. 

I asked how else the teachers manage misbehavior, and the teacher said they make the misbehaving student stand on his chair for a while. Maybe they make the student hold his hands together, with arms straight over his head, in a replica of the Buddhist Free School nun’s behavior management technique. Or, in a surprisingly exact replica of a consequence adopted by an American teacher of Karen Burmese refugees on the Thai border, the teacher would make misbehaving students cross their arms, grab their ears and hop up and down. The American teacher at the Karen refugee school in Thailand would make students who did not do their homework do it. These Burmese kids here in Burma were so cute that when I would imitate what the teacher was doing and jump up and down holding onto my ears, they did it too, giggling hysterically, a mix of delight and nervousness. 

I also asked the guide to translate another question for me -- How about respect for teachers, disrespect towards teachers, or, even, God forbid, aggression towards the teachers? My guide laughed at that as he translated the question for me. My guide explained that children are taught from a young age to respect Buddha, the monks, the “government,” (meaning, military junta – actually, I think that’s my personal addition to the respect list), and teachers. He echoed the previous guide by saying that teachers use “fear” to gain respect. 




I noted again that such fear-induction is similar to the military junta’s fear-inducing techniques for controlling the “people,” leaving a populace filled with fearful people. One theory of when the education system starts socializing fear is very early on in Burma. I’d pictured age 5 or so, when they first start formal schooling; there’s no government preschool here and only about 70 early education centers run by World Vision here. So, I asked this teacher if the cane is used more with the young ones in elementary school, the 5 year olds, or the oldest elementary school students, who are her pupils. She said the cane is used more with the older than the younger students, meaning it is her job as a teacher to wield the cane to socialize the 9-year-old students to be fearful of the teacher, and paying attention to the teachers is a sign of respect.

I looked around and noticed that our presence was causing the kids to get more wild and the teachers had given up teaching. I started to wrap up my questions, telling the guide to thank them for their time. 

I went up to the only Karen teacher at this school on the Karen state border, and I tried to get a last few words in with her. She, however, said nothing, making me think she couldn’t speak English, so I left.  On my way out, the guide said the Karen teacher was actually the only teacher who had studied English as a university student. I looked back in the school and saw that she was being cajoled by the teacher I’d interviewed into coming to speak to me and she was resisting coming out to speak with me. Finally, she succumbed once she saw me coming towards her. While she still wouldn’t speak English to me (explaining she was never taught conversational English), she let my guide translate for her. 




I asked where she lived and she pointed across the street to a little walled village. I didn’t think much of it at the time. Then, the guide explained that her father had been in the military, and that he had passed away (WHAT? A Karen in the government military? I assumed all Karen were rebels. How’d he die? Why? Had being Karen caused the military to be more likely to put him in harm’s way, as the U.S. military had done with African-Americans, historically?). In fact, I asked the guide some of these parenthetical questions. He was very brusque about my questions, for a typically polite, deferential Burmese. He very quickly dismissed my question of: “Why is a Karen in the government military???”, as if it was a rude and unsafe question to ask here.

As I walked back to the van, confused by a Karen ethnic minority being in the government army, I looked a little harder at the walled village across the street. It turns out that this was a village that housed military families. On the front entrance of the village was the military insignia, as you can see in the photo above. AH HA! I thought. I asked the guide if most of the kids in this school were military. He stammered out a YES then defended that many were also local villagers from the rural countryside too.

Given the school’s location right across from the walled military village, it was clear to me that the real answer was YES, that all the military kids from the military village went to this school. I had just seen a school largely for government military kids.

Here’s my thought process, then: I was angry at first that my guide had not taken me to a school within the Karen-filled zone, true, as the travel agency and guide had promised. My expectations had been disappointed. And, the guide now seemed like he had deliberately chosen a safer school for him. Despite the itinerary and my repeatedly asking to see a Karen school with Karen students, he had deliberately avoided such a Karen school, it seemed. And, our guide had chosen a safer school for him without pretty much any Karen students, but, rather, filled with military students. 

Now, I am actually not sure that way of thinking is right. I asked our guide about the military school being safer than a Karen school. He said the only schools with majority Karen are deep within the Karen state where we cannot go. And, he thought it was equally safe for him to take me to a Karen versus military school in an isolated rural spot, like he took me to. He argued that the military school in our rural spot was equally safe for him because rural military kids are very low level soldiers in the military, with poor, underresourced schools. The military government does not care about these kids.

In fact, our guide thought that the Karen teacher was living in a poor military village and at a poor school because her dad had been a low level military soldier, since he was Karen. While it is rare for an ethnic group that has rebel groups to become military, they are sometimes allowed to join the military. They are, however, not allowed to become officers if they are from a minority ethnic group. Only those from the Burmese group are allowed to become officers. Our guide thought the Karen teacher’s military father had probably not grown up in the Karen state, but, rather, grew up in Yangon or elsewhere without conflict, and then was willing to support the government military as a result.




Clearly, being in the Burmese military has major benefits. In fact, given the deep poverty in Burma, being a military family can mean the difference between the a family life with food, housing, and education, including university education for your children, versus a family life without. But, there is a price to be paid. If you sell out as a Karen or other ethnic group, and join the junta military, then my impression is that you are more likely to be put in harm's way, where the most violent fighting is - fighting your own ethnic group in violently contested minority areas. You fight your ethnic brothers, in order to get privilege. But, in return for the education and financial security of your ethnic minority children, you are more likely to pay the price of your life.




It also seems to make a difference whether you come from the Karen Buddhist revolutionary group (DKBA) or the Karen Christian revolutionary group (KNU). The Karen Buddhists have developed more friendly relations with the government military while the Karen Christian rebels continue to fight them tooth and nail, not budging an inch, without real progress being made in conflict resolution since the military government became a civilian one.

PARTNERS (NGO supporting Burmese in Thailand and ethnic zones) had argued that the military government only provided education through age 8 in the conflict zones, like the Karen state. That may be true but, I’ve questioned that statement since. Why? Because many isolated rural areas only have an education through age 8 or 9, conflict zone or not. You have to travel further away, sometimes by bike, and often too far for students to commute to. However, there are probably more accessible longer-term schooling available in non-minority versus minority areas. In fact, many speak of the scarcity of schools, or poor quality schools, in ethnic areas. In contradiction, one Burmese guide told me that the Karen National Union (KNU) revolutionaries explode government schools in their isolated mountain villages. Why? Because they think the government is trying to indoctrinate their Karen children to like the government, or to a government way of thinking. 




There is a whole lot of confusing, contradictory information about schooling in ethnic minority areas, and I can't say I've shone a clear light on ethnic schools based on this brief visit. But, I do think I understand more of the messy complexity of the within-ethnic vying for limited resources in addition to some of the methods used by the military to keep the ethnic groups down, via limited education.