Rebellion
The Regional Autonomy Enquiry Commission in October 1948, though now expanded to include six Karens, six Mons, five Arakanese, seven Burmans and four others, did not report until February 1949, by which time the Karen rebellion had already broken out. The Karen had repeated their controversial demand to include Karen majority areas of the Irrawaddy Delta in the independent Karen state as well as a joint Mon–Karen independent state in the areas of the Tenasserim where they could not stake an exclusive claim.[1]
Communal relations turned sour when the AFPFL government deployed Karen and Kachin troops, which proved to be ruthlessly efficient, in suppressing the Burmese Communist rebellion that started in March 1948 centred on their stronghold of Pyinmana.[1] The situation went from bad to worse when U Nu raised the Sitwundan auxiliary troops in order to reduce the government's heavy dependence on ethnic troops, and not least in anticipation of a Karen insurrection. They were put under the command of Maj. Gen. Ne Win and not the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Smith Dun, a Karen who was later removed and replaced by Ne Win on January 31, 1949. They soon outnumbered the Karen Rifles and Union Military Police (UMP), and were subsequently used against the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), a paramilitary force formed in July 1947 by the Karen National Union (KNU), and the Karen UMP units.[1]
History repeated itself when the KNU was judged to be a separatist movement as an 'imperialist plot' at the Left Unity talks in July/August 1948 between the AFPFL and the PVO (Pyithu yèbaw or People's Volunteer Organisation, a paramilitary force formed earlier by Aung San from BIA veterans) and their allies the Communists. A gun-running plot had been uncovered involving an Anglo-Burmese officer ,Capt. Vivian, who was convicted and jailed but later escaped with the Karen; he was linked to U Saw who was in the frame for the assassination of Aung San and six other cabinet members in July 1947. Another plot led by Col. Cromarty-Tulloch, an ex-Force 136 adventurer, and a few other Britons and Anglo-Burmese officers, in the early days of the Karen insurrection, was also uncovered shortly after it started.[1] Naw Seng, a commander of the Kachin Rifles, after being dispatched to suppress the Karen revolt, joined the KNDO whose ranks now swelled from the defection of the Karen Rifles; he then went on to lead the Pawng Yawng rebellion before going into exile to China in 1950, only to make a comeback in 1968 as a Communist commander.[1]
It was not just the Karen and Mon that rose up in rebellion, soon after independence in early 1949. The Rakhine led by the veteran monk U Seinda started an insurrection as early as 1946 followed by the Rakhine Mujahid in December 1947 in northern Arakan along the border of today's Bangladesh, migrants and their descendants from East Bengal. The Karenni revolt however was precipitated by a Baptist-Catholic split in its leadership in August 1948, when the veteran leader Bee Tu Re was brutally murdered, and as a result the Kyebogyi Sawbwa Sao Shwe took up arms against the AFPFL-backed Kantarawaddy Sawbwa Sao Wunna, both ex-Force 136 and erstwhile comrades-in-arms, and Sao Shwe was later aided by Tulloch.[1]
But it was not until the early 1960s that the Kachin rebellion, triggered by the former Marxist U Nu's declaration of Buddhism as state religion, and the Shan rebellion, triggered by Gen. Ne Win's coup d'etat of March 1962, took off. In fact it was the Shan Federal Movement, led by Sao Shwe Thaik and aspiring to a 'loose' federation with Burma, but seen by army hardliners as a separatist movement insisting on the government honouring the right to secession after 10 years provided for by the 1947 Constitution to both the Shan and the Karenni, which precipitated the coup.[1] Ne Win had already stripped the Sawbwas of their feudal powers in exchange for comfortable pensions for life in 1959 during his caretaker government.[1] His 1962 coup put paid to the 1947 Constitution and what little remained of the Panglong spirit.[1] The Chin launched a rebellion also in the 1960s. The Kayan insurgency in the Shan substate of Mong Pai was triggered by the first 'demonitisation' declaring the 100 and 50 kyat notes illegal in 1964 which wiped out the savings of hill farmers as well as the rest of the country
The Regional Autonomy Enquiry Commission in October 1948, though now expanded to include six Karens, six Mons, five Arakanese, seven Burmans and four others, did not report until February 1949, by which time the Karen rebellion had already broken out. The Karen had repeated their controversial demand to include Karen majority areas of the Irrawaddy Delta in the independent Karen state as well as a joint Mon–Karen independent state in the areas of the Tenasserim where they could not stake an exclusive claim.[1]
Communal relations turned sour when the AFPFL government deployed Karen and Kachin troops, which proved to be ruthlessly efficient, in suppressing the Burmese Communist rebellion that started in March 1948 centred on their stronghold of Pyinmana.[1] The situation went from bad to worse when U Nu raised the Sitwundan auxiliary troops in order to reduce the government's heavy dependence on ethnic troops, and not least in anticipation of a Karen insurrection. They were put under the command of Maj. Gen. Ne Win and not the Army Chief of Staff Gen. Smith Dun, a Karen who was later removed and replaced by Ne Win on January 31, 1949. They soon outnumbered the Karen Rifles and Union Military Police (UMP), and were subsequently used against the Karen National Defence Organisation (KNDO), a paramilitary force formed in July 1947 by the Karen National Union (KNU), and the Karen UMP units.[1]
History repeated itself when the KNU was judged to be a separatist movement as an 'imperialist plot' at the Left Unity talks in July/August 1948 between the AFPFL and the PVO (Pyithu yèbaw or People's Volunteer Organisation, a paramilitary force formed earlier by Aung San from BIA veterans) and their allies the Communists. A gun-running plot had been uncovered involving an Anglo-Burmese officer ,Capt. Vivian, who was convicted and jailed but later escaped with the Karen; he was linked to U Saw who was in the frame for the assassination of Aung San and six other cabinet members in July 1947. Another plot led by Col. Cromarty-Tulloch, an ex-Force 136 adventurer, and a few other Britons and Anglo-Burmese officers, in the early days of the Karen insurrection, was also uncovered shortly after it started.[1] Naw Seng, a commander of the Kachin Rifles, after being dispatched to suppress the Karen revolt, joined the KNDO whose ranks now swelled from the defection of the Karen Rifles; he then went on to lead the Pawng Yawng rebellion before going into exile to China in 1950, only to make a comeback in 1968 as a Communist commander.[1]
It was not just the Karen and Mon that rose up in rebellion, soon after independence in early 1949. The Rakhine led by the veteran monk U Seinda started an insurrection as early as 1946 followed by the Rakhine Mujahid in December 1947 in northern Arakan along the border of today's Bangladesh, migrants and their descendants from East Bengal. The Karenni revolt however was precipitated by a Baptist-Catholic split in its leadership in August 1948, when the veteran leader Bee Tu Re was brutally murdered, and as a result the Kyebogyi Sawbwa Sao Shwe took up arms against the AFPFL-backed Kantarawaddy Sawbwa Sao Wunna, both ex-Force 136 and erstwhile comrades-in-arms, and Sao Shwe was later aided by Tulloch.[1]
But it was not until the early 1960s that the Kachin rebellion, triggered by the former Marxist U Nu's declaration of Buddhism as state religion, and the Shan rebellion, triggered by Gen. Ne Win's coup d'etat of March 1962, took off. In fact it was the Shan Federal Movement, led by Sao Shwe Thaik and aspiring to a 'loose' federation with Burma, but seen by army hardliners as a separatist movement insisting on the government honouring the right to secession after 10 years provided for by the 1947 Constitution to both the Shan and the Karenni, which precipitated the coup.[1] Ne Win had already stripped the Sawbwas of their feudal powers in exchange for comfortable pensions for life in 1959 during his caretaker government.[1] His 1962 coup put paid to the 1947 Constitution and what little remained of the Panglong spirit.[1] The Chin launched a rebellion also in the 1960s. The Kayan insurgency in the Shan substate of Mong Pai was triggered by the first 'demonitisation' declaring the 100 and 50 kyat notes illegal in 1964 which wiped out the savings of hill farmers as well as the rest of the country
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