Bo Mya
Bo Mya ( Burmese: [ bò Mya ]; born January 20, 1927 as Htee Moo Kee in District Papun in present-day Myanmar ( Burma), † December 24, 2006 in Mae Sot, Thailand) was a politician in Myanmar, consisting of the the Karen people came.
Bo Mya was 1976-2000 President of the Karen National Union ( KNU ), then Vice President of the KNU to 2004. During World War II Bo Mya first fought on the side of the Japanese against the British colonial administration as a military policeman. But he soon switched sides and fought in 1944 and 1945 on the British side in the Force 136
After the founding of the KNU in 1947 and Burma's independence from Britain in 1948 succeeded Bo Mya quickly in the Karen National Liberation Army ( KNLA ), to make the military arm of the KNU, career. From his headquarters in Manerplaw the Salween River from it was in the 1970s and 1980s as a successful guerrilla leader. But at the beginning of the 1990s seemed to leave him his fortune.
The KNU embroiled in internal struggles. Karen Buddhist faith split from the Christian-dominated KNU and formed their own organization, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army ( DKBA ). That was the biggest disaster for Bo Mya. The DKBA rebels could lead the Burmese army in the heavily fortified headquarters of the KNU in Manerplaw thanks to their knowledge of the defenses and the location of minefields. Since then, it did not succeed in the KNU to keep solid areas. From his former subordinate army a " guerrilla gang" had become.
2004 traveled Bo Mya in the Burmese capital, Rangoon, to negotiate with Khin Nyunt, the then Prime Minister of Myanmar, about a ceasefire. There was no written contract, but it arrived at a gentlemen's agreement. This oral agreement was never seriously respected by the government side. On the contrary, the Myanmar army used the ceasefire to venture far in Karen area to create roads and build outposts. In October 2006, the KNU declared a ceasefire as not effective.
In recent years, Bo Mya was seriously ill and could only move in a wheelchair. He spent his last years in exile in Thailand's Mae Sot. In public, he was last seen in 2006 at the 57th " Karen Revolutionary Day" at a secret base near the village of Mu Aye Puu at the Salween River. There he was buried with the participation of 10,000 mourners, among them members of the Burmese military government and Thai politicians.