Red Karen

The Kayah, also called Karenni or Red Karen, are a subset of the people of the Karen in Myanmar. They are among the Southeast Asian hill tribes and settled mostly in Kayah State. Their ancestors migrated from southern China a likely to Myanmar. As members of the Karen are attributed to the Tibeto-Burman peoples, which in turn form a branch of the Sino-Tibetan family of nations. Under British administration, the Kayah lived in a largely independent state in 1947 incorporated the Union of Burma. Due to the ongoing civil war, but fled from the 1980s numerous Kayah to Thailand, where they are currently housed in UN refugee camps.