Talk:Karen people

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Page scope

Karen people is the page for the Karen (Sgaw Pga K'nyau; Pwo Phlong; Thai กะเหรี่ยง; Burmese Kayin), the speakers of Karenic languages in Myanmar and Thailand. It covers names and self-names, the disputed edges of the group, population, language, the Karen between the lowland courts, the mission and the rise of Karen nationalism, the war in Myanmar, the Thai state's "hill tribe" category and the Kaeng Krachan dispute, society, religion, culture, rotational farming, plant use and the cannabis record, and lists the accessions collected among them. The Kayah (Red Karen), Pa-O and Kayan, whom some classifications count as Karen, are treated as related peoples. Cannabis on the ranges and in the places named is covered on Pegu Yoma, Si Sawat and Lu Thaw.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

For Myanmar the page draws on Ashley South's study of the Karen conflict for the Transnational Institute (2011), Andrew Selth on the war years (1986), Kazuto Ikeda on the colonial censuses and the Buddhist Karen chronicles (2012), Anthony Walker (2008) and Hitomi Fujimura (2015) on the Baptist mission, Ronald Renard's review of Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung (2013), David Brenner on the KNU (2017), a Transnational Institute briefing on the 2014 census and a UCA News report of 2018. Fujimura's article is in Japanese; only its English abstract was read. For Thailand it draws on the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's entries for the Pga K'nyau and the Phlong, Kwanchewan Buadaeng (2006) on the Tribal Research Institute, Abigaël Pesses's report on Karen birth and citizenship registration (2007), a participatory research report of 2017 for the National Human Rights Commission, the 2011 text of the committee for restoring the Karen way of life (an excerpt of pp. 19–29, hosted by the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre), a report of 2022 by The Active of Thai PBS, and village studies from Chiang Mai and Tak. For society and religion in the hills it draws on Ananda Rajah's study of Palokhi, the author's doctoral thesis of 1986 published in 2008, and Bernard Moizo on the Pwo (1993). Passages from Thai and French sources are paraphrased from the original text.

Some statements reach the page through a later writer: Peter Hinton's question of 1983 and the KNU bulletin of 1986 through Renard; the figure of 1,367,673 Karens in 1949 through Selth, who takes it from Crozier; the opinion of U Hla Pe through Ikeda; the 1992 count of the Tribal Research Institute through Moizo; the 2003 count of the Department of Social Development and Welfare through Pesses; the figure of 549,400 through Phumthum and others (2020), who cite the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's database without a year; and the National Human Rights Commission figures on rotational farming both in the report itself and in Kanta and others (2022). On the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's Phlong entry, the history of the Karen of Uthai Thani, Suphan Buri and Kanchanaburi rests on สุจริตลักษณ์ ดีผดุง and สรินยา คำเมือง (2540 BE, 1997), and the tribute of elephants to Chiang Mai on Mischung (1980). None of these was read in the original.

Where the sources disagree

Size of the Karen population. No census of Myanmar since the colonial period counts the Karen reliably, and the ethnic tables of the 2014 census were not released. The page gives the 1983 census share, the estimate of three to seven million (South), the KNU's figure of 7 million for 1986, Crozier's 1949 figure and the Karens' own claim of more than two million then (via Selth). Other figures read and not used: about 2.2 million in Burma and 242,000 in Thailand (Rajah, an undated estimate of the 1980s); four million in Myanmar and one million in Thailand (Mendiolaza 2018, citing Kanska 2008); five to seven million (Saw Soe Gyi and Waters 2023, citing Lenkova 2015); and the figures of the Encyclopedia of World Cultures entry reproduced at EveryCulture.com, which give 1,350,000 in the 1931 census and about 185,000 in Thailand.
The 438,131 figure for Thailand. Pesses dates it to the Tribal Population Survey of 2003 by the Department of Social Development and Welfare; the National Human Rights Commission report gives the same number for data of Mahidol University's Institute of Language and Culture for Rural Development in 2004. Tangjitman and others (2015) write of more than 430,000 Karen in 2003, citing a ministry report dated 2002. The article gives the figure with Pesses's year.
Which groups are Karen. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre lists four subgroups in Thailand (Sgaw, Pwo, Kabae or Kaya, Pa-O or Taungthu). The National Human Rights Commission report lists Sgaw, Pwo, Bwe and Pa-O. Junsongduang and others (2013) and Kaewsangsai and others (2025) give four groups that include the Pa-O or Taungthu. Songsangchun and Seelanan (2024), citing the Department of Social Development and Welfare, list Pwo, Sgaw, Pa-O and Kayah. The KNU bulletin of 1986 claimed 12 groups. In Myanmar's 2014 census the Kayah are a "major race" of their own. Glottolog classes Pa'o, Kayah and Kayan Lahwi as Karenic languages, which says nothing about how their speakers see themselves. The article names each subgroup as its source names it.
The Kayan. Glottolog places Kayan Lahwi in the Karenic family. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's Kayan entry assigns the language to the Austroasiatic family; the entry was read only through a research transcription and is not cited.
Where the Pwo of Thailand live. The Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre places the Pwo who call themselves Phlong mainly in the west and in parts of the central region. Moizo (1993) writes that the Sgaw are mostly in the west and that the Pwo make up most of the Karen settlements of the north. The article follows the Centre and does not place the subgroups by region beyond it.
Religion. The censuses of 1921 and 1931 counted about three-quarters of the Karen of Burma as Buddhists. South estimates perhaps 20 per cent Christians in Myanmar. Phumthum and others (2020) state that more than 90 per cent of the Karen of Thailand practise animism; Phumthum and Sadgrove (2020) that almost all do. Single villages range from mainly Christian (Mae Hae Tai; four villages in Tangjitman and others 2015) to Buddhist. Mendiolaza (2018), citing South (2007), gives 25–30 per cent Christians and 5–10 per cent animists; the figure is not used.
Bang Kloi and Chai Phaen Din. The English sources spell the second place Jai Pandin; the Thai press writes ใจแผ่นดิน. The article uses Chai Phaen Din throughout. The Cross Cultural Foundation's account of the operation of 2010–2011 is an advocacy group's; the Administrative Court's ruling of 2016 and the Department of National Parks' position of 2020 are given beside it. The Foundation dates the disappearance of Billy to 2013 in its timeline; the Department of Special Investigation and the Bangkok Post give 17 April 2014, which the article follows. The Foundation reports that the bones found in 2019 were Billy's; the court in 2023 held that the forensic evidence did not establish this. Both are given.
Kawila and the Karen captives. The Phlong entry dates the captives brought to Chiang Mai by Kawila to "ค.ศ. 1802 (พ.ศ. 2355)", citing Renard (1980); the two years do not match (1802 CE is 2345 BE). The article gives no year.
The KNU's de facto government and the DKBA split. South describes the DKBA as founded in protest against Christian domination of the KNU; Brenner as the mutiny of Buddhist soldiers against discrimination in a Christian-dominated movement. Both readings are close; the article gives Brenner's, attributed.

Cannabis: sources and how far each goes

Lewe township, Yamethin district. The statement that "It was only Karens who cultivated large quantities of ganja for sale to timber traders (Thitgaungs)" is that of Maung Gyi, the township officer of Lew (Lewe), recorded by J. E. Bridges, Commissioner of the Eastern Division, in his evidence to the Hemp Drugs Commission (vol. VII, p. 378). It describes the time of the Burmese kings. Whether the officer saw the growing himself is not stated. No source read places these Karens on the Pegu Yoma.
J. S. D. Fraser, Deputy Commissioner of Pegu (vol. VII, pp. 387–388), framed his answers from enquiries among officials and residents. His "Formerly by Karens and Talaings" answers the Commission's printed question 17, "By what classes of the people are the preparations of the hemp drug respectively made?". It is about who made the preparations, not who grew the plant, and the article keeps it in those terms. "Talaing" is the colonial name for the Mon.
The Pegu Yoma. The Toungoo (1914, p. 66) and Tharrawaddy (1920, pp. 93–94) district gazetteers are statements of the district administration and name no informant or Karen group. The police report of 1903 (para. 44) has Indian traders buying ganja "from Shans in the Pegu Yomas"; it does not say whether the Shans grew it. The Imperial Gazetteer (1908) says the plant "grows wild on the Pegu Yoma". The sources do not settle whether these describe different valleys or different decades, and the article gives the Karen and Shan statements side by side. The plantations destroyed in 1921, 1975 and 1979 are reported without their growers, and are left to the page on the range.
Si Sawat. The account rests on one informant, a 56-year-old Karen man called Phi Ton, interviewed for Niphatphon Phengkaeo's book ปฏิวัติกัญชาสยาม ๒๕๖๒ and known here through the excerpt published by Bangkok Biz News on 18 February 2021. The excerpt names Decha Siripat as the book's publisher. The book itself could not be obtained: no library or e-book copy was found. The excerpt does not name the village or date the interview. The author calls the people visited the Karen of the western border, and the informant speaks of "the border of Kanchanaburi", but Si Sawat District does not itself reach the Myanmar border: Sai Yok and Thong Pha Phum districts lie between. The variety names are given in the Thai script of the excerpt with a romanisation; chong wa is the excerpt's Thai spelling (ช่องวา) of the Karen name, which is not given in a Karen script.
Mae Ramat, 2013. The only text read is the TeeNee.com repost of 22 February 2013, which credits the newspaper Matichon; the Matichon original was not found online. The hiring of "Hmong and Karen" workers by financiers is the police commander's statement from the early investigation; no worker was named or arrested in the report.
Kaeng Krachan. The article gives the accusation of 18 March 2021 and the Bang Kloi villager's reply of 19 March, both from the Matichon Weekly report. The photographs said to show cannabis were not published there. A newspaper clipping held by the Silpakorn University library (e-clipping 570786), reporting that the Department of National Parks was preparing to move more than 1,000 "Karen-Karang" people out of the park after its head said they had opened forest for cannabis fields, was read but is not cited: neither the newspaper nor the year is printed on the clipping. A Sanook report of 1 May 2013 on a helicopter survey of the park's upper catchment found clearings "mixed with" cannabis at 16 points, without naming who made them.
Use in northern Thailand. Kobori and others (2009) surveyed two Karen villages, which they do not name, on 24 February and 26 March 2003, as part of a study of methamphetamine use; 548 villagers answered (a response rate of 79.3 per cent). The study uses the word "marijuana" and counts use in the past year. It does not say whether the use was old or recent, how the plant was obtained, or give a Karen word for it.
Lu Thaw and Mutraw District. Karen News (3 July 2013) reports the KNU district office: displaced villagers began growing on their own around 2011, first for buffalo feed and then for sale. The KHRG situation update for January 2013 (published 2014) and the KHRG report chapter of 2014 say that the Burmese army asked villagers to grow cannabis and paid for it. The KHRG chapter cites its "Source #275" for this, which was not identified. The two accounts are given side by side, each attributed. Neither names the villagers' people; they are Karen only in so far as the township lies in the KNU's Mutraw District of northern Kayin State.

Cannabis: not used

The description of a YouTube documentary (พันธุ์ไทย, episode 6) says that King Chulalongkorn granted the "Tanaosri" and "Kroeng Krawia" strains to the Kalieng (กะเลี่ยง, Karen) to grow, and that the crop became one of the five goods the country then exported. It points to a mural painting in Phetchaburi and cites no document. It is not used.
A seed seller's listing for a "Thai Ta Nao Si" line from Kaeng Krachan, and a 2022 speech at a Phetchaburi event calling the province the old source of "Thai stick", name no people and are not used.
The 1975–1979 press reports of plantations destroyed in the Pegu Yoma, the 2018 eradication at Kyweh Htein Kon in Tanintharyi Township (KHRG) and the 2018 hilltop field in Si Sawat name no growers.
In Kayah State a dispensary owner protected by the Karenni Nationalities Defence Force told Frontier Myanmar in 2023 that he was growing about 100 acres (Demoso). The report does not give his people.
Rajah's list of 38 swidden crops at Palokhi (1980) includes tobacco but no cannabis. The ethnobotanical studies of Karen villages read for the page (Junsongduang and others 2013, Tangjitman and others 2015, Phumthum and others 2020, Kantasrila and others 2020 and 2024, Punchay and others 2020, Kaewsangsai and others 2025, Songsangchun and Seelanan 2024) have no cannabis in their text; their large species tables are in supplements that were not read. The texts were searched for "cannabis", "hemp", "marijuana", "ganja" and กัญชา.
Kobori and others (2009) relate the opium use they found to a "cultural and traditional use of opium, dating from the late nineteenth century" among the Karen. The phrase is the authors' own and is not used.

Not used, and why

Origin legends. The National Human Rights Commission report and Ethnologue's summary repeat the view that the Karen came from Mongolia; no historical source for it was read, and it is not used.
Customs without a source read. Frog drums, hta poetry, the white dress and the Leke script have no source among those read for the page, and are left out. The National Human Rights Commission report records a proposal to protect rotational farming as cultural heritage; no listing was found.
Refugee figures after 2011. A blog post of 2025 relaying The Border Consortium's count for 2024 (106,454 in nine camps) was read, but The Border Consortium's own page could not be opened. Winai Boonlue (2016) gives 110,607 refugees in December 2014, most of them Karen. Neither is used.
The Kayah, Pa-O and Kayan entries of the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre were read only through research transcriptions and are not cited.
The Encyclopedia of World Cultures entry reproduced at EveryCulture.com is a tertiary reference of the 1990s; its etymologies are marked as uncertain by the entry itself. It is not cited.
Singkul and Montrivade (2021), on Karen rituals in Uthai Thani and Nakhon Sawan, give Thai names for the Sgaw and Pwo that differ in places from the Sirindhorn Anthropology Centre's; the Centre's names are used.

Open content questions

The ethnic tables of Myanmar's 2014 census, which would give the first count of the Karen since 1983, have not been published.
Whether the Karen of the Pegu Yoma in the gazetteers of 1914 and 1920 were Sgaw or Pwo is not stated by any source read. A Sgaw village of the Bago range was studied in the 2000s (Fukushima and others 2007).
Whether the swidden cannabis described at Si Sawat was grown in other Karen villages of western Thailand is not settled by any source read.