![]() Over the following weeks he made his way from village to village, travelling mainly by night, only stopping for as long as he felt safe. Fearing for his life he fled Rangoon, determined to join the armed insurgents hiding out in the dense jungle of southern Burma. But when Ka got back to his feet his friend remained motionless on the ground, dead from a shot in the back. Caught in the crossfire, Ka and a friend fell to the ground, desperate to escape the hail of bullets. Soldiers opened fire with machine guns on crowds of unarmed protesters, killing thousands. The military’s response was as savage as it was inevitable. Then on 8 August 1988 hundreds of thousands marched to demand the regime be replaced by an elected government. When the police killed one of his fellow protesters later that year, the universities came out in mass support. Instead he joined the student protest movement. Afterwards I didn’t want to be a teenager anymore.’ So they tortured me brutally for three days. The military was trying to locate him, but I did not have any information. ‘A close friend with whom I used to go kick boxing had disappeared. ‘It was two weeks after my birthday,’ Ka continues. By the middle of that year, rice stocks were running perilously low and public anger was boiling over. The country had suffered years of economic collapse, environmental degradation and human rights abuses as a result of the junta’s isolationist ‘Burmese way to socialism’ programme. All I cared about was how I looked, hanging out with my friends, messing with girls.’Īll that changed in 1988 – the most infamous year in Burma’s recent, tragic history. ‘I was just another obnoxious teenager,’ he tells me. ![]() And but for a single, dreadful event 16 years ago, he might never have become one. For the indigenous Karen, the white elephant is a sign of hope. They call him ‘Ka Hsaw Wa’, which in the language of the Karen means ‘white elephant’. But the many ordinary Burmese who have been abused and seen relatives killed while working on the Tatmadaw’s £1.2 billion Yadana pipeline project see him as a hero. The junta – the murderous Tatmadaw – wants him dead. Thanks to his courage the most profitable enterprise ever undertaken by the ruling military junta is under threat. The 33-year-old sitting opposite me in the lobby of a London hotel is one of the most wanted men in Burma. A few years ago he took a knife and skinned a distinctive tattoo from his right forearm. He does not give his real name, but an alias he adopts to protect his family. He goes to great lengths to conceal his identity.
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