‘Our Village Was Burnt’: Karen Refugee Naw Woo

Naw Woo doesn’t know her age exactly but she thinks that she is about 40 years old. Naw Woo grew up in a small village in the Karen State, helping her parents make a living with hill-side plantations. Conditions were harsh and sometimes the villagers had little more to eat than rice with salt. Other times they had to substitute rice for bamboo shoot or anything else they could find in the jungle. The villagers also regularly fled from Burmese soldiers who came to their village with no warning, demanding porters and torturing and beating anyone who got caught running away from them. Naw Woo and other villagers lived in a constant state of fear, and many villagers lost their lives amidst fighting between Burmese and Karen soldiers. Eventually, Burmese soldiers burnt their whole village to the ground. Naw Woo now lives in Mae La refugee camp, the largest of the camps on the Thailand-Burma border, and hopes she will not have to go back to the land she so desperately escaped from.

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**The following is a passage from Naw Woo’s story, published in Burma Link’s book “Lives on the Line: Voices for Change from the Thailand-Burma Border.”**

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… Some people hid under their houses making a hole in the ground. There was one woman breastfeeding her baby who came out from the hole and was hit by a bullet and died.

One of my relatives was shot because he was accused of being a KNU

[Karen National Union] soldier. Burmese soldiers also shot towards one house as they thought KNU soldiers were hiding there, but instead two young brothers and one sister who were hiding in the house died. Yes, sometimes they fought around our houses in our village. Then, our houses were shot at and our village was burned.

Some of the villagers were killed. There was a pregnant woman who was shot and [who] died.

[When we fled] it was the rainy season. The Burmese [military] came to our house at that time. We were afraid of them and we fled from the house. On the way we walked, we had to be afraid of the landmines. We just followed other people… >>> Read the full story on Lives on the Line

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