“This is not only my interest – it is also my duty,” says Khay, a research fellow now based in Berlin, about his work in unraveling and better understanding Myanmar’s complex crises.
Khay’s personal story has embodied his research. Raised in Karen State during an era of armed conflict, he first became politically engaged as an engineering student at university, volunteering to document constitutional dialogues at KNU headquarters. A pivotal moment came during a flag-raising ceremony. Khay recalls a leader saying they had been struggling to raise the flag for many years, even for their lives. Hearing this, he felt reminded of his duty to his ethnic people and resolved to continue their struggle through research rather than arms. Soon after, he shifted from engineering to political research. He worked as a senior researcher for an organization in Myanmar, where he studied ethnic politics and security issues. This experience eventually led to his move to Germany.
After the 2021 coup, he returned temporarily to Karen State to document the impact of the military’s violence on local communities, researching the displacement, flow of refugee, and rise of informal governance structures in resistance-held areas. Conducting this work required caution. “I had to pass the military checkpoints using many strategies,” he recalls, underscoring the personal risk involved in even basic fieldwork. Yet it also gave him an intimate view of how ethnic organizations adapted in the face of state collapse and how grassroots governance became a crucial pillar of survival.
Central to Khay’s research is the Karen National Union (KNU), one of Myanmar’s most prominent ethnic resistance organizations. For decades, the KNU had balanced armed struggle with participation in national peace negotiations. But the coup convinced KNU leaders that dialogue alone was futile. Since then, it has pursued a multifaceted approach: continuing military resistance, forging alliances with other anti-junta forces, engaging in diplomacy, and— perhaps most significantly— investing in local administration. The organization has provided extensive training to township-level officials and prioritized “bottom-up federalism,” an alternative to the country’s historically centralized state model.
Yet the Karen movement is not without its internal debates. For example, Khay identifies a widening generational divide. While KNU leaders remain committed to a federal union, many younger Karen activists, particularly those in the diaspora, demand even greater autonomy, sometimes envisioning confederation-like arrangements inspired by political movements in Rakhine State. This gap, Khay argues, reflects not disunity but a dynamic political awakening. “Youth now expect more than just federalism,” he says, noting that this same ambition extends to the broader resistance movement, including Bamar-majority youth who have begun to question long-standing power hierarchies.
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