40 tourists from Thailand taken hostage by Karens in Burma (updated 22/01)

According to a Thai television channel, a group of Karen soldiers took hostage around 40 tourists from Thailand in Burma.

The Karen have reportedly asked Thai authorities to release one of their fighters.

On the morning of January 21, Thai television station Nation TV reported, citing a police source, that 40 tourists had been taken hostage by a group of Karen fighters on the Burmese border with Thailand.

According to data presented by a police source, the Karens have asked the Thai authorities to release one of their fighters who was in a Thai prison for organizing the illegal crossing of migrants.

Updated on 01/22/2017

The Karens who participated in this tourist hostage-taking have nothing to do with the Karen resistance, as I thought, they are Karens from the DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army), a group of Christian Karen who had allied themselves with the Burmese junta to fight the other Karens.

The DKBA was used by the Burmese dictatorship to attack Karen civilians even in refugee camps in Thailand.

Today, DKBA members are used as border guard forces (BGF) and work with the Burmese army.

Hostage-taking linked to child prostitution

The tourist kidnapping took place in Payathonzu district, across the border from Sangkhla Buri district in Kanchanaburi. It was resolved after half an hour of talks but highlighted ongoing tensions in Karen territory along the border.

The 37 tourists (Thai) arrived at the Payathonzu market across from the Three Pagodas Pass around 9 a.m. in three vans. An unknown number of Karen members of the Border Guard Force (BGF) suddenly appeared to arrest the tourists.

Thai authorities then quickly sent a team of officials and security personnel, led by Khanchai Theerakul, district chief of Sangkhla Buri, to hold talks with Myanmar military authorities.

After negotiations, the guards agreed to release the 37 Thais, who returned safely to Thai soil.

Colonel Piyapong Klinpan, deputy commander of the task force at Surasi military camp, said Saturday's incident appeared to stem from a Thai police operation to arrest people involved in human trafficking on January 18.

The operation involved police officers from the Anti-Human Trafficking Division posing as clients and offering to purchase sexual services from six sex workers at Payathonzu for 8,000 baht.

After the transaction, two hired motorcyclists transported the six women across the border to a station.

When the six women arrived, the police arrived to arrest them. Two of them were released as they were over 20 years old. The other four girls, aged 16 and 17, and the two motorcyclists from Myanmar were arrested and taken to Bangkok.

Following Saturday's incident, the Three Pagodas border crossing has reopened and is operating normally.

The Karens, victims of France

The Karen are a Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group located mainly in Burma but some of whom live in Thailand.

In the 1990s, France discovered a large gas field in the Andaman Sea. Total won the contract, and France provided financial and military assistance to the Burmese dictatorship to eliminate the Karen resistance and build a gas pipeline right through what was Karen country, Kawtoolei.

Today the French media speak in unison of the Thai government as a dictatorship, when this is not at all the case. On the other hand, when our country participated in human rights violations by supporting the bloody Burmese dictatorship, we did not hear them, because it was not in their interest to tell the truth!

We must always keep in mind that information is given to us according to the economic interests of our country, that there is no free press, even (and especially) in France...