Kawthoolei

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Kawthoolei (S'gaw Karen: ကီၢ်သူလ့ၤ, lit. 'land without darkness', Pwo Eastern Karen: ခါန်ႋဆူလါင့်; Burmese: ကော့သူးလေ) is the endonym for a proposed state that the Karen nationalists have sought to establish in Myanmar since the beginning of the Karen conflict in the late 1940s. In general, Kawthoolei refers to the aspirational hypothetical state imagined by Karen separatist leaders. The area variously defined as being part of Kawthoolei includes areas where other ethnic groups, such as the Mon people, predominantly live. Kawthoolei was first described as an autonomous region for the Karen people to be set up following Burma's independence from the British. But after the outbreak of the Burmese civil war in 1949, it evolved into the name of the territories controlled by the Karen National Union. In 1953, the KNU announced the declaration of the Kawthoolei Free State, based in its capital, Papun. In the 1990s, the KNU chairman Bo Mya re-aligned KNU strategy towards protecting a smaller Kawthoolei territory in Eastern Myanmar based in Manerplaw, establishing his vision of an alternate society to military dominated Myanmar. On 7 January 2026, the splinter armed group Kawthoolei Army declared the independence of the "Republic of Kawthoolei". The name "Kaw-thu-lay" was used by the government of the Union of Burma in the drafting of its 1948 constitution, which made provisions for an autonomous region for the Karenni people. Questions regarding what a Karen territory would look like and even who counts as part of the Karen ethnicity were questions left unsettled at the time of independence, in part because the Karen National Union had boycotted the elections at the time.