ABSTRACT
The Kachin are a minority tribal group of Tibeto-Burman linguistic affiliation who inhabit the north-eastern uplands of Burma adjacent to India and the People's Republic of China. They have been party to rebellion against the central government in Rangoon since the early 1960s. Before independence, their sense of separate cultural identity was reinforced by the influence of Christian missionaries and by recruitment into the colonial army. The date of its foundation was given as 1951 in order to demonstrate a direct lineal descent from the Vietnamese-dominated Communist Party of Indochina founded by Ho Chi Minh in 1930. Its first secretary-general was Pen Sovan, who was replaced by Heng Samrin in December 1981. The Karen is a substantial but less than homogeneous ethnic minority in Burma who have long resisted domination by the government in Rangoon through armed struggle. The Karen position crumbled in December 1994 with the defection of a Buddhist faction which allied with the Rangoon government.
