Where Htoo Now?
Far Eastern Economic Review
Issue cover-dated February 1, 2001
For the former leaders of the Karen rebel God's Army, life after battle could provide a semblance of normality
By Bertil Lintner
IT WAS CLEAR they had been well prepared for the event. Johnny and Luther Htoo, the legendary Karen twins from Burma with magical powers and their own army, had obviously been given a good scrubbing, a haircut and crisp new clothes prior to their January 17 date with the world's media in Ratchaburi, a town close to the rugged mountains that separate Thailand from Burma.
The word was that Johnny and Luther had ended their violence, and those who had been living in fear of the rebels, could breathe a sigh of relief. The twins, and their so-called God's Army, had been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks, including the storming of the Burmese embassy in Bangkok in October 1999, and a hospital siege in Ratchaburi in January last year when hundreds were held hostage. Now the threat, real or imagined, was over.
The twins, who are said to be only 13 years old, will likely be reunited with their parents at a border camp and get a chance to attend school. Both are illiterate, though their followers insist they know the Bible by heart. So, a happy ending to one of Southeast Asia's most bizarre and tragic recent stories?
No. From the beginning there was more to the stage-managed surrender ceremony than met the eye.
Local aid workers close to the refugee camps maintain that the last remaining soldiers of God's Army, including the twins, in fact disbanded in October and rejoined the Karen National Union, the main Karen movement, which they had broken away from in 1997.
According to initial reports of the surrender from Thai authorities, the twins gave themselves up peacefully after a Thai border patrol stumbled upon them. But a later version of events, from the same authorities, had it that the twins turned themselves in voluntarily. According to refugee workers the border camps were sealed off several weeks prior to the breakthrough, with food supplies being restricted. As one worker put it, "the Htoo twins were basically starved out of their hiding places."
Conditions in the border camps have never been good, a point underlined by Sadako Okata, the former United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In an October visit last year she described the main Tham Hin camp as "not up to an acceptable minimum standard for refugees." Supat Chitranukroh from the Thai Foreign Ministry retorted that the poor conditions might be seen as an effort to discourage refugees from staying, pressuring them to return home.
And that may be the central point. Ratchaburi has the potential to be developed into a major trade route between Thailand and Burma, given its proximity to Bangkok. There is also a Burmese natural-gas pipeline that runs from the Gulf of Martaban into Thailand near the town. Further, there is talk of extending the cross-border road down to the gulf and to develop a deep-sea port at nearby Tavoy that would serve both countries.
Bangkok-based Western diplomats note that the Karen rebels across the border, and even the refugees on the Thai side, are simply in the way of the grandiose development schemes. The enigmatic God's Army had to be the first to go.
And the Htoo twins? As anthropologist Theodore Stern noted, many Karens believe in a "divinely sent deliverer" whenever times are hard. This was the origin of the myth surrounding Johnny and Luther, who could make themselves invisible and were impenetrable by bullets.
However, Western missionaries also say the Karens accept this kind of prophet as easily as they turn away from them once their powers have waned. Now the child warriors have become merely pawns in a game being played out way above their heads.