Saw Chit Thu

Colonel Saw Chit Thu (စောချစ်သူ) is a Karen military officer and former insurgent commander who is the current general secretary and executive advisor of the Central Command of Border Guard Forces (BGF).[1][2][3][4] Saw Chit Thu is a former commander of DKBA Battalion 999, and majority of BGF troops operating in Karen State are from the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) faction that broke away from the Karen National Union (KNU) and allied itself with the Burma Army in 1994.[5] Among the DKBA leaders, he is believed to the most powerful decision-maker in both the DKBA's military wing and its political administration.[6]

In 2010, he accepted the Burma government’s demands to transform itself into the Border Guard Force, under the command of the Tatmadaw.[7] In 2017, Saw Chit Thu began working with a Hong Kong-registered company called Yatai International Holding Group to develop the Shwe Kokko project. He also owns large businesses dealing with logging and auto trading, and he is rumored to be involved in drug trafficking.[8][9] In December 2020, the Tatmadaw pressured Saw Chit Thu and other high-ranking officers including Major Saw Mout Thon and Major Saw Tin Win, to resign from the BGF. Major Saw Mout Thon of BGF Battalion 1022 resigned on January 8, and on 8 January 2021, following 13 commanders, 77 officers and 13 battalions of 4 regiments collectively signed and submitted their resignations.[10] Under pressure amid controversy, at least 7,000 BGF members resigned to protest the ouster of their top leaders. However, Saw refused to retire.[11]

In November 2022, he was awarded the title of Thiri Pyanchi, one of the country’s highest honors.[12]

References
  1. "BGF Colonel Saw Chit Thu appeals for more time before resigning". Monnews. 21 January 2021.
  2. "Colonel Chit Thu – "Border Guard Force Stands By The Karen People…"". Karen News. 27 August 2014.
  3. "Karen State Militia Leadership Quits en Masse After Military Ousts Its Chief". The Irrawaddy. 15 January 2021.
  4. "Uniting ethnic Karen armed groups 90 per cent successful". Mizzima. 30 November 2018.
  5. "ကရင်လူထုကောင်းစားရေးအတွက် ကေအန်ယူ အပေါ်သစ္စာဖောက်ခဲ့ရဟု ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီး စောချစ်သူပြော". DVB (in Burmese). 21 August 2019.
  6. "The Junta Hit Men". The Irrawaddy. July 9, 2009.
  7. "Kayin State BGF officers and others collectively resign". Eleven Media Group. 16 January 2021.
  8. "With conflict escalating, Karen BGF gets back to business". Frontier Myanmar. 13 May 2021.
  9. "အခုက ဟိုး တစ်ကနေ သုည ပြန်ဆုတ်သွားတာ". The Irrawaddy. 16 August 2022.
  10. "BGF ထိပ်သီးခေါင်း‌ဆောင်များ နုတ်ထွက်ခြင်းမပြုရန် တပ်မတော်တိုက်တွန်း". Myanmar NOW (in Burmese). 15 January 2021.
  11. "ယူနီဖောင်းချွတ်ရန် အစီအစဉ် မရှိသေးဟု ဗိုလ်မှူးကြီးစောချစ်သူပြော". Mizzima. 12 January 2021.
  12. "Wirathu, preacher of hate, receives top honour from Myanmar junta chief". Myanmar NOW. Retrieved 2023-01-05.


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