Palaung State Liberation Party

The Palaung State Liberation Party is an armed opposition movement among the Palaung (Ta-ang) people of the Shan State of Myanmar (Burma). Related to the Wa, the Palaung and their villages are found in a number of districts in the state. The main military activities, however, have been centered in the northern mountains between Namhsan, Namkham, and the tea-growing valleys of the former Tawngpeng substate. In these areas a Palaung sawbwa (prince) traditionally ruled.

Palaung culture and politics have always been linked with wider developments in the Shan state. Like the Shans, most Palaungs are Buddhists. In 1963 the first Palaung insurgent group, the Palaung National Force (PNF), was established under the Shan State Army before setting out on its own three years later. In 1968 a damaging split occurred between PNF troops led by Kham Thaung and those headed by three sons of the last Tawngpeng sawbwa. Kham Thaung's troops came out on top, after which the surviving son, Chao Nor Far, merged his remaining soldiers with the Shan United Revolutionary Army based in the south of the state.

In 1976 the PNF was reconstituted as the Palaung State Liberation Party (PSLP) and joined the National Democratic Front. Kham Thaung died in 1979 from battle wounds, but the PSLP worked closely with the Kachin Independence Organization and the SSA and grew into an effective military force during the 1980s, with an estimated one thousand soldiers under arms.

In 1991 the PSLP was one of the first NDF groups to agree to a cease-fire with the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) government. Under the leadership of Aik Mone, the PSLP embarked on a number of peace and development schemes in its territory, designated as Shan State Special Region 7, with the expectation that this would eventually become a Palaung autonomous region in the country's future constitution.

Kachin Independence Organization; Myanmar—History; Myanmar—Political System; Shan State; State Law and Order Restoration Council—Myanmar; United Wa State Party

Milne, Leslie. (1924) The Home of an Eastern Clan: A Study of the Palaung of the Shan States. Oxford: Clarendon.

Smith, Martin. (1999) Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity. 2d ed. London: Zed Books.

Tzang Yawnghwe, Chao. (1987) The Shan of Burma: Memoirs of a Shan Exile. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.