Pa'O Self-Administered Zone

Pa-O Self-Administered Zone ပအိုဝ်းကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ ပအိုဝ်ႏနမ်းပဲင်ႏအိုပ်ချုတ်ခွင်ꩻလꩻဒေႏသ
Self-administered zone
Headquarters of the Leading Body
Flag
Location in Shan State
Country	Myanmar
State	Shan State
No. of Townships	3
Capital	Hopong
Area
• Total	8,386 km^2 (3,238 sq mi)
Elevation	1,079 m (3,541 ft)
Population  (2008)[1]
• Total	380,427
• Density	45/km^2 (120/sq mi)
Demonym	Pa'O
Time zone	UTC+6.30 (MMT)

The Pa'O Self-Administered Zone (Burmese: ပအိုဝ်းကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရဒေသ [pəʔo̰ kòbàɪɰ̃ ʔoʊʔtɕʰoʊʔ kʰwɪ̰ɰ̃ja̰ dèθa̰]), also abbreviated as Pa'O SAZ, as stipulated by the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar, is a self-administered zone consisting of three townships in Shan State. ^[2][3]

History

Pa'O SAZ's official name was announced by decree on 20 August 2010.^[4]

In the wake of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état and ensuing civil war, Pa'O youths, like many throughout the country, formed and joined resistance forces like the Pa-O National Defence Force, in opposition to military rule.^[5][6]

On 24 February 2023, fighting began in Pinlaung Township, forcing more than 5,000 villagers to flee, including most villagers from Namneng.^[7][8] On 11 March 2023, the village of Namneng became the site of the Pinlaung massacre, during which Myanmar Army troops killed at least 30 civilians, including 3 Buddhist monks.^[9]

Government and politics

The zone is currently under the de facto control of the Pa-O National Organisation.

Headquarters of the Leading Body at Hopong

Administrative divisions

The Zone is divided into three townships:

townships of Pa'O SAZ

  Hsi Hseng Township

  Hopong Township

  Pinlaung Township

The three townships are administratively part of Taunggyi District.

References

1. "2014 Myanmar Population and Housing Census" (PDF).
2. ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ (၂၀၀၈ ခုနှစ်) (in Burmese). 2008. Archived from the original on 2015-11-19.
3. ပြည်ထောင်စုသမ္မတမြန်မာနိုင်ငံတော် ဖွဲ့စည်းပုံအခြေခံဥပဒေ (၂၀၀၈ ခုနှစ်) (in Burmese)
4. "တိုင်းခုနစ်တိုင်းကို တိုင်းဒေသကြီးများအဖြစ် လည်းကောင်း၊ ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ တိုင်းနှင့် ကိုယ်ပိုင်အုပ်ချုပ်ခွင့်ရ ဒေသများ ရုံးစိုက်ရာ မြို့များကို လည်းကောင်း ပြည်ထောင်စုနယ်မြေတွင် ခရိုင်နှင့်မြို့နယ်များကို လည်းကောင်း သတ်မှတ်ကြေညာ". Weekly Eleven News (in Burmese). 2010-08-20. Retrieved 2010-08-23.
5. "'They are preparing for war': Forced recruiting by Pa-O militia in Shan". Frontier Myanmar. 2023-02-28. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
6. "Junta forces kill 29, including three monks, in southern Shan State". Myanmar NOW. 2023-03-13. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
7. "Thousands Displaced as Myanmar Junta Forces Clash With Karenni Resistance". The Irrawaddy. 2023-03-09. Retrieved 2023-03-13.
8. "Thousands Displaced By Fighting In Panglaung Township". Burma News International. 2023-03-07. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
9. "At least 30 civilians killed in southern Shan State". Democratic Voice of Burma. 2023-03-13. Retrieved 2023-03-14.

20°47′39″N 97°10′24″E