Lay Kay Kaw
{{Infobox settlement
| name = Lay Kay Kaw
| native_name = လေးကေ့ကော်
| other_name =
| pushpin_label_position = bottom
| pushpin_map = Myanmar
| pushpin_map_caption = Location of Lay Kay Kaw, Myanmar
| seat =
| seat_type =
| settlement_type =
| image_skyline = Lay Kay Kaw new town.jpg
| image_caption = Lay Kay Kaw Myothit
| image_map =
| map_caption =
| subdivision_type = Country
| subdivision_name = {{MMR}}
| subdivision_type1 = State
| subdivision_name1 = 23px Kayin
| subdivision_type2 = District
| subdivision_name2 = Myawaddy
| subdivision_type3 =
| subdivision_name3 =
| established_title = Founded
| established_date = 2015
| area_total_km2 =
| population =
| population_as_of =
| population_density_km2 = auto
| coordinates = {{coord|16.599205000403824|98.52423176384484|region:MM|display=inline,title|format=dms}}
| timezone = MST
| utc_offset = +6.30
| website =
}}
Lay Kay Kaw Myothit ({{langx|my|လေးကေ့ကော်မြို့သစ်}}; {{lit|Lay Kay Kaw New Town}}) is a town in Myawaddy Township, Kayin State in southeastern Myanmar. Nine miles in the south of Myawaddy, it is close to the border with Thailand.{{cite news |title=၄ရက်မြောက် အဖြစ် လေးကေ့ကော်မှာ စစ်ရေးတင်းမာနေ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61bdc33a634f74085bb58e3d%26%E1%81%84%E1%80%9B%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%BC%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%20%E1%80%A1%E1%80%96%E1%80%BC%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%20%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B7%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%BE%E1%80%AC%20%E1%80%85%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9B%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%90%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%99%E1%80%AC%E1%80%94%E1%80%B1%262021-12-18T11%3A17%3A16.387Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:37cf02fc-4bc4-4f22-a1b5-4cbc94dec06b&pinned_post_asset_id=61bdc33a634f74085bb58e3d&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}}
In recognition of the Burmese military's negotiations with Karen National Union,{{cite news |title="စစ်မဲ့ဇုန်"လေးကေ့ကော်က တိုက်ပွဲနဲ့ နောက်ဆက်တွဲအလားအလာ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-59666803 |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}} the oldest ethnic armed organization in the country,{{cite news |title=Explainer: Karen rebels step up attacks as Myanmar army struggles to rule |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/karen-rebels-step-up-attacks-myanmar-army-struggles-rule-2021-04-27/ |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=Reuters |date=27 April 2021 |language=en}} Lay Kay Kaw was built as a "town of peace"{{cite news |title=စစ်ကောင်စီဘက်က အင်အားသုံးတိုက်ခိုက်လာနိုင်တယ်လို့ KNDO ပြော |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61beb20199991e76caa305e7%26%E1%80%85%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%85%E1%80%AE%E1%80%98%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%20%E1%80%A1%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%A1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%B8%E1%80%9E%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B6%E1%80%B8%E1%80%90%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%81%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9C%E1%80%AC%E1%80%94%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%90%E1%80%9A%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9C%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B7%20KNDO%20%E1%80%95%E1%80%BC%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%262021-12-19T04%3A18%3A14.547Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:a132a3e5-68ac-42e7-b295-5715d01e55f5&pinned_post_asset_id=61beb20199991e76caa305e7&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}} in 2015.{{cite news |title=Challenges Beset New Myanmar Village for Karen Refugees |url=https://www.voanews.com/a/challenges-beset-new-myanmar-village-for-karen-refugees/4672828.html |access-date=20 December 2021 |language=en}}{{cite news |title=Myanmar battlefield rises from the ashes |url=https://www.mmtimes.com/news/myanmar-battlefield-rises-ashes.html |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=The Myanmar Times |date=6 December 2019}}
History
=2015–2020=
With the support of Nippon Foundation,{{cite news |title=Japan's gamble to help Myanmar's peace process |url=https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-s-gamble-to-help-Myanmar-s-peace-process |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=Nikkei Asia}} Lay Kay Kaw was built in 2015 as a cooperation between the then-chief minister of Kayin State, Zaw Min, and KNU's chairperson, Saw Mutu Say Poe.{{cite news |title=လေးကေ့ကော် စစ်မီးစ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2021/12/16/248163.html |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=The Irrawaddy |date=16 December 2021}} Divided into six quarters, it has a population of more than 3000. Despite administration of the Kayin State Government, the town has been controlled de facto{{cite news |title=2,500 Myanmar villagers flee army troops into Thailand |url=https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/2500-myanmar-villagers-flee-army-troops-thailand-81809006 |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=ABC News |language=en}} by the KNU for six years.{{cite news |title=လေးကေကော်တွင် လွှတ်တော်အမတ် အပါအဝင် ၃၂ ဦး ဖမ်းခံရ |url=https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2021/12/14/248086.html |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=ဧရာဝတီ |date=14 December 2021}}
=After the 2021 coup d'état=
Since February 2021, anti-coup protesters and those who joined the civil disobedience movement came to Lay Kay Kaw to evade the military.{{cite news |title=လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲခွင်ပိုကျယ်လာသလို ထိုင်းဘက်ကို ခိုလှုံလာတဲ့ ဒုက္ခသည် ထောင်ချီရှိလာနေ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/burma-59682420 |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my}} After the military conducted a search in the town in 14 December,{{cite news |title=လေးကေကော် တိုက်ပွဲအတွင်း စစ်ကောင်စီတပ်၏ သေဆုံး၊ အဖမ်းခံရစာရင်း ထုတ်ပြန် |url=https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/news/9697 |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=Myanmar NOW |language=my}} clashes broke out between the military and local armed groups the next day.{{cite news |title=လေးကေကော်ကို စစ်ကောင်စီ ဝင်တိုက်မှုအပေါ် KNU အမြင် |url=https://burmese.voanews.com/a/knu-condemns-sac-on-lay-kay-kaw-new-town/6356416.html |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=VOA Burmese |language=my}} At least 2500 local villagers{{cite news |title=More than 2,500 flee to Thailand as rebels clash with Myanmar army |url=https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/hundreds-flee-thailand-rebels-clash-with-myanmar-army-2021-12-17/ |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=Reuters |date=17 December 2021 |language=en}}{{cite news |title=လေးကေကော်တွင် စစ်တပ်က အလောင်းလာကောက်ပြီးနောက် တိုက်ပွဲပြင်းထန် |url=https://www.myanmar-now.org/mm/news/9722 |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=Myanmar NOW |language=my}} fled to Mae Sot, border town in Thailand.{{cite news |title=မဲဆောက်မြို့ မဲ့တောင်းကလန်း စစ်ဘေးရှောင်စခန်း မှာ လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသစစ်ရှောင် ၄၀၀၀နီးပါး ခိုလှုံနေရ |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61bd5215d299cd67a8112c30%26%E1%80%99%E1%80%B2%E1%80%86%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B7%20%E1%80%99%E1%80%B2%E1%80%B7%E1%80%90%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%9C%E1%80%94%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%20%E1%80%85%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%98%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BE%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%85%E1%80%81%E1%80%94%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%20%E1%80%99%E1%80%BE%E1%80%AC%20%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B7%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%92%E1%80%B1%E1%80%9E%E1%80%85%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BE%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%20%E1%81%84%E1%81%80%E1%81%80%E1%81%80%E1%80%94%E1%80%AE%E1%80%B8%E1%80%95%E1%80%AB%E1%80%B8%20%E1%80%81%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%9C%E1%80%BE%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B6%E1%80%94%E1%80%B1%E1%80%9B%262021-12-18T03%3A14%3A31.709Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:02fa2688-998e-4108-86e5-2bccc116d873&pinned_post_asset_id=61bd5215d299cd67a8112c30&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}} After a shell landed in a sugarcane plantation, and a small fire broke out, Thai authorities, through Thai–Myanmar Border Committee, issued a warning that "it was prepared to retaliate if stray artillery shells landed on Thai soil",{{cite news |title=လေးကေ့ကော်တိုက်ပွဲတွေအတွင်း ထိုင်းဘက်ကို လက်နက်ကြီးကျည် ကျရောက်မှု ထိုင်းက ကန့်ကွက်အကြောင်းကြားစာပေးပို့ထား |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61bc2d994a8abc5c898914c0%26%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B7%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%90%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%95%E1%80%BD%E1%80%B2%E1%80%90%E1%80%BD%E1%80%B1%E1%80%A1%E1%80%90%E1%80%BD%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%20%E1%80%91%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%98%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%20%E1%80%9C%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%94%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AE%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%BB%E1%80%8A%E1%80%BA%20%E1%80%80%E1%80%BB%E1%80%9B%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%BE%E1%80%AF%20%E1%80%91%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%20%E1%80%80%E1%80%94%E1%80%B7%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%E1%80%BD%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%A1%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AC%E1%80%B8%E1%80%85%E1%80%AC%E1%80%95%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%95%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B7%E1%80%91%E1%80%AC%E1%80%B8%262021-12-17T06%3A40%3A04.084Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:5f6320cc-0b96-49b1-ab11-eb13fc46ad87&pinned_post_asset_id=61bc2d994a8abc5c898914c0&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}} and Thai armed forces were deployed in the border area.{{cite news |title=လေးကေ့ကော်စစ်ရှောင်ပြည်သူတွေနေတဲ့ ဖလူးကြီးရွာကို လက်နက်ကြီးတွေကျရောက် |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61bf140099991e76caa30651%26%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B7%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%85%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BE%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%95%E1%80%BC%E1%80%8A%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9E%E1%80%B0%E1%80%90%E1%80%BD%E1%80%B1%E1%80%94%E1%80%B1%E1%80%90%E1%80%B2%E1%80%B7%20%E1%80%96%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B0%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AE%E1%80%B8%E1%80%9B%E1%80%BD%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%20%E1%80%9C%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%94%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%AE%E1%80%B8%E1%80%90%E1%80%BD%E1%80%B1%E1%80%80%E1%80%BB%E1%80%9B%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%BA%262021-12-19T11%3A14%3A11.310Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:98ee922f-c580-43f0-af8f-61c726d8bf37&pinned_post_asset_id=61bf140099991e76caa30651&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}} On 20 December, KNU urged the UN and international community to establish the area as a no-fly zone.{{cite news |title=လေးကေ့ကော်ဒေသကို လေကြောင်းပျံသန်းမှု ကင်းမဲ့ဇုန်အဖြစ်သတ်မှတ်ပေးဖို့ UN အပါအဝင်နိုင်ငံတကာကို KNU တောင်းဆို |url=https://www.bbc.com/burmese/live/burma-59562110?ns_mchannel=social&ns_source=twitter&ns_campaign=bbc_live&ns_linkname=61c0770e634f74085bb59231%26%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B7%E1%80%80%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%BA%E1%80%92%E1%80%B1%E1%80%9E%E1%80%80%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%20%E1%80%9C%E1%80%B1%E1%80%80%E1%80%BC%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%95%E1%80%BB%E1%80%B6%E1%80%9E%E1%80%94%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%99%E1%80%BE%E1%80%AF%20%E1%80%80%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%99%E1%80%B2%E1%80%B7%E1%80%87%E1%80%AF%E1%80%94%E1%80%BA%E1%80%A1%E1%80%96%E1%80%BC%E1%80%85%E1%80%BA%E1%80%9E%E1%80%90%E1%80%BA%E1%80%99%E1%80%BE%E1%80%90%E1%80%BA%E1%80%95%E1%80%B1%E1%80%B8%E1%80%96%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%B7%20UN%20%E1%80%A1%E1%80%95%E1%80%AB%E1%80%A1%E1%80%9D%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%94%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%84%E1%80%B6%E1%80%90%E1%80%80%E1%80%AC%E1%80%80%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%20KNU%20%E1%80%90%E1%80%B1%E1%80%AC%E1%80%84%E1%80%BA%E1%80%B8%E1%80%86%E1%80%AD%E1%80%AF%262021-12-20T12%3A29%3A03.088Z&ns_fee=0&pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:a042c1a7-7bcf-4a92-8144-44d055dbdc14&pinned_post_asset_id=61c0770e634f74085bb59231&pinned_post_type=share |access-date=20 December 2021 |work=BBC News မြန်မာ |language=my-MM}}
On April 21, 2024, 24 Filipinos trafficked by a Chinese scam centre in the town's Dong Feng Park were rescued by police attachés of the Philippine Embassy of Thailand with the cooperation of Thai authorities.{{cite news|last=Novio|first1=Eunice Barbara C.|title=24 'trafficked' Filipinos rescued in Myanmar|url=https://globalnation.inquirer.net/232788/24-trafficked-filipinos-rescued-in-myanmar|access-date=22 April 2024|work=Philippine Daily Inquirer|publisher=INQUIRER.net|date=22 April 2024|location=Bangkok, Thailand}}