The Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP) stated on Sunday that Phone Naing, 76, a central committee member and the Karenni Army deputy chief commander, died at a hospital in Thailand while receiving treatment for an undisclosed disease on Sunday.
“Phone Naing was strict in managing his soldiers but very friendly and generous outside military affairs,” Banyar Aung, Secretary-2 of the Karenni Interim Executive Council (IEC)—a provisional government established in Karenni State in June 2023—told DVB.
Banyar Aung added that Phone Naing was like an uncle to him. The KNPP announced that a funeral service for Phone Naing would be held at an undisclosed location along the Thailand-Myanmar border in territory under the control of Karenni resistance forces on Sept. 30.
“[Phone Naing] was a battle-hardened commander who spoke little but got a lot of work done,” Neineh Plo, secretary of the KNPP “International Relations and Alliance Committee” stated on Sept. 27.
“We are not fighting for the interests of just one ethnic group. We are striving for freedom for everyone, including the Bamar people,” Phone Naing said in an interview with Kantarawaddy Times news agency on March 7, 2025.
Phone Naing began his political and military career when he joined the KNPP and the Karenni Army at age 21.
The KNPP is a founding member of the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF)—Myanmar’s premier resistance coalition established on March 30—along with the Karen National Union (KNU), the Kachin Independence Organizations (KIO), and the Chin National Front (CNF).
The SCEF includes both the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH)—two groups representing lawmakers elected in 2020 but ousted in the 2021 military coup.
