Myanmar's ethnic minority Karen rung in their New Year with song, dance and traditional kickboxing, in celebrations a day before fresh efforts to reach a ceasefire to end the country's myriad rebel conflicts.
Tens of thousands of people, many in bright traditional clothing, thronged through teeming Yangon streets, in a three-day celebration ending on Monday.
The Karen, who are Buddhist and Christian, have their own calendar and have officially celebrated their New Year since the 1930s.
"I love my Karen people and value my ethnicity in my heart," Sa Ye KyawOo, an event volunteer told AFP.
New Year events, marked by dance competitions and bouts of the country's lethwei kickboxing, were also held across southeastern Karen state.
The guns have largely fallen silent in the state after ethnic minority rebels waged one of the world's longest insurgencies -- although recent months have seen sporadic clashes linked to smaller rebel factions. 
The conflict saw Myanmar's army accused of widespread rights abuses that prompted tens of thousands of ethnic Karen to flee their homes, many into border camps in neighbouring Thailand.
"All ethnic groups have to take responsibility for the peace process if it is going to be really successful," Mann Phoe Saw, an organiser of the festivities told AFP.
The celebrations come ahead of political dialogue between the Myanmar government and ethnic minority groups on Tuesday.
The meeting is set to be the last major push to cement the current leadership's peace-building legacy before handing over power to Aung San Suu Kyi's party which won November elections.
Suu Kyi used the New Year to send a message on efforts to end fighting between the army and rebels.
She has said ending the violence, which has plagued a horse-shoe of border regions for decades, is her first priority of government.
"We will have to build a peace that takes into account the rights of ethnic people and most importantly we must be united. So let us seek out a real peace for our nation," Suu Kyi said in a statement published on her official Facebook page.
The powerful Karen National Union (KNU) battled for greater political autonomy for decades before joining a peace process led by general-turned-reformist President Thein Sein.
He has targeted ending the country's myriad ethnic minority rebellions as the final plank of his agenda before handing over power to Suu Kyi's opposition in March.
Thein Sein has sought to hold up war-battered Karen as an example of the development potential for peace in Myanmar's restive borderlands.
In quotes published in the state-backed New Light of Myanmar on Monday, Thein Sein acknowledged that the Karen "have had to endure a tough road for a very long time".
"But today, the rays of peace have already dawned," he was quoted as saying.
© AFP