Mae Sot, 10 kilometer from the Myanmar (Burma as most people here prefer to call it) is a hub of foreign research and aid projects. There are thousands of illegal migrant workers here who have escaped Burma’s tyranny, civil unrest and warring between ethnic groups and the government’s and oppressive laws
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Away from town and stretching all the way along the Thai and Burmese border are refugee camps, filled with hopeful people waiting for years, sometimes a life time, for resettlement in to countries throughout the world. Everyone I have talked to agree that they would rather be amongst their family in their home land but agree that the loss has not been great enough to take them back to a country where they live in fear and poverty.
Many people do not have enough to eat and education, although highly valued is not always possible, as children are needed to help with the family’s survival and are sent out to work either in the fields or on to the streets. Many young children are also taken to the army with a promise of food and shelter etc. Orphans are also taken in by the army and so the army becomes their way of life and family. There are 7,000 child soldiers in Burma.
Thai “brokers’ smuggle desperate truck loads of people across the border and down to Bangkok or the like to be used as cheap labor in factories, or young women as prostitutes.
One young man who I spoke with told me he paid 20,000 baht (about $600 US) , a huge amount for a Burmese to a broker who packed him and 20 others into a chicken truck, only to be caught and sent back across the border where he said he spent a month in the most terrible conditions in the jail. He was beaten, deigned food and crammed in to a 12x 8ft room with 20 others in unbelievable squalor. Others were taken to hard labor camps or used as human mine detectors. He said many workers that do make it to Bangkok are kept by their employer and become hooked on drugs as they are given amphetamines in order to keep working and so begins a cycle of degradation.
Other illegal migrant workers choose to stay in the border towns; some are lucky enough to make a life and home, many end up in what they call “sweat shops”. These are often women who are crammed in to small “factories” with no air flow or open windows or doors in fear of being caught. They sit behind sewing machines for long hours. The air is filled with fabric dust and they often suffer lung problems.
However there is hope too. Two days ago I visited a nursery school and centre that was set up by SAW (social action for women). This group provides support, housing and medical care and education for abandoned and orphaned children, women who have been raped and tortured, or who have HIV aids. The children I played with were like any other child, full of cheekiness, laughter and joy. There was an atmosphere of care and love. The young Burmese women who were in charge were part of the feeling of survival and positivity that seems to prevail over these conditions.
Yesterday I was invited to visit a school set up to house and educate children between the ages of five and seventeen who have been taken to the border by their parents and sent to “the other side” to be educated and hopefully have a better life. (Can you as a parent imagine being so desperate that you could do this for your children?). The problem for these children is that without official papers or refugee status even after being educated here in Mae Sot they will never be able to continue their education into university or officially have any support from the Thai government…that means access to health facilities unless they stay around the border towns where the Burmese and foreign aid can assist with unofficial jobs, housing, health and education. These are the people from what I have learnt so far who are in real need of support.
My friend here who has spent over a year in Burma and has just returned from a few days in a refugee camp teaching “ultimate frizbee” with a troop attached to DARE (drug and alcohol R,…not rehabilitation, something else) said that the camps seem to be well supplied with foreign aid and are quite well established villages. They can not leave the camps but have established a life there waiting for resettlement some where in the world. But I will see for my self when I visit one close to here next week with the principle from the school that I mentioned above.
Tomorrow I am invited to go back to the school where I will take some paper and crayons, a frizbee or two and some beads and twine. The older children I spoke with had quite good English skills as they have a wonderful 81 year old Burmese woman teacher living with them who learnt English from the British before and after the Japanese left during the second world war. She was such a beautiful old lady. She held my hand most of the time and the lines on her face showed her charm and wisdom.
The political and refugee situation (more and more people are crossing the border) are getting worse and the release and incarceration of political prisoners and activists is still no further ahead. The leaders for a democratic government are being silenced. The Burmese are afraid to speak out and so non violent protesting actions and event such as the killing of the protesting monk last year and the refusal of foreign aid after the cyclone here this year, still seem to be the only way possible to raise the awareness of the Burmese problems to rest of the world.
These are the experiences that make my travel filled with meaning and give a broader perspective on life. What it will mean in the long run for me is yet to be discovered, but I have been filled with humanity and the awareness of the struggle of others, particularly the children in Asia and these experiences have certainly put a new perspective on my own life.
