Hunting For Refugees

Located approximately five kilometers from the Burmese border, there is a lot more to Mae Sot than meets the eye. This is one of those places where first impressions are always wrong, and making assumptions is one of the most dangerous things you can do. Most of its 150,000 official residents are migrant workers or refugees from Burma. This is a place where you are more likely to find someone who doesn’t speak Thai as someone who does and less likely to meet someone who is who they say they are than someone who isn’t.

The majority of the foreigners who pass through Mae Sot are adventure travelers decked out in overpriced quick dry costumes that should have stayed in storage after Crocodile Dundee 2 hit theaters a few years ago. Few westerners would ever travel to Mae Sot if it were not along the way to the Thee Lor Sue waterfalls, the sixth largest in the world. The rest of Mae Sot’s expatriate community consists of a smattering of teachers, journalists, advocates, and aid workers who concern themselves with an endless array of competing objectives, projects, and initiatives, all with the overriding goal of accomplishing one thing: fixing Burma.

Mae Sot

Despite the incredible amount of human suffering that has resulted from decades of fighting and the magnitude of the human rights abuses perpetuated by the Burmese junta, the international community has successfully managed to ignore what has been happening in Burma. Part of the problem has been the lack of attention paid to the refugee crisis by the international media. The other side of the issue is the world’s refusal to listen, to care, and ultimately, to do something about it.

My arrival in Mae Sot came suddenly. Peering into the early morning darkness through sleep-laden eyes, I pondered my next move. Equipped with little more than a few notebooks and a Nikon D70, I boarded a bus from Bangkok the night before on the somewhat naïve assumption that I could find a way to get involved in the struggle for freedom and democracy in Burma, and ultimately make a difference.

I had no idea how hard it would be to accomplish my goal. For starters, no one is supposed to be inside of a refugee camp after dark. That is not to say it never happens - you just have to meet the right people. I came to Mae Sot on a whim, and needless to say I was not well connected. After spending a day or two inquiring around, I ended up at a bar called Aiya. I was told, someone there might be able to help me.

Aiya is run by a Burmese immigrant named Myat Thu, a man who is purported to be an important figure in the network of political activists that operate from the comparative safety of Mae Sot. It was there that I heard about the demonstration that was staged for the following morning, May 27th. That day, the Prime Minister elect and pro democracy activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was supposed to be released from house arrest where she has been detained for 13 of the last 19 years by the Burmese Junta1.

The following morning, I found myself wandering through the dusty streets of Mae Sot wondering how I was even going to find it. The details of the protest were deliberately left unclear to prevent the Thai authorities from shutting it down before it even started. I may well have missed it entirely had I not spotted Paul, a Canadian journalist I had met at Aiya, riding up and down the Mosque road on his scooter.

Paul is a rather large middle-aged man whose hair would have been gray if he’d had any, judging from the color of his beard. Like many of the people I met in Mae Sot, he had nowhere else to go. It’s funny how border towns attract the sorts of people who don’t belong anywhere else. Despite the fact that his visa expired years ago, he wasn’t worried about the Thai police who would inevitably become involved once the demonstration passed the point of no return. With alarming seriousness, he coached me on what to tell them should I be detained. For the first, but certainly not the last time, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

The minutes leading up to the demonstration seemed almost comical, as I loitered on the side of the road watching the organizers secretively whispering into their cell phones. It is easy to forget that in other countries there isn’t the same freedom to assemble that people brought up in the west take for granted. I heard rumors that the police were paid 10,000 baht to allow the protest to take place in the first place.


Suddenly and with remarkable speed, a crowd of people filled the street, placards raised high above their heads demanding the release of the 2160 known political prisoners being held in Burmese prisons2. The crowd marched the short distance to the UN office to present them with a formal letter imploring them to exert more pressure on the Burmese junta, while hordes of reporters descended upon those brave enough to give statements. Less than twenty minutes later it was over, as the Thai police began to move in taking pictures of everyone at the scene. I was later told that this is standard practice. People who start showing up in the photos too often are placed under surveillance.

Later that afternoon, I was sitting with Paul at Aiya, when my break finally came. I overheard a man I would later come to know as Damien complaining that if he could just find Dan, he was going to deliver a truck full of aid to the families of Karen soldiers at Umpiem Mai refugee camp.

Although I’d only been in Mae Sot for about two days, I had already heard a lot about Dan. He is more or less a local legend best known for the seemingly contradictory traits of rampant binge drinking and his unflinching support for the Karen in their fight for freedom. More importantly, he doesn’t let borders or rules get in the way of what needs to be done, and if I had any chance of finding the people I needed to find, by all accounts, he was the man I needed to see.

Dan and his wife at the KNLA 7th Brigade Headquarters inside Burma

Damien and I walked the short distance down Intarakhiri Road to the restaurant he operates with his wife at the DK plaza. When I first saw him, he was sitting in a plastic patio chair, a beer in one hand and a cheroot burning lazily in the other. At thirty-nine years of age, he looks twenty years older than he actually is. His personal health is the least of his concerns. Last year he broke his elbow for the second time running away from the Thai border police during an attempt to bring a journalist from the London Financial Times into Burma. Many of his friends are concerned that he is going to lose his arm if he doesn’t do something, and don’t get me wrong – it looks terrible.

Before we could leave, we had to stop at the market to buy the supplies, but not before we drove the wrong way down a one-way street to the amusement of the vendors lined up on each side of the narrow road - that is except when Dan’s erratic driving threatened to demolish their stalls.

All over Asia, the raw buying power of a US dollar never failed to amaze me. For the $185.00 we cobbled together between us, we managed to buy over one hundred kilograms of fish paste, chilies, salt, oil, chickpeas, eggs, and all sorts of various non-perishable foodstuffs that were simply inaccessible to people living on a refugee budget of zero dollars per day. Even so, the Asian market experience is chaotic. As I began to wonder how anyone accomplishes anything in Thailand, Dan leaned out the car window smiling broadly. “You like the way we do aid? It’s disorganized but we get food to the people.”

Finally, we were on our way. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought we were on our way to a concert as we roared down the highway, casually sipping beer while awful Thai pop music blared over the stereo of Dan’s SUV. He bought it with the money that should have paid for an operation to fix his arm properly. Instead he has a screw that juts out of the festering wound on his elbow, an unfortunate fact that prevents him from wearing shirts with sleeves. The local doctor that put it there in the first place earned just 400 baht for his services. At least Dan’s truck is four-wheel drive.

Heading towards Umpiem Mai

For them, this was just another day of life. For me this was the adventure of a lifetime, as I gaped out the window in awe of the shifting landscape as we left the fields that surround Mae Sot and weaved our way southward into the mountains of northern Thailand. My first glimpse of Umpiem Mai came abruptly. The area around the camp is sparsely populated due to the rugged terrain. After seeing little more than scattered settlements for nearly an hour and half after we got off the main highway, a vast sea of huts appeared out of nowhere, tucked neatly in between the folds of the rolling hills in the valley where the camp was located. I felt an intense desire to start shooting pictures wildly, but as we pulled up to gate three, Damien warned me to keep my camera out of sight “until everyone was happy.”

By everyone, I mean the Palat of Umpiem, the Thai official in charge of camp security. Making him happy meant drinking bottle after bottle of Thai whisky, a practice regarded by most as the best way to establish a relationship with an important person. Backroom business meetings in Asia invariably involve drinking, and non-drinkers are frowned upon. As best I could tell, the purpose (besides having fun) is to allow each side to evaluate the trustworthiness of the other.

We spent at least two hours in the Palat’s bamboo hut, making friends as we drank several bottles of home brewed spirit made from fermented sticky rice, crunching periodically on whole barbecued frogs. Although the Palat of Umpiem has a reputation of being hard to get along with, those who have had problems in the past must not have liked to drink! By the end of the meeting, Dan managed to establish an informal partnership with him, whereby he would allow us to enter the camp in order to deliver food and supplies to the families of Karen soldiers who live in his camp. I obtained his permission for an extended stay.

From right to left: Esso, Me, Damien, Dan, Palat

After the meeting he invited us to the only restaurant for eighty kilometers in any direction, an invitation it would not have been prudent to refuse although we were nearing the point at which no one would have been capable of driving us home. We later found out that the restaurant stayed open three hours after closing time at the Palat’s wishes, for he is the king of his domain, and no one does anything without his permission. Along with plate after plate of food too spicy for me to eat, inevitably came more bottles of whisky and packages of Krong Thip cigarettes with pictures of aborted fetuses pasted prominently on the front. Making powerful friends couldn’t have been easier – until the morning after.

The next day, we made the two and half hour trip back to Umpiem Mai with another load of supplies – enough to keep the families in section fourteen situated for at least another month. The only difference this time around was that I wasn’t returning to Mae Sot. Instead, I was left under the protection of a soldier in the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) named Esso. I would spend the next five days living with him and his family inside Umpiem Mai.

The ascent into Umpiem Mai

The sun was setting as we made our way upwards into the camp. As we climbed higher and higher up the mountainside the vastness of the settlement was laid out before us, a picture perfect image of what happens when normal people get caught in the middle of a war they can do nothing about. In their helplessness, they are not alone – they represent but a small percentage of the people who have been affected by sixty years of armed resistance. Umpiem Mai is just one of nine such camps that house the 150,000 or so internationally recognized refugees from Burma3, and Umpiem Mai is nowhere near the largest. Mae La, located about two hours north of Mae Sot houses at least 37,000 refugees according to an April 2009 report released by the TBBC - about twice as many as Umpiem Mai.

There is no denying that the camp is utterly beautiful. If it wasn’t for the refugees, it could pass for one of those secluded rustic retreats where celebrities go to stay out of the public eye for a few weeks following a breast augmentation. Of course some renovations would be in order but you can see where I’m going with this. For the refugees, the quality of life hovers around tolerable. Outside employment is officially forbidden, and opportunities to work within the camp are extremely limited. If you ask the children what they want to be when they grow up, most of them will say a teacher or a medic, two of the only jobs available inside the camps. That’s not to say that the people who live there aren’t happy but resigned would be a better word to describe their outlook on life. Anything would be better then barely surviving in the jungles of Karen state. At least they know they are safe.

Karen working to fix their house inside Umpiem Mai

The following morning, Esso and I started the process of collecting information. Dressed in his civilian clothes, he looks deceptively young. With a smile that spans the length of his angular jaw, it is hard to imagine him shouldering a weapon. Donning his uniform, he morphs into a different person entirely. His jawbone seems to jut out more severely. His black eyes narrow below his furrowed brow. At twenty-six years old, Esso has spent half of his life as a KNLA soldier and you can tell. In between assignments on the front line in Burma, his job is to look after the sixty or so families in section fourteen, all of which are in some way related to the Karen war effort. It was to these families that he took me each morning and afternoon.

I could not help but feel awkward each time I visited a new family. There is no easy way to ask people to dwell upon the suffering they cannot escape. The more people I talked to the more their stories seemed to run together, for their suffering is collective. Every race is bound together by their shared experiences, and the Karen draw their strength from generations of oppression.

I asked every soldier why he took up arms and joined the KNLA, for there is no glory in jungle warfare. The soldiers are all volunteers, and give their lives willingly, enduring the hardships of life in a war zone, as their families remain poor. The answer was always the same.

As children they witnessed the crimes committed against their people by a government hell bent on staying in power. They watched helplessly as their villages were burned, their women raped, and their livelihoods destroyed. Their families were murdered, their brothers enslaved, and those who survived had no other choice but to leave their homes to become refugees in a foreign land.

None of this is new. The outside world has known what has been happening in Karen State and the rest of Burma for a long time, but little has been done to stop it. Forgotten, the Karen have been fighting for their freedom since 19494. As I was told many times, for the Karen there will be only one revolution. The soldiers I met vowed that the Karen would never stop fighting until they won freedom for their people or every last one of them was dead. These may seem like strong words coming from the KNLA who are heavily outnumbered and outgunned, but sixty years is a long time, and they are still here. As Esso put it, “it doesn’t matter if we never live to see the day our people are free because there will always be another generation to fight.”

Meeting people like Minnai, helped me understand the depth of their sacrifice. After ten years of distinguished service as a special weapons sergeant in the KNLA, his military career came to an abrupt end. During a military operation northeast of Gawcher village, a landmine explosion in late October of 2008 blinded him, one month after his only daughter was born. Taking off his dark glasses for the first time, he turned his head in my direction, his empty sockets a burning reminder that he will never know what his daughter looks like.

One of the tattoos on his arm says, “I will decide my own fortune” and he has. Minnai has sacrificed far more than his eyes for his people. Several years ago he was shot in the stomach and almost died trying to arrest a DKBA captain. He told me, “I was happy to give ten inches of my intestine for my people.” In disbelief I asked him whether or not he regretted the way he had chosen to spend his life. Smiling now, he said, “I would rather have freedom for my people than regain my sight.” It made me wonder how many American veterans would be able to say the same thing.

During my time in the camp, I spent every minute of every day at Esso’s side. I didn’t take a single picture without asking him first. Although the Palat had given me informal permission to be inside the camp, what I was doing was a sensitive matter. Esso made it clear that it was not safe for me to leave the house unsupervised. Even in a refugee camp there are informers, and my presence put him in danger. Most of the people he had introduced to me were no longer active members of the resistance but he was a wanted man.

Esso and I at his Aunts house in Umpiem Mai

On my last evening at Umpiem Mai, he surprised me as I sat hunched over my notebook on the floor. When I arrived, he told me many things about his life, but that night he wanted me to know his full story. Esso was born into a family with a long history of KNLA involvement dating back to the beginning of the war. When he was eight years old Esso and his mother were forced into hiding, barely able to survive, eating only what they could find in the jungle. His father stayed behind where his family owned land. Four years later Esso got word that his father had been executed. A simple farmer, the SPDC accused him of being a KNLA spy. He never received a trial.

The next morning one of the other villagers found his father’s severed head hanging from a mango tree. Grotesque and disfigured there was no question who it had belonged to. In 1994, Esso received a letter telling him this. That is how he found out about his father’s death. Enraged, Esso dropped out of school and begged his grandfather, at that time a high-ranking officer in the KNLA, to let him join the army. For him and many of his friends, “fighting for freedom was better than life as a slave.”

At times, he was forced to stop at the difficulty of recalling the traumatic memories from his past. His face contorted with pain as he told me how, at fifteen, he had sheared off the heads of a pair of SPDC soldiers, the same way his father was murdered. With clouded eyes, he said, “they raped a woman I had known, cut off her breasts, and then stabbed her to death.” I could hardly believe that this was the same man I had heard that morning strumming the tune of a Backstreet Boys song on his guitar, singing, “as long as you love me.”

Last year Esso got married. He says he loves his wife, but he wasn’t ready to get married. He had no choice. He explained that as a soldier, he could die at any time. He told me that he had to ensure that he did his part to raise the new generation of Karen freedom fighters. Upon hearing that his wife is pregnant, I couldn’t help but ask whether or not a life like his was really what he wanted for his child. “No one wants to live like this, but nothing will change if we don’t continue to fight.”

However, for the KNLA and its political arm the KNU, things have been changing. Their ability to mount an effective resistance has gradually weakened under the impact of continued offensives by the Burmese military, which have pushed large sections of KNLA forces out of Burma entirely, while infighting within its ranks and other Karen groups have caused further difficulties5.

I witnessed the fighting that began in early June of 2009 from across the Moei River in Thailand’s Tha Song Yang district as the SPDC and their Karen allies, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, mounted a major joint offensive against the KNLA Seventh Brigade6. In the wake of escalating conflict, early reports suggested that more than 3,000 people fled across the border into Thailand, resulting in the single largest exodus of refugees from Karen state according to the Karen Human Rights Group.

New arrivals in Thailand who fled recent fighting in KNLA's 7th Brigade

In recent days, the situation has worsened as another thousand refugees have fled their homes, this time, to avoid a campaign of forced recruitment initiated by the DKBA in order to fulfill an agreement recently signed with the SPDC which will install the Buddhist Karen as a private border security force7. The KNLA has been forced to retreat, abandoning long-standing base camps in Seventh Brigade, leaving those remaining inside Burma at the mercy of the DKBA.

It seems as though the most recent refugees to arrive on Thai soil won’t be heading home in the near future. Soon they will join the hundreds of thousands of other displaced people in waiting for democracy to come to Burma. Many people have laid their hopes on the off chance that the general elections scheduled for 2010 will bring political change, even as their top candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi, stands on trial for violating the terms of her house arrest. Most are waiting for the rest of the world take notice of their struggle, and finally take action. How much longer will they have to wait?
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Works Cited
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8049187.stm
2. http://www.aappb.org/
3. http://www.unhcr.org/refworld
4. http://www.crisisgroup.org
5. http://thejakartaglobe.com/world/60-years-on-weakened-karen-rebels-still-fighting/317688
6. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8088947.stm
7. http://www.danielpedersen.org/articles-about-burma/report-refugees-fate-in-the-hands-of-warring-armies/