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July 04, 2007
Resettlement and Refugee Camps along the Thai/Burma Border
A small child is standing before me, with a haphazardly shaven head and two quarter-sized gold hoop earrings. His wobbly legs indicate that he has only recently learned how to walk. The child’s sweater has the look of a tenth time-around hand-me-down, made of cloth that once must have been a deep, rich shade of purple, but has now faded into a vaguely tinted grey. He is looking at me intently. Apart from his shirt he is entirely naked, no diaper, no shorts; he is entirely bare from the waist down except for his feet, which are lodged in a pair of oversized rain boots, one purple and one teal, clunking awkwardly on his little tiny feet.
Underneath the intricately woven bamboo overhang of a small restaurant, I am facing out toward a panoramic view of lush rolling mountains patterned intermittently with brown rice fields. It is the end of June and so the rice has just been planted. The tiny grass-like beginnings of what will later serve to sustain an entire village seem to be lodged inside the underskin of the earth. Exposed dirt against tropical greenery is a shock to one’s predictions up close, but from where I sit the combination of it all looks more like a quilt than a scar. Between me and the mountains a group of teenaged boys are playing. Clad in soccer shorts and colored jerseys they are maneuvering their feet with skill in a game like hackisack played with a woven bamboo ball. To my left, several older men are playing volleyball. To my right an older woman is selling fresh pineapples and avocados to passersby. The packed dirt expanse before me is alive with little kids running around with kites and stone-faced determination.
The sky here is a billowing presence. In the course of a day the color and temperature of the place changes vehemently every hour, and whether the colorful umbrellas that everyone carries serve to protect them from the rain or from the sun is a matter of minutes and inconsequence. The houses are not markedly different from those in the village nearby. The kites the children fly are made of tailored plastic trash bags, the volleyball is half deflated, and the fruit being sold was actually smuggled in by a relative lucky enough to make it safely outside and back into the camp. Despite much physical beauty, there are many loud clues about where I am.
I am in Umpium camp, one of the nine official refugee camps currently functioning along the Thai-Burma border. Until August I will be working with the International Rescue Committee’s Overseas Processing Entity on an information campaign designed to give refugees accurate information about the process of applying for resettlement and the realities of permanently relocating in the United States.
For refugees, there are usually three main options outside of staying forever in a camp. These options are known as “durable solutions” and include repatriation back to the country of origin, local integration in the country to which they were forced as refugees, and permanent resettlement in a third country. The ongoing situation for people fleeing Burma is such that no option but the third is presently viable. The actions of the SPDC have been enough for the United States to automatically recognize all members of the Karen ethnic group in Burma as refugees. Regular and systematic economic, physical and sexual abuse on the part of the Burmese Army has resulted in tens of thousands of displaced persons, some still inside Burma and others escaping across the border into Thailand. The journey into Thailand is long and terribly dangerous: those who attempt it face not only the natural dangers of the jungle like malaria, dengue fever, and deadly animals, but also a strenuous trek across Thailand’s northernmost mountain range and the ongoing danger of violent attacks.
The first big wave of refugees from Burma in to Thailand came in 1984, and many of those people are still waiting in the border camps. It was not until 2005 that the Thai government officially recognized displaced individuals within Thailand as refugees. The decision came with the condition that anyone wishing to be considered an official refugee must make their way to one of Thailand’s official border camps immediately to obtain an official registration document and status. Many people missed this deadline and aside from a few trickling exceptions, the door of opportunity has not opened again. For unregistered refugees, the only real option now is to wait. And thousands are waiting, for the Provincial Admissions Board to give the go-ahead for a substantial new wave of refugee registration in Thailand.
Unregistered individuals living in the camps are living there illegally. These include new arrivals and anyone else who missed the 2005 registration deadline. Currently, unregistered refugees are not eligible for most of the benefits, like rations, that are afforded to officially registered refugees living in the same places. Many sneak out of the camps to seek illegal employment in surrounding towns, and some even travel as far as Bangkok in search of work or education.
A man named Arthur* approached me at the end of a recent information session to ask about his case. He was a political refugee from the Aung San Suu Kyi wave in the early 1990’s, who like many others in the Burma border camps did not register on time with the UN. Like the others, Arthur was very smart, very industrious, and very much at the end of his rope. He was a tall, slender, well-dressed man approaching fifty, and his composure while he plead with us to think of alternative solutions became quickly but subtly compromised by the threat of tears in his sullen eyes while he spoke. “I cannot stay here any longer,” he explained. “There is nothing for me here. No family, no rations. I cannot even get a job as an interpreter because I only speak Burmese, and not Karen. I am withering away here.”
I thought if I were in his position I would be conducting myself the same way: asking questions ad nauseam until I felt for sure that the annals of every able person’s brains had been explored and yielded no solution. Despite his persistence, there simply was no answer to give but “you must wait, I am very sorry.” Telling him that I wish it were up to me to make the decision only gave him hope that there was something I could do. Unfortunately in the camps the sometimes the opportunity for movement comes not from will power or intelligence or strength, but rather from politics and nothing.
And not all people wish to go. Despite the lack of traditional freedom that accompanies life in a refugee camp, a large percentage of refugees in Thailand do not want to leave. For many, staying in the camp means staying with a community in which you have invested your trust and your livelihood over a long period of time. But people’s reasons for wanting to stay are not always based in such realities. Rumors circulating around the camps range from the trivial to the absurd. For a time in Mae La camp, many would say, “I heard that if I go to America I would be devoured by a giant fish and then be eaten out of a can”. Others were simply unclear about what it does and does not mean for young males to sign a mandatory selective service form. “If I go to America my son will be shipped off to Iraq to fight” is a common reason given for deciding not to resettle.
Resettlement is not the best option for everyone. The choice to apply or not is one of a litany of difficult decisions refugees in Thailand currently face, and it requires time and careful consideration. At a minimum, we can give people accurate and consistent information about how to apply and what to expect, because the consideration they give to their choice should at least be informed consideration. The information campaign evolves every day alongside the ebb and flow of cooperation between key organizers. They are right that for those who can go, life will be hard in the United States. Not as hard, though, as a Karen in a can.
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*Due to the proximity of Thailand's refugee camps to Burma, continuing nearby violence and a history of SPDC interference in border camps, as well as the political nature of many refugee persecution claims, I have changed this man's name to protect his anonymity and will refrain in future entries from identifying anyone through writing or photographs.
Posted by Bremen Donovan at July 4, 2007 08:32 AM
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