THEY CALL US ILLEGAL

The Thai Constitution of 1997, also called the People’s Charter, has been hailed for its inclusion of numerous rights and benefits, including 12 years of compulsory and free education, public health services, as well as freedom of speech, association and movement. From 1992 to 2003, Thailand acceded to no less than six major human rights treaties. In the past few years, however, some human rights groups and others within and outside Thailand have been asking if the Thai welcome to refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers has cooled, indeed, if the overall human rights climate in Thailand is growing colder. As evidence, they point to crackdowns on illegal migrants, a “war on drugs” in 2003 that left more than 2,000 people dead in three months, and the fact that Thailand has no legal working definition of “refugee” on the books.

Despite a long history of involvement with refugees and asylum seekers and a cooperative relationship with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees dating back to at least 1975 with the first influx of Indochinese refugees, Thailand has never ratified any of the UN instruments relating to the status of refugees or stateless persons.

The more than 140,000 Myanmar nationals living in camps along the Thai-Myanmar order, though classified as “displaced persons” by Thai authorities, are recognized by UNHCR as refugees.

Elwyn woke me. He came in to sit on my floor and talk. He has many ideas and a mouth full of words. He gave me information about Thai soldiers in and around the Mae La camp, about them arresting freedoms, torturing workers who venture past the walls, even raping women.

“I have no chance to be a man, earn some baht here, no” he says.
“I would like to buy some small thing, plant rice and get more education. We have no chance for more study.”He went on speaking in memories as pictures of a sweet country land and handed-down tales of his glorious nation collided violently with the admissions of the fractured, ignoble pains of a refugee.
“They Thai solider call me illegal, immigrant. They call us displaced person and so many other bad names. I don’t want to hear it anymore. I am a man, just like you. It is not good for our hearts, these dirty things they call us, no.” I had nothing to say so I only listened, still half asleep in the hot room. I sat on the floor and listened to a pattern already familiar in speaking with Karen students here. Some of these younger ones, when given time to speak spin tales that rise up from anger, hate, bitterness and shame to intense emotions of pride and courage, nail-tough strength and intelligence.
“If we die, it’s ok,” Elwyn says plainly. I keep staring up at the wooden roof through my net, my shirt soaked in sweat.
“Better like that, maybe. But to stop struggle, that is bad, not like Karen, not like a man. We must fight to the end or die. This is simple and truth.”


*Note, Myanmar is the name recognized by the UN, but not by the US nor the Karen people who like most of the world view the name change from Burma another of the ruling military junta's slight of hand manouevers to put a 'new face' on the country as they continue to stall the peace process towards democracy.

BRIGHT BAGS SWINGING IN THE WAKE

At night all you hear is the stillness of the crickets and lizards calling out beneath the darkness. The moon is wide and bright tonight. It is the calmest thing I have seen yet and I have seen many things.

I saw so many little girls and boys; the kid girls’ faces powdered yellow in cute, rough circles. I saw them shuffling around to somewhere, dust kicked up and tiny, bright bags swinging in the wake of this child exodus headed into or out of church, homes or schools. I heard the acoustic ring of guitars in the distance, the dookay lizards making an own chorus.

Singing is around all corners here and laughter follows in smaller, widening ripples. Lives are carved out here. In the side of this mountain bamboo homes rest next to so many, many houses. Unofficial number is around 50,000 but who can call it with all these new babies crying in laps and on shoulders, women hauling bamboo poles with a swollen, pregnant stomach.
I saw the houses closely today. Dried, massive leaves sewn together make roofs, some sadly slipping off, others cracked through in this hot, arid season. The bamboo is getting old here, worn through and splitting down the middle. In other places new shelter is going up, houses raised by four men working. Tiny patches of farm gardens make tight lines between silty walks. I saw boxed in self-sufficiency. The good earthy smell of fresh, watered mud is around, a giant green snake slithering through the field. Cobras run here as well.

Across the way, the thin, ash-colored trunks grow bare up to the top of the hazy green mountain. The water flows in swells up stream, chugging and pausing as it slaps and slips over the rocks, falling down the way, cut through the green-brown of dirt and grass until it is slowed to a chocked trickle in front of my feet. On one side of the stream is the impossibly large mountain range standing high on guard. Here, now, there is only one mountain, not many to be concerned with or know. There is only one and he is so big you can hardly stand to look at him, hazy and burning in emerald green, the straight white lines of trunks breaking the burn. Below the tree line, dried-out brown rooftops dot the hillside, up and down in stacks that stick out under the green of the palms. The big, wide leaves of the palms blow in a warm wind. I stood in the heat to watch one of my student water a tiny, deep green plot. He waved across before carrying two large empty pitchers back down to the stream. On the other side of that mountain are thousands and thousands of people running through the jungles, starving and staving off malaria, bullet wounds, rape, torture and death as much as they can while they stave down crying babies, hungry stomachs, and heart through souls.

The houses on this side of the mountain, in the land around the seminary look abandoned. Piles of ash sit kicked into ditches in front of the high porches. Some young men sit underneath the raised houses, asleep in the shade. I watch their hammocks rock slowly as I pass, climbing like a Billy goat up the steep cuts. The Karen move up with ease, a natural walk. I am stumbling. Inside glassless windows, women sit on the floor, men sit chewing and spitting beetle nut down between the floor beams. Many houses are empty. I circle back, sliding downhill and catching stares from dark eyes hidden behind walls and smaller eyes hidden behind trees, children smiling then disappearing.

As the sun went down, I crossed back down to the stream. Evening of this hot day made a little warm wind to blow through the dried treetops. A rustling broke the silence as bodies broke through the brush. Men and women walked in groups through to the water, sitting down in heaps to bathe and wash clothes. The shadow rose higher up the mountainside. While the women soaked their clothes, dirty-faced kids ran across the stream, kicking a flat volleyball, splashing and shouting into this fine hour, all dressed in matching navy blue shirts with logos in a Scandinavian tongue.

Besides the European-sponsored shirts, I wondered how much would change or be different at this hour of the day if these people were home, in a free state on the other side of this mountain. It is hard to imagine. What do they feel at this hour? It is harder to know the shock of looking across the East River in New York, standing on a Kip’s Bay pier if Queens was a country I once knew but could not call home any longer. So close and well….yes, very far.

I am sure there would be large, concrete schools if these Karen could live in peace. A man could plant his own rice and not wait for one of the Burma Border Consortium groups to give it to him. There would be more water, more food and a man could call a patch of mountain land his, and not theirs or someone's. And a man’s hands could do his own work. I imagine a Karen man could then come home at this good hour and bring his family up close to his body and look into the sky and his chest would go silent and cool like a filled-up river in ways no American has known since the Natives but that we all still search for in the security of suburbia and non-thinking, at least about neighbors and the others.

FAITH BIGGER THAN HANDS

The Christian faith here is overwhelming. The photo above is a newly rebuilt church inside Burma. The past 3 in the village have been burned down by Burmese SPDC soldiers. The Karen keep building it, knowing God has a plan for them while the world ignores them.

In only one day of living with the Karen you can sense their faith coming out of corners, smell and taste it on all fronts and hear it sung earnestly. I suppose they have nothing better to do, nothing else to soak up hours. Why not go to church five times a Sunday? I am not sure though what better things exactly we have to rush off for back in the States. We seem to get ants in the pants after one hour in God’s house. I am starting to wonder if we should be so lucky to have nothing to do on the Sabbath but sit and worship. Back in New York wheels turn quickly yet there is little progress. I remember days filled in busy work, trappings and self-obsession.

Watching these people for only a few days, I already wonder if the faiths of these beaten and scarred people would change in freedom that large, massive word that seems even harder to hold along these borders. Perhaps there is no maybe about pressure building faith in a dying criminal or a low-life who knows his need for Christ long before a rich, pious man even realizes something is missing. Many of us will never know a thing about the joy a stone broke man feels when he finds one single dollar lying on the road. Still my new neighbors could be doing about 1,000 things that have nothing to do with going into a church and getting down on your knees.

THE NUMBERS

According to the US Committee for Refugees (USCR), a non-partisan private organization, Thailand hosted over 420,000 refugees and asylum seekers at the end of 2003, the overwhelming majority, 405,000, of whom were from Myanmar, including about 140,000, mostly Karen and Karenni, living in camps, of whom 20,000 were unregistered; an estimated 200,000 ethnic Shan living among the local population, and at least 50,000 from persecuted ethnic minorities living as illegal migrants.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines a refugee as a person who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country”. 96

Thailand does not employ the term “refugee” in reference to any of the populations displaced on its soil. The general term employed since 1954 has been “displaced person”, following the Ministry of Interior’s 1954 “Regulation Concerning Displaced Persons from Neighboring Countries”, which defines a displaced person as “he who escapes from dangers due to an uprising, fighting or war, and enters in breach of the Immigration Act”. 97

Thailand has not allowed the estimated 300,000 ethnic Shan refugees living along the northern border to enter designated camps, nor has UNHCR been allowed access to the Shan.

WHY WE COME

Compared to most of its neighbors, Thailand is an example of economic success and political stability, religious tolerance and ethnic pluralism, and freedom of expression. Because of this, over the past quarter-century, Thailand has played host to hundreds of thousands of Myanmar, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese and other nationals, many seeking temporary refuge from persecution or conflict in their own countries, others seeking economic opportunities unavailable at home. Yet, due to the high pressure the press put on Thailand while the country hosted refugees from Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia, Thailand has made full-access to the Karen camps difficult to journalists, the UN and private aid organizations.