Facing the grind of life in limbo

As Trócaire launches its Lenten campaign, SUSAN MCKAYtravels with the charity to one of its projects on the Thai-Burmese border

IT’S THE LOOK on their faces that shocks, a look that is of something more profound than boredom, something like despair. Their eyes are unlit. These people are from Burma, but they are living in a refugee camp just across the border in northern Thailand. They’ve been here for up to 15 years.

“People who are refugees are sad. Everyday they aren’t happy. Their tears fall onto the ground all the time. They never have freedom in their life . . .” These are the words of a young person called Kham Sheng, written while in exile in Thailand. When we are introduced to the refugees they put away their sad faces. They smile. They are friendly and open. There’s a shortage of rice, but we are fed handsomely.

Theh Reh fled the military regime in Burma in 1992. He lives with his grandmother, Hency, his parents, his sisters and their children, four generations of the family packed into a small house made of bamboo and straw. The illusion is maintained that the Baan Mai Naisoi refugee camp is a temporary arrangement – no permanent structures are allowed.

“My father was a village head in Burma,” he says. “We had constant trouble with the army, but it was a difficult decision to leave. Everything is hard. We were farmers before. We grew rice and corn and other crops, but here we have no space to grow anything. We can’t teach our children how to be farmers.”

Families are encouraged to grow bananas and papayas on spare ground around their houses, but they have no right to the land, so if another family arrives and wants to build a house, they can take over the garden to do so. This leaves refugees dependent on the food provided by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC), which is partly funded by Trócaire.

Theh Reh worked for a time on a community development project. His mother, Hla Htoo, used to teach weaving and sewing to other women in the camp through the TBBC’s education programme, but she is in poor health now. “There is very little to do here and very little opportunity to work,” she says. “It is boring. But it is better than being in Burma and having to deal with the army all the time. You have to change your way of thinking.”

Some members of the extended family have been accepted onto a resettlement programme for the US. Theh Reh’s sister Poe Myar wears a “16 days against violence against women” T-shirt. She will leave soon with her husband and children. “We have no choices here,” she says. “I used to be a health worker in the camp. People here get diarrhoea, malaria, respiratory and skin diseases. There is more and more violence against women in the camp. Women who used to have their own land and income have nothing here, and they can’t leave their husbands because there is nowhere to go.”

Her grandmother is listening on her chair in the corner of the porch. “You want to go to America but I can’t go,” she says. “I can’t go back to Burma because I am afraid of the military. But how can I go to America? I can’t even go down the stairs.”

Theh Reh says their grandmother talks a lot about Burma. “She talks about the second World War when the English and the Japanese were there and she had to hide in the jungle. She has already had a lot of trouble in her life.”

THE CAMP IS hidden away, deep in the jungle. It is reached via narrow, rutted roads that sometimes follow riverbeds and sometimes pass through fields of garlic. It is a lost place, and a place for people whose plight has largely been forgotten by the rest of the world. It is almost 50 years since the generals seized power in Burma. Donors have become attuned to responding to political drama and sudden disasters – but this is the humanitarian aftermath, the slow grind of life in limbo for the displaced.

Burma achieved independence from Britain in 1948, but after a military coup in 1962, the generals abolished the constitution. In 1974 the country became a one-party socialist state. Elections were held in 1990, but after the National League for Democracy (NLD) won a huge majority, the regime disregarded the outcome and kept the NLD’s charismatic leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. New elections have been promised for next year, but few people we met expressed any hope that real change would follow.

Under the military regime, Burma, despite its rich natural resources and potential, has become one of the poorest countries in Asia. Its people are ravaged by illnesses which have been eliminated in other countries in the region, and it has become one of the world’s biggest exporters of opium. Over 40 per cent of government expenditure is on the army, while spending on health and education combined is less than 77 cent per person each year.

The army continues to oppress the people, shooting on sight in some border areas, raping women, planting landmines in agricultural areas, forcing people, including children, to work for it for no money, demanding exorbitant taxes, evicting entire village populations and burning down homes. The regime appears oblivious to condemnations from the international community.

Ireland is one of the countries which is taking part in the United Nations’ new resettlement programme. The US is operating its own resettlement programme. In the past 18 months or so, more than 700 people have left the camp we visited, and hundreds more are waiting to hear if their applications have been successful. Resettlement offers a new life to those who get it, but it is unsettling the camp, already a fragile community.

THE BURMESE HAVE a hunger for education – even while hiding out in the jungles, the internally displaced set up classes, sometimes writing out lessons on rock faces. One of the best things about the camp is that the refugees have set up an excellent education system. Children who would not have got a chance to go to school in Burma are taught a full curriculum. We stand outside the bamboo classrooms watching their intent little faces as they learn. Some of the teachers were already professionals, others receive training in the camp.

Augustin Moedu, who took part in the 1988 student rising in Burma, is the head of education. He and his family are about to leave for Australia. “It is difficult to manage the students at the moment,” he says. “The teachers are waiting to leave, and so are some of the children. It is hard for us to concentrate. Most of our experienced staff are leaving. I feel bad in a way because there are people who won’t be able to go, and they’ll be left behind.”

It is the same in the health clinics and community development projects. It is crucial that the people the TBBC is training to take their places are supported to continue their work.

Refugees are not allowed to take paid work in Thailand, though many do, mostly as labourers for local farmers. Their illegal status makes them vulnerable to exploitation.

Not all of the Burmese in Thailand are in camps. Thousands cross from the Burmese town of Myawaddy over the so-called “Friendship Bridge” into the Thai border town of Mae Sot every day. Some have work permits; they do the jobs they know as the “Three Ds”: difficult, dirty, and dangerous.

Just upstream from the bridge, we watch a young woman clamber into an inflated tyre tube to be rowed across the filthy Moei River. This is the unofficial crossing, and she risks being stopped by the police and fined or sent back to Burma. But, Theh Thet tells us, it’s a risk the woman takes every day as she goes to work on the Thai side. She’s from a town deep inside Burma, and her six-year-old son still lives there, cared for by his grandmother, while she lodges with an aunt in the dingy and overcrowded Myawaddy.

“I work in a sewing factory in Mae Sot,” she says. “I work most days from 8am until midnight. We get paid a lot less than the Thai workers, and we only get work when there are orders. Most of what I earn I send back to pay my son’s school fees. I had to leave school to work when I was 13. I want him to do better.”

She says all this in an uncomplaining tone. This is just what everyday life is like for victims of the Burmese military regime. Undramatic, unrelenting, unforgivable.

Lenten campaign to aid displaced

Trócaire, the overseas development agency for the Catholic Church in Ireland, today launches its annual Lenten campaign.

Each year, in the run-up to Easter, Trócaire raises awareness about an issue of global justice and raises funds for the work it is doing on the issue. This year, the theme is displacement and the agency hopes to raise €11 million to help refugees and internally displaced people in countries as diverse as Columbia, Darfur, Somalia. and Burma.

More than 26 million people around the world are currently either refugees, or displaced within their own countries having had to flee their homes because of conflict. Many are homeless or living in makeshift accommodation in camps with little access to work or education. Some will be displaced for years. Many will never be able to return home again.

Working in partnership with local organisations and groups, in emergency situations, Trócaire helps to provide shelter and food for these people. In the longer term, it supports education and training and other programmes.