On the Borderline

Ethnic Karen refugees have fled military defeats and persecution at the hands of the Burmese government. Now they live in refugee camps, and mostly in limbo.

MAE SOT, Thailand - Nyaw is 25 now — a grown woman. She remembers back 17 years to a time when she didn't live in a refugee camp, but in a village called Walay inside Myanmar.

She says it was on a night when she was just eight years old that the shooting began.

She is an ethnic Karen and her people have waged a protracted war for autonomy since Burma, now known as Myanmar, became independent in 1948.

On this night the war came to Walay. She and her family had to flee the village, which she says was burned down by the Burmese army, eventually crossing the border into Thailand and settling in the Mae La refugee camp, home to over 50,000 Karen refugees.

Living a limbo existence » View

Mae La is one of seven camps inside Thailand with more than 125,000 people total. While conditions are difficult, the camps are fairly well-established, with schools and medical clinics run or supported by various non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Refugees are also registered and granted protection under the

What residents lack, however, is a sense of stability and long-term hope. Since they are not Thai citizens they can't legally work outside the camp. But as long as they don't stray too far, say informed observers, no one protests too much.

"No one will say it," says Tay Tay, the head of the Karen Refugee Committee, a humanitarian group that provides food and medical and other material supplies to Karen refugees, "but many of the Thais are benefiting from the presence of the refugees on the border, especially in agricultural production. A Thai laborer will work in the rice paddies for 300 baht a day. But a Burmese refugee [will work] for just 100 baht (about $3)."

Because of their status, a certain amount of labor exploitation exists, but it is the limbo existence that bothers most of the Karen refugees here.

Since they're unable to work in higher paying jobs or to access advanced education in the Thai system, all they can do is wait until their political representation, the Karen Nation Union (KNU) — along with its military wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) — negotiates or wins autonomy from the Burmese ruling military junta. Neither seems very likely at the moment.

The KNU/KNLA suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Burmese military in 1995 when a splinter faction defected to the Burmese side and provided enough information for the military to overrun the KNU headquarters inside Burma at Manerplaw.

It was a nearly overwhelming setback that has stymied the Karen's ability to apply either political or military pressure against the Burmese. It has also sent a huge wave of refugees into Thailand and to borderland areas still inside Burma.

Since the Thai government has officially announced it was not going to allow any more refugees into Thailand, many Karen people have had to set up refugee camps inside Burma along the Moei River, which divides the two countries.

Karen refugees struggle on both sides of the border. » View

At one camp, Ler Per Her, 750 people try to eke out an existence during the difficult rainy season. A schoolteacher named Rainbow, a refugee himself, recruited from another village to teach here, gives me a tour. His name seems appropriate for this time of year — he was named after the rainbow in the bible story that appeared to Noah after the flood.

"It was a sign from God to Noah that he wouldn't destroy the world again that way," he says. "I think my father was thinking that my name should be a symbol of that promise — an end to destruction."

Today most of the village seems empty. Rainbow says it's because everyone is at the health clinic that provides de-worming and vitamin A supplements every six months to the children of the village.

Inside the thatch clinic, dozens of children and their mothers gather around a small table where Karen medical technicians, trained by international aid groups, crush the medications and mix them with sweet milk so the children will be more eager to get them down.

I'm told vitamin A supplements are important here because of the high incidence of eye infections and cataracts due to poor sanitary conditions.

In another wing of the clinic it seems the other half of the village is gathered to receive treatments or preventative medications for malaria, which is epidemic this time of year.

A 10-year-old girl named Muehpaw sits on the floor with her father. Her eyes are glazed and her face is pale and moist with fever sweat.

"It's very tough on the family," says her father, Pamae. "My wife is also sick with malaria and I have to take care of the children. The ones who aren't sick have to do extra work around the house."

Fortunately, says one of the medical technicians, the clinic has enough malaria medicine to handle the seasonal crisis, even with the large numbers of infected people.

Rainbow leads me past other villagers, some weaving baskets from bamboo stalks, others smoking homemade cigars called cheroots, made by stuffing betel nut leaves inside maquela or tenopala leaf wrappers. They have a pleasant smell and create a dense white smoke that envelops the face of the smoker.

As we continue down the path, a small child startled by my presence shouts, "Kolawa, kolawa!"

Rainbow laughs.

"White man," I say, "right?"

"Foreigner," he says. "Foreigner, foreigner."

At the end of the dirt path Rainbow shows me what he says is a youth hostel or dormitory for secondary students, both boys and girls, from villages inside Burma that don't have their own schools.

He says he and a few other teachers, who supervise the students, also live here in the thatch huts surrounded by planters filled with flowers and an open grassy area divided by a volleyball net.

"They're eager for an education," he says, "so they don't cause any problems; but it's hard for them. They have to cook for themselves and also to be away from their families for long periods of time."

Rainbow says his wife and baby daughter live here with him.

"We feel safe here now," he says, "inside the border, but we always have to be ready to run, run for our own safety."

He looks down, circumspect, but not, it seems, visibly bothered by the prospects of what has become an aspect of daily life here.

I cross the river by dugout canoe, back to the Thai side.

At the Mae La Camp — only about half an hour south of Ler Per Her — Nyaw takes me to a building she says is the home of people handicapped by the conflict. Inside we meet a 30-year-old man named Pa No Htoo.

Voice of sad strength » View

He is blind, his face covered in blast scars. His right arm was poorly amputated above the elbow near his shoulder, leaving a jagged stump. His left arm was more cleanly amputated, jut above the wrist. Both arms still show signs of homemade tattoos that were once complete when he had all of his limbs.

Pa No Htoo says he was a KNLA soldier, just 21 years old when the incident happened.

"I was laying landmines," he says, "but I forgot where I put the last one until I put my hand on it." The cook, preparing food nearby, chuckles. Undoubtedly he has heard the story many times before.

That was nine years ago, says Htoo, and he's been here at the Mae La camp ever since.

Most days he says he feels sad that his life has turned out this way, but he says he still believes in the Karen struggle, even though it has left him so severely injured.

The little happiness he experiences comes when he sings — something he never did before the accident. With a little prodding he agrees to sing, accompanied by a man on guitar, also blind and living at the center.

Htoo's voice is sweet and tinged with the sad strength of something once broken, healed, but forever different.

Htoo's life will probably always be like this, because of the double limitations of being a refugee and a man with severe disabilities in a situation where advanced care or training is out of reach.

But what about those only limited by their surroundings — like Nyaw, an energetic and highly intelligent young woman with few prospects to meet her promise within the legal limbo of the Mae La camp?

"There is a woman from an NGO," says Nyaw. "She might be able to get a visa for me and my sister to study in Canada. That is what we hope for anyway."

It is a small but important hope in a place where little can be found.

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