The faces and stories of Burma’s refugees

Friday, 03 September 2010 22:30

Title: Nine Thousand Nights – Refugees From Burma: A People’s Scrapbook

Publisher: Thailand Burma Border Consortium

Reviewed by: Joseph Ball

For two days we walked, crossing in and out of Thailand and Burma. The little dirt path we traversed was a low-volume highway of people on the move – farmers, traders, soldiers and refugees. We ate a mix of what the jungle’s foliage offered and what we were able to kill with our slingshots.

Having finally reached the refugee camp nestled in the hills of Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province, nights were occupied taking turns minding the tripwire to alert the camp of any intrusion by Burmese soldiers. As it was, the Thai army had entered the camp only weeks previously and confiscated the settlement’s minimal arsenal. Nonetheless, it was the mid-1990s, there was talk of returning to a changed Burma, and it was exciting.

In Nine Thousand Nights, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) has compiled a rich 184-page compilation of memories, experiences and desires related to Burma’s refugee population. The collection includes brief biographies, short stories, artwork, poems, a treasure trove of photographs and the reflections of both refugees and those who have worked with Burma’s refugee population.

Unfortunately, the title to the volume is all too indicative of the prevailing situation for many in the camps. Nine Thousand Nights denotes the 25th anniversary of the first large-scale infusion of refugees from Burma into Thailand, in 1984, when some 10,000 fled an attack by Burma’s armed forces in Karen State. And while there are happy stories to tell as well, too often the tales are ones of dreams lost and lives either destroyed or put on indefinite hold.

Evoking an eerily matter-of-fact type account of the situation – similar to the Rwandan genocide victim’s simple missive, “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families” – an excerpt from a letter authored by the Mon National Relief Committee reads, “We want to report that there is a camp of victim and poverty. It is large enough. But on account of several reasons, it is unknown to the world.”

As Nine Thousand Nights chronicles, each apparent misfortune in the annals of modern Burma’s history produces yet another injection into the refugee population.

There are the pictures and stories of the students post-1988 and 1990 that fled to the border to take up armed struggle against the junta; smiling young girls receiving training in automatic weaponry evoking thought provoking musings as to the evolution and efficacy of non-violent versus violent resistance to the state.

Then there are the fading images of Manerplaw, the former stronghold of the Karen armed struggle and long a center of opposition intrigue that was overrun in 1995. The pictures tell of a vastly different time, when many that are now refugees were still masters of their own domain inside Burma.

The bulk of the book, however, is directed at the lives of civilians, innocent bystanders, forced to flee in the absence of human security and longing to return home. The volume abounds in textual and visual representations of lives lived in the confines of rolling bamboo and thatch camps scattered in the hills along the border region.

Ever since the mid-1990s, a steady stream of refugees has poured into the camps as the Burmese military looks to ever tighten its noose around ethnic opposition. The net result is an estimated 150,000 Burmese refugees today living in the camps that dot the Thai-Burma border.

The story of Daniel Zu is told in some detail, a Karen who attended Rangoon University in the 1980s and whose hopes were dashed by events inside Burma proper. Daniel went on to become a leading figure in the Tham Hin camp before finally being resettled in Australia in 2007.

Daniel Zu’s experience epitomizes a growing trend. Since 2005, the UN’s refugee agency has resettled some 60,000 Burmese refugees, with another 45,000 under consideration for future resettlement.

Putting a positive face on what has to be a conflicting experience, Daniel postulates as to the significance of resettlement, “Some leaders saw it as a brain drain. I saw it as an opportunity to develop people’s life quality, profession, and skills. It will surely be a brain gain in the future.”

Still, with Burma’s first general election since the ill-fated endeavor of 1990 set to take place on November 7th, reading through Nine Thousand Nights one comes to wonder just how many more people will flee for the camps in Thailand (and eventually further abroad?) as a result of new hostilities and exclusion in the making of modern Burma.

TBBC is a consortium of 12 international non-governmental organizations from ten countries providing food, shelter and non-food items to refugees and displaced people from Burma. The organization prides itself in implementing projects through refugees and local partners.