Visit to Karen refugee camps at the Myanmar-Thai border
September 2006 | by Jacob Gelt Dekker

”Like volley ball in Burmese snow, sir?” asked the guide who smuggled me into the Karen refugee camp at the Myanmar-Thai border. For security reasons, I had to be smuggled into the Karen camp, since they are locked tightly and forbidden terrain for all, especially journalists.

Bright teenage men and women play on an improvised mud field as if they were enjoying a game in St. Moritz snow. The monsoon rains turned the densely populated camps on the steep slopes of the mountains at the Thai border into one giant mud pool. Residents can only move slip-sliding away with mud often up to their knees. Mud slides take all and everything down in their destructive paths in spite of hastily put up sandbag barriers.



After the 1988 crackdown on democracy by the Burmese military junta, thousands of ethnic minorities, like Karenni, Shan and Mon fled to neighboring countries where they were reluctantly welcomed for temporary stays under UNHCR supervision. Huts were constructed strictly out of temporary and quickly degradable materials such as leaves and young bamboo sticks. No metals, stone, or plastics are allowed, not even today, nearly two decades later. No electricity, running water, sewer systems are present and typhoid and diarrhea are rampant killer diseases. The density of the camps is so high that cultivating any vegetables on small plots for additional nutrition became impossible. World Food and UNCHR hand out daily well measured ransoms of rice and baking oil. Refugees cannot work outside the camps and are not allowed to sell any of their home made products out side the camps. They are de facto prisoners--in a huge hell hole prison.

Day after day, year after year, over 150,000 refugees languish in squalor, with only the young killing their days with limited education, sports tournaments, religious indoctrination or silly squabbles. Burma under the British brought into the country large groups of Muslim coolies, who also found themselves to be amongst the Undesirables for the Junta and were forced to join other ethnic minorities in the camps. Today, they form the hard core Muslim fanatics, and became the fertile breeding ground for fundamentalist jihads.

Karen, by far the largest minority group, are split into Muslims and Christians Both groups formed revolutionary armies, fighting as guerrillas the Junta as well as each other. No political solutions appear to be in sight. But there are still glimmers of hope in this dim lighted living nightmare.

Since December 2005, USA-Ambassador to the United Nations, John R.Bolton called on the Security Council to review the situation. He listed as reasons:

“The threats to international peace and security caused by actions of the Burmese government that have resulted in things like ethnic cleansing, refugee flows, international narcotics trafficking, trafficking in persons, failure to act adequately on threats like HIV/AIDS or avian flu.”

But close ties between North Korea, Iran and Burma with possibly Burma's Junta facilitating missiles transports to rogue axis of evil countries seems to be a more compelling reason for the Republican Ambassador to act.

A college for sixty admissions per year for the best and the brightest amongst the large teenage population has long lists of applicants. Illegally set up, most likely with foreign NGO's smuggled into the camps, the college prepares these young bright minds for a future of responsibility and leadership of a new reality to come. Leadership & Management Training College reads their proud sign. How graduates will make it from the college to university is not yet clear since none have identity papers and none are allowed off the camp limits.

In front of the crowded classroom, I point out the Rights of all Children in the world, as set out in the UN resolution of 1993: The Rights of Children, in the meantime ratified by all countries of the world:

“You all have the right to education, whether you have papers or not. You all have the right to health. You have to demand what you are entitled to. Please let us know if you cannot obtain your inalienable rights. Please contact us, and we will work for you till you get what the world owes you. Do not lose courage. You are the hope for the future. You are the heroes of your own future. We are also very happy that the Thai government has become more open to your welfare and well being. This is a very encouraging development.” .

In the outskirts of the border city Mae Sot, I pay a visit to the world renowned Dr. Cynthia Maung of the Mae Tao clinic. The courageous medical doctor, who was nominated for the World Nobel Peace Price last year, showed me around.

“People get sick in my clinic,” she sighed when I pointed at two scurrying rats in the open sewer that runs between the wards.

Annually the clinic treats about 45,000 out patients and 6,000 in patients. The 125 beds are no more than sheets on a slap of concrete or sometimes primitive wooden boxes. Most patients have family members to care for them during hospitalization. In addition over 400 health workers with their families live and work on the premises of what was once a private residence and is today a quilt of shacks and simple concrete constructions. Training facilities double as congregation and recreation areas, morgues, additional in patient clinics or temporary shelter for family members.

With the help of many foreign NGO's Mae Tao is proud “to continue to give quality health care” to all refugees from Burma, as is bravely stated in their annual report. Yes, it is another glimmer of hope but still under unimaginable circumstances for us, in our spoiled Western world.