I finally got to go to the Shan refugee camp, a place I had been hearing a lot about, and was really looking forward to visiting. (the area that I was in borders Burma, but more technically it abuts Shan State: within Burma there are different ethnic states, most of which are in some state of fighting for their independence, to which Shan state has perhaps the best case) Me and Meeber went on separate motorbikes, and upon arriving first, I was greeted warmly by the leader of the camp (the same man, I quickly realized, who Meeber had been telling me about). He rushed to get chairs (the customary plastic mold in primary colors that is ubiquitous in Thailand) and arranged them on the corner of an old metal table, left outside for many rainy seasons, with a rainbow of rusts half consuming the words Rotary International. A boy emerged from inside with glasses and weak green tea. Within a minute, it became clear that he had no real idea of who I was, or why I had come, and although Meeber had been here a number of timesapparently never in an official capacityhe didnt recognize the name of my organization when I offered it. Instead he saw someone who had specifically come to his campa process of navigating a pitched and pot-holed gravel track on a motorbike for about an hourand welcomed him with open arms.
Meeber eventually showed upmore chairs and tea materializedand she offered further insight into who I was. He took us on a tour of the camp, illuminating the histories and processes of its construction, rules and resources, all the while tutoring me on Shan history. The village was constructed along a single road, which winds its way along the ridge of a mountain, so on either side the houses are built lower than the road, on pylons reaching down to the slope below. Toward the top of the ridge, the main road stopped at the steps to a wat. We sat down upon the rattan mats that covered the floor, and continued our conversation, and once again green tea materialized. After the British left Burma, Shan state agreed to temporarily join the Union of Burmawhose first president incidentally was Shanwith the stipulation that they could secede and become an independent nation after a period of ten years. A coup occurred and the new military leadership threw out the agreement, and the constitution, and since then Shan State, as well as Karenni State, have been fighting for the independence that was promised to them 60 years ago.
As tends to happenespecially when seated on the floor of a wat, doubly especially as an artisan meticulously paints a Buddha image upon the wallour conversation migrated toward Buddhism, and he further explained cultural differences between Thai, Burmese, Northern Thai, and Shan linguistics, and how they manifested themselves in the respective cultures Buddhist practice.
The place was amazing. It didnt feel like a refugee camp in the sense of people packed into tents under the protective gaze of the UN, or the Red Cross, it was more like a village. However, by this point I had stayed in a number of villages, and this place had something markedly different about it. As I came to learn about their collective story, I got closer to understanding this ineffable perception that I had been experiencing.
The residents of the camp had left Shan state, their houses, and in many cases members of their families to avoid the war that has been smoldering there for the past FORTY years (in which our host had fought for 19). They had grown tired of the endless persecution at the hands of the increasingly oppressive Burmese government, and the bombs that would torment their lives without warning. I could imagine a zigzagging line of people, exhausted from decades of war, plodding along the steep mountain paths like marching ants, carrying wicker backpacks and small children, occasionally looking over their shoulders at the homes to which they would in all likelihood never return. They ended up, just across the border into Thailand, at a Shan temple let them stay. They remained there for a whole year, while preparations were made to move into their current location on the ridge, on previously undeveloped land, also owned by the wat.
The Thai government, has had nothing to do with the refugeesas they barely recognize the rights of ethnic minority people who have lived in Thailand for generations, refusing them Thai ID cards, and requiring them to get written permission from the local government to travel away from their province. On my bus rides around the North, roadblocks manned by soldiers are an inevitability, but whether you are stopped or waived on is a lottery (on this particular 3 day trip, I was stopped 4 times). The soldiers ask for your ID card, and if people have minority persons cards (because the government will not give them proper Thai ID cards) they are taken out the bus and made to pay a fine. Now there is certainly corruption, and fines can become exorbitant based on the ranking officers whimsmany of whom, incidentally drive nice cars, while receiving a government salary of about US$130but the thing that is amazing, incorrigible, disgusting, is that the fines themselves are based on law. The soldiers certainly exploit these people(charging fines in excess of US$50, when in reality they should be asking for US$6), but it is the governmentthe very same government who denies these people, many of which were born in Thailand to parents born in Thailand, ID cards based on their ethnicitythat fines these people for traveling without having ID cards.
Meeber is Akhaone of the 6/7 major ethnic minorities in Thailandand until very recently, did not have an ID card. When traveling for workwhich we all do a great dealshe devised a number of strategies for dodging persecution, most notably, pretending she was asleep at check points, or, due to her youthful appearance, insisting that she was not yet 15, the age at which one gets ones ID card. However, her techniques were not 100% effective, and she recounted many times where she was taken off of buses, and, unable to pay the fine, made to stay at the check point, to wait for a us going the other direction which sometimes was not until the next day, as her bus went on without her. I can only imagine the people who leave their families behind to work long hours of backbreaking construction work in the city, only to have it extorted away from them on the way home.
Anyway, sorry about that rant, the point being that one cannot expect the Thai government to do anything for these Shan refugees when one knows how they treat the Shan, or Akha, or whatever ethnicity people who are 3rd generation Thai-residents. They camp got help from the Rotary Club to build washing stations and toiletsand apparently tables toobut otherwise have been largely on their own. The success of the camp, in terms of creating a place that is peaceful, safe, orderly and relatively self-sufficient, seems to be due largely to its good leadership. The whole camp was meticulously planned out, taking into account watersheds and fitting within the strict delineations set out by the Shan temple that owns the land, and now exists under strict rules regarding water and electricity use. Other than in the main meeting hall, with the camps sole TV, the only other use of electricity is to illuminate the night classes help at the small way on top of the ridge, where English, Chinese and Burmese are taught. Also, they have arranged with a school in the next townwhich is largely inhabited by Shan people from Thailandto accept the children of the camp as students, where usually their lack of Thai citizenship would prevent them from attending.
We continued walking up past the wat, and as the sun started to set, I was struck by the glowing hills repeating seemingly infinitely into the distance as they faded to pale blues. Our host pointed to three adjacent hilltops: on one a lone building sat perched under a waiving Thai flag, the next peak over had a barely visible bunker that was apparently a Burmese army camp, and the third, I was told, was a camp of Shan rebels. I could just imagine soldiers on each hilltop, with standing orders to be on binocular duty, and if it werent for the sometimes brutal war that was been going on for decades, I could see the sit-com/comic strip possibilities.
Then my host pointed to another hill, closer than and not quite as high as the other three, and asked if I could see the break in the foliage about three quarters of the way up. I said that I could, and wondered what other possible army could be entering the standstill.
That was my home, he said, with a resigned tone that told me he didnt come up here very often. His gaze hung there for a moment, and then, with a deep exhale, he turned and headed off down the path to the new home he had made, only a single hilltop from the one that he had left behind.
