Camping on the Thai-Myanmar border
Posted Monday, April 30, 2007, 3:37 PM by Lonely Planet
It's a sad fact of life that along some stretches of the western Thai border, refugee camps are rather plentiful. I'd been curious about the camps' living conditions for some time, so it was a fortunate coincidence that only hours after arriving in the town of Mae Sot, I met Na Yean Kim, a Korean doctor studying tropical medicine in Bangkok. She was curious about the camps as well, so we made plans to visit the following day. 
An hour-long songthaew ride passed before we finally reached the massive Mae La Camp, where more than 25,000 members of the Karen hill-tribe now live. The Karen have been battling the military-installed Myanmar government for autonomy since 1948 - the same year Burma gained independence from the British. The vast majority of Mae La's residents first fled their country in an attempt to escape the fighting, and now they're essentially citizens of a no-man's land, trapped and frightened at the same time. Camps have been torched without warning in the past, so everyone lives in constant fear of another torching - or something worse - happening again.
Interested in learning more? Check out the fascinating Karen Refugee LiveJournal blog, featuring entries by Mae La kids.
- Dan Eldridge
Labels: Asia and Pacific, Volunteer
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3 Comments:
Spent two months teaching english on the Burma side in a camp. Talking to the locals it is hard to know who is fighting who and for what reasons as you have the SPDC, the DKBA, and the various sects of the KNU. In this camp there was a hospital and the wreckage left by the landmines by all sides is most extraordinarily disturbing. Bloody stumps and scarred bodies, soldier, mother, father, child, civilian, does not matter. Thank you for heading into one of the UN camps. Every little bit helps.
Absolutely -- as everyone who has investigated this very frustrating issue has no doubt discovered, there's no black-and-white here, just muddy shades of grey. Certainly there is corruption and evil on both sides, just as in neary every other aspect of life which on the surface appears either 'all good' or 'all bad'. Nonetheless, I do encourage travellers to study the very frustrating Burmese situation on their own, and if they're able, to visit a refugee camp as well. For myself at least, it was a truly enlightening experience. --Dan Eldridge
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