Chapter 1: Field Study: Visit to Mae Hong Sorn and the Ban Mai Nai Soi Camp

Thailand is currently home to several thousand illegal immigrants (from several countries, like Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, and other neighboring countries and European countries. These illegal immigrants have different status 1) Some of them are "totally illegal" and thus subject to instant deportation if arrested by police or 2) some of them are “registered illegal immigrant workers” whose employer have sought amnesty from Thai government so that they can work for a year or so, however they do not have any labor rights and are often exploited  or 3 ) The third group of illegal immigrants or classified as refugees by the UNHCR are , mostly from Burma (Myanmar) and who started arriving in Thailand about 20 years ago due to the political unrest in the country. The Thai government does not recognize them as refugees and however they have been moved to certain areas near the Burma-Thai border called “Temporary shelters” by the Thai government. There are a total of 9 “Temorary shelters” along the border. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) along with several international and local NGO’s are supporting these Burmese refugees. The camps houses around 140,000 refugees.

The Thai governments also has not signed the International Refugee Convention and hence have no legal obligation to allow the refugees to integrate within Thailand. However, one should keep in mind that Thai government has taken total responsibility for these refugees by not only providing them with the land but also working with UNHCR and International Organization for Migration (IOM) for the resettlement programs for the refugees.

Let me describe my field trip to visit one of the Refugee camps. There is so much information that I will have to write in parts.

We arrived in Chiangmai this week. The rotary club has sponsored everything, our flight tickets, vans, hotels, food etc. We really have been treated very royally. Thanks to all the Rotarians and their donations, that is funding our study program. It has been a great experience so far and indeed feel very privileged. Our first day was a little laid back and we all went to the night market to shop. I was extremely tired from the travelling. The next day we started at 7:00 am in the morning to go to Chiangmai University. We were a part of the panel discussion on Human Trafficking issue in Thailand. I have learned so much about Human Trafficking (HT) in the last few days. The issue of HT in Thailand is very serious problem, as it is a center for source, transit, destination for human trafficking. In May 2006, Vital Voices Global Partnership in collaboration with the Royal Thai. Government's Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United States Embassy in Thailand, and the United States Agency for International Development organized a regional conference in Bangkok, Thailand to encourage civil society and government efforts to collaborate in the prevention and elimination of human trafficking. I will write about Human Trafficking and my personal perspectives in my next posting.

I was laying in the bed after puking my guts out at the hotel in Chiang Mai. I could not sleep as I was exhausted and also my mind was trying to process all the information that we had learned in one week. Human trafficking, bonded labor, sex trafficking, refugee resettlement programs, politics of Burma-Thailand, the red shirt perspective of the Thailand issue, Chiang Mai history and of course 1864 curves that I almost survived twice. I thought that there were both positive and negative aspects of everything that I saw and learned. The issues and problems existed but there were also people, organizations and international community trying to alleviate the problems if not able to solve them. The fact that Rotary organized for the World Peace Fellows to go on this field study is infact a testimony that the issues in Thailand were gaining public attention. I see this field trip as a wonderful opportunity for the World Peace Fellows not only as a learning experience but also to get involved in meaningful work with anyone of the organizations that we visited (IMO, UNCHR, University Professors, the theatre group) etc.

The visit to the refugee camp Ban Mai Nai Soi was one of the field study organized by Rotary. This camp is one of the longest protracted camp (of the 9 camps) along the Burma-Thailand border. Although every meeting with various stakeholders and organizations were highly informative and interesting, for me the highlight of the trip was the opportunity to visit the Ban Mai Nai Soi Camp in Mae Hong Sorn. I will never forget the morning of the camps day visit. As we prepared to board our truck in the morning to leave for the refugee camp, a sense of sadness engulfed me, the same sadness; I felt when I was in Mozambique working with the children orphaned by AIDS and used to travel with them in pickup trucks. It wasn’t that I was not ready to visit the site, but it was more of my personal feeling toward pain. Having gone through a life threatening health problem in the last few months, being diagnosed with a rare disease, the painful recovery, the endless visits to hospitals, the several emotional meltdowns when the physical pain became overwhelming, and the loneliness that pain and disease brings to your life. You are so trapped in the diseased body that you reach a point where you relinquish all your fight as pain becomes a part of you. It is not giving up hope but rather accepting what is and learning to mange and cope with pain and the inherent uncertainty that it brings to your life.

I was reminiscing the events in my life and thinking about the refugees and the kind of pain they must be going through being trapped not only physically in the camp for more than two decades but also emotionally with the uncertainties that has become a part of their life. As our truck drove through the thick woods, lush with green trees, bamboo shoots and overflowing river waters, it became evident how the far removed the refugees were from all other civilization. As we reached the camp check point to fulfill the legal formalities to get an entry pass to the camp, the entire process seemed like going to a safari. Yes ironically very sad. The houses within the camp reminded me of the movie Avatar, where the Navi people on the planet Pandora had build their homes with natural materials from the forest. Infact, the entire scene of the brown and beige camp houses made of bamboos and dried leaves against the backdrop of the luscious green trees resembled the plant Pandora, kind of pristine, organic and untouched by the modern world. The tour at the camps site shed a lot of light on how things actually operated in the camp.

In my personal opinion the camp was in a much better situation than I had imagined with so many NGO local and international organizations in supporting the camp. The most important human right violation was the inability of the people to move and being trapped in this confined space. I wondered about their pain, as I tried to make eye contact with some of the adults and children. Most of the adults I looked at were stoic in their expressions, and continued doing their daily business as if they were used to the foreigners coming to the camp site and watching them all the time. Very few made the eye contact; most of them just ignored us. I also wondered what was going through their mind. Did they think of us as just another group of strangers here to watch the circus? Or were they just immune to all the visitors? Or had they just accepted their fate and sort of adapted to their refugee way of life or just lost their hope in the system and the hope in going back to their homeland? I can’t say that I was very deeply moved as I have been in similar situations before but yes, witnessing one more made me extremely sad. Then I began reflecting on all the conflict places that we talked in our classes, Bosnia, Sudan, Israel-Palestine, Sri-Lanka, Africa, Argentina, Thailand, Burma etc and the plight of the people suffering. The camp visit almost served as a model and replicated in my mind the plight of people suffering around the world. Strangely at that moment while I was in the camp, I was not thinking about how I can help and what I can do. I was just dazed at us as human beings, and how we treat our own kind and for what? Money, Power, Territories, Identity? When the reality is that all of the causes that creates conflict among us are frivolous in the grand scheme of life. We come alone and with nothing in this world and we go alone with nothing. I guess, we all human beings lose sight of it. As one of the Thai professor had said in our class that the root cause of all kinds of conflicts and suffering is the attachment to desire. I personally have always believed that true education is the only way to release yourself from the bondage of human suffering. I describe the details of the camp and what I saw and feel because for me it is a miracle to be alive and be here with the people whose pain I cannot feel but at least empathize. All my senses became alive and my heart resonated with the heartbeats of all trapped in the camp. I do not want to compare my pain with the pain of the people in the camp however this visit has given me a new perspective in dealing with my own.

Finally I want to say that there are basically moments in which you're in touch with the meaning of life, when your relationship to the rest of the universe makes sense and this field trip was such a moment for me. Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope.

Will write more about the camp in chapter 2. We were not allowed to take pictures at the camp, however, the camp commander has allowed some pictures that were taken by them. I will post more in my next blog posting.

Here is the song that my friend and colleague Rosamaria introduced me to on our way back from Mae Hong Sorn through the 1864 stomach churning  mountain curves.