Traditionally, the Karen hill people of Burma blamed the divine power for their misfortunes. Who else? They believed that the creator of the world threw three clods of earth on the ground. From one sprang the tribe of the Burmans, from the second the Karen, from the third the Kalas — foreigners.All seemed equal, until the Karen showed their ebullient, talkative nature. Then, irritated, the Divinity threw another handful of earth to the Burmans, making them supreme for ever.
The parents of the deaf children I watch learning sign language in Zone C, Mae La refugee camp, probably don’t know that old legend. Like some 105,000 other Karens in eight camps dotted along the Thai- Burmese border, they fled to Thailand to escape Burma’s notorious military regime — and you don’t need old myths to understand the meaning of a torched village. Many of the children in Mae La’s deaf school will have been born here, in exile. In the strange silence of the bamboo room, their teachers (trained with the help of foreign non-governmental organisations) are signing in the Karen language — a totally revolutionary step, since this sign language is still being evolved — 550 words so far and more developed each month. Here is a paradox indeed. For the families would not be here if it were not for Burmese oppression. Yet if they were not in this refugee camp, it is unlikely that these children would be receiving such a highly specialised education.
Minorities usually construct myths to account for their collective plight. The point is, long animosity is deeply ingrained in Karen culture. Certainly the recent history of conflict goes back to the 18th century. Like the Shan people, another Burmese minority, the Karen felt they were unfairly treated after the 1947 constitution, when the British promised them independence but failed to deliver. Ironically, the Karen were widely recruited and promoted by the colonial power for their fighting skills.
Now the Karen Liberation Army is involved in constant skirmishes with the government armed forces on Burmese soil, while some 130,000 people (nobody knows precisely) live across the border as refugees. Countless other Karen swell the drifting population of about 350,000 illegal immigrants in Thailand.
Mae La camp itself holds something like 35,000 people, in bamboo huts so densely packed that, from above, the site resembles a brown mosaic. At ground level it buzzes with movement: blacksmiths make machetes, children run to school, women crouch to create new leaf roofing before the rainy season hits, small boys play tournaments with marbles — all the life of any village, except that it is concentrated in the shadow of the steep cliff which overlooks the Moei River, beyond which is Burma. Until recently the Burmese would make lightning strikes across the border, shooting and shelling in the knowledge that it is partly from these refugee camps that the Karen people organise their struggle for an independent state. Its blue and yellow flag is embroidered on cotton bags woven in Mae La.
It isn’t straightforward to obtain a pass to any one of the camps; at different times the authorities tighten up on press access. But when you pass the checkpoints (casually manned on the day of my visit), the first surprise is that Mae La is no dismal retreat for displaced victims. On the contrary, the Karen have created a harmonious society in microcosm with governance, education, leisure, peaceful co-existence of religions, and security — proud independence within dependent exile. There is a football pitch (the Karen Youth FC is followed with devotion), recycling bins, an HIV/Aids Information Centre, the deaf school, two Médécins sans Frontières hospitals, and so on. We pass a secondary school where scores of pupils are bent over examination papers in total silence, under open- sided bamboo roofs. In the 17 camp schools the children always start the day by expressing gratitude to the Thai people — represented by portraits of the King — for allowing them to stay. They give thanks for their “kind hearts”. But since so many children have known no other life but that of the camps, the Karen Education Council was determined that education there would reflect their own language and culture — helped though they must be by foreign charity. Back home in Burma they were forbidden to use the Karen language in school.
Our destination is a nursery school where a slim, fair foreigner is sitting among the children, her outstretched legs weighed down with small bodies. In a loud, clear voice she sings “Row, row, row your boat” and sways back and forth, the children joining in as best they can in a univeral language of music and fun. This is Jacqui Reeve, a 55-year-old Canadian-British woman who is on her second stint as a Voluntary Service Overseas volunteer in Thailand (the first was three years in Bangkok, after which she went home to Canada. Then once again she answered VSO’s pressing need for special needs teachers in Thailand). Reeve speaks fluent Thai but very little Karen, so she jokes in English with Rose Moo, the Karen headmistress. Rose Moo quickly scoops up a similar group of tiny children along her legs and “rows the boat” in the Karen language, to much hilarity.
Reeve’s current placement is to work identifying children with special needs in the camps, and training Karen people to deal with their problems — all under the auspices of Consortium, a USAID- funded charity working in education. In this class she has come to observe Canedeoo and Sawloypaw, three-year-olds whose symptoms might have been described as (perhaps) “slowness” if the families had been at home in their villages, instead of here where the NGOs are present with all their expertise. To the inexperienced eye their behaviour is no different from that of the other infants, yet Reeve has identified problems and will assign them a specialised teacher whom she has trained.
I see how this system works when I tag along with Reeve on a home visit to the Poelo family, living in one of the typical bamboo huts raised on stilts to hold the dwelling above the sea of mud that the camp becomes during the rainy season. By accident we arrive moments after Gaygay, the young teacher whom Jacqui has trained. Gaygay has come to check the progress of BuGayPaw, who looks about two but is in fact four years old. Cerebral palsy has bent her hands and feet into stiff positions; her eyes focus and unfocus on sunlight filtering through the wall, gilding the strangely inappropriate radio- cassette player on the floor, bought by a charity to stimulate the child with music.
The Poelos have been here for six years; before that they lived in a temporary settlement. Their story is typical. The mother and father lived in a village high in Karen country, but their village was harried by the Burmese military and finally burnt. This was the logical ending to the junta’s “Four Cuts” campaign — which worked to cut off the main supplies of food, finance, intelligence and recruits for the Karen people (and the Karenni, Mon and other hill tribes too). The strategy was to break the people by whatever means, after which the able-bodied men would cease rebelling and be press-ganged into portering for the Burmese Army. Through Reeves’s translator, Chat, I ask if the Poelos still want to go home. The man shrugs, sitting with his back to the wall, thinks hard, then murmurs a few words with an air of resignation.
Chat says: “Perhaps you know something of our history? You will understand when he says they would like to go back to their home, to the place they were born — but only if they would be allowed to live peacefully. Until then they stay here.”
The light transforms them all. And indeed, the child suddenly looks happy as her sling sways. There is gentle music from the tape machine and the murmur of chickens and children from outside. She makes a small noise of contentment, and her mother’s face is radiant. Reeve says to Chat: “Tell Dad the sling is good, because it keeps her in the relaxed position.” This comunicated, Poelo shifts his feet shyly, proud of his achievement. With little employment in the camp, he looks after his family with the help of the handout of fish, oil, rice and other staples. So an improvised baby sling is something he made. Watching, I can’t help wondering if (in light of the universal longing for the construct of “home”), life for the little girl could possibly be as good were her family still back in Burma. How could it be? Gaygay — trained by Reeve, courtesy of VSO and Consortium — would not be coming round to see how the baby was progressing.
The numerous NGOs in this area mean a boost for the economy, yet some local officials object to them since foreigners mean inevitable scrutiny, and corruption is endemic. In some ways this is still “bandit country”. The nearest local town of any size is Mae Sot, 45km south — a classic border town, traditionally trading in three languages (Thai, Burmese and Chinese) and with a history of shady dealings. Women, weapons and narcotics are trafficked across the border. “Illegals” provide cheap labour for local industries. Occasionally, when the local police think that they must seem to be doing something, these men are rounded up and dispatched back to Burma across the border. In time they sneak back — some minus limbs because the border is extensively landmined. In Mae La Camp alone I spotted four men with artificial legs.
Refugees make the local people twitchy — the universal syndrome of “I’m poor and it’s all their fault”. In the meantime the Thai Government seems paralysed to the point of denial.
In the early 1990s UNHCR asked if it could get involved but the Government refused, apparently because it didn’t want an international acknowledgement of the situation. Then protests in Bangkok and the continuing influx of refugees meant that the Thais could not cope alone, and so UNHCR was allowed in, to help guarantee the standards by which the Karen and other minorities were looked after. But when the Burmese military attacked refugee villages the Thai Government signally failed to condemn Burma, and the Thai Army rarely intervened on behalf of the Karen.
Much of this ambivalence has to do with trade. There is huge pressure within the Thai business community to increase trade with Burma, justified (as with all pragmatic politics) in terms of having a slow influence on the regime there.
The Thai Government justifies its current position by saying that the more it trades with the junta, the more likely it is that democracy will follow.
Against this background the Karen become anxious. The Burmese ease up on democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and a rumour of repatriation can infect the air like pollution. A small boy jiggles his baby brother on his stomach while his mother cooks, three girls giggle at the sight of the photographer’s camera. All seems normal, even happy, yet a whisper goes round that all this might be coming to an end. And the Karen people know that old animosity would not disappear in a fairytale moment of Burmese PR.
Seeking air in the intense heat of the crowded camp, Reeve and I climb one of the hills, heading for a Buddhist wat (temple). In Mae La there are churches for everybody; many Karen converted to Christianity, but as well as churches of different denominations there are mosques and wats on every little peak.
We pass saffron robes pegged out on a washing line to dry. Weirdly, the sound of a generator thrums in the air near by, and then we catch a familiar chatter- and-crash from one of the huts. It sounds like . . . a movie? There is a monk standing outside, craning his neck to peer through the window. Reeve reads the situation right away. “Must be crowded in there,” she grins, “and wouldn’t you just guess it, it’s the monks who’ve got themselves TV.” We wander down, then stop by a long, low bamboo building from which comes a more traditional sound — a clicking and clacking so rhythmic that it makes you want to dance. Here, in the weaving shed, the Karen people are practising the craft for which they are famous. Women wind skeins of vibrant purple cotton, and a man sets up the rainbow warp on his loom. A child leans against one of the roof supports, silently watching his mother at work. In Mae La lengths of brilliant fabric have myriad uses, and the best examples of weaving can also be sent to towns like Mae Sot to generate income. As we walk through the shed I spot words, incongruously, in English on the back of one man’s T-shirt. The message is appropriate: “Love each other. Unite and work for freedom, justice and peace. Forgive and don’t hate each other. Pray with faith, act with courage, never surrender.”
“Look at that,” says Reeve. “You can burn them out of their villages, beat their men, rape their women. You can blow off their legs with landmines and drive them away — and they come here, keep their spirit, and just go on making beautiful cloth.”