Eleven long-neck Karens or Kayans who disappeared early last month from their villages in Mae Hong Son province in Northern Thailand are now back in Mae Hong Son.  Of the 11 missing, four are children and seven are adults.

Among the seven adults, three will face further charges while four Kayans with no ID cards are about to be released and are now being detained in Mae Hong Son immigration office for questioning. They will be fined 1,800 Baht per person for leaving Mae Hong Son province without permission of the local authorities.

"Three people with hill tribe ID cards face further charges on the accusation that they misled the group and for contacting human trafficking gangs, said an official of the Mae Hong Son based anti human trafficking and protection programme.  The programme works under the Federation of Trade Union Burma (FTUB).  

"We are trying to find out who smuggled out the group illegally to another province and we consider it human trafficking.  And therefore, we will cooperate with local Thai authorities and take legal action," he said over telephone.

One of the Kayan women who recently returned told Kantarawaddy Times that "We left because people (Thais) came and picked us up, and we also wanted to go because they said they would pay us 4,000 baht per person per month.  We don't have money here and it is difficult to make ends meet".

Another woman in the group said, "I don't know exactly where we were. There was no village we just stayed here and there. We had been on the move constantly and were hiding under big trees and in bamboo groves in the jungle," when asked about where they had been staying.

Since their disappearance in early July, the group was being searched for by Thai authorities.  The group and the smuggler had to put up with so much pressure living in Mae Tang district in Chiang Mai province that the smuggler sent them back to Mae Hong Son.    

This is not the first time that Kayan people left the villages.  The Nation newspaper (Thailand) reported last November that " six Kayans were allegedly kidnapped from their homes by a private tour company"....." to be displayed tourists in a resort in Chiang Mai's Mae Tang district".  

Kayan people fled together with other people from Burma to Thailand more than 15 years ago following civil wars and are recognized by UNHCR as refugees.  However, due to their distinctive looks or rather their manner of decorating the body, some Thai businessmen brought them outside the refugee camp and let them stay in villages in Thailand.  The three villages Kayan people live in are Ban Huai Poo Kaeng (Old village), Huai Su Htuk and Ban Nan Soi (Kayan Thar Yar) villages in Mae Hong Son province.    

Tourists who come to their villages have to pay entrance fees and the money is kept by Thai businessmen.  In return, Kayan women, who wear brass rings around their neck, earn 1,500 baht per month.  There have been cases, where girls as young as five started to put rings on their necks, maybe to earn more money for the family.

However, since their relocation to a new village (Huai Poo Kaeng (new village), some Kayan families face financial hardship because tourists do not go to their new village and also they no longer get financial assistance from businessmen.  The relocation occurred when local authorities took the initiative to gather all Kayans in Mae Hong Son province into one village in 2007.

Kayan people are well known as Long-neck Karens due to the multiple brass rings around their neck that makes them look like human giraffes.  They are also known as Padaung (meaning 'brass wearers' in Shan language) as their neighbours the Shans call them, which later came to be used widely by other people.  However, they have always regarded themselves as Kayan people and prefer to be called as the Kayan tribe rather than their other well known names.   

Kayan people are believed to have descended from Mongolia and are a sub group of Karen.  Kayan people live together in Burma but are geographically scattered into three states and one division.  They live in northwest of Kayah (Karenni), northern Karen and southern Shan state and eastern Mandalay division near Pyinmana, the new capital city of Myanmar.

Since, a number of Kayan have been living in Thailand for about 20 years and speak fluent Thai. They are being now recognized as one of the hill tribes of Thailand which one can spot very clearly in TV advertisements.  The Kayan tribe accounts for  more than 200,000 people.