Early on the morning of January 14, 2009, most residents of Ban Don Yang Camp, at Three Pagoda’s Pass border crossing, took shelter from the cold winter air inside their huts.
I woke up at 5:00 am to wait for the truck that would take me from the camp to Sangkhlaburi Town, in Thailand’s Kanchanaburi Province, where I would catch a bus to Bangkok and begin my journey towards resettlement in the United States of America.
My friend Zi Thu and I sat in my home and listened to the noise of the truck arriving.
I was very excited, even though I’d already been abroad, because this time I was leaving behind the challenges and frustrations of the refugee camp I had lived in more than three years- a place that was only a holding pen for Burmese refugees in the process of being resettled in parts of the European Union, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia.
I was among the first group of refugees that had registered in Ban Don Yang Refugee Camp as refugees under the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in 2004. I’d been living in the camp, waiting to be resettled, since September of 2006.
Ban Don Yang Camp is the same camp that currently shelters Luther Htoo, who led the Karen rebel group “God’s Army”, along with his twin brother Johnny Htoo, until their surrender in 2001.
We were registered in the camp as political asylum seekers, and the majority of us were members and supporters of various armed rebel groups throughout Burma. I was registered as a journalist, but some were only pretending to be rebel group members, as a means of being resettled abroad and finding well-paying jobs.
Ban Don Yang camp was founded by the Thai government in 1997, when it moved two small Karen camps, known as Thu Ka and Hti Ta Bay, away from violence in Tenasserim Division and Dooplaya district. The two camps were combined and relocated to the Three Pagoda Pass border area, near the refugee camp run by the New Mon State Party (NMSP), called Hlockhani.
Over 4,000 refugees from different areas of Burma currently live under the protection of the UNHCR and the Thai government in Ban Don Yang camp. The Mon National Relief Committee (MNRC) provided rations for Ban Don Yang residents between 1997-2002. The Thai-Burma Border Consortium (TBBC) has handled the job for the last 7 years.
The UNHCR started recognizing the camp’s residents as refugees in 2004.
Ban Dong Yang is officially known as a “refugee camp” because of its location. Just across the border in Burma are the three main Mon resettlement sites called Hlockhani, Bee Ree, and Tavoy, which have over 10,000 residents.
The largest of these, Halockhani, was founded in 1994, when the strongest Mon armed political party, the NMSP, was still in armed conflict with the Burmese military government. The camp was created to shelter the thousands of Mon refugees who had fled from the suffering caused by the civil war inside Burma.
The lives of Mon refugees in Halockhani changed for the worse following the cease-fire agreement reached by the NMSP and the Burmese government in 1995. NMSP leader, Nai Shwe Kyin, made a public statement that Mon refugees could return home. He claimed that there was no civil war and no human rights violations in Mon territories, and that no help would be needed from the UN and International NGOs.
Nai Shwe Kyin’s statement backfired. NGOs began decreasing the aid they sent to Mon resettlement sites within Burma, but, human rights violations and civil war persisted within the Mon territory.
Mon refugees living on the Thailand-Burma border found themselves unable to return home, due to infighting between various Mon splinter groups.
Many were unable to return home when their land was seized by the Burmese government a few years later in 1998, as part of the Burmese military operation known as the “ self-reliance” program. More than 20,000 acres of fruit and rubber plantations were confiscated, and the newly destitute Mon farmers fled to refugee camps.
Meanwhile, forced labor, portering (forcing civilians to carry equipment and supplies for the Burmese troops), rapes, killings, and other human rights violations continued to be inflicted by the government’s troops in southern Mon State, where Mon splinter groups were active.
When the NMSP demanded that the military regime order an end to the oppression, it was ignored. The cease-fire achieved the opposite of what the NMSP had hoped for.
Victims of the violence tried to flee to Mon resettlement sites, but, NGOs had already reduced their support of Mon refugees after the ceasefire.
Mon refugees already in the sites found it increasingly difficult to survive and new arrivals struggled even more. At the same time, the Thai government also set up a policy discouraging NGOs from giving aid across the Thai-Burma border. Instead, donors encouraged Mon refugees to be more self-sufficient.
In the name of “self-sufficiency”, the MNRC, which changed its name to the Mon Relief and Development Committee (MRDC), lent a small amount of its funds to Mon refugee families to produce traditional handicraft products, and to grow rice paddies and plantations. These efforts failed, however, due to the small amount of land and poor security at the sites.
Despite the fact that the project failed, NGOs continued reducing their support of Mon refugees.
Survival has become a major challenge, and many refugees have sneaked inside Thailand to find jobs, so they could send back money to family members in their resettlement site.
At the same time, many refugees have moved out from the sites to some villages close to Three Pagodas Pass to get jobs, because they are afraid of having trouble with Burmese authorities.
“Many children left the school to help their parents with their daily survival. Many of the refugees secretly left the camps and have moved to some small villages near Three Pagoda Pass Town so that they could find jobs and get income. Many wanted to move into Son Yon camp, but the Thai authorities would not allow it,” said Nai Kao Chan, former Headmaster of the Mon National Middle School in Halockhani.
He claimed that, over the last 10 years, more than 30 percent of the students have dropped out of school early, in order to help their parents earn money.
The main jobs available to Hlockhani residents are bamboo shoot harvesting and working in sweatshops, both jobs earn a salary of 50-100 baht per day. The jobs are considered to be seasonal, and refugees have trouble making enough money to survive.
“I sent my son and daughter to central Thailand as migrant workers to seek jobs. This is the only one way for us to have enough income. If they get good jobs, they can send us money. If they can’t, it is our bad luck,” Mi Shwe [not her real name] told me.
Many teenagers from Halockhani camp have moved to Thailand, with the idea of sending home their earning to their families in the camp. Such arrangements are the main source of income for Mon refugees in the three sites along the Thai-Burma border.
“The refugees are crying, because donors have only given 25% of the rations for their daily needs in 2009. We can do nothing,” Hlockhani camp Chairman Nai Chit Thaw told me.
The donors have also restricted their distribution of other supplies to Mon refugees and they also stopped giving extra rations to NMSP troops and officers who have taken on the responsibility of acting as security guards over the last 13 years.
This development not only endangers the survival of Mon refugees living in the sites on the Thai-Burma border, but, it also prevents new Mon refugees, fleeing from civil strife in Burma, from seeking shelter at the sites.
Currently, most Mon refugees in the three sites of Hlochkani, Bee Ree, and Tavoy in Burma are from Ye Township, Yebyu Township, and Tavoy Division. Many have left the sites and are taking shelter inside Thailand, in order to find ways to support their families. Many of these people have opted to move in with relatives already in Thailand, in order to get sufficient aid to start a new life.
There also is no space for the new Mon refugees to access shelter in the Thai camps across the border that do have sufficient NGO funding for Mon refugees; including Ban Dong Yang, which has the added benefit of being recognized by the UNHCR.
Unfortunately, Mon refugees from Hlockhani camp, who want to cross the border to move to Ban Dong Yang Camp, to be recognized as refugees under the UNHCR, are being barred from the camp by Thai authorities.
This is happening while hundreds of Karen Refugees access shelter at Mae Lae camp, despite the fact that Mae Lae also has been under-funded by donors.
However, a chance remains for Mon refugees to seek refugee status under the UNHCR, if they register as political asylum seekers, or if they have relatives already living camps. These people have to request that the UNHCR recognize them as refugees and they have to register at a camp. This option is open to only a small number of refugees.
During my final months in Ban Dong Yang, I met a Mon refugee family who was seeking shelter in the camp. Their 10 year-old and 14 year-old sons had been tortured in mid-2008 by local Burmese battalion IB No.31 in their home of Khawzar town, in Ye township, Mon State. The children were stabbed with knives and slapped several times by the battalion’s troops, who accused the children of knowing the location of Mon splinter groups near the town.
Luckily, the family was not kicked out of the camp by Thai authorities, as the father has a brother-in-law already recognized by UNHCR.
Since taking shelter in Ban Don Yang camp, the family is now free from life-threatening danger, even though they have had to sacrifice their freedom, but, are facing the same difficulties faced by myself, my friends and my fellow refugees.
The family is not allowed to leave the camp and it has no income to cover daily life, no electricity, and a small water supply.
Living in a hut surrounded by the jungle restricts contact with the outside world. From my experience, it is similar to living in a prison.
One day, the father of the family took his two sons fishing at nearby Blaed Hnoat dam.
“I caught about three kilos of small fish and frogs for our meal,” the father told me. “But now I can’t catch as much as before. There are less fish, frog and prawns.”
This man, who only receives rice, salt, oil, fish paste, beans, chili and some fish for rations, claimed that lowered water levels due to the summer season, was endangering his family’s survival.
The family’s future remains uncertain. They do not know whether when they can return home or be resettled in a third country because they are not yet recognized as refugees by the UNHCR and the Thai government.
Before that can happen, the family must go through the five-step interviewing process so they can state the reasons that they cannot return to Burma.
The family is registered with the UNHCR, but, that is only the first step in the resettlement process. Unfortunately, they have to be patient with the slow resettlement process.
They must have another interview with the authorities for the second step of the process and they must be registered as a family in Ban Dong Yang camp for the third step.
They must apply yet again to the UNHCR to gain resettlement abroad as for the fourth step.
And, finally they must have an interview with embassy officers to gain resettlement from a specific third country.
All these steps must be accomplished before the family can be resettled and the process takes many years to complete.
This means the family must continue to struggle to survive for many more years.
The father of the family told me what he hoped future resettlement in the US might bring:
“I want to live a peaceful life. I don’t want to meet Burmese troops anymore. We are scared enough.”
