The Silenced Hearts Within Mae La Camp

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A group of refugee children take a break outdoors by their camp school. Photo by Jennifer Cavagnol.

Editor’s Note: This is the first of a series of reports from Jennifer Cavagnol, 25, who is currently traveling in Southeast Asia to study humanitarian issues. Cavagnol graduated from Kailua High School and magna cum laude from the University of Massachusetts. Her intention is to raise awareness in Hawaii about the plight of refugees in Myanmar and to eventually raise funds in Kailua to help with their medical care and other needs.

What is worse than having to choose between two things you like? ... Having to choose between two things you don’t like.

This is the reality that faces many of the citizens in present-day Myanmar. In a country that grips its people to the point of suffocation, many, mostly ethnic minorities, have chosen to flee to the border with Thailand. But some may refer to the differences between these two worlds as a blemished line.

The refugee camps located along the Thai border with Myanmar have a strange reality, and though the immigrants find solace in the quiet of the camps, here they also face stagnation.

Mae La, the largest of nine refugee camps running adjacent to the Thai-Myanmar border, stretches over a mile long and encompasses more than 20,000 bamboo dwellings. Its inhabitants, now swelling to over 50,000, have sought refuge here from their homeland and its military junta.

After taking control in 1962, the ruling military government has been continuously criticized for atrocities violating basic human rights - and the list is long. It is well-documented by Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International and other international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that the Burmese have and continue to endure dismal circumstances within the borders of their own country. As of 1996, according to HRW, 3,077 villages have been burned to ashes and more than a million people displaced. Thousands have fled to the Thai border; others are forced into government-controlled relocation camps where they melt into an accessible pool of labor and food suppliers for military forces.

The Burmese have also been used as free laborers for government needs, being forced to build roads and pipelines under harsh conditions, with little to no food and without compensation. Not even pregnant women escape it; they are sometimes made to carry their small children with them while they work. Stories of frequent miscarriages abound. One Karenni woman told me of her encounter with forced labor ... she has had three miscarriages in the past five years.

Human Rights Watch and Refugees International also say that the ruling junta has planted landmines in and around crops and homes to prevent locals from harvesting them to feed anti-government insurgents. Mines are not exclusively for war. They are sometimes placed inside homes of the ethnic minorities and, according to a catalog of testimony gathered by the Karen Women’s League, civilians have been used as human minesweepers, forced to walk ahead of government troops to clear the path for them. To add insult to injury, HRW also reports that the government will occasionally charge a fee to the family of a landmine victim on the grounds of “destruction of government property.”

The country is effectively closed off to the outside world, enabling surreptitious operations to flourish. A young Chinese/Burmese man working in his aunt’s Internet cafe in Yangon shared with me in hushed tones the workings of this silence world. Though such cafes abound, he said, all email accounts are prohibited, as are anti-government sites - even Lonely Planet’s access is denied, since it offers a short chapter on Myanmar politics.

Fees for international phone calls are so inflated - at $5 to $6 a minute - that hardly a Western tourist can afford it, let alone a native Burmese. The military has successfully manufactured a society of fear, where the possibility of spies makes people wary of their closest neighbors (according to my taxi driver) as well as the ever-present government officials.

Locals say government-owned newspapers like The New Light of Myanmar (locally dubbed “The New Lies of Myanmar”) is read only for its obituaries. “That is the only truthful news you can find in the country,” I was told.

In this climate, it is no surprise that thousands flee, in search of a life free from the heavy fog of terror. Indeed, it’s a blessing they have somewhere to run.

But the confinement of Mae La, though it represents a safe enclave, is like a prison.