Between Borders and Burdens
We are sharing a series of journal entries that the author, JH, contributed following an invitation from Insight Myanmar for publication on our website. She includes the following message: The following entries from my journal along the Burma-Thai border were first shared more than 18 years ago. On the advice of a respected teacher, they were distributed only on paper, so as to protect involved parties while raising awareness. Later, when the Internet became available, many of us still hoped in our hearts that these descriptions would soon become obsolete. Finally, I offer these words here in realizing that certain details remain far too accurate. May they bring benefit. Please forgive my youthful ignorance and arrogance. Errors are my own.
“One woman was fifteen years old and in high school when first imprisoned, for showing up on a certain street corner at a certain time not pleasing to the SPDC.”
Burma Border Journals #4
I walk in grimy flip flops and flowered sarong, glimpsing periodically from under a plastic- handled sunshade umbrella, toward the clinic compound on the outskirts of town each morning. The bull I pass is a greyish-white, one-humped, docile-looking beast, wandering around a bamboo tetherball pole. At rest the granny skin hanging from its neck wobbles while chewing cud, massive thorax balanced over skinny legs and knobby knees. It pulls like an ox when commanded, but when I see it in the field I fill with affection and yearn to pet it on that flat spot between the eyes. The cows, his female counterparts, are anchored to his domain on longer invisible leashes. This mirrors the political and economic situation of the migrants and their employers. Not only that but the mountains of Burma resemble the backs of these water buffalo, crooked bony spines, and dark jungled lumps, ruminating multi-chambered mysteries, resource rich for those who penetrate their secrets, silhouetted as the rains approach and rays of sun reach for gold-plated temple spires in the distance. Like the soft silence of the cattle, they draw me in, magnetizing my every cell with their silent buzzing aliveness.
One day along the Moie, a man offered to ferry us across in his traditional wooden boat, a sort of rowboat stretched double length end to end, steered from a standing position with a long stick that touches the river bottom. Many folks made such offers. Tempted but aware of possible consequences we politely declined the invitation. Since spies monitor the comings and goings of foreigners with unknown effects on security, it is useful to consider the pros and cons of one’s forays into the jungles of the Karen State with respect to the harm or benefit they might bring to the people of Burma. In the case of this particular offer, embarking on a spontaneous journey might have lead to some sort of divine meeting with a contact for future humanitarian aid projects, but most likely our participation would constitute a high stakes sort of adventure tourism. It does feel different on that side of the river. There is a value to bearing witness certainly, but one wouldn’t want to bring attention to the porosity of the border. Increased visibility of transport could theoretically lead to crackdown by officials on either side. Cross- border work ensures delivery of supplies and export of human rights information; its viability warrants protection. Just think what a hostage situation would do to the transparency of river commerce, warfare, and escape of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
Obvious changes in Western presence also affect trade patterns. One of our companions during prior explorations of the region had come upon a man wading three completely naked girls across at gunpoint. This gentleman had then attempted to peddle his wares to our friend at one hundred Thai Baht per head, or about three US Dollars. No thank you. My first thought was that he should have bought all three, but realistically, where would he set them free, so far from home, virtually guaranteed of re-capture, or worse? They say that when your feet touch the waters of the River Moie you will never again go home.
Aside from witnessing these transactions, personal safety is no small concern. There are the SPDC, the Karen National Army (KNU), and two other military groups that regularly engage in skirmishes involving firearms and shelling up and down this portion of the border. One of these groups is the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), a funny term if you think about it. One is tempted to assume that an appellation composed of such contradictory words, each with individually positive connotations, would have been coined by the same murderous proponents of Peace and Development as those who similarly retitled an entire country and its major cities. Our species, branding even death.
In fact, the generals are currently relocating the capital. The new headquarters are far from the house arrest site of Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National Democratic League (NLD), endorsed in retroactively dismissed elections by eighty two percent of those who voted. However more centrally located this transposed hub may be, it has been said that a major factor in the junta’s departure from Rangoon, now called Yangon, relates to the proximity of the university. As with many of the ethnic regions in Burma, now referred to as Myanmar, the SPDC is not so popular with the students. Unlike other portions of the populace a number of those associated with the university refuse to let their lives be dictated by fear. A government engaged in a rule of fear interprets any other empowerment than its own as a threat.
Myanmar’s prisons hold 1141 political prisoners, some dating back to the student uprising of 1988. Last evening a few of my new mates and I paid a social call, bearing assorted butter cookies and chips, to the Burmese Political Prisoners’ Union (BPP). Whereas the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners Burma (AAPP) with its museum and model cell block, do courageous political work, documenting atrocities, speaking truths, and networking the world over, this newer and complimentary organization serves direct practical purposes in Thailand. Yes, the photos of those abducted, the graphic drawings of torture positions, the examples of arts and crafts made by prisoners from plastic bags, poetry written with pins attached to sticks, personal demonstrations of real wrist and ankle shackles as well as of the bowl shared for defecation, the intellectually grounded comprehensive vision of Burma’s future all play essential roles in raising awareness. They cannot, however, feed and hide all new arrivals in Thailand after release from Burmese facilities and subsequent escape from their homeland. To this end, since its inception earlier in the year, some sixty ex-political prisoners newly arrived from “that other country” have been helped by the BPP to find food, lodging, and orientation while awaiting permission to enter a third country and settle.
Like other meetings, the ritual includes a private cell phone call to the persons to be visited followed by the arrival of a motorcycle driver sporting sleek headset. The guests then follow the guide to the latest quarters of those he protects. We met with five men, two women, and a child. One woman was fifteen years old and in high school when first imprisoned, for showing up on a certain street corner at a certain time not pleasing to the SPDC.
Although these men and women were released legally from captivity, their captors conveniently separated them from their families for so long that their children no longer recognize them and also took steps making it virtually impossible for these often well-educated professionals to secure employment. Smuggled across the border into Thailand or China, or Bangladesh, they are illegal aliens, uninvited annoyances to the neighbor countries and without necessary legal documents. They are lucky, in that 1.5 million of their fellow citizens remain IDPs. Still if they leave the small unit where the organization sheltering them makes its home, they run the risk of being picked up and thrown into jail by the Thai authorities. Without bail there is deportation; with deportation often death or worse.
In a way, the Thai are doing a service in not shutting the door completely to the estimated one million Burmese migrant workers and asylum seekers displaced eastward. On the other hand, it is not unheard of for the police to round up a few at a time from the shanty areas sprung up around factories and feudal farms so as to augment their own personal incomes with bail money. The price is arbitrary depending upon the whim of the officer involved, and if the arrestees are female it’s not so much bail monies the authorities covet but profit from sale into the human trafficking of the sex trade.
Last week three members of the BPP were locked up at a release price of one thousand Thai Baht or three hundred US Dollars per person. Conversations had in the neighborhood indicate that even a legal immigrant, meaning one not hiding for his life and for whom an annual work permit has been purchased by some sponsor, makes five to twenty Thai Baht per day in the service industry or at best eighty Baht per day in manual farm labor. Of course after learning the Thai language this wage increases, but as you can see the bail was set steeply. These three in question had recently come from years of living in an eight-by-eight foot dark cell with two to eight other roommates for 23.75 hours per day, enduring various devices of physical and mental torture and sharing a single bowl for excrement. Their wardens had administered routine medicinal injections with one needle to all prisoners, including the other true criminals and also intravenous drug users, both of whom enjoy shorter sentences than intellectuals, and many of whom carried the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Needle exchange is not exactly top priority and the participant who lacks even an old syringe might out of necessity resort to hollowed out bamboo as the sole delivery method available. The heroin trade funds a neither insubstantial nor inconsequential portion of the junta’s annual operating budget, the effects thereof reminiscent of China’s Opium Wars. All this for something like possessing a book; so, the perspective on one night in a Thai jail for walking down the street shifts a bit. That night the three men refused to pay and called upon other members of their nascent organization for support. In response, the Thai authorities let the men go. They don’t want a scene either, though there are those who speculate about the form covert backlash might take.
May this writing heighten awareness about the plight and great beauty of the people from all parts once called Burma. May it bring benefit to all who are described herein and to all who read it. May you be truly happy.