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Mae La Refugee Camp is one of 7 refugees camps for the Karen ethnic minority located on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. The journey there takes some 10 hours’ driving west/northwest from Bangkok. There are at least half a million Karen refugees living on the Thai side of the border.

Mae La itself has approximately 49,000 inhabitants. They live in sturdy bamboo huts built on stilts with dried leaves for roofing. People sit and sleep on mengkuang-type woven mats or string hammocks. These huts begin from just next to the main road, Highway 105, for 4 kilometres, and up to the steep hills nearby, 1 kilometre deep. To get around inside the camp, you have to navigate a maze of little lanes in between the huts, constantly either climbing or descending.

The detritus of daily living litters the place. When it rains, the little lanes turn into riverlets, and then into mud, through which one has to trudge. The slopes turn slippery. There used to be no electricity, though in certain parts of Mae La electricity was installed just the week earlier to some community areas. At night you navigate either by candlelight or torchlight, or by the dim green LED display of an old Nokia mobile telephone, which the older teenage and twenty-something boys all seem to own.

There is no running water. There are communal stand pipes, where people collect water and bathe, and do some laundry (although there is also a small river that cuts through the camp further away). In the mornings there is a queue of water containers; people collecting for the daily chores ahead. Needless to say there are no flush toilets. Almost every available space is used up, including the area under the huts, where livestock (mainly pigs and chickens) are reared. There is no room for growing vegetables; in fact the Thai government does not allow much farming apart from some designated places for “hill” rice. The European Union provides regular food assistance in terms of rice, cooking oil and fish paste. Everything else is bought from the Thai traders who come 3 times a week from Mae Sot with fresh provisions.

Money is scarce. Although not allowed, some residents take the risk and clear some land back across the Myanmar side of the border. They go in the morning and return in the evening. The border is unfenced. The dividing line is the River Moi which, at times, is clearly visible from Highway 105. In the current rainy season (July to October), the river is a swift and swollen flow of teh-tarik coloured water. Others try to clear some land on the Thai side and do the same, or merely forage in the forest for whatever they can find. Camp security isn’t so tight, so some people do go out and take menial jobs. Mobility is restricted because the refugees do not have identity papers. I was told even the Karens who are Thai citizens (the Karens traditionally inhabit an area which is now divided between Myanmar and Thailand) do not have full mobility rights because they are classified as hill tribe peoples; they need written permission to leave the area.

There is an official border crossing at Mae Sot. However it was closed when I visited due to the coup in Thailand which had just occurred 2 days earlier. Unofficial crossings happen quite regularly, of course. According to reports, the border has been closed to new Myanmar refugees since March 2006. But still they come through, victims of the repressive regime on the other side.

I was part of a team comprising Singaporeans, Malaysians and an American meeting with a church-based group in Mae La Refugee Camp to see what kind of financial and logistical assistance we could provide through them to the refugees. In addition to Mae La, our mission took us to a few other Karen settlements around the area.

The most heart-wrenching part of the trip was my visit to an unofficial settlement. In order to protect the safety of the inhabitants I will not refer to it by name. It is in a very remote area. You suddenly take a turn into a jungle track off Highway 105 and drive on a 4X4 until you literally cannot drive anymore. Then you get down and walk. The hike is somewhat tricky. Eventually you cross a small river and arrive at a clearing. There are 45 families living in bamboo huts in this settlement. Amongst the families are 90 children. Some have been sent there by their parents, who still live “across the river” (on the Myanmar side of the border). They were brought there because, however bad the living conditions were, they represented a window of hope compared to staying behind.

A school has been started, and 5 teachers have been found to teach the 90 children, whose ages range from 5 to 12. The teachers are refugees too. They call the children who have been sent across “boarders” and the school a “boarding school”. The children see their parents about once a year, if they come from across the border to visit. The journey is neither easy nor safe. Otherwise they do not see their parents at all. There is 1 hut for the boys, and another for the girls. Each is partitioned into several compartments, and a few children sleep in each compartment. When we arrived the teachers and the village heads gathered all the children together to greet us. They sang us 2 songs. Their clothes weren’t very clean, and some had dirty faces. A few of the children we could see were suffering from conjunctivitis. (Malaria and diarrhoea are also commonplace in these parts.) I have young children of my own, and the thought of them having to live under these conditions drove home personally for me the reality of their situation. One of the older boys sang us a local song accompanied by a traditional harp-like instrument. One of the younger boys started crying after a while because he was lonely; he had arrived at the settlement only recently. I had a large packet of sweets which I shared around with the children. The teachers showed us the classrooms, filled with coloured charts and alphabet posters, like you would see in any classroom. But there were no chairs; the children sat on the rattan floor. Benches served as tables. Soon it was time to go; we promised another team would come in December.

This was not the first time I had visited a refugee camp. After my English bar exams I worked for a year with internally-displaced people in northern Uganda (where the LRA were terrorising the local population). But that was 16 years ago (although the LRA have only recently signed a ceasefire accord). Still, there were similarities. For one, their present situation, however bad, seemed preferable to what they had left behind. That despite the hardships, there was hope for the future. And that these small groups, linking up with outside organisations, offered opportunities for improvement, in terms of education and training (English language and computer classes), animal husbandry, some farming, some traditional crafts (like weaving).

Naturally as a lawyer I could see that there were issues of justice and human rights, and the need for peace and reconciliation. But these were for a different time and place. I knew that they knew that at any time, the camps could be closed and they could be ordered back across the border to face an uncertain future at the hands of a repressive regime. So work does need to take place at international and regional government-to-government levels.

To this end, the recent military coup in Thailand is a step backward because it relieves Myanmar of pressure from within ASEAN. But here, at the cutting edge, I came away with a deep feeling of awe and respect, that in the midst of what to outsiders is a tremendously difficult set of circumstances, these Karen people who had very little were still strengthened and uplifted by their indomitable human spirit and belief in God, vigour for their collective future, and zest for the continued life of their ethnic community.

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