The Karen People
A Karen 'refugee' camp in Thailand
For several years, we have had a very rewarding interest in the Karen people of Burma. Now living in exile in Thailand, they are without sufficient education and medical care and, indeed, without a country. Their plight is largely ignored by the international community but their stories of terror and aggression from the ruling military junta and army is just as awful as any story of oppression.
We first met our Karen friends when we trekked with Mr Oom from Mae Sod into the forests of the Umphiang National Park in Thailand. He is a friend of the Karen and we soon became aware of the trouble caused by the Burmese junta. The minority peoples of Nurma have been, and are still, under great duress. Tens of thousands have crossed the border to live in 'camps' in Thailand near Mae Sod.
Since that first meeting, we have supported the Karen cause by doing some volunteer teaching and giving financial aid to students from the area. As the Karen people have no passports and are not granted refugee status by the Thai authorities, they are between a rock and a hard place. Progress towards a solution is very slow. Lives continue to be destroyed in Burma and refugees continue to stream over the borders (even into bangladesh!) to escape the torture, rape, beatings, burning of houses and destruction of crops that continues in Burma. In and around border towns in Thailand like Mae Sod, many volunteers are working in the fields of education and medicine to improve the lives of the refugees.
In the area around Mae Sod, there are several 'camps' of 'refugees'. Actually, they are not camps - they're villages. And the people who live in them are not lucky enough to be labelled 'refugees'. They are DPs - displaced persons - without recognition by the UN Human Rights organisation and so without much hope of assistance from many quarters.
However these people have not given up their struggle for freedom or their struggle to live meaningful lives. The villages contain infrastructures for education, health, law, religion, water reticulation, sewerage and finance! They do need help though. If you can spare some time or clothing or money as you pass through, it will be put to great good use.
There is a huge amount more to the story of course. There are many more Karen and other minority people inside Burma but unable to live in their village. These IDPs (internally displaced persons) number in the millions. They have been oppressed for fifty years in ways unimaginable to most minds.
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