Daniel Pedersen

Restrictions fueling frustration, anger and violence

MIZZIMA

Don Talenywun

September 28, 2009

Trouble is brewing among the refugees of Burma’s war.

Stranded in northern Thailand, fed on rations donated by international community, unable to travel freely and not allowed to work, the populations of the camps strung out along Burma’s border are ready to blow.

Umpheim Mai refugee camp is on tenterhooks, with violence threatening to break out among residents at any time.

A football game on Saturday afternoon descended into crowd violence at game’s end, with gangs of young men attacking each other.

Some camp residents described it as a mini riot.

The current trouble started earlier this month, with a murder of a Burmese resident when he allegedly failed to pay for a cow he had already taken possession of.

When it became obvious he could not pay, the owner is said to have sought his money back, only to find the potential buyer had already slaughtered the beast.

A dispute escalated rapidly from a verbal stoush among two groups of men into physical violence.

Whatever ensued, the alleged “buyer” is now dead.

The camp, situated in Thailand’s in Tak province to the south of Mae Sot and officially home to about 15,000 people, spent months earlier this year on high alert and these latest events have done nothing to ease ethnic tensions.

Residents for months waited in anticipation of an attack by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a militia allied with the Burma Army, the armed wing of Burma’s ruling military junta, the State Peace and Development Council.

Rumours ran wild that the remote camp would be destroyed, with much of the population packed up and ready to flee at a moment’s notice.

It only takes a rumour for a large group of isolated, traumatised people to react unpredictably to minor events.

Law and order in the camps has long been a taboo subject with Thai authorities, lumbered with policing communities that would not exist but for a grinding war of attrition in Burma’s ethnic minority-dominated north.

Thai authorities maintain stringent guidelines for allowing Burmese citizens to become part of the camps, requiring them to be fleeing fighting orchestrated by soldiers of the state.

Thai authorities do not recognise soldiers of the DKBA as soldiers of the Burmese state, creating a propensity by the Burma Army to use allied ethnic militias where it can, and paint the conflict as an ethno-centric struggle for power among rival warlords.

Economic migrants or those fleeing human rights abuses or forced labour do not qualify as refugees, inadvertently creating a vast pool of people who have quietly slipped over Burma’s borders and become part of an illegal workforce.

This workforce, satisfied to work for as little as half the wage of a Thai worker, is estimated by some organisations to number as many as two million.

But for those who do qualify as people who have literally run for their lives, containment in a refugee camp and the inability to achieve anything for themselves results in a frustrated existence.

In Umpheim Mai refugee camp on Saturday that frustration bubbled over into mob violence.

“Football is banned now,” said one refugee.

“And rumour from on high is that the Palat [Thai camp commander] may close the gates [put the camp into total lockdown].

“Things are not good, I’ve never seen it like this before, there is a definite vibe in the air,” said the refugee resident.

“Thai patrols through the camp are random now and the soldiers are clipped up and ready to go [carrying live ammunition in the event they have to quash a riot or mob violence],” he said.

ENDS