Flight from the junta

Refugees tell of life in the camps on the Burmese border and the trauma in their troubled homeland

A new book has given voice to the voiceless â?" and filled a huge void in Thailandâ??s recent history.

â??Nine Thousand Nightsâ? tells some of the remarkable stories of refugees living along the Burma border. Tens of thousands of Karen and other persecuted ethnic minorities have lived in camps from Kanchanaburi and Tak all the way north to Mae Hong Son for more than a quarter of a century.

The plight of those who have fled decades of abuse and persecution in the east and north of Burma is arguably Southeast Asiaâ??s greatest humanitarian crisis. Yet it is also one of the most under-reported, with the camps off limits to all news media.

The last major fighting was in the mid-â??90s, but low-level civil strife has dragged on for so long that the latest casualties, guerrilla attacks and village slayings in Karen and Shan States rarely make headlines.

That partially explains the importance of this book, published by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium â?" a non-government group that raises millions of US dollars every year for food and supplies for 150,000 refugees in the nine camps along the border.

â??Nine Thousand Nightsâ? was conceived as a â??scrapbookâ? of notes, photos and artwork by refugees and the people that care for them. Sandy Barron, an Irish former Nation sub-editor, had the difficult task of sifting through hundreds of moving letters written by the refugees and trying to do them justice in print.

The end result is heartbreaking, full of insight into what theyâ??ve endured, both before and since fleeing to Thailand. The subject matter may be bleak, but itâ??s also a remarkable testament to the human spirit.

â??Night Thousand Nightsâ? was launched last month at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Bangkok with TBBC executives Jack Dunford and Sally Thompson on hand.

Both have been honoured as Members of the British Empire. Dunford received his from Queen Elizabeth in 2000, and Prince Charles presented Thompson with her medal this past July for her 19 yearsâ?? work on behalf of the refugees.

Dunford admitted to feelings of â??despair balanced with hopeâ? as he wondered how brutal military attacks on innocent villages â??could happen for decades, with impunity â?" and how many more years could this go on for?â?

Mubi, a Kayan (Karenni) refugee, spoke at the book launch of a childhood on the run, sleeping outside her houses in fear of Burmese soldiers. â??My house was burned down four times,â? she said. â??Life wasnâ??t really safe for us. I really wanted to go to school â?" I wanted an education.â?

Her family ended up in Camp 2 near Mae Hong Son in 1995 and Mubi got the education she wanted. Sheâ??s had the opportunity to live outside the camp, but with limited rights â?" needing permission to travel outside Mae Hong Son was â??humiliatingâ?, she said, â??because I have no country of my ownâ?.

Barron said the more than 200 letters from the camps that form the backbone of the book were â??incredibly enlighteningâ? and her editing task was â??a privilege and a responsibilityâ?.

The insights and information provided was different from what journalists usually glean, Barron noted. â??They were saying what they wanted to say.â?

One of the refugees insisted that itâ??s impossible for outsiders to understand what their lives are like. As Barron wrote: â??To be a refugee is to have lost everything you once held dear.â?

She was shocked how many residents in the camps wrote in about hunger when in Burma, and their struggle with being a refugee, â??living a life of receiving when their culture is all about givingâ?.

She read passages from the book:

â??You may be in Thailand, but you are close to home as the birds fly. Sometimes the physical distance between a refugee and the home she hasnâ??t seen for 20 years is a mere few kilometres â?¦ It is perhaps the most difficult contradiction of all in the camps. The longing for home doesnâ??t go away. It has to be constantly contained.

â??Home means more than simply the physical place: it stands for memories of freedom, peace, space, plentiful food, and a way of life with old traditions that were sustaining and made sense.â?

â??The refugees,â? Barron said, â??describe impossible, real, desperately traumatic events that are difficult for outsiders to take in. They tell stories with a quiet power and a level of detail that demands to be listened to and that implicitly insists on questions: Where is the justice?â?

Thompson shared some happier moments in the camps, including the refugeesâ?? recipes for cooking various animals and an infant whose name translated as â??bite off the umbilical cordâ? â?" his mother had given birth alone while hiding in the jungle.

Dunford said heâ??s mystified at the lack of international empathy about whatâ??s happening in Karen State.

â??Somehow thereâ??s a disconnect between what happens in these remote areas and the Saffron Revolution,â? he said, referring to the 2007 uprising led by monks in Rangoon.

â??It gripped the entire worldâ??s attention,â? Dunford said, but the Burmese armyâ??s violence â??is happening every day in the border areaâ? and goes almost wholly ignored.

Border lines

-â??Nine Thousand Nightsâ? is published by the Thailand Burma Border Consortium.

- Itâ??s available at Asia Books and the TBBC office for Bt750.