• Burmese
Friday, June 20, 2025
No Result
View All Result
NEWSLETTER
The Irrawaddy
25 °c
Yangon
  • Home
  • News
    • Burma
    • Politics
    • World
    • Asia
    • Myanmar’s Crisis & the World
    • Ethnic Issues
    • War Against the Junta
    • Junta Cronies
    • Conflicts In Numbers
    • Junta Watch
    • Fact Check
    • Investigation
    • Myanmar-China Watch
    • Obituaries
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Opinion
    • Commentary
    • Guest Column
    • Analysis
    • Editorial
    • Stories That Shaped Us
    • Letters
  • Junta Watch
  • Ethnic Issues
  • War Against the Junta
  • In Person
    • Interview
    • Profile
  • Books
  • Donation
  • Home
  • News
    • Burma
    • Politics
    • World
    • Asia
    • Myanmar’s Crisis & the World
    • Ethnic Issues
    • War Against the Junta
    • Junta Cronies
    • Conflicts In Numbers
    • Junta Watch
    • Fact Check
    • Investigation
    • Myanmar-China Watch
    • Obituaries
  • Politics
  • Business
  • Opinion
    • Commentary
    • Guest Column
    • Analysis
    • Editorial
    • Stories That Shaped Us
    • Letters
  • Junta Watch
  • Ethnic Issues
  • War Against the Junta
  • In Person
    • Interview
    • Profile
  • Books
  • Donation
No Result
View All Result
The Irrawaddy
No Result
View All Result
Home News Burma

Refugees Face Uncertain Future as Burma Opens

Denis Gray by Denis Gray
May 13, 2013
in Uncategorized
Reading Time: 4 mins read
0 0
A A
Refugees Face Uncertain Future as Burma Opens

Children play at Mae La Refugee camp. (PHOTO: Feliz Solomon)

2.9k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

MAE LA REFUGEE CAMP, Thailand—Since the day she was born, 20-year-old Naw Lawnadoo has known almost nothing of the world beyond the fence and guard posts that hem her in with 45,000 others — ethnic minorities from Burma and those like her who were born and raised in the Mae La refugee camp in neighboring Thailand.

School, family, friends, shopping and churchgoing—many of the refugees are Christian—have all been confined to a valley of densely packed bamboo-and-thatch huts huddled under soaring limestone cliffs.

Now, she and other camp residents face a future that will dramatically change their constricted but secure, sometimes happy lives. With the end of 50 years of military rule in Burma, aid groups are beginning to prepare for the eventual return of one of the world’s largest refugee populations—some 1 million people in camps and hideouts spread across five countries.

RelatedPosts

Bangladeshi Islamist Party Proposes Independent Rohingya State in Myanmar’s Rakhine

Bangladeshi Islamist Party Proposes Independent Rohingya State in Myanmar’s Rakhine

April 28, 2025
2.4k
Myanmar Refugees in Limbo, Thailand in Denial

Myanmar Refugees in Limbo, Thailand in Denial

March 22, 2025
2.7k
Bangladesh Arrests Notorious Rohingya Militant Leader

Bangladesh Arrests Notorious Rohingya Militant Leader

March 19, 2025
1.2k

For thousands like Naw Lawnadoo, it is “repatriation” to a country they have never known, where their parents suffered under a military regime that suppressed ethnic insurgencies with brutal tactics, and where ethnic tensions continue to erupt in bloodshed despite some democratic reforms. More than half the population of the camps in Thailand is under 19.

“We are prepared to go back, but we don’t know what the real situation there is like,” says Naw Lawnadoo of Burma. “We can’t speak Burmese. We have no identification cards. And I don’t know what kind of a job I could get.”

Just when they will have to leave remains uncertain, but Thailand, which hosts many of the camps, is eager to close them.

“We’re coming to the endgame,” says Sally Thompson, executive director of The Border Consortium, the main agency providing aid to a string of Thailand camps, where you can find four generations living under one roof.

Some may melt into Thailand, joining the 2.5 million migrant workers from Burma. A few may be resettled in third countries, though the United States is ending a program under which it has taken 80 percent of the 105,000 settled so far. With shrinking options, most will likely have no choice but to return.

While camp life is hardly cosmopolitan, some of the young can meet foreigners, have access to the Internet and occasionally slip out to a nearby town, or even the shopping malls and bright lights of Bangkok, Thailand’s capital. For them, the prospect of planting rice in isolated villages to which they would probably go holds little attraction.

Naw Lawnadoo for one is seemingly confused. The young woman, dressed in neat slacks and a blouse embossed with a teddy bear, has heard the stories of how her parents fled Pea Ta Ka village in Karen state as Burma soldiers moved in to pillage, burn houses and kill.

At one moment she says she would like to go to Australia, where her father’s three sisters and mother are settled, after finishing her studies at a Baptist college in the camp.

Later, she talks about returning to her mother’s village in Burma as a medic or Christian missionary, thinking that perhaps she could adjust to life there. “If our neighbors could live like that, we could too,” she says.

She and her parents had an opportunity to go to Australia earlier, but decided against it because her maternal grandmother still lives in Burma. “My mother didn’t want to go. She said we would be even farther from her mother than we are now, and my father gave in to her,” Naw Lawnadoo says with a distinct note of regret.

“I’ve never ridden a train or an airplane,” she says. Her longest trip and only one to a city was to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.

The majority of the refugees, including Naw Lawnadoo, belong to the Karen ethnic group. Others include the Karenni and Pa-o. Many of the older ones, who fled fighting in their homelands, hope to return one day but say the time is not yet right.

Burma remains a nightmare for Mu Pro, a 42-year-old woman. She still dreams about running, running, trying to flee the grasp of her pursuers who finally catch and torture her.

“No more Burma army. No more torture. No more killing. No more suffering,” she says. “I don’t want to go home. Since I was young, I have always been running away from Burmese soldiers.”

Her aging father, like many in the war-torn regions, was forced to be a porter for the army and shot when he could not carry his load. When her husband, also shanghaied, never returned she fled her mountain village. She sent two of her sons to Thailand, while she and three younger children became internal refugees—like some half a million others in eastern Burma—for 11 years. Always on the move, they hired themselves out to feed pigs and plant rice.

When they finally arrived in Mae La, the deadline set by Thailand for refugees to register for possible resettlement to third countries had passed, though her two sons left for Australia with a friend a year ago.

“I don’t trust the SPDC and I fear armed conflict will erupt again,” she says, still using the acronym for the now defunct military junta, some of whose former leaders continue to wield influence. The government has signed a series of fragile ceasefires with many of the insurgent groups, but some have already frayed, with clashes having recently erupted in Shan State and the Kachin State still fighting the government. Soldiers are likely to remain in Karen State for the foreseeable future.

The Karen Refugees Committee, a leading refugee organization, recently said the reforms in Burma “signal a ray of hope for many refugees to be able to return to their homeland,” but laid down 10 conditions for repatriation ranging from a solid nationwide ceasefire to clearing the vast mine fields along the border.

Thompson cites a host of problems in Karen State and other ethnic regions, ranging from rehabilitating communities shattered by conflict to mounting land grabs that have turned the homes and fields of farmers into plantations, factories and dam sites. Some refugees who go back to check their old properties say they no longer exist, and they have no documents to reclaim them.

But she also says that “suddenly something will be triggered and they’re off so we have to be prepared for that moment.”

Thompson, who has worked with border refugees for more than two decades, says forced displacement of villagers has dropped dramatically and there are fewer military checkpoints, allowing people to move around more freely. Refugees crossing into Thailand have slowed to a trickle.

To prepare for an eventual return, aid groups are boosting refugee skills, from building sturdy houses to creating business plans for small enterprises to monitoring ceasefire and human rights violations. This, along with the uncertain timetable for repatriation, has also stoked unease.

“We have shifted our thinking from taking care of refugees to their return,” she says. “There is hope now for the first time in decades.”

Your Thoughts …
Tags: Refugees
Denis Gray

Denis Gray

Similar Picks:

Myanmar Youth Exodus Feared in Wake of Junta’s Conscription Law
Burma

Myanmar Youth Exodus Feared in Wake of Junta’s Conscription Law

by The Irrawaddy
February 15, 2024
15.7k

Activists warn of increased labor rights violations in Thailand and human trafficking as young people flee to avoid mandatory military...

Read moreDetails
By Almost Every Measure, Myanmar Junta Ranks Among World’s Worst Regimes
Analysis

By Almost Every Measure, Myanmar Junta Ranks Among World’s Worst Regimes

by Khin Nadi
February 2, 2024
10.8k

The Irrawaddy unpacks the regime’s three-year track record of violence and rights abuses, as assessed by leading global organizations and...

Read moreDetails
Karen Ethnic Army Launches Final Push to Capture Myawaddy on Thai Border
Burma

Karen Ethnic Army Launches Final Push to Capture Myawaddy on Thai Border

by The Irrawaddy
April 9, 2024
10.3k

The KNLA and PDF groups launched an attack on the last junta battalion defending Myawaddy on Tuesday afternoon and were...

Read moreDetails
Illegal Entry Arrests Surge in Thailand Amid Forced Military Conscription in Myanmar
Myanmar’s Crisis & the World

Illegal Entry Arrests Surge in Thailand Amid Forced Military Conscription in Myanmar

by Brian Wei
May 30, 2024
9.4k

More than half of the soaring number of people being detained at the border said they were fleeing conscription, a...

Read moreDetails
Clashes Resume on Thai-Myanmar Border
Burma

Clashes Resume on Thai-Myanmar Border

by AFP
April 20, 2024
7k

Myanmar junta troops near the Second Friendship Bridge to Thailand are holding out against anti-regime forces.

Read moreDetails
Myanmar Junta Causes Thailand Problems
Guest Column

Myanmar Junta Causes Thailand Problems

by Paul Greening
March 7, 2024
6.8k

The multiple crises on Thailand’s border sparked by the Myanmar junta’s failed coup could present opportunities for Bangkok, but so...

Read moreDetails
Load More
Next Post

Large Croc Pulled From River Near Burma’s Former Capital

Police Busted for Stealing Meth Worth $4m From Buddhist Monk

No Result
View All Result

Recommended

Myanmar Tourism Sector Mocks Junta’s Russia Tourist Drive

Myanmar Tourism Sector Mocks Junta’s Russia Tourist Drive

1 week ago
1.8k
Untested Commander Takes Charge as Myanmar Military Faces Toughest Challenge in Decades

Untested Commander Takes Charge as Myanmar Military Faces Toughest Challenge in Decades

1 week ago
1.8k

Most Read

  • Myanmar’s Aging Leaders Continue to Suffer in Junta Jails

    Myanmar’s Aging Leaders Continue to Suffer in Junta Jails

    shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Trade and Traffic from Thai Border Region Dwindle as Checkpoints Multiply

    shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Mon Groups Vow to Boost Attacks on Myanmar junta

    shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • The Lady Myanmar’s Generals Can’t Defeat

    shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0
  • Thai PM Faces Growing Calls to Quit in Cambodia Phone Row

    shares
    Share 0 Tweet 0

Newsletter

Get The Irrawaddy’s latest news, analyses and opinion pieces on Myanmar in your inbox.

Subscribe here for daily updates.

Contents

  • News
  • Politics
  • War Against the Junta
  • Myanmar’s Crisis & the World
  • Conflicts In Numbers
  • Junta Crony
  • Ethnic Issues
  • Asia
  • World
  • Business
  • Economy
  • Election 2020
  • Elections in History
  • Cartoons
  • Features
  • Opinion
  • Editorial
  • Commentary
  • Guest Column
  • Analysis
  • Letters
  • In Person
  • Interview
  • Profile
  • Dateline
  • Specials
  • Myanmar Diary
  • Women & Gender
  • Places in History
  • On This Day
  • From the Archive
  • Myanmar & COVID-19
  • Intelligence
  • Myanmar-China Watch
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Food
  • Fashion & Design
  • Videos
  • Photos
  • Photo Essay
  • Donation

About The Irrawaddy

Founded in 1993 by a group of Myanmar journalists living in exile in Thailand, The Irrawaddy is a leading source of reliable news, information, and analysis on Burma/Myanmar and the Southeast Asian region. From its inception, The Irrawaddy has been an independent news media group, unaffiliated with any political party, organization or government. We believe that media must be free and independent and we strive to preserve press freedom.

  • Copyright
  • Code of Ethics
  • Privacy Policy
  • Team
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Burmese

© 2023 Irrawaddy Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
    • Burma
    • Politics
    • World
    • Asia
    • Myanmar’s Crisis & the World
    • Ethnic Issues
    • War Against the Junta
    • Junta Cronies
    • Conflicts In Numbers
    • Junta Watch
    • Fact Check
    • Investigation
    • Myanmar-China Watch
    • Obituaries
  • Politics
  • Opinion
    • Commentary
    • Guest Column
    • Analysis
    • Editorial
    • Stories That Shaped Us
    • Letters
  • Ethnic Issues
  • War Against the Junta
  • In Person
    • Interview
    • Profile
  • Business
    • Economy
    • Business Roundup
  • Books
  • Donation

© 2023 Irrawaddy Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.