Survival on the Thai-Burma border
The Burmese children clutched each other as they watched the soldiers execute their family. Their 65 year old grandmother died. Their 13 year old sibling followed. Then the 4 year old. Soon they had lost everybody except each another. Battling grief, terror and confusion, they found their way across the Thai/Burmese border to a refugee camp.
Refugee camp on Thai/Burma border ©Sheep"R"Us (Flikr)
Today, in that camp, they live with memories that no child should have to endure. So do their fellow residents. Most recent news of this area report the unprintable: gang rape, torture, beheadings, slave labour, violence against women, civilians used as ‘mine sweepers’, crucifixions and people buried alive. For those of us who have led sheltered lives, it is difficult even to read or write about them. For those who live them, however, especially young children, they must create memories that are almost impossible to live with. Countless do, however, in scenarios that have repeated over and over in the world’s longest-running humanitarian crises: the ethnic cleansing of minority villages along the border of Burma.
There are currently over 140,000 refugees in camps such as these. Many people have been there for over 20 years and are unlikely to return to Burma until things change. Worse, even though they come here for refuge, protection is not guaranteed: recent months have seen violent attacks launched across the border, reaching those who thought they were safe.
People from all around the world have responded to help those battling survival on the Thai/Burma border. One of these, ‘Dr C’ is a doctor who was herself, once, a refugee, of the same ethnic group as those in the camps. She fled in 1988, but, as a medical doctor, she felt drawn to come back and help her people.
She opened a clinic that cares for over 400,000 refugee patients each year. Gunshot wounds, landmine injuries, respiratory disease, HIV/AIDS and malaria can all be part of a day’s work for the 100 paramedics and interns who work at the clinic. Foundational to its philosophy is the commitment to treat each patient with care and concern regardless of ethnicity, religion or economic status. When the clinic first began, it operated in an abandoned barn with a dirt floor, using an electric rice cooker to sterilise instruments. Since those early days, much has improved, but the clinic still needs help to provide for the desperate and destitute.
We have sent the clinic medical supplies, including bandages and blankets, together with educational items for a school that they have established for children from the camps. We are thankful to the Hong Kong community for their ongoing donations of the kind of goods that can help to change and save lives.
Juliane Okot Bitek, a displaced person herself, says media reports make these camps “seem so far away that it might as well be fiction.” May that sense of distance not be true of us. May we stand, with respect, alongside these people who battle for survival, so they can count on us.