Travels in Thailand - Helping the Karen peoples of Burma

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AgentK
visitor

Travels in Thailand - Helping the Karen peoples of Burma

Post by AgentK »

Hi all!

After meeting Lugh on Mark Thomas Info I have decided to update my travels here as well.

The following posts will be those that have appeared there and I hope you all find them interesting. :D

K
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

I'm currently just on this side of the Thai-Burmese border in Mae Sot trying to get together a protest against the proposed dams in Burma. Anyone know anyone here or any news/freelance reporters to come along and help? Currently it's my wife, grandmother and cousin here with a camcorder trying to get any footage of the corrupt regime etc. etc. as well as helping out the displaced Karen peoples (140,000 of them in the refugee camps currently). This was all started by my grandfather before he passed away 10 years ago as he was one of the British officers that stayed here (against orders!) after the withdrawl and helped the minorities fight for their Independence. As such he had very close contact with the KNU command structure and was a close friend of Bo Mya (President-General of the KNU) who was poisoned by the Burmese Junta at his Birthday Party and passed away last year. (Ok he accepted a cake from his 60 year enemy as a sign of good faith DOH!). Currently the survivors from the British Empire years is rapidly dwindling and so is the infomation that they carried around from that time so this Fortnight here is spent mainly gathering information about what the hell has been going on here for the last 67 years!

Ok a bit long winded for an intro and plea but as you can see time is short! The protest that is planned for the 28th of Feb. is a worldwide one that is to take place outside your local Thai embassy so please support it! Essentially the Thai's and Burmese are planning to build several dams accross the rivers here flooding land on which ethnic peoples currently have their homes and none of them have been consulted or even told that it is going to happen! ( Hmmmm where have we heard this before?)

Our family have been coming here for the last 25 years bringing clothing/books and MP's to try and sort this one out cause lets face it, it was our mess to start with and we dealt with it in the same way we dealt with every other post-colonial problem.... 'Oh sorry, not our problem any more old bean'

To compound the issue even further the Thai and Burmese have reached an 'agreement' as to what to do with the refugees after next year. SOME will be allowed to emmigrate to other countries (about a thousand already resettled worldwide), SOME will be allowed to stay in Thailand subject to 5 year reviews, and the majority will be booted back over the Thai-Burmese border and i'm sure you can guess what that means! (for those of you who don't know or need a hand with that imagination the Burmese military is currently using MOST of the ethnic peoples of Burma as SLAVES! Yes thats right Slavery is alive and doing quite nicely in Asia and they have the backing of China, Russia and N.Korea to boot!)

Any help and support that anyone can give us now and in the future would be so very very welcome right now so please post or as the ABC Warriors have been know to say occasionally 'SPREAD THE WORD!'

K. N. Humphrey-Taylor
History Student (for obvious reasons!) and son of one of the Karen emassadors to the UK.
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

Here's also a couple of links to relevant sites:

www.burmacampaign.org.uk
www.karen.org/knu/knu.htm
www.photosbybjorn.com/burma_karen_guerillas.htm
www.dassk.org/index.php

These should give you a brief overview of the current situation and history and they have links to other sites that can flesh out any questions.
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

The Karen tribes already have their own 'Karen River Watch' to keep an eye on things and keep the info flooding (ohh that was bad) in. This is an intro website but typing in the above to google will bring up a few more!

http://www.freewebs.com/ka_rw2003/

As you can all probably tell this will be the first protest that we have actually organised ourselves although we do have the usual CV of 'Stop the War' as well as contact with the houses to keep these issues current.
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

Just met a guy called Eric from Seattle and lo and behold they are supporting the free clinic run by Dr Cynthia (think she's up for an award for her selfless running of the clinic for children of Burma) AND are visiting the camps! Unfortunately he didn't bother finding out that a) the camps were closing down next year or b) the Burmese-Thai plans for refugees. ( c) Dams! ). If you are reading this please click on one of the above links and find out what's going on!

Things are starting to look up for a change and i'm hoping that we are actually making a difference here!

Lynn (the missus) just found these:
www.burmanet.org/news
www.bicusa.org//en/Article.3144.aspx

And sign the petition being sent to the Thai Prime Minister by following the links from here:

http://www.salweenwatch.org/
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

Thats IT!!! I don't care what they say Canadian Christians are just as bad as their North American counterparts. I don't care if they knock on my door with a list of why they're better (lower violent crimes etc.) i REALLY don't give a crap.
OK a bit of an explaination may be in order.....
Just ben to a refugee camp an hour down the road. Currently there are 40,000 in the camp and they are mostly surviving on UNICEF and UNHCR rations of rice, beans and water except for what they can trade themselves. In the meantime in the Christian school the Bible Thumpers are happily eating battered chicken legs, fresh fruit and vegetables. Upon talking to Lynn they made the immediate mistake of saying 'hey my ..... was Irish, give us a REAL Irish accent, you know something more Irish than now' and they were'nt joking. Trust me, she showed the greatest restraint i've ever sen not to jump over the table and start on the World Record for serial killings. Follow it up with the fact that they also started slagging off the Muslim part of the camp for having a market. Then their idea of 'helping out the Karens' was to sit around composing 'Worship Songs!!!'. Christian Rock Lovers the lot of them!

In the mean time we took some time out to go to where the landmine survivors were living and you have to se some of the things they make there. The Burmese plant landmines and then forget where they are so to get round this little problem they grab the nearest non-army Burman and tell them to walk 10 paces in front. You can imagine the results! All of them have lost their eyes/sight and most of them are amputees but considering that when they step on one they are left there and the next one told to take their place, survivors are not common. Otherwise they just happen to be out walking and.... you can guess the rest. The point being that these have started to rebuild their lives and those that are able are making keyrings, toilet roll holder holders (read it again it makes sense, honest) and animals using fishing wire and coloured beads. The real point is that by knowing which bags the beads are in they can add details including eyes etc to the animals. I know this sounds unbeleivable but its true and as soon as we get back we'll upload some vids to you tube and post the links.

Please show your support on the 28th by protesting outside the Thai embassy in your country and let them know that supporting GENOCIDE isn't the party peice that it used to be (ohh about 1000 years ago!).
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

Ok one more link before they throw me out (it's 10pm already here!)

http://www.earthrights.org/burmafeature ... jects.html

It dosent matter what you do, doing something is the important part!
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

Ok just had my first bit of 'friendly advice' by one of the local volunteer workers here who has just said that this sort of thing may embarrass the local police and we may end up getting arrested! Part of me is saying 'yeah well that's what we are here for, to get the attention and change the focus' another part is saying 'when was the last time you were in a THAI prison cell?'. The FEAR is starting to set in and the Adrenaline has started pumping.......

On top of this local people are starting to ask the 'where are you staying?' 'when are you leaving?' kind of questions. Paranoia is definitely starting to set in...
AgentK
visitor

Post by AgentK »

on another note i think i may be starting to understand the stresses and ups and downs that come with trying to organise and inform. Today was spent handing out our home-made leaflets to anyone that isn't a native and getting people to turn up on Wednesday. Our first visit didn't go as planned as we were told no by a couple of Americans who own a caff out here. We were told that he probably dosen't want the trouble so the hassle to good ratio wasn't worth it for them.

Then the rays of light started to appear on the horizon. Local owners of cafe's and guest houses were delighted to hear what was happening and put up the posters advertising the pre-demo muster. Suddenly the tension started to fade and the feeling of accomplishment was rearing it's head.

The best part of all this is that the internet caff i've been writing from this last week is known in town as a neutral zone for anyone who wants to send out reports. The owner told us that he is from Burma, is a Karen and that his cafe is used by reporters to send out their, well, reports to the rest of the world. (sorry it's 10pm here and closing time, plus getting 5 hours broken sleep is doing nothing for my attention span!). The best part is that he gets a copy of everything here and so far has copied a 10min documentary that explains the Salween problem, the funeral of General Bo Mya who was the inspirational Karen leader and fighting the Burmese since my grandfathers time here and the wedding of Burmese General Ne Win's daughter. The last one has to be seen because while the bitch is draped in about 10 kg of diamonds with a 50 foot silk dress,it shows the people of the country starving from rising food prices and the general unrest that is being, literally, beaten down by the SPDC.

Anyone who wants copies of these please PM me with your address and i'll try and get them to you when we get back.
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