On my bus ride from Mae Sot to Chaing Mai today (well, actually, on the minivan ride from Mae Sot to Tak, from whence I caught the bus to Chaing Mai), two of the passengers were pulled off at a Thai Authority check point. They were Burmese, and the Thai ID's they presented must have aroused suspicion. Their departure was a surprise to noone on board, and so elicited hardly a reaction. It is a regular occurrence, at these checkpoints, for even most of the passengers to be pulled off, given hardly a moment to collect their belongings, and then left behind on the top of a mountain, as the bus pulls away to roll down one side into Tak, or down the other into Mae Sot. Once, I was one of 5 people left, when a double decker night bus from BKK continued on to Mae Sot.
The Thai Authorities have established these check points to check the flow of Burmese migrants from the border areas into the rest of Thailand. Even those Burmese who are registered refugees and migrants cannot travel outside of the province in which they are registered (with the exception of a few that have a higher level of papers). And the many who are here illegally cannot travel at all, as for them, being stopped has more serious consequences. I know numerous people who have never left Mae La refugee camp, or who have never left Mae Sot, because of these travel restrictions. Because there are not enough jobs here for all of the refugees and migrants, unemployment is a widespread difficulty, particularly in the camps, and the jobs available pay depressingly low wages, so these limitations on movement can have family wide and life long implications.
Restriction of movement of refugees is technically in violation of international humanitarian law, but in reality, occurs in many refugee situations. Their reasoning, I think, has more to do with the fear of a flood of economic migrants spilling from the border region into the rest of Thailand and devouring all available jobs... Its kind of as if there were checkpoints on all roads out of Texas and Southern California, preventing Latin American migrants from leaving those areas. It doesn't take long to realize that noone is benefitting.
It is true, however, that Burmese migrants do try to leave, and often enough that the police do catch many. And therefore approach anyone appearing Burmese with the utmost scrutiny. Even people with valid IDs or travel papers can be pulled off a bus in the middle of the night, and made to sit outside for hours while the Authorities sort out the authenticity of their papers.
In the midst of this, its hard to know how to feel. It feels disgusting and wrong, but there is little I can do to change it, and in the moment, virtually nothing I can do to intervene. Their lives or well beings are not immediately endangered. Freedom of movement, yes, and with that, possibly economic security, opportunity, family, and who knows what else that lies outside of these arbitrary political cages. It feels like a cop out to say that there isn't anything I can do. It feels cowardly to not protest the continuation of a practice that feels in my gut to be so wrong. It feels as if I am allowing injustice to continue by joining the disempowered multitude, precisely the multitude who's existence has enabled so many atrocities to occur in the past. And yet, I don't know what to do to change it.
Obviously, this is not the worst atrocity I observe or of which I am aware in the spectre of my existence here on the border. And yet, that doesn't seems like enough to justify ignoring it. My colleagues here generally join the refrain that there is nothing to be done. And certainly, I don't yet know what there is to do, but that doesn't absolve my nagging sense of justifying inaction because it is easier. I can't believe it is justifiable to not do anything but watch.
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