Tensions on the rise inside refugee camps

by Don Talenywun
Monday, 28 September 2009 13:09

Umphang, Thailand (Mizzima) – Trouble is brewing among the refugees of Burma’s civil war. Stranded in northern Thailand, fed on rations donated by the international community, unable to travel freely and not allowed to work, tensions among refugees in camps strung out along Burma’s border are ready to blow.

Umpheim Mai refugee camp is on tenterhooks, with violence threatening to break out among residents at any time. A football game on Saturday afternoon descended into crowd violence at
game’s end, with gangs of young men attacking each other. Some camp residents described it as a mini riot. The current trouble started earlier this month, with the murder of a Burmese resident after he allegedly failed to pay for a cow.

When it became obvious the buyer could not pay, the owner is said to have sought his money back, only to find that the beast had already been slaughtered. The dispute escalated rapidly from a verbal altercation between two groups of men into physical violence.

Whatever ensued, the alleged buyer is now dead. The camp, situated in Thailand’s Tak Province to the south of Mae Sot and officially home to about 15,000 people, spent months earlier this year on high security alert in anticipation of an attack by the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, a militia allied with the Burma Army – and these latest events have done nothing to ease tensions.

Rumors ran wild that the remote camp would be destroyed by hostile forces, forcing much of the population to pack-up and be ready to flee at moment’s notice. It only takes a rumor for a large group of isolated, traumatized people to react unpredictably to minor events.

Law and order in the camps has long been a taboo subject with Thai authorities, charged with policing communities that would not exist but for the grinding war of attrition in Burma’s ethnic minority-dominated periphery.

Thai authorities maintain stringent guidelines for allowing Burmese citizens to become part of the camps, requiring them to be fleeing fighting. Economic migrants or those fleeing human rights abuses do not qualify as refugees, inadvertently creating a vast pool of people who have quietly slipped over Burma’s borders to form an illegal workforce.

This workforce, satisfied to work for as little as half the wage of a Thai worker, is estimated by some organizations to number as many as two million. But for those who do qualify as people who have literally run for their lives, containment in a refugee camp and an inability to achieve anything for themselves results in a frustrated existence.

In Umpheim Mai refugee camp on Saturday that frustration bubbled over into mob violence.

“Football is banned now,” said one refugee. “And rumor from on high is that the Palat [Thai camp commander] may close the gates [put the camp into total lockdown]. I’ve never seen it like this before. Thai patrols through the camp are clipped up and ready to go [carrying live ammunition in the event they have to quash a riot],” he added.