Anand Gopal

Burmese fleeing to camps in Thailand find that they get little aid or work and no legal status.

Mae La, Thailand - Myo Zaw thought freedom would begin the day he left Burma (Myanmar). Government authorities there had made it impossible for him to get a job and tracked his every movement after some of his relatives joined political resistance groups. Eventually Myo Zaw paid truckers to smuggle him out of Burma and to a hidden city, deep in the jungles of Thailand.

That city, a sprawling refugee camp carved into the base of a mountain range about 30 miles from the border, forms part of an archipelago of camps that house political dissidents, ethnic minorities, homeless, jobless, and others who have fled.

But instead of bringing Burmese closer to liberty, Myo Zaw and others like him say Thailand’s Burmese refugee camps are little more than open-air prisons, where Thai police tightly control movements and inhabitants face a growing threat of deportation.

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