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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Monks teach children critical thinking and human rights, to groom the next generation of activists. Part 3 of 3.

Mae Sot, Thailand; and Rangoon, Burma - Deep in the Thai jungle bordering Burma (Myanmar), a group of children gather every day for their lessons. In an elongated but modest teak shack, nearly a dozen ashen-faced children – all different ages – sit in front of a tattered blackboard.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” teacher Zaw Lazein Oo asks. Each student answers in measured English. “A doctor,” answers one. “An aid worker,” another replies.

Such open-ended questions are unthinkable in Burma’s government schools, where learning is by rote and adheres strictly to the ruling junta’s ideology.

But a new generation of political activists is striving to change that by setting up a network of secret schools – from the Thai-Burmese border to monasteries in Burma – that service impoverished students and teach critical thinking and human rights.

Read the rest of this entry »