With 16,000 registered residents, Mae La Oo is one of Thailand's mid-sized camps for Burmese refugees. It's estimated there are thousands more people than this living here, but the UNHCR provides rations for 16,000, so that's how many are permitted to register to live here.
The Thai policy is to let no foreigners into the camp, but as with everything else, as Hlah Tay says, they “have an understanding” (bribe) about letting them in anyway. “Everything here is under the table. Like we are travelling today, it is under the table. You saw the driver give the guard the money... Everything is an understanding under the table...it's very difficult for anybody to get out.”
It's expensive to get in too, or at least it was when the ABSDF brought us in. A "pass" comes to 1,500 Baht per person, about $50, plus 2,500 Baht ($85'ish) to hire a driver, each way. Hlah Tay estimates "no more than 100" foreigners visit the camp every year. Most are NGO workers, some are undocumented guests like us.
NGOs and the UN pays for everything in the camp, including the salaries of some of the border police. The Thai government pays nothing. The country does benefit financially because it's from Thailand that supplies are bought and drivers are hired. Even lumber and bamboo is bought in Thailand and trucked in, since it is illegal for refugees to cut teak or bamboo, and they could be arrested if caught doing so.
Cutting teak will bring a 6–7 year jail sentence. Trucked-in bamboo costs 25 baht per pole, wood is 200 baht per pole, with transportation charged on top of that. There is almost no way to make money in camp, but there are somehow many ways to spend it.
Even if there were as many residents as food rations, it's unlikely there would be enough to go around. The camp is divided into more than a dozen sections. Each section has a committee in charge of distributing food. However, rations can be skimmed. On our trip out, our group sat on top of bags of rice the truck driver bought in camp, saying it was a lot cheaper for him to buy food there, presumably from the section storage house, than in town.
Hlah Tay believes there are 8 refugee camps in the Karen-Karenni region. There are some more in the south, and one registered Shan camp; about a dozen official camps in total. After that are IDP communities, unregistered refugee communities, legal and illegal migrants, bringing the number of Burmese refugees in Thailand or near the border to around 2 million, though no one is sure.
The camp has a very cramped, ramshackle feel. Refugees can't leave this camp for Thailand because it is very remote, and the road has a number of Thai border guard check points along the way. There is no need for a fence. There's no sign anywhere of a UN presence, for example row or prefab housing, signs, offices. Word is the Thai government works hard to keep the UN out, though the UNHCR is the umbrella organization for Mae La Oo.
Motor bikes are illegal here, again permitted “under the table,” so of course they're all over the place. I ask how I'm going to leave the camp, and Hlah Tay explains: “Yes, we will make arrangements. You can go by motorbike.” I ask if I can't hitch a ride with an out-going transport truck. “Oh no, because driver would not dare.” I do leave by motor bike the next day, with an ABSDF driver.
The inhabitants of Mae La Oon are a mixed bag compared to Shan land. There are a few Shan here, like the man building a new house who does push-ups every morning, and practices his English in the hopes it will help his resettlement application. He has been in camp for six months, and wants to go to the US.
Others range from curly-haired East Indian looking people, to square-faced Mongolians, to round-faced, pale people with full red lips.
It's crowded. Dogs, poultry, pigs and people are close together in small, often randomly arranged bamboo structures. Theirs is an accentuated appearance of poverty as they are forbidden from creating permanent concrete structures. There is a narrow paved road through the centre of camp, some of the rest of it has gravel, most is packed dirt. Even the school is a bamboo platform on top of muddy sandbags and dangerously eroded packed earth.
Hotel Mae La Oo, February 2009
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