Thailand - Mae Sot

Mae Sot has little in common with the place Kelly and I imagined when we thought of going to a small, rural, border town in Thailand. Its actually quite cosmopolitan in many ways, due in large part to the number of foreigners that come here to either help with the political situation, or report on it. As seems to be standard around here, we have wireless broadband access in our room (that we're paying a massive $13 a night for - and that's including the optional extra of daily laundry). Our food options are pretty diverse, with lots of restaurants nearby. Our favourites have become 'Aiya' (which serves the best Burmese food we can find), and 'Casa Mia' (which simultaneously has great Italian and Thai food, and is on the way to our respective jobs for breakfast), but we've braved (and survived) the street stalls, and some of them also make really awesome pad thai, curry, and khao soey (which is a Northern Thailand dish that is a lot like the most awesome 2-minute noodles ever, only quite a bit better). Eating around here is dirt cheap, and my daily lunch near the clinic rarely costs me more than a dollar.

But enough about the food, although I could go on happily (see our pictures!). I know the burning question is "what are we doing?". I'm obviously doing a medical elective, at the Mae Tao Clinic. Kel is teaching at a school for the refugee kids, which is a long story that she really ought to tell. Both places are a little out of town (Kel's further than mine), and we bought bikes to get around (thanks Nan!).

The Clinic is pretty interesting; it's basically a small, poorly-funded hospital. So far I've worked in the 'medical out-patient', 'surgical', and 'medical in-patient' departments, and this week I'm in 'paediatric in-patients'. Each of these departments is pretty unique. In Med OPD I mostly saw relatively mild ailments, such as stomach aches, headaches, mild pneumonias, that sort of thing. In Med IPD there are serious diarrhoea cases, lots of malaria and TB, which combined would make up about 2/3 of all Med IPD beds. In Surg I saw mostly things that needed draining (like abscesses and haematomas) and trauma cases (traffic accidents, and a surprising number of lost fingers and toes). Also, there's this really weird spate of self-induced penis problems going around the Burmese population in Mae Sot which require surgical intervention. Apparently lots of men around here don't feel that their package is up to snuff, and resort to backyard "enhancements". Most of the cases involve injecting 1-2ml of coconut oil just under the skin of the penis, this causes some serious scarring under the skin, and over the course of a few years worth of injections they end up with a massively enlarged appendage. Unfortunately, pain and poor erectile function are some of the side effects, and these guys come to Mae Tao to get it fixed. Our solution? We remove all the skin between the head and the base and give them a skin graft. I posted a couple of pictures on the web (In the 'Mae Tao Clinic' album, not in the 'Highlights' album!).

Paeds IPD has been interesting so far. A lot of tragic cases of HIV, malnutrition and meningitis. I haven't had anyone die on me so far, but another med student (from my uni) told me the horrible story of how he rocked up to the clinic to find all the staff huddled around a new baby that was comatose and severely dehydrated. Over the course of the next 1/2hr the baby deteriorated, and nobody could get any vein access, and he ended up having to do his first real life resuscitation on a 4 month old kid with a hysterical mother pleading with him incomprehensibly. The kid died, and he was pretty upset for quite a while. I'm hoping I don't have to do anything like that... There are a couple of kids in there right now that are going to die in there though, which is pretty sad.

To change the subject (which I think its about time I did), I'm going to try to explain why there are refugees in Mae Sot. Burma has a nasty government that is brutal in trying to hold together the country. Originally, Burma (aka Myanmar) was just a collection of disparate ethnic groups, and it just had a line of convenience drawn around it when the British colonised the area. After gaining its independence from Britain, Burma has undergone a change for the worse, with a military dictatorship giving way to the aptly-named SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), which itself is now called SPDC (State Peace and Development Council). Despite the changes, all of these governments have viciously guarded their power. The full story is long, even if it isn't that complicated, and you can read about it (with a slightly Karen biased flavour) here. Although its a pretty stock-standard military regime, a couple of things that make it stand out are:

1. It very publicly got completely flogged in the last elections, winning only 2% of parliamentary seats, compared to 82% won by the National League for Democracy (Aung San Suu Kyi's party, who was subsequently put under house arrest, where she remains to this day)!
2. The SPDC has essentially no ideology at all, and is probably the best example of a purely militaristic government in the world today (from what I understand). It exists solely to protect its own power, and all of its energy goes into this. They don't even put on an international front, so far as I can tell; this is their official website, and it definitely doesn't suggest any kind of ideology!

In the end, the problem with it is that they are punishing villagers in Karen state as part of their "four cuts" policy, which aims to cut food, funds, recruits and information to insurgency groups by "systematically terrorising the civilian population in ethnic minority areas". In real terms this means all of: torture/interrogation, rape, summary execution, burning farms and villages then laying landmines to prevent villagers rebuilding, and forced labour/portering for the Tatmadaw (Burmese military) - i.e. slave labour. Because of all this, there are thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in the jungle, getting malaria, and having practically no access to clean water, healthcare or an education. Below is a story from a report ("State of Terror") written by the Karen Women's Organisation. I think its a translation, and its imperfect, but you get the gist of it:

Case #955
Name: Naw Win Shwe
Age: 35
Date of Incident: 13/03/2006
Place of Incident: Nwar Lay Koh, Mone Township Kler Lwee Htoo District
Perpetrator: SPDC troops

Human Rights abuse: Torture and Murder, Forced displacement

"I was born in Aw Law Si village and stayed there until I was 25 years. Then I married in 1997 and went to Nwar Lay Koh Mone Township Kler Lwee Htoo District because of the military attacks. I had 4 children and the eldest one was 9 years old and the youngest was 5. We had to flee because we could not survive our life. We were faced with many problems like the SPDC taking away our belongings and burning down our house, our farm, our food and our grain. As we are farmers my husband worked hard to have food for our family. We were always moving. 2006 is an unlucky year for our family. We fled from our place because we
heard that the SPDC troops made a heavy operation upon our Karen State and so we hid in the forest.

On 13th March 2006, my husband was arrested by the Burmese troops while he was coming back from the hill farm. We heard the gunshot and dared not go back to look for him. The Burmese soldiers brutally killed him by taking out his eyes, cutting his ears off and cutting out his mouth from his body. We heard his screams loudly because it was not too far from us. But we dared not go to that place. If we went then the SPDC would do the same to us as they did to my husband. So we fled from our house and we went outside our village and hid in the deep forest. Then the next day we went to Teh Na Hta village then to Pa Ta Hta so that we would be far from our village. My husband was 30 years old and he was only a villager not a Karen soldier. The SPDC troops shot him as a Karen soldier and killed him brutally.

As we went out from our village we also went far from our farm, because the SPDC troops went around our field and if they saw one of us they would have killed us or forced us to labour for them. This situation was in March 13th 2006 and so from the relocation side, from our hiding place we then moved from place to place and then came to the new camp. We were wandering for a month to reach the new place because the SPDC troops shot their guns and so we tried to escape from them and it took a long time. On our way it was rainy season and it was really hard for the children to walk or climb up the mountains. We didn't have enough food and so we had to share with each other. Sometimes the children were crying because they were afraid of the SPDC troops and sometimes they were thirsty and hungry and so they cried. But the elders stopped them crying because we were very close to the SPDC and if they cried loudly there would be a danger for others, so when there was some food they gave it to the children first.

I have four children, the oldest one is nine years old and the youngest is five years old. When they were in the village they attended school. After their father was killed by the SPDC the youngest son told me that when he becomes a young man he will join the Karen soldiers and take revenge on the SPDC for his father. I tried to explain him to go to school but he just told me that he wants to be a soldier. When we started our journey my husband was at the farm and worked for the whole day while we were in a hiding place and so after he was killed, I went on the journey with my 4 children. It is very dangerous and difficult for they were too small to walk or carry things. In the jungle they got sick and had diarrhoea. There were no medicines and no clean water. In our group there were about 14 families. Because of the
situation, being left alone with small children I cried at night. I didn't want my children to see me while I was crying. Now we are in the camp and I feel that it is better than living in the village because we get many things from the camp. I hope that my children will have a chance to study in the camp."

The whole report is really long, but the intro is worth reading if you're interested in what's happening to the Karen and other minorities in Burma. You can understand why these people want to escape to Thailand though... Unfortunately, the Thais aren't recognising them, and they are pretty restricted in what they can do ( i.e. they are mostly stuck in refugee camps outside of town, and can't legally work or earn any money). The police apparently have a racket going where they take refugees to gaol and then expect a bribe (consisting of everything in their pocket) before taking them right to the border, letting them go and turning around a driving off. Then the refugees just walk back into Thailand and try to avoid being taken to gaol again! So basically, the Thai authorities are just trying to make as much money off the refugees as they can. I suppose its better than letting them die in Burma!

You might be wondering how the Burmese government funds its operations. Burma is actually very rich in natural resources, at should be a well-off country. The government sells gems, drugs (unofficially) and natural gas to whoever is willing to buy it. Of these three, the natural gas the most feasible source of funds for the junta, and they just recently finalised a deal with China to build a gas pipeline between the two countries and to exclusively supply China with there natural gas. Fucking China! Where practically the entire world has sanctions against the Burmese, China is capitalising. And they have UN veto power so there's not much the UN can do...

Anyway, Kel and I are going to Chiang Mai on Saturday (i.e. tomorrow), to go swimming with elephants! It should be good! We've met a couple of poms that we're going with (and they're also going to be in Kathmandu when we're there so we're going to try to catch up with them then too!). Tonight is the both the birthday of a girl that's staying at Ban Thai, and the last night that John (another Flinders Med. Student) and a couple of others are in town, so the Ban Thai crew are partying hard tonight!

I finally, yesterday, got my new credit card. Thanks mum for sorting that out for me, I know it was a royal pain! We're going shopping for stuff for the kids at Kel's school today.