One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [40]
“My mom’s not afraid anymore, so I am not afraid anymore. The other children’s parents are,” Siha said. His own mother, who was out of the country at a human rights training at the time we met, I was told, is politically engaged and a confident, fearless woman. Siha seemed proud of his confidence, glad that he had conquered his fears. In conflicts, children often take their cues on how to react from their parents. The level of stress they feel is directly connected to how the adults around them react and can bear little relation to the amount of violence they have actually experienced.
Siha’s warning about how fearful other children’s parents were was played out in the following days. I tried to arrange visits with families living on construction sites. I saw the level of fear in which the refugees in urban areas lived.
The first person to speak with me was a Thai performance artist who worked with refugee children. “I will do what I can for you,” he said. “I can try to help you, but now is a difficult time. The government is cracking down on the migrants. I will talk to people.”
He could not arrange anything for me because he was leaving the country the next day to perform abroad. He referred me to a woman who provides assistance to the migrants on construction sites. Call her P——. No real names can be used here, since operations to assist the refugees are under constant scrutiny and might be put at risk. On July 15, 2002, the Thai National Security Council declared martial law on all northern border areas with Burma, banning foreign journalists and NGOs. P——, an affable British woman, is under constant threat of being shut down.
P——met with me over a soda.
“Now is a difficult time,” she said.
“How so?”
“The Thais want to reopen the border with Burma. They make a fortune off the trade. The refugees are an embarrassment to the region, especially because the Burmese suspect many of them of trying to undermine the military authority. Often they are accused of involvement in the Karen National Union or one of the other insurgent armies. Usually they are farmers who could not support themselves in Burma anymore.”
The Karen National Union (KNU) is one of the largest ethnic armies in Burma. Since 1949, when disputes over the drawing of the border for the new Karen state led Karen officers in the post-colonial Burmese army to mutiny, the KNU has been fighting for autonomy in areas dominated by the Karen people. The KNU leadership, according Burma scholar Christina Fink, was a mix of university-educated dissidents and experienced soldiers. Boasting thousands of members and income from smuggling and improvised border tolls, the KNU remains a formidable foe to the Burmese government over fifty years after its founding. The KNU enjoys popular support along the Thai-Burma border.
P——continued: “The work that the migrants do on the construction sites is dangerous and they get injured sometimes, but that is not the worst problem. They have to remain hidden or else they lose their jobs and they can be arrested. They are very afraid of strangers. I do not think I can bring you out to see them. It would draw too much attention.”
I asked, naively, if the children could be brought to meet me.
“I don’t think so,” P——answered. “These people have seen children taken away for one reason or another and never return. They would not be comfortable with that, and it would scare the children far too much. Even if I could arrange for you to meet them, they might not say anything at all to you. The fear runs very deep.”
I tried many more avenues. None worked. While I met with one local NGO, a field office called the headquarters in a panic. The police were raiding the office. They demanded identity cards from everyone, they searched files and looked for information about any