One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [44]
Another family I met later that day found themselves in an even worse situation. They were not registered with UNHCR and were running out of time. M——and his wife worked for a pro-democracy organization in Burma, fighting for freedom of expression and the people’s right to self-determination. They are members of the Burmese ethnic group, the majority group in Burma. When economic conditions became too harsh and the threat to his family due to his political activities became too great, M——fled Burma and arrived with his wife and two children in Bangkok. They lived in a windowless eight-by-ten room, also under the harsh glow of fluorescent lights. The neighbor’s television blared through their walls. It sounded like a violent action movie was on. The family had lived in Thailand for five months.
“I can’t play too loud or the police will come,” M——’s ten-year-old son, Caleb, said. M——explained that just the day before, one of his neighbors was arrested and sent back to Burma with his family because the Thai neighbors complained to the police. The children were playing too loudly, shouting during a hiding game, which annoyed the older people on the floor who just wanted to watch television in peace.
“I do not know what will happen to them now,” M——said.
“I’m afraid of the police and the Thais,” Caleb said as he played with the toys his parents brought with them. “I want to go to school.” Even if it was legal for him to attend a Thai school, even if he spoke Thai, he could be arrested if he ventured out onto the street, or even lingered in the hallway of his building for too long. An aid agency that provides help to these families told me that of the 160 children under their care in Bangkok, they have successfully managed, with the help of UNHCR, to get two enrolled in school, with no guarantees for the children’s security from the police.
Caleb’s only forays into the outside world involved going across the street to the market with his mother. He did this about four times a week. The trips lasted about forty-five minutes. They were his only time in the sunlight. His skin had grown sallow.
“We leave the light on all the time because there are no windows and it is so dark in here. There is no ventilation. I worry about the health of my sons. We have moved four times already, to avoid the authorities,” M——said. “The children do not feel safe, as they know we will move again very soon. We are always moving.”
M——cannot work in Thailand so his family relies on the assistance of NGO’s illegal operations to help them. These programs can be shut down at any moment. Their offices, like all the NGO offices, are watched. The families receive cash assistance for food and health care, but there are no programs to help the children, no opportunities for the illegal children in Bangkok to socialize and interact with other children. They live in fear and in hiding. Now, after five months, M——can no longer receive assistance as an unregistered migrant. UNHCR, at least, must recognize him so his family can continue to receive aid. For now, he has to try and find work, where he will most likely be exploited. If he is not paid, if the conditions are unsafe, he has no recourse with the law. There is nowhere he can turn.
For these children there is little hope for the future. Their parents fear returning to Burma, yet Thailand will not accept them. Of the twenty children I interviewed in Bangkok, not one felt safe in their new surroundings and every one wanted only to go to school and to play with other children. They have no homeland, no community. Their parents are nearly helpless to support them. The outlook for their future extends only as far as the four walls of the rooms in which they try to survive. Their drawings all look the same: dream worlds of home, as it probably never was, with the peaceful hills of Burma gently fading into the sky (Figure 11).
Outside of the cities, in the areas near the