With Karen people in Maela refugee camp in Thailand along the Thai-Burma border

Since July 2005, I have been with the Karen people in Maela refugee camp along the Thai-Burma border. They are one of the major ethnic groups of people who have been facing intense and active genocidal persecutions from the Burmese junta for around five decades.

This camp is one of the seven major camps along the border inside Thailand. There are around 55,000 refugees here in the camp alone. They are confined in the camp and hardly have the oppurtunity to earn their living--though some do small scale business.


These displaced people (refugees) are supported by many NGOs. They get their daily rations in terms of rice, charcoal for fuel, cooking oil, fish paste, and bamboos and leaves for houses. Besides these supports, they are also supported in terms of education--schools and the stationaries for school; health clinics; vocational schools; computer education; engineering college, and bible schools.

(They recieve bamboos and leaves for their house construtions from the Thai-Burma Border Concertium)For many of them, their whole lives circle in and around the camp. Decades of years have gone by with the hope to return to their homeland but no sign of political improvement inside Burma, rather a continous displacement of people in huge scale from inside their homeland. Many people who cannot make it to the camps have to opt to stay in the forest in groups and have to be "On the Run" (a documentary on the Internally Displaced People inside Burma) relying on their physiological abilities to digest and assimilate anything they eat for their food as the means for survival. (Children and youths having fun!)

(The market inside Maela Camp)


The UN has been helping these people by working hand in hand with many organizations. One way of giving them a better chance, besides the camps,for their future is to send them to the third countries which are willing to accept them. Many have been sent to the States, Canada, New Zealand, Norway and Australia.