LABOUR-BURMA: Thai Crackdown Means Life in Hiding, Uncertainty

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Naw Seng

CHIANG MAI, Mar 22 2004 (IPS) - Htun Kyaw (not his real name) has been hiding at a friend’s house, its doors and windows shut, at the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

”I feel like I’m living in jail,” said the 29-year-old who worked at a garment factory for two years without proper papers. It is now a week after the deadline given by the Thai government for undocumented Burmese migrants to leave town. Officials in the western town of Mae Sot say the crackdown will last a month, and media reports say policemen are still arresting migrant workers there daily.

Htun Kyaw is not overly worried since he has stockpiled rations, but the bigger problem is he has no idea how to find work when the crackdown stops. Already, it has not only meant a halt in work – and income – for thousands of Burmese migrants here in Thailand but the risk of being sent back to their country.

This time, unlike previous crackdowns, thousands of Burmese workers have had to go back to their country after the mayor and officials of Mae Sot in western Tak province- host to 80,000 to 100,000 Burmese – announced that those without work papers had to leave.

Burmese-language posters pasted on Mar. 11 around Mae Sot warned undocumented workers to leave by Mar. 15. ”Those who do not have work permits have to serve a jail term,” the posters stated.

More than 6,000 workers went back to the Burmese side of the Moei River, which separates the two countries, on Mar. 15 alone, Thai media reports say. Migrant workers who do not have enough money to go back to Burma – the town of Myawaddy lies just across Mae Sot – have gone underground.

A week after the exodus, which left empty many factories and shops in Mae Sot, some Burmese workers have begun streaming back, willing to take the risk.

”The crackdown is bad for everyone,” Moe Swe, leader of the Yaung Chi Oo Burmese Workers’ Association that does advocacy work for Burmese migrants working along the border, said in an interview.

In the run-up to and right after the Mar. 15 deadline, Mae Sot, normally bustling with Burmese, became a virtual ghost town. ”No Burmese were on the street,” Moe Swe said.

The departure of thousands of Burmese workers – the vast majority do not have working papers – hit local businesses hard. Thai bus drivers said they were not getting passengers. Shopkeepers and owners complained about a fall in sales. Half of the teashops and restaurants closed because of a lack of legal workers, because almost every shop and restaurant in Mae Sot had Burmese workers. About two-thirds of Mae Sot district’s population is estimated to be Burmese. They work in garment factories, ceramics kilns, homes, shops, and as workers on farms and construction sites, many escaping poverty and lack of options inside military-ruled Burma. Many women staff brothels in Mae Sot and other districts in Tak province.

”I think the crackdown is not fair,” said Inwadee, a Thai national with the Chiang Mai-based Migrant Assistance Programme (MAP), which provide social assistance to Burmese workers. She says the Thai economy owes much of its vibrancy to cheap workers from neighbouring countries, especially from Burma.

In Mae Sot, the minimum wage this year is 135 baht (3.4 dollars) day. The unofficial minimum rate for Burmese is 50 to 80 baht (1.28 to 2 dollars) a day. But because they need jobs and often do not have papers, Burmese in teashops and small restaurants get as low as 20 baht a day (51 U.S. cents). Garment workers earn 3,000 baht a month (77 dollars).

Thai employers often feel they have fewer responsibilities to foreign workers, adds Inwadee. In this crackdown, officials threatened to take legal action against Thais who hire undocumented workers.

”Many Burmese are worried and nervous when the crackdown comes,” said Moe Swe.

This crackdown is not the first – or the last. It comes in the wake of a crackdown on thousands of Burmese living in Bangkok before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in November 2003. In March also, some 1,000 Burmese workers were detained in Mahachai, some 32 kilometres south-west of Bangkok.

This highlights the uncertainty that life in Thailand brings for many Burmese workers. Although Thailand presents better options for them, a shift in political or law-enforcement winds often dictates where their lives go.

Returning to Burma – where there has been nary a media report on the crackdown – is not a real option for many, especially for those unable to show a Burmese identity card. ”For them, there is nowhere to stay on the Burma side,” said Moe Swe.

The system of work permits that the Thai labour ministry set up in September 2001 for nationals from Burma, Cambodia and Laos has had limited results – because of the cost of the permit (110 U.S. dollars a year), reports that workers still get arrested anyway and that employers hold on to the work permits to prevent workers from leaving.

Over 500,000 of the some one million Burmese workers in Thailand were issued work permits in 2001, and some have had them extended until last year. Many factory workers who did get six-month extensions until September 2003 will see theirs expire at end-March, and what happens afterwards is unsure.

Media reports say it is unclear whether the Thai government will renew the work-permit system in April. In September 2003, officials said the labour ministry would ”no longer provide work permits for immigrants on a yearly basis except for jobs which Thais refused to do”.

Inwadee says Thailand should look for a more comprehensive system of migrant work and facilitate a suitable deal between employers and migrant workers. ”I want Thailand to have good image amongst international community by practising justice on every one else,” said Inwadee.

Over in Myawaddy in Burma, Burmese authorities have opened a temporary holding centre for returning workers to ask for personal information, take medical examinations and ask them to not to go back to Thailand again.

Centre officials warned that those who are arrested in Thailand again would be put under detention six months, said a resident in Myawaddy. One returnee to Mae Sot said returning workers were sent on forced labour on construction sites elsewhere in Burma.

As in the past, Burmese workers will be back at their work places when the crackdown cools down, says Moe Swe. But he added, ”The more the crackdown lasts, the more difficulties for the Burmese”.