Burma and Thailand

There has been a lot in the press recently about Burma, or Myanmar as it is now called, although many still use the name Burma. This week the United nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon visited the Burma leaders but was not allowed to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, a lady who is the leader of the opposition party in Burma and who is under house arrest. Burma is run by army Generals who operate a dictatorship style of power and many opposition persons are imprisoned including many monks. The largest ethnic group in Burma are the Karen people and many have fled to the hill areas of Thailand to try to live a normal life, about 1000 a month are still entering Thailand. This has caused big problems in Thailand, on the one hand there are humanitarian concerns for fellow Buddhist people but there are problems of illegal Burmese workers taking jobs at lower rates of pay and also drug trafficking as Burma is the worlds leading producer of amphetamines.

This article is on the BBC web site this week
No place to go Burma's Karen unable to return home
Many of those who have fled over the past week were living at the Ler Per Her camp for internally displaced people in Burma - and had already left their home villages.
Rainbow, who is the secretary of the camp and the headmaster of the school there, told the BBC News website about what is forcing the Karen to flee and the difficult circumstances they now face:
Last week government troops attacked our camp. They were shelling every day. The fighting between the Burmese army and the Karen rebels was taking place close to the camp. It became a dangerous place. So we decided to leave.
There were 1,264 people living in the camp. Since October 2008 we've had about 300 new arrivals.
The Democratic Karen Buddhist Amy (DKBA) [allied to the Burmese army] have been trying to force people in the area to join them in the last few months.
They wanted to be in control of the area and they needed more people.
In order to put pressure on villagers they put mines close to rice fields. To avoid being recruited to the army, many have abandoned their homes and farms and gone to live in camps for internally displaced people. Farms are abandoned and homes burnt down.
There are over 3,000 people now in different places on the Thai side of the border.
There are more than 1,000 of us in this village. We are being taken care of for now, but it's really difficult as there are too many people and not enough accommodation. It's very crowded and it's constantly raining.
But there's nothing we can do. We are just waiting to see what will happen.
We are in a very difficult situation. We can't go back because the military has taken over our camp.