THAILAND: Knowledge Arms Burmese Migrant Women against Abuse

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

CHIANG MAI, Thailand, Mar 19 2004 (IPS) - She travelled to this city with her lips sealed. After all, she feared that even a word from her during a 14-hour train journey from Bangkok could have revealed her identity as a woman from Burma and lead to police arrest.

Yet she felt compelled to take this risk because she wanted to come to this city nestled in the hills of northern Thailand to meet others like her, female migrant workers from Burma, who were seeking ways of confronting rape and other forms of sexual violence.

”This is the furthest I have been from Bangkok, but I wanted to come to learn about what we need to do when women are abused,” said the 32-year old who chose another name, Aido, rather than reveal her true identity.

”If I am arrested, they will send me back to Burma without asking any questions,” added Aido, who has been working as a domestic worker in Bangkok for 13 years.

The streets of the Thai capital are no less safe for this woman who could easily pass off as a Thai native due to her straight, shoulder-length hair, small eyes and slender build. ”We can be caught if we go to a part of Bangkok that we have no permission for.”

That is because of the strict geographic limits placed by Thai authorities on the tens of thousands of migrant workers toiling for meagre wages across this South-east Asian country. Aido, for instance, only has the freedom to move within a limited area of northern Bangkok.

Like her, there are a small number of Burmese migrants willing to take such dangerous journeys in order to arm themselves with vital details about combating rape, as was evident here during a meeting held away from the glare of the media.

For now, the women Aido met from at least three corners of Thailand have as a possible guide – and defence – a process still in the making called the automatic response mechanism (ARM). It offers a 10-step guide that victims can pursue in prosecuting a rapist.

”ARM takes victims of violence and their support group through counselling, support medical assistance, legal assistance and community support,” states a publication explaining this process that offers hope to victimised migrant women.

According to a migrants rights activist, such efforts are necessary for female workers from Burma since as migrants they often have little recourse to justice in the event of rape unlike women from Thailand, who can use the Thai legal process if sexually abused.

”Because migrant workers are made to feel that they have no rights, it is very difficult for the women to do something,” says Jackie Pollock of the Chiang Mai-based Migrant Assistance Programme (MAP), a non-governmental organisation.

”Rape is a big problem, particularly in the border areas and isolated places,” she told IPS, adding that such abuses are under-reported due to the fear, particularly among Thailand’s undocumented migrant workers, that a complaint to the police will result in deportation. Thailand is host to 1.2 million migrant workers, majority of whom are from Burma. Over two-thirds of them do not have legal working papers.

The Thai government has a plan to issue to new work permits to Burmese workers in April, but news reports this week say this has been postponed. Migrant workers from Burma have been cautious in the last weeks because of announcements in places like the border town of Mae Sot that all those without work permits should leave Thailand by mid-March.

In Bangkok, there are an estimated 30,000 domestic workers like Aido, according to research done by MAP. The Chiang Mai area has close to 12,000 domestic workers.

Female and male migrant labour can also be found in the agriculture sector, on construction sites, in the fishing industry and in the many garment and other labour-intensive factories.

Refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border are not immune from sexual violence either. ”In confidence, women talk about forced sex as part of their lives,” said Ruth Margerison, a gender consultant for a German humanitarian agency that assists refugees in northern Thailand.

Challenging such abuse is ”extremely difficult,” she revealed in an interview, because ”nobody wants to stir up trouble in the camps”. Such silence is enforced further ”because of the stigma attached to such violence.”

But the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recently put into place a process to remedy this unchecked abuse in the nine refugee camps that are home to some 120,000 refugees, largely from the Karen and Karenni ethnic groups in Burma.

Since 2002, the U.N. agency has been maintaining a record of rape and sexual violence cases, Bhairaja Panday, deputy head at UNHCR’s regional office in Bangkok, told IPS. ”A mechanism for redress has also been created, including the availability of lawyers for the victims and an opportunity to use the Thai legal system.”

There have been close to 90 cases of sexual and gender-based violence, including rape, in the camps over the past two years, he revealed. ”And 30 cases have been tried in Thai courts.”

”The number of reported cases have gone down significantly since the beginning, because people know that there is a process of accountability,” he added. ”Many don’t want to bring the cases to court and are pressured to settle out of court.”

For the likes of Aido, however, the challenge to be aware of and confront rape and sexual violence is more daunting, given not only the indifference with which Burmese migrant workers are treated in Thailand but the isolation that domestic workers like her live with.

By the time she was ready to head back – lips sealed again – to Bangkok, Aido said she had gained some skills about what women in her situation could do in the event of abuse. ”They are important lessons for me to share with others,” she said.