Refugees

A suspension bridge in Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camp that was swept away in the worst floodwaters seen for 50 years in northern Thailand has been rebuilt by international NGO’s, including the Thailand Burma Border Consortium. The Karen Refugee Committee said the suspension footbridge in the Mae Ra Ma Luang Refugee Camp that links Section 7A to 7B and…

Flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains killed two residents of Mae La refugee camp this week. According to Saw Ah Mu, the camp security officer, Saw Pe Klay 19, a high school student, was swept away by the fast floodwaters in the Htee Nu stream as he was crossing on his way to school. Saw Ah Mu said that Saw…

The Karen National Union said it had grave doubts that the Burma government’s recent declaration to European officials that it was wanted peace with ethnic groups was a blatant attempt to please the international community. Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, recently returned from Burma after a two-day humanitarian visit told reporters in…

Earlier this month Thai authorities in Tak province instructed Nu Po refugee camp officials to list all residents and sort them into three categories. Saw Thoo Lei Doh Soe, secretary of Nu Po camp committee said the instruction from the provincial Tak officials to the Thai administrators in the camp was to list refugees into the following three categories –…

Monsoon rains earlier this week caused landslides and destroyed four refugee houses at Karenni Refugee Camp 2 located on the Mae Sariang River, Mae Hong Son Province on the Thai-Burma Border. The camp officer-in-chief, U San Hla, told Karen News there were no injuries or deaths caused by the flooding. “After the heavy rains, the flood waters washed away the…

Burmese refugees in Umphiem camp in the northern Thai province of Tak have the chance to resettle to Japan in 2012. Saw Wah Htee, the chairman of the Umphiem refugee camp committee, spoke to Karen News and said the Japanese government representatives and officials from the United Nation High Commission for Refugee visited the camp in July and meet with…

The heavy monsoon rains hammered the north of Thailand in early and middle August, breaking the banks of the Mae Sariang River in Mae Hong Song province and flooding two refugee camps and nearby villages. The floodwaters destroyed 400 houses in the camps, made 2,000 people homeless, destroyed 2,000 sacks of rice and hundreds of bags of other essential foodstuffs.…

The ethnic people of Burma are having a hard time. Burma Army soldiers are targeting women in the Kachin and Shan State for rape. Villagers are used as forced labour for the Burma Army. Development projects mean forced relocation and slave labour. Half a million ethnic people are displaced in eastern Burma. Village schools have been burnt, health care is…

I don’t think many people in the west have any real understanding of what it is like to be driven out of your country, to have to flee for your life, leaving your possessions, friends, everything you know behind you, and never knowing if or when you will ever being able to go back. As if that horrible experience isn’t…

Residents of Mae Ra Ma Luang refugee camp in northern Thailand are bracing themselves against further flooding that has already swamped 400 houses, made 2,000 people homeless, destroyed 2,000 sacks of rice and hundreds of bags of other essential foodstuffs. Heavy monsoon rains lashed the north of Thailand last week and earlier this week breaking the banks of the Mae…