Burma’s Long Neck
Karen choose exploitation in a tourist village rather than returning
to a civil war.
 Two years ago an
18-year old Karen girl named Zember, living in a refugee village
within sight of the Thai-Burma border, staged her own little personal
revolution. She removed the rings she had been adding around her neck
each year since she was seven or eight years old, the age the girls
take the first ones that ultimately turn them into human giraffes.
The Padaung Karen, or
long-neck Karen, so-called because of the multiple rings that
elongate their necks by deforming their collarbones and pushing their
shoulders down, have been described for decades as one of the closest
things in Asia to a human zoo. But their condition points up just how
much of a zoo it is. They have found dubious refuge in artificial
tourist villages where visitors, both Thai and foreign, pay a heavy
entrance fee to gawk at them.
The Padaung Karen are a
tiny offshoot of the larger Karen people, natives of Burma who have
long been caught up in a civil war against the government. The Karen
– and other Burmese minorities have never been fully
integrated into the country and the current military rulers of the
country have spent decades trying to suppress the various rebellions.
Estimates claim that as many as 2 million refugees, many of them
tribal peoples, have fled over the border into neighboring Thailand.
What Zember wants, as
do most Karen on the Thai side of the border, are more comprehensive
residency rights and the ability to move freely. But since removing
the rings, she finds herself in double jeopardy. Now, not only is she
a stateless Padaung Karen refugee living in a sideshow, but the
elders in her village shun her as a traitor to the ring-wearing
community.
The Padaung Karen are
typically singled out by Thai entrepreneurs because of their
appearance, scooped up and deposited in the tourism villages before
reaching United Nations refugee camps. Allowing Padaung Karen to gain
refugee status would be bad for business because the village owners
collect money from the tourists. Owning a group of long-necks is a
lucrative business – lucrative enough, according to Som Sak
Seta, a guide who takes tourists to the villages, that entrepreneurs
come and take Padaung Karen to their own villages elsewhere in
Thailand.
“Some Thai made a
fake village in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai and stole some Karen from
here to live there,” Som Sak Seta said. “They charged
1,000 baht (US$30.70) or more for the entrance fee.”
Huai Sua Tao is a
Padaung Karen village located in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son
Province, near the Burmese border. After paying their entry fee,
tourists find an entire village that is one huge shop, with women and
children selling goods and posing for photos. There are no men to be
seen. Karen in Burma traditionally live by planting and cultivating
rice, gathering forest products, raising animals, and hunting as
their people have done for centuries. But in the tourism villages,
the Padaung Karen work as trinket vendors. Normally, the Karen would
be tied to the land, but now, as salespeople, they are losing their
culture. In Huai Sua Tao there are no rice fields.
“It’s their
choice,” Says Som Sak Seta. “The Karen can make money
wearing their neck rings in the camp, or they can go back to the
refugee camp. They don’t have a right to stay (in Thailand).
This is the compromise of the governors of this place, so the Karen
can stay inside the Thai border and make some money, and the
governors can get some money as well.”
Prasit
Leeprechaa, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University, is himself an
ethnic Hmong, a group persecuted in Laos for fighting alongside the
Americans in the Indochina conflict. While millions of Hmong families
have been resettled in the United States and others still languish in
refugee camps awaiting resettlement in the USA, Prasit uses his
education to study and help the region’s many tribal people.
“The Karen are
faced with four options,” Prasit says. “Live in a tourist
village, become official refugees, go back to the war in Burma, or,
number four, some countries like New Zealand offer them a chance to
go live in cultural tourism villages abroad.”
These are only options
if the tribal people are made aware of their rights, which most are
not. All legal residents of Thailand receive some type of ID card,
with various rights attached. Obviously, citizens get the most
rights. Legal aliens may be granted rights such as employment or
residence. But because the Long Neck Karen in the tourist villages
have no legal status, they have no rights of residence, employment,
or freedom of movement in Thailand.
A Padaung Karen girl
named Mali – who was born in Thailand – said she hadn’t
been given any type of ID, although she had already lived in Thailand
for more than 12 years. Asked if she has residency papers, she
responded: “No, I don’t have anything. They just let me
stay here.”
She is allowed to go
into nearby Mae Hong Son, but, she says, “I can’t stay
overnight. I can just go there and buy some food. Afterwards, I have
to come back here. I have to stay here.”
Other Karen have
explained that the Thai government is willing to give ID cards to
babies born in Thailand as long as the birth is registered. The same
Karen said they were either unaware of the law at the time their
children were born or that the owners of the villages actually
prevented them from obtaining ID cards for fear of losing revenues.
Mali explained how the
Karen business works. “If we stay here and wear the rings
around our neck, they will give us 1,500 baht per month, each. But
the men don’t get money because they don’t wear the
rings.” Each Karen receives another Bt180 for rice and food.
“If we don’t wear the rings, we don’t get the
money. So, the men won’t get the Bt1,500. They only get Bt180
for rice, per month, per person.”
Asked if she had ever
thought of going to work in town, she answered: “No, I can’t
go. I just can’t go.” Someday, she said, “I would
like to go to work in town. But we wear this metal around our neck,
so I don’t think we can go. I think we just can stay here and
sell souvenirs.”
The trinkets the women
sell were identical in both villages. Many were sealed in plastic,
obviously made in a factory. They essentially told us they get the
souvenirs dropped off in the morning and the money is collected in
the evening. They implied that the women didn’t get to keep
much, if any, of the souvenir income. Som Sak Seta said all of the
income is put in a pool and divided up, with the owner getting the
first and largest share. But it isn’t clear if in some months
the women earned more than 1,500 baht, for example if they had good
sales.
As I spoke to the
villagers, some Thais– probably off-duty soldiers or employees
of the owner hung around, taking pictures and eavesdropping.
Finally, to avoid putting anyone in jeopardy, I asked Som Sak Seta
take us to a “real” village, called Baan Nai Soi, where
it was much easier to do interviews. It was there that we found
Zember. Som Sak Seta explained the soldiers were only there to guard
the border, a few kilometers away.
While the soldiers sat
on a cooler, sipping Cokes, Zember told the story of her predicament.
Her hair cut in Japanese pop fashion, she says she would prefer to
have a normal life. Her skin is light and she is very slim and
attractive, her neck is only slightly elongated and there is little
sign of the rings she once wore. If she were wearing western clothing
in Hong Kong or Bangkok, she would be a normal Asian teenager. In
addition to taking off the neck rings, she no longer wears
traditional clothing, dressing like any rural Thai, but she is stuck
here in a kind of limbo –no longer willing to wear the rings
but not free to make a future for herself either.
In recent years,
Thailand, like many Asian countries, has been rewriting its laws to
increase human rights and freedoms. The issues facing the tribal
people do not seem to result from a lack of legislation but rather a
lack of enforcement. Too often, it seems the whim of the local
authority prevents people, both Thai and tribal, from accessing
rights granted them by the government. High rates of illiteracy among
the tribal people also add to the problem. Add to this the ever
present specter of deportation to a war where they are considered the
enemy, and it is no wonder that the tribal people feel isolated.
For the Padaung Karen
women, the rings around their neck may be seen as cultural shackles, but
they are faced with a brutal choice: return to Burma and risk
death or remain a stateless sideshow attraction in Thailand.
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i am happy that i was born 1992 and here were im at now 
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