How a river saved a village when war reached its doorstep

Sydney Morning Herald

23-06-2025

Zach Hope and Kate Geraghty travel to the borderlands near Myanmar, where efforts are under way to rescue thousands of trafficking victims from scam factories. See all 7 stories.
Ayoung woman crouches by a gap in the bamboo fence of Thailand's biggest refugee camp, her head askew, eyes peering through barbed-wire strands at the sparse oncoming traffic.
She is anticipating a taxi – a family member has a doctor's appointment in the nearest Thai town. When the car pulls up, they will need to move fast, as they do not want the attention of the guards.
Almost 40,000 people live in the Mae La camp, a crowded jumble of tin and timber homes and rambling tracks, close to the border with Myanmar. The occupants are mostly Karen, an ethnic group from south-eastern Myanmar.
No one is allowed to leave without special short-term permission, unless to return to the homelands they have fled over decades of civil war.
Even trips to the doctor must be discreet.
Mae La is the largest of nine camps on the Thai side of the border. Many residents, longing for third-country resettlement and peace, have known no other life.
The latest iteration of Myanmar's civil war, brought on by the 2021 military coup that removed the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, has added 20,000 people to the camps, pushing the combined population above 100,000.
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'But there is no more space, so we cannot build new houses,' Karen Refugee Committee secretary Saw Bweh Say says. The committee has been operating along the Thai-Myanmar border for more than 40 years.
In addition to increased population pressure, US President Donald Trump's order to freeze foreign aid has crippled the capacity of at least one major non-government organisation to deliver healthcare, water and sanitation.
Another major non-government organisation, The Border Consortium, said on Friday (World Refugee Day) it had been forced to reduce rations to 'well below international standards', though it did not cite the Trump administration as the cause.
While some people get help from relatives overseas and a small number slip out to work illegally, about 80 per cent depend on NGOs for their everyday needs, the secretary says.
Thailand is not a party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, meaning the camp populations are not recognised as such, and are restricted in their movements and activities.
'Life in a refugee camp is you cannot work and you cannot do anything with your daily life,' 70-year-old Mae La resident Naw Mu says.
'When USAID was suspended, we faced a food shortage – they reduced the monthly food ration – and we don't get enough water.
'On the other hand, when you look at the Burma [Myanmar] situation, there is no peace. People face difficulties every day. They cannot live in their villages.'
Naw Shee Eh Plo, the eldest daughter of Karen revolutionaries, came to Mae La in 1997 because it was unsafe at home.
'If we cannot go back to Burma or another country, then I prefer to stay here,' she says. 'I don't have hope for peace in Burma.'
Saw Bweh Say, the Karen committee secretary, hopes Thailand will change its position on recognising refugees, allowing adults to work and children to attend formal education.
Still, he is grateful. For 50 years, the Thai government and people have allowed the Karen refugees a safe haven.
For those still in the Karen lands of Myanmar, life can be upended – and ended – at any moment by military air raids and drone attacks.
This masthead met a group of internally displaced people in the Thai town of Noh Bo, about 50 kilometres north of the Mae La camp.
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The men had crossed the shallow Moei River border that morning – not because of an immediate threat, but because they wanted Australians to be aware of what is happening to them and their country.
The Myanmar civil war, though unfolding in Australia's region, is overshadowed by the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, and now Iran. But it is no less barbarous, claiming about 50,000 lives, including 6000 civilians, since February 2021.
About 20 million people – more than a third of Myanmar's population – need humanitarian assistance and 3.5 million people are internally displaced. These young men are among these numbers.
On February 27, the State Administration Council, as the military regime is called, bombed positions of the Karen National Liberation Army, one of Myanmar's many ethnic resistance forces.
The fighting was almost at the village of Pu Lu Palaw, forcing the civilians to wade over the river to the safety of Noh Bo, aided by Thai military border patrol teams.
'We could not even bring anything with us,' Saw Hser Khu, a weathered 39-year-old former fisherman, says.
Hundreds crammed inside the Noh Bo church. Hundreds more slept where they could outside.
When things calmed down, they crossed back to Myanmar, but Pu Lu Palaw was still not safe.
'Mostly, people now sleep by riverbank, but those who are quick, they stay in their homes,' Saw Hser Khu says with a grin, only half-joking.
Some have family on the Thailand side, and this masthead witnessed several family groups crossing the river with sacks of rice and whatever else they could carry above the waist-high waterline.
Military planes are a regular sight and sound above the hazy mountains.
'If the [regime] see a lot of people in the village, they will bomb,' Saw Hser Khu says. 'We were lucky that we were already in hiding.'
Almost all the group living in Pu Lu Palaw has fled there from elsewhere in Myanmar because of the fighting. Now, they are displaced again.
As there is almost no work, the villagers on the riverbank rely on charity and NGOs for most of their needs.
Those with a little bit of money sometimes cross into Noh Bo to buy rice and supplies. Those without often go hungry, the men say.
At the end of the day, it is time for the villagers to leave Noh Bo and return to the Myanmar riverbank.
This masthead follows them down the steep track, past the Thai military observation post. They pause on the way to point out an abandoned regime military base, shrouded by trees at the tip of a Myanmar mountain.
At the river, we exchange thank yous and farewells. Then, they pull up their shorts and pants legs, and wade back to broken Myanmar.