Slim chances for children of illegal Burmese

October 16, 2007

WHEN the children at Hsa Mu Htaw school in Mae Sot grow up, they want to be pilots, engineers, teachers and soldiers, not exploited labourers like their parents in Thailand's border garment factories. However, the chances of that are slim.

For these children, their good fortune is in getting to school at all, for, like almost every other Burmese migrant in Mae Sot, they are living illegally in Thailand, without rights or protection.

"All the children are illegal," said Daw Htet Htet Aung, 56, principal of Hsa Mu Htaw school, at Kabiban village, close to Mae Sot. She and her staff are also illegal migrants. She is a teacher with 27 years experience, but for the past nine years she has taught Burmese children in one of the 45 schools in Mae Sot set up to deal with the influx of Burmese refugees, both political and economic — more than 1 million along the Thai-Burma border.

Children of illegal Burmese immigrant workers at Mu Htaw school near the Thai-Burma border. The school can only afford to feed them three out of five days a week.

"Economics are not good in Burma, I am a teacher for 27 years. I was working in a school near Rangoon. My living is good in Thailand. Teaching is better here because there are organisations that help the children by providing textbooks. Their parents are illegal, but they are better here than in Burma," she said.

It's not only more textbooks that mark a difference in the education at this school for 123 children aged three to 14 years. The children study a Burmese syllabus based on what is going on in Burma, it covers Burmese history and geography — and study human rights and democracy.

"I want to teach the children democracy and human rights because it's a very good idea so the children will know it. In Burma you teach them the Burma idea of politics," she said.

The children have been watching the demonstrations in Rangoon on video, and the staff explain to them the political situation in Burma, they explain the exploitation, the suffering, the forced labour and the human rights violations," she said.

"The older children understand, they say we want to go, we can't tolerate it."

Most of the children are Buddhist and come from Karen and Mon ethnic communities directly across the border. Their lives are tough. If their parents are working in the garment factories, they might earn 70 baht ($2.48) a day, half the Thai rate, for a 14-hour shift, seven days a week.

The school's situation, like that of the wider community, is precarious.

The salaries are intermittent, in theory the principal gets 3000 baht a month, 2500 baht for other teachers. They give the children rice and bean curry, but can only feed them three out of five days a week for which the parents donate 50 baht a year.

For the principal, economics drove her out, but only political change will take her back.