The Consumer Complaints Blog

Burma’s Long Neck Karen Hill Tribe chose exploitation in a tourist village rather than go back to a civil war which borders on genocide
By Antonio Graceffo

The Burmese civil war, often viewed as a genocide, committed against Burma’s tribal minorities, has been raging off-and-on for a period of nearly fifty years. Estimates claim that as many as two million refugees, many of the tribal peoples, have fled over the border into neighboring Thailand. The Long Neck Karen tribe, so called because their women wear multiple neck rings, which elongate the neck, to several times normal size, have found refuge in artificial, tourist villages, where visitors, both Thai and foreign, pay a heavy entrance fee to gawk at the unusual looking people.

One such tourism village is Hoy Sua Toa Long Neck Karin village, located in Thailand’s Mae Hong Song Province, within sight of the Burmese border. After paying their entry, tourists will find that the entire village is one huge shop, with women and children selling goods and posing for photos. There are no Karen men to be seen. Traditionally, tribal people lack a merchant class, and yet the village is 100% dedicated to the sale of trinkets. Karen in Burma live by planting and cultivating rice, raising animals, and by hunting. In Hoy Sua Tao, however, there are no rice fields.

“It’s their choice.” Said Som Sak Seta, a guide who takes tourists to the Long Neck Karin Villages. “The Karen can make money, wearing their neck rings in the camp, or they can go back in 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 of the Thai border and make some money, and the governors can get some money as well.”

Ajan Prasit Leeprechaa, a lecturer at Chiang Mai University is himself a member of the Hmong tribe, a group persecuted in Lao, for fighting along side the Americans in the Indochina conflict. While countless Hmong families languish in refugee camps, awaiting resettlement in the USA, Ajan Prasit uses his education to study and help Thailand’s many tribal people.

Ajan Prasit explained the Karen predicament this way. “The Karen are faced with four options. Live in a tourist village, become official refugees, go back to the war in Burma, or number four, now some countries like New Zealand offer them a chance to go live in cultural tourism villages abroad.”

All of these options are only options if the tribal people are made aware of their rights, which most are not. The Long Neck Karen are typically singled out, because of their appearance, scooped up and deposited in the tourism villages, before reaching the UN camps. Allowing Long Neck Karen to gain refugee status would not be in the best business interest of the village owners, who collect money from the tourists.

Owning a group of Karen is a lucrative business.

“Some Thai made a fake village in Chiang Rai and Chiang Mai, and stole some Karen from here to live there. They charged 1,000 Baht or more for the entrance fee. But, the Mae Hong Song government went down and took them back here already.” Said Som Sak Seta.

All legal residents of Thailand are given some type of an ID card, with various rights attached. Obviously, citizens get the most rights. Legal aliens may be grated rights such as employment or residence. 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 Long Neck Karin Karen girl, named Mali, told us she hadn’t been given any type of ID card, although she had already lived in Thailand for more than twelve years.

Do you have any other papers for residence or anything?

“No, I don’t have anything. They just let me stay here.”

Can you go into town? Can you go into Mae Hong Song?

“I can, but 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.”

In Burma, the Karen people would be engaging in agriculture, as well as hunting and gathering forest products, as their people have done for centuries. But in the tourism villages, they work as full time sellers of trinkets. Normally, the Karen culture would be tied to the land, the jungle, and the agricultural rhythms. As salespeople, the Karen have lost their culture completely.

We asked Mali if her younger sister, who was born in Thailand, had an ID card.

“No, no we don’t. None of us have an id card, none of us.” Said Mali.

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 that they were either unaware of the law at the time their children were born, or that the owners of the villages actually prevented the Karen from obtaining ID cards for fear of losing revenues.

Mali explained how the Karen business worked. “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.”

Do they give you rice, something to eat here?

“Yes, they give us 180 Baht per person, per month. So, we take that money and we go to buy rice and food.”

If you don’t wear the rings, will they give you money?

“No, if we don’t wear the rings, we don’t get the money. So, the men won’t get the 1500 Baht. They only get 180 Baht for rice, per month, per person.”

Have you ever thought about going to work in town?

“No, I can’t go. I just can’t go.”

Have you ever thought about what kind of job you would want to get?

“I have been thinking about that? Someday if I can, 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.”

Thai spies, in yellow shirts, hung around, photographing my team and eves dropping on our conversations. Finally, to avoid putting ourselves or the Karen in jeopardy, we had Som Sak Seta take us to a “real” village, called Baan Nai Soi, where it was much easier to do interviews. Som Sak Seta explained the soldiers were only there to guard the border, merely a few kilometers away. While the soldiers sat on a cooler, sipping a coke, an eighteen year old Karen girl, named Zember, told her story.

Zember only moved back to the village when she was about seven or eight, the age when girls take their first rings. She followed the custom, adding one ring per year, till she was sixteen. Finally, she had them removed in an attempt to gain more comprehensive citizenship rights and be able to migrate down to “urban” Mae Hong Son without being gawked at as a freak

Since removing the rings, she finds herself in a situation of double jeopardy. Now, not only does she still have the lowly status of being a stateless Karen refugee, living in a sideshow, but the Karen elders shun her as a traitor to the ring-wearing community.

Zember said that she does make frequent trips down to the city during daylight.

In recent years, Thailand, like many Asian countries, has been rewriting their 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 federal government. High percentages of illiteracy and low levels of education among the tribal people also add to the problem.

Although none of the Karen came right out and said it, they must be living under tremendous pressure, knowing that they have no legal right of residence, no right to property ownership, and as far as they know, no access to legal recourse. 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 lack the internal strength to stand up for themselves.

Tribal people tend to think in very tangible, concrete realities. And one reality which they see everyday is, as bad as the situation in Houy Sua Toa is, no one is shooting at them. Additionally, they have an income and they have their children and families with them. So, on some level, they are better off than they would be in Burma. And of course, at any time, they are free to return to the war.

The Puyai Ban, village owners who pocket most of the tourism revenue, evoke images of the war as a justification for what they are doing. Tourists, headed into Houy Sua Toa will notice a huge display of bombs and mines, right near the entrance.

“They are just telling what kind of bombs, and how bad it is for these people, so the tourists can know.” Explained Som Sak Seta.

Som Sak Seta told us that for a brief period, the Thai government had been issuing ID cards to the Karen.

“Now the Karen just don’t get the ID cards anymore.” Som Sak Seta. “They (Puyai Ban) prevent the people from becoming Thai citizens. They are trying not to give them anything.”

“If the government gives them the card, and the people in charge of this income let them have the card, and they become Thai citizens, the Long Neck Karen will disappear. So, no more income and no more attraction. They are trying to keep these people as Long Neck Karen and pay them 1500 Baht a moth, and keep them happy.”

So, what if the Karen disappeared? Mae Hong Song province would just be short of income. Isn’t that so?

“Usually there is a lot of income from foreign tourists. Normally the people who get the money for the entrance fee will develop the roads or build a temple or something in the village, but these people only develop their pockets.”

“The Karen said that if they had to relocate to another artificial village, they would not go there. They would move into the refugee camp. They don’t want to go farther from the border, into the interior. Here, they have NGOs to look after them, like the UN. So, they might have a chance to go to a third country as refugees. Some of them have already moved to Holland, USA, and Australia. I think already, more than 500 have been resettled into third countries by aid organizations.”

“If they stay here they are being pressured by the governors in charge, if they move into the NGOs it will be better for them, they have no freedom if they stay here.”

The rings around their neck are cultural shackles. The Long Neck Karin are faced with a fatal alternative. Is it better to return to Burma, and risk death, or better to remain as a stateless sideshow attraction in Thailand? On the other hand, the Long Neck Karin, because of their unique appearance, are the only one of Burma’s many ethnic minorities who has this option of escape.

Antonio Graceffo is an adventure travel and martial arts author, living in Asia. His specialties include ethnic minorities, languages, and martial arts. He has studied Kung Fu at the Shaolin Temple and lived in the last Muay Thai monastery in Thailand. He has published four books on amazon.com
See his website: http://speakingadventure.com/

Contact Antonio: [email protected]

I was very happy to find your Blog… Here’s my story, hope it will help other consumers avoid such experience in the future:

I hired the moving company Rockbrune Bros. Ltd. to move our home from Toronto to Albany, NY. The scheduled date for receiving our content in Albany was July 19th.
On July 19th, no truck or local movers arrived and no one contacted us to provide inforamtion on the whereabouts of the truck. After numerous calls and emails I was finally able to learn (late in the day) that the truck would not arrive until the 23nd. We were left in an empty house in a new town.

Rockbrune bros. suggested we either go to a hotel or buy the basic things we needed to stay in the empty house until the 22nd. Having a child and 2 pets we opted for the latter and purchased an inflatable mattress, some towels and kitchen utensils (mostly plastic), three bar stools, and a doll for our daughter. The total cost was approx. $600, slightly less than we would have spent on a hotel and restaurants for the four days.

After the move was completed we contacted the company for a refund of our expenses. We were surprised to learn that the company will not reimburse us for the full amount. The owners claimed that our expenses were not justified and they would only provide $200 as a “gesture of good will”. This is despite their earlier promise to reimburse us for our expenses! We refused their offer of $200 and requested that they reimburse us in full.

The owners further claimed that we should not be reimbursed since we get to keep the things we purchased. We notified the company that we are happy to give them these items (mattress, chairs, etc) since we really had no need for them and were forced to buy them because of the delay in shipment. The company did not respond and to date did not refund us for our expenses.

As a consumer, in situations like this I am left frustrated with my inability to do anything (other than perhaps a small claim but who has the time…). I hope that by posting my experience on your blog people may be able to avoid the services of Rockbrune Bros or at least be aware of the potential issues that my come up.

Sincerely,

Dorit Nevo

Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.

I usually don’t go in for the whole protesting thing. I really see it as nothing more than an opportunity for the media and higher ups to manipulate the public while the rest of us feel like we’re making a difference by blowing off steam and screaming. The truth is that unless there is a mass movement, protest don’t really seem to accomplish much.

I’m a much bigger believer in the grass roots organization movement and voting with my dollar rather than screaming in the cold or something. But to each his own. The point I’m getting at is the video below. The part about the boots was really kind of amusing. It’s nice to know that Joe Public is so easily manipulated into a riot situation for a good old fashioned ass kicking. The host is kind of slow like he’s speaking to a room full of 5 year olds. Anyway, watch the video and let me know what you think.

Before you get all excited, there is no real way to beat the system. But there are things that you can do to help yourself from being completely shafted.

1. Never pay the fine outright.
If you pay your ticket without going to court, your conviction will register immediately and you’re pretty much screwed with your insurance. So even if you get a ticket for 10 over, don’t pay it. Take it to court. Why you ask? Because your conviction will only register after you have been found guilty. With the state of the court system today, that can be up to a year or more before you go in front of a judge.

So let’s say you got charged with not stopping at a stop sign even though you did stop. You can’t fight it because they’ll always believe the cop in court but you can limit the insurance penalty.

Even if you’re found guilty in court, the points will go on your record only after the conviction so they may only stay on your record for 6 – 8 months if the courts are jammed enough. This is because the points are based on the offence date and not the conviction date.

2. Go to court and look and listen for the cop.
The prosecutor will check in with all the cops. It helps if you can memorize the cops face when he stops you but he’ll say his Officer Number to the prosecutor to check in so listen carefully. If he’s not in court, your charges will be dismissed. This has worked for me 7 times in the past. Cops don’t always come to court. Sometimes they are busy or have to work and so on. If you’re really polite when they stop you, they may note it down and not bother to come if it’s just the one case.

3. When in doubt, bargain.
The prosecutors are lazy. They just want the conviction for their stats so they’d rather not sit there actually doing their job. They want to bargain with you and go to lunch early. You can usually get minor secondary offences dismissed and reduce your charge if you agree to plead guilty.

4. Stay away from those ticket services.
If you hire one of those “We’ll get you off for any violation” people, they really won’t do much for you but take your money for doing what you could basically do yourself.

5. If you have time and friends, stall.
If you have an agent that is willing to go in for you, you can try stalling by having them tell the JP that you are really sick with diarrhoea or something else disgusting and believable then ask for a new date. Stalling not only adds more time from your offence date to the conviction but it also increases the chance that the officer won’t show up. But don’t have your agent talk to the prosecutor in this case or he/she will know what’s going on. There is always the chance that the JP won’t believe your agent in which case he’ll have to say that he is not prepared to proceed and you may get convicted anyway. In that case, take the time it took to get to court as a bonus and be happy with that.

6. It’s your Worship not your Honour.
Apparently they get very testy about this. The traffic court has a Justice of the Peace (JP) and you refer to them as Your Worship. The criminal courts have judges and they are Your Honour. Holy crap talk about an ego trip. In any case, you won’t get a fair shake from either because in my experience, they always believe the cop over you. So no point in pissing them off further. Just remember to call him Your Worship and you’ll be fine.

7. An excuse is not the law.
If you have an excuse for doing what you did, it won’t matter so don’t waste your breath. They just go by the law like some kind of idiot robot. There is no room for humanity in the court so even if your baby was dying, they’ll convict you because you technically broke the law when speeding to the hospital. It’s best to try to prepare based on the actual law if you plan to fight the charge.

To sum it up. Basically, just go to court for any offence. The $20 extra for court fees and so on are well worth the insurance premium over a year with points on your record.

If you have a serious conviction like DUI or something, go talk to a lawyer right after your AA meeting. I only intend this advice for minor traffic offences. Good luck.

In stark contrast to the Highland Farms meat incident a little while back, I found a couple of sites today that were fun and useful. The first is a spoof on the Matrix and has won some awards: The Meatrix. It’s just a quick look into the meat industry and the shitty way in which the large farming corporations are growing our meat and mistreating the animals in the process. No I’m not an animal activists. I fully endorse eating meat but I don’t believe that any creature should be immobilized in pens and made to stand in its own shit just so we can save a buck or two.

Is cheapness just as bad as corporate profits? If we keep sending the message that cheaper is better, won’t the big companies always try to cut costs at the expense of everything else? Maybe we should be saying that better is better.

From that site I came across this one: Eat Well Guide. The really cool thing about that site is that you can enter your postal code (or zip code) and find stores, farms, and restaurants in your area that offer naturally raised and organic foods. I’m in Toronto, Ontario and it seemed to work well for me. At least for the stores. It’s not perfect but what a great find for anyone that’s looking at eating healthier. It’s too bad the media continues to brainwash people into thinking that eating healthy means eating low fat food. Why do all the fat people always eat low fat and diet foods? If they actually worked, shouldn’t they be loosing weight?

Anyway that’s a whole other blog post. If you’re one of the people that has figured out that eating healthy means non poluted and naturally raised food, you can check out the Eat Well Guide. Use it to find a store in your area that offers an alternative to the same old shit from our supermarkets inferiormarkets today.