On a calm, sunny day in Chiang Mai, June 20 (World Refugee Day), is like any other. It’s easy to nosh on a bowl of noodles in the midst of gilt temples and think nothing of the world 150 miles away. It’s easy—that’s the explanation many expats give for their choice in residence. Life is slow, and the Buddhist ideal of detachment prevails. You can be whomever you want to be in Thailand. That’s what makes it such a great vacation spot. And yet, just over the hills north of Chiang Mai, reality takes no break. Civil warfare rages within Burma (Myanmar), where hundreds of thousands of refugees have been driven from their homes. For half a century, ethnic minorities have been fighting for sovereignty. The Burmese Army responds by torching villages, raping women, and sending thousands across the border to camps in Thailand. This year, Free Burma Rangers, a Thailand-based group providing medical care and aid to displaced villagers within Burma, celebrates its 10th anniversary. Last year I met a young FBR member, pale-faced and weary, who showed video footage from jungle villages that had been razed by the Burmese Army. He showed villagers digging up the bones of their neighbors and relatives. Not long before that, my husband visited a camp on the Thai-Burmese border, where thousands of refugee families live cheek-by-jowl under the sharp eyes of the Thai military. There is no work, there is little to do. Families wait months and years for an opportunity to move to a third country. For many, it never comes. They spend their days in the relative freedom of purgatory.
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