4.4: Notes from an Ethnography

There are approximately eight million Shan people, mostly in Shan State, which has been de facto part of Burma (Myanmar) since its independence in 1948. The guaranteed right to secede from Burma after ten years was never honoured. Neither have other human rights been respected, with the Shan people routinely being subjected by the Burmese military to forced labour, while little was spent on their health and education. Although the Shan people outnumber the Tibetans and the Palestinians, their plight is largely unknown, in contrast to the persecution of Burma’s Muslim Rohingya people by ultra-nationalist Buddhists in 2016 that attracted greater attention worldwide.

What follows is excerpted from the field notes of an ethnography conducted by one of the authors of this chapter on the Thai-Burma border. Some details have been changed for reasons of confidentiality.

Today I had lunch in a Chinese Muslim vegetarian restaurant, in a Thai village not far from the Burmese border. We had scrambled yellow tofu with rice noodles, accompanied by samosas and sweetcorn fritters. My companions included a Jewish Australian woman and three Shan people, all Buddhist. The Shan people all work for SalusWorld, a mental health NGO that works to heal psychological trauma caused by human rights abuses around the globe. They included a Shan woman who has recently started a postgraduate degree, which, given that many Shan people in Thailand do not go to school, even fewer go to university, and even fewer still are women, is quite remarkable.

Before lunch, we went to a nearby orange farm to assess the possibility of opening a school for the children of Shan refugees, many of whom work on the orange farms of the area for less than 100 baht (US$3) a day. Although they are refugees in the sense of being outside their country through conditions not of their own making, they are not legally recognised as refugees by the Thai government or the UNHCR. Hence, they have no papers, and their children are not entitled to a state education. This is why a number of NGOs – secular and faith-based – fund and operate schools like this potential one. That said, it is possible for Shan children to enter government schools if they meet certain criteria – notably having a sufficient level of competence in the Thai language. So, the NGO schools often focus on teaching Thai language to the Shan children, as well as English, mathematics, and Shan history. If they get into the government schools, it is possible for them to get formal school and even university qualifications, Thai citizenship, and better job opportunities.

After visiting the potential school site, we visited a Shan family on another orange farm. They have a four month old daughter, and the people from SalusWorld were delivering milk because breast feeding has become impossible, and they gave advice about vaccinations that were available at a nearby clinic. The parents both work on the farm, earning 180 baht a day between them, so a sufficient supply of milk is not something they can afford. Their main job is to spray the orange trees with pesticides. Some of the nearby orange farms use pesticides that are illegal even in Thailand; I have no way of telling if this farm is one of them, but it is certain that the pesticides would have long term negative health effects on the whole family. They had no protective clothing beyond simple scarves that they wrapped around their faces while spraying. It had been raining, and the puddles were a deep green pesticide colour.

The family have been in Thailand for six months. They escaped from Burma, and considered their living conditions to be far better than anything they had experienced previously. They were genuinely happy and relieved to be here.

Had the human security paradigm emerged in the 1930s, the perspective of my Jewish Australian companion would have merited extensive discussion. Today, her Zionism would strike many non-Jews as a threat to human security, but she would see it as necessary to the human security of her relatives and her fellow Jews. The human security of the Chinese Muslims in the village where we ate is another story. They escaped from China during the time of the Communist Revolution – some of the older generation fought for the Kuomintang. The restaurant was beside a mosque, where they were able to worship freely. The researcher’s own human security was enhanced by being able to eat in accordance with his vegetarian principles.

As for the Shan people, even the worst human rights violations they experienced in Thailand were not enough to make them wish they were in Burma. The border was onlya few kilometres away, but this barrier protected them from the Burmese military. The human security of the workers on the orange farms was compromised by their low wages, the health risks from the pesticides, and the precarious legal state that their lack of papers put them and their children in. These human insecurities were real. It is not too strong to call them human rights violations. Yet their relief at being in Thailand rather than Burma was equally real. A point worth emphasising in this chapter on religion in human security is that both Thailand and Burma are majority Buddhist states, with vastly different approaches to the intersection between the principles of human security and the principles of their faith.

Yet, there are no de minimis violations of human rights. In other words, human rights constitute a minimum acceptable standard, not a vague set of aspirations. They are necessary to human security. It is no defence of human rights violations to say they are less bad than the violations that occur elsewhere. Human rights violations cannot be excused by culture, or national security needs, or even by a democratic veto. Human rights are universal and indivisible, and they are the foundation of human security. Or are they?