Who bears the brunt of Thailand’s crackdown on migrant workers?
Undocumented workers, many of whom fled violence in their home country, have to stay on and endure rampant discrimination and exploitation
It has been more than 10 years since Aye Min fled Myanmar amid the fighting between the military and the Karen nationalist forces. With nothing but the clothes on her back, Aye Min boarded a boat in 2006 and crossed the Moie river to Mae Sot, a district located at the border of Thailand and Myanmar.
Now 43, Aye Min lives in a house in Mae Sot where she works as a cleaner, receiving 300 baht (US$8) at most in a week. She hardly goes out though, afraid that she may be caught by the police and deported to Myanmar. “I have no documents,” she said in Burmese.
The other option for Aye Min is to go back to Mae La, the refugee camp where she and her sister first stayed upon their arrival in Myanmar in 2006. With her cropped hair, baggy trousers and polo, however, Aye Min, a lesbian, had been an easy target of discrimination when she was still in the camp. Some refugees, whether they are Muslims or Christians, would allegedly physically and verbally harass her for her sexual orientation.
“Men will put their hands inside the pocket of my shirt and touch my breasts – then they will laugh and say, ‘just checking if you still have them because you look like a man’,” she recalled.
The tougher migrant laws in Thailand served as a double whammy for Aye Min, an undocumented migrant who escaped Myanmar’s ethnic strife only to see herself wanting to escape homophobia in Mae La. When she finally did find a place she no longer wanted to escape from, however, she had to stay put, her room for growth literally limited as she cannot go beyond the confines of the house she cleans for a living.