MAHACHAI, Thailand (AP) — Kicking off her first trip abroad in nearly
a quarter-century, Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi offered
encouragement Wednesday to impoverished migrants whose flight to
neighboring Thailand is emblematic of the devastation wrought on her
homeland by decades of misrule.
Aung San Suu Kyi waves to the crowd while leaving a community center in Mahachai, Samut Sakhon Province, Thailand. Pic: AP.
“Don’t feel down, or weak. History is always changing,” she told an
exuberant crowd of thousands southwest of Bangkok. Many held signs
saying, “We want to go home,” and Suu Kyi said her visit was aimed at
learning how she could help them.
“Today, I will make you one promise: I will try my best for you,” she said.
Suu Kyi, who arrived in Bangkok late Tuesday, left her luxury hotel
and the skyscraper-packed capital Wednesday for the nearby town of
Mahachai, home to Thailand’s largest population of Burmese migrants.
Thousands of Burma’s downtrodden crowded around her and chanted: “Long
Live Mother Suu!”
“I had only seen her on TV and in newspapers,” said Saw Hla Tun, who
left Burma’s Karen state seven years ago and earns a meager wage
carrying heavy salt sacks on his back. “I couldn’t hold back my tears
when I saw her.”
After speaking to the crowd from a fourth-floor balcony at a
community center, the Nobel Peace Prize winner met with migrant workers
who told her they face mistreatment from employers but lack knowledge of
their rights and have no legal means to settle disputes.
Suu Kyi spent 15 of the last 24 years under house arrest. During
intermittent periods of freedom, she dared not leave Burma — not even to
visit her dying husband — because she feared the military junta ruling
at the time would not allow her to return. Now, in a sign of how much
life has changed, the democracy activist and newly elected member of
Parliament is traveling across Thailand, where she will speak later this
week at the World Economic Forum on East Asia.
She’ll return to Burma briefly before heading to Europe for a
five-country tour in mid-June. Her stops include England where she’ll
address the British Parliament and Oslo, Norway, to formally accept the
Nobel Peace Prize she won 21 years ago.
Fixing a battered economy is one of the most crucial challenges
facing Burma, also known as Burma, as it begins opening up in the wake
of 49 years of military governance that ended only last year.
Thailand hosts around 2.5 million impoverished Burmese who have fled
here to work low-skilled jobs as domestic servants or in manual labor
industries like fisheries and the garment sector.
Andy Hall, a migrant expert and researcher at the Institute for
Population and Social Research at Thailand’s Mahidol University, said
the Burmese migrants — up to a million of them undocumented — make up
between 5 and 10 percent of the Thai work force, contributing as much as
7 percent of the nation’s GDP.
Many are exploited and paid reduced wages. Some have been trafficked;
some have had their passports confiscated by employers. Hall said they
were nevertheless “the lifeblood of a lot of the Burma economy, sending
home money to support families who don’t have enough money to eat.”
“They have no voice, they can never speak up or stand up,” Hall said.
“So for Aung San Suu Kyi to visit is like a dream come true, someone
who finally may be able to bring attention to their suffering.”
One of the migrants, a 26-year-old woman named Khin Than Nu, works at
a Thai canning factory and dreams of her home in Burma’s Mon state.
“We left our parents in Burma, and all my brothers and sisters work
here to support our parents,” she said. “I hope Daw Suu will help
develop our country, and bring jobs so we can go home.”
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