Mekong Diaries: Day 29

Day 29

Today we meet a father and his daughter, Lahu minority villagers who cross the border from Burma to tell us about life under the SPDC. We arrange to meet at 8 am, but it is 9 or 10 by the time we are all together. We first take two of them to a café near the customs house where the coffee is really good. There as tourists come and go browsing through the infinite riffs on the theme of mass-produced holiday trinket we say our introductions.

The daughter speaks excellent English and as a family of devout Christians, as with many Lahu who have been Christians for over 100 years, is confident and takes the lead in our discussions. They explain to us the significance of the Christian section of the Lahu, but stress that most Lahu are still Buddhist animists.

Our first questions about traveling inside Shan State are met by warnings about a heightened state of instability with newly fired conflict between the Burmese Army and the various ceasefire armies. They tell us that a year ago a Korean tour group was visiting a village and were seized by the local Burmese military unit and badly beaten.

They also report an upswing in armed violence with fighting between the Burmese Army and the United Wa State Army over drugs, guns and the river’s border. Our failure to find a berth on a boat down the river could be due to this increased conflict. They tell us that it has become increasingly difficult to travel on the river and that if they, the Wa army, “see foreign people they will shoot”.

They confirm that the Lahu are involved in the drug trade, growing poppies. But they suggest that “the Lahu just do what the Wa and the Chinese say. If they don’t do it then they will have no money.” As such they suggest that all villages grow poppies, with usage levels as high as 50%. They state that in all cases the government controls opium cultivation. “If you want to do business with drugs just pay the government. It is easy to do.” Besides the traditional wooden houses the traditions of the Lahu are almost all gone. Mostly they say that villagers don’t get rich from growing opium. It is the businessmen who run the trade who are making money. Even the rich Lahu businessmen making money in drugs, mostly in Mae Sot and Mi Shat, are controlled by the Burmese government. Normally the split is 80/20 for businessmen and villagers in a drug growing arrangement.

A lot of the fighting is between the Lahu, Shan and Wa over the drug business. And this is serious fighting with lots of guns and armaments, including landmines. The underlying power in the drug and in the region comes from China. They tell us that many Chinese businessmen evade national protections by purchasing a Burmese passport for around 30,000BHT, after which they are free to do whatever they want inside Burma. In the cases of the government cracking down on drugs those drugs seized by the police and army are simply sold after a grace period of a year or so.

They broke down the profit sharing arrangement commonly seen in the synthetic narcotics industry. For 1 tablet the trafficker would earn about 1 baht, the wholesaler 35 baht, the Mekong trader 50 baht and the government 1 baht in ‘tax’.

At this point the two Lahu people grew nervous about continuing to speak in a public space about such illicit things. It was strange but suddenly the women operating the espresso machines and opening the milk fridges became figures of suspicion, their glances and loitering at the bar signs of a covert intention to gather information. We relocated to a larger hotel where the dinning room was spacious and empty.

The father told us that while still a Christian his grandfather had been a hunter.  He explained that the Lahu are forced into armed service by the Burmese as a disposable force to confront the Wa. In his own village he reported some 500 men had already been forcefully conscripted into a militia. The strongest army according to their own observations is the Shan, as it does the most business and gives the government the most money. Normally the Lahu, Wa and Burmese armies locally have no money from any other sources other than what they steal from the villagers.

In particular the Burmese army is the worst. In the case of a unit coming into a Lahu village, the father suggested they would steal everything. Other crimes such as rapes and killings are common. If the people attempt to stand up to the soldiers they expect to be killed out of hand. “They don’t use the law, they use only the money.” It is the same for the police and the army, any big problems can be solved by money. If sentenced to execution, a criminal able to pay can be released and another dead body will take his or her place.

In all these things the Lahu have no power to resist said the father. ‘If they say, be in the army, we must. If they want to fight the Shan and the Wa, they will send the Lahu and Wa to die for them.’ A week before speaking to us the father told us that 20 men from one village had been taken away for training. On their return they carry the protection of the army and so become virtual agents for the government, and its business allies inside the village, in issues of trafficking drugs, women and other crimes.

The government in Burma was nothing other than a loose collection of individual businessmen. Forced labour and army smuggling constantly feeds the armies conflicts.

After hours of talking we thanked the man and his daughter, and waved them farewell as they crossed back into Burma. With a new appreciation of our context, and security, we spent the rest of the day filming the border crossing and preparing for the first interview with a Shan man schedule for the next morning.