* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In Kachin State, Northern Myanmar, communities are caught between two armies: the Burmese army and the independent separatist movement, the Kachin Independence Army (KIA). Nicola Kelly went to meet some of those living in villages on the frontline of the conflict and those who have fled to one of the 164 refugee camps in this part of Myanmar.
Everyone had looked puzzled when I told them I was planning to visit Bhamo, a remote town surrounded by refugee camps in conflict-affected Kachin State, Northern Myanmar.
"Don’t you want to see the temples of Bagan? You know, Myanmar is known as the Golden Land. There are many important sites to see here."
"No, no, I’d like to go to Kachin, to hear the stories of the refugees displaced by the fighting," I said. Furrowed eyebrows and bemused smiles told me this was not a common request.
"There are many landmines along the border with China," my colleague Isaac warned, in one of the more haphazard security briefings I have encountered. "And other big problems, such as the MSG they add to the food up there." Landmines and MSG. There was a lot to contend with.
And so I set off. Leaving the congestion and purpose-built blocks of Yangon behind me, I took to the skies on what can only be described as a rattling tin can, floating around among monsoon clouds.
What greeted me was a sleepy, yet refined town. Bhamo is subtle, unassuming, elegant. Waif-like women amble along under parasols, faces painted yellow with a sun protector made from bark. Slight men trot enthusiastically alongside them, wearing the traditional longyi – a sarong-like garment tied at the hip – laden with the bags of their female companions.
I was in Bhamo to see the work of Gender Development Initiative (GDI) and the Kachin Baptist Church (KBC). Both organisations work in the UNHCR-funded refugee camps and in the communities caught between the Burmese army and the KIA, training human rights monitors to document and report human rights violations – of which there are numerous examples, daily.
The work of these partners carries significant risk. A week before I arrived, the Camp Manager had received a death threat from the Burmese army. "How many days do you want to live?" one had muttered in a low voice. Earlier this year, attention had been drawn to KBC’s work following the case of two teachers raped and killed by the Burmese military. Activists receive frequent warnings but they continue, unphased.
It was with all this in mind that I arrived in Bhamo to meet GDI’s human rights monitors and to hear the stories from the conflict-affected communities themselves.
"We have been waiting a very long time for someone to come and hear our stories," La Roi, Head of KBC, told me. I felt at once an enormous sense of privilege and of responsibility.
What followed was four 12-hour days, sitting in a teak armchair with my dictaphone recording story after story, each more harrowing than the last. Stories of rape, torture, forced labour, child abduction.
The most difficult to hear was of Mai Ja, a 14-year-old girl who arrived with her grandmother. Mai Ja is deaf and her grandmother, bent double from back-breaking work earlier in her life, would act as her interpreter. She told me she feels unsafe in the camp. She can’t sleep, because she can ‘hear things’ through the woven-bamboo partition to the next hut.
"When men are drunk, they do whatever they want," she tells me. Her young face is weathered, prematurely aged by harrowing experiences.
Mai Ja had been forced to work as a live-in au pair for a Chinese family, to support her younger sister. Her mother had died in the conflict. Her brother and father had returned to their village 10 miles away to work. She hadn’t seen them for 2 years.
Being deaf, she was unable to communicate with her employers or their one-year-old child. The baby’s mother was out all day, teaching. The man stayed at home, cultivating the land.
I asked if she liked her employers. Her frozen expression cracked; she broke down and sobbed. ‘They beat me when I make mistakes,’ was all she could say. I couldn’t bring myself to ask what happened when she was alone with the man in the house.
The options for young women such as Mai Ja are extremely limited. They can remain with their families, where they will be forced to marry a man from the Burmese army or the KIA. Alternatively, they face arranged marriage – often to a man with alcohol and drug abuse issues.
Or they flee from their families to live in one of the 164 refugee camps in this part of Myanmar – seemingly, a safer choice. There, they will be made to find work on construction sites, mixing and carrying cement, or in the tea shops, working a 12-hour day for $3.
But these options offer no viable prospects for the future. What Kachin State needs is a peaceful, negotiated settlement, so that these women can live with their families and work on their land.
"What do you hope for your future?" I asked Mai Ja.
"I want to be able to light a candle in the evening, without fear that one of the armies will shoot. That, to me, is freedom."
Nicola Kelly is a International Communications Advisor for Christian Aid
