Mae Sot is in the Thai province of Tak, which sits on the Myan­mar border. It is a place that has attracted large numbers of refugees escaping persecution and war in Myan­mar. The district’s first refugee camp was established in 1984. Now, in addition to nine camps, there are more than 100,000 refugees in the area outside of the camps. Without citizenship or proper immigration papers, they lack freedom and live hard lives.

In the camps by the Thai–Myanmar border, running small businesses is one of the few ways the refugees have of earning money.

Helping refugees from Myanmar

In 1996 the Chinese Association for Human Rights’ Tai­pei Overseas Peace Service (then the Thai–Chinese Refugee Service) was commissioned by the Thai government as the first NGO to serve refugees on the Thai–Myan­mar border. For nearly 20 years, it has been involved in carrying out refugee education assistance plans, in assisting migrant workers from Myan­mar, and in helping women and children of the mountain tribes. 

As people have grown more familiar with the issues confronting the Myan­mar border area, Taiwanese humanitarian missions and independent volunteers have found their way there. Just a ten-minute drive from the Thai–Myan­mar Friendship Bridge one finds the town of Mae Sot. There crowds can be found pouring in and out of an unremarkable-looking alley. This is where Cynthia ­Maung, a Myan­mar refugee physician, opened the Mae Tao Clinic. She is now known as the Burmese Mother Teresa. With the political instability in Myan­mar that arose with the emergence of the student movement in 1988, she fled to Mae Sot, carrying what she could in her simple luggage. There she began to provide medical services to her fellow refugees. Originally planning to return to Myan­mar when the political situation stabilized, she never expected that she would still be there today, helping both refugees and migrant workers who come across the border to look for work.

From the days when it was housed in a barebones wood-plank structure, there have been numerous improvements to the Mae Tao Clinic over the past 30 years. In terms of the overall medical environment, however, conditions are still tough. For more than 20 years, the clinic has been receiving international assistance, with volunteers from the United States, Japan, France and other nations providing humanitarian assistance. Among them, the volunteers coming from Taiwan have truly made their mark.

Daniel Hsu first came to the clinic as a college student with the Youth E-Service, Taiwan. After graduate study at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Hsu decided to return to the clinic to see a digital medical information system he was designing throughto completion.

Previously, hospital volunteers had to keep patient records. Not only was the process time consuming, but because the data was entered at different times, it was difficult to manage. Consequently, Hsu spent five years raising money, acquiring equipment and writing programs in order to build a digital medical records system. It has dramatically reduced the time spent on scheduling appointments. Checking the clinic’s medical records is likewise much more convenient now.

When the dry season arrives in November, young girls in the area around the camps avoid the harsh sun with parasols and coat their faces with thanaka powder, which is made from tree bark.

Don’t plant poppies, plant trees!

The situation in northern Thailand is quite unlike the situation in Mae Sot. In 1949, with the fall of mainland China to the Communists, large numbers of Chinese Nationalist troops decamped from Yun­nan Province to northern Myan­mar and Thailand. Cut off, they settled into lives in a foreign land, experiencing much hardship.

By the early 1950s, the Chinese Association for Relief and Ensuing Services was already helping out in northern Thailand, distributing large quantities of supplies. In 1982 the association established in Thailand its first locally based NGO, which built Chinese-language schools and assisted the descendants of the lost ROC soldiers to pursue further study in Taiwan. On summer and winter vacations, groups of volunteers from Wen­zao Ursuline College of Languages, Providence College of Arts and Sciences for Women and other institutions of higher education went on humanitarian missions to northern Thailand.

In the 1970s the ROC and the Thai government worked together on the “Royal Project of Thailand,” which brought ROC agricultural technology and techniques to northern Thailand, helping the locals to become self-reliant. The chain of events that led up to this project stretch back to 1968. Back then the mountainous area in the border region of Thailand, Myan­mar and Laos was inhabited by a variety of indigenous peoples including the Karen, Yao, Meo, Akha and Lisu. Their customs and traditions were formed by their experiences wresting a living on hardscrabble slopes. As a result of their environmentally detrimental slash-and-burn farming techniques, the amount of arable land in the area was gradually growing smaller. Consequently, the farmers were steadily growing poorer, so that planting poppies for heroin became the best chance to make ends meet. At the end of the 1960s, more than 150 metric tons of opium was produced in northern Thailand each year.

Large-scale opium production not only didn’t enrich the local residents, it also severely impacted the environment in the northern mountains. To prevent the widespread harm caused by opium cultivation and to improve the lives of local people, King Bhu­mi­bol Adul­ya­dej invited people of various nationalities to visit northern Thailand and search for solutions. In 1969 he launched the Royal Project of Thailand, and nations such as Britain, the United States, Korea and Japan responded to his call. In 1971 the ROC Veterans Association shipped in more than 2000 seedlings of temperate-zone fruit trees and vegetables, and the ROC government dispatched Sung ­Ching-yun, then deputy director of Fu­shou­shan Farm, to Northern Thailand to gather information first hand. Ang­khang and Dai Pui were selected as sites for experimental farms. There staff first planted fruit trees before moving on to vegetables, flowers and the cultivation of seeds and seedlings.

In 1983 the Royal Project of Thailand was turned into the Royal Project Foundation, and authority in Taiwan was also transferred from the ROC Veterans Association to the Taiwan International Cooperation and Development Fund. Cooperation between Thailand and Taiwan has continued down to the present day. Over the course of four decades, not only has the cultivation of opium poppies, once widespread, largely been eradicated, but local residents have seen rising standards of living. Today the new crops Taiwan helped introduce are being cultivated on more than 270,000 hectares, helping more than 170,000 farmers.

The Myanmar refugee physician Cynthia Maung operates the Mae Tao Clinic, where volunteers offer medical services to refugees.

A medical clinic plan to help refugees

Cut to the Thai capital of Bangkok, where the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu-chi Foundation was commissioned by the US State Department and the UN Refugee Agency to provide medical services. According to a UN report, some 7000–9000 international refugees arrive in Bangkok every month. Some are victims of political oppression, and others have been forced to leave their homes for religious reasons. In Bangkok they await eventual refuge in a third nation. Take Bo­ran, a Cambodian refugee receiving assistance. He used to be a political leader. Then he became an enemy of Prime Minister Hun Sen and began to suffer political oppression. He had no choice but to flee with his family to Bangkok, where he has become an international refugee, awaiting settlement in a third country. When he, as the head of the family, was confined to bed with ill health, the family had no choice but to rely on Bo­ran’s 17-year-old eldest son to work illegally in a factory at a salary of THB7000 a month. Because the son lacked papers, he had to accept substandard wages and had to deal with fears about being reported or interrogated by the police.

The vast majority of refugees have similar stories. The lucky ones get approval in three to five years to move to a third country such as the United States or Canada, where they will start new lives. But the vast majority of refugees face uncertain futures.

At the beginning of 2015, after Tzu-Chi was commissioned to provide medical services to refugees, it brought together 20 doctors from local Thai hospitals, as well as ten other healthcare workers. They provide basic medical and mental health services to 500–700 refugees each month. In accordance with individual circumstances, Tzu-Chi provides some refugees with its services in exchange for work.

Sukanya Rimphanawet, CEO of the Tzu-Chi Foundation in Thailand, explains that the refugees come from a variety of places and often encounter language barriers. There is great demand for people fluent in their mother tongues and English. Some of the refugees were among the intellectual elite in their mother countries, so Tzu-Chi has hired them as translators. The employment both supplements their incomes at a time when many of them are not free to work elsewhere and also lifts their spirits.

From their start in northern Thailand, Taiwan’s humanitarian efforts moved west to Mae Sot and then south to Bangkok, as Taiwan’s NGOs shifted the focus of their assistance from agriculture, to education, to medicine. Exchange between Thailand and Taiwan began with cross-border demonstrations of compassion.

Taiwan and Thailand have been working together on the Royal Project of Thailand for nearly 40 years. In the picture, project chairman Prince Bhisatej Rajani invites a foreign guest to try some organic lettuce at a Royal Project farm. (courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

The Tzu-Chi Foundation in Thailand has been commissioned by the United Nations to provide free medical services to refugees in Bangkok. (courtesy of Tzu-Chi Foundation)

Nestled in the mountains, the Mae La refugee camp is Southeast Asia’s largest.

Refugee teachers and workers who are receiving training from the Taipei Overseas Peace Service assemble happily for a group photo at a camp’s kindergarten.