Phil Thornton; Asia Books – Ilaria Maria Sala; www.feer.com/;Â 7/06; Ms. Sala is a free-lance journalist based in Hong Kong.
At the border between Thailand and Burma, there is a war going on. Everyday, soldiers and civilians die as victims of a brutal regime that kidnaps, tortures and kills its citizens. It is a David-and-Goliath battle that pits a Karen army of 20,000 poorly armed rebels against nearly 500,000 government troops. As they fight in the inhospitable jungle, characterized by ambushes and landmines, and plagued by malaria, monsoon rains and the lack of food and medicine, the world looks the other way, sullen and incapable of any intervention.
The conflict between the Karen minority and the Burmese military dictatorship is the world’s longest civil war, one of the many gaping wounds left open in the aftermath of World War II and decolonization. Largely the outcome of a British postwar betrayal, it is yet another example of a botched attempt to close the chapter on colonial history, only to leave in its wake a trail of blood and misery.
In Burma, as in Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and other Asian territories occupied by the West, the invading Japanese army in the 1930s and 1940s tried to portray itself as a liberator — a harbinger of that pan-Asian prosperity that claimed to free the continent of its colonial yoke. Many national liberation movements were lulled by this Japanese rhetoric, only to realize too late their own folly and the sheer brutality of a Japanese occupation. The initial message sounded convincing, and for a while fooled a number of anti-colonial leaders.
This is why Burman nationalists, including General Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi), originally collaborated with the Japanese. The Karen, on the other hand, in an attempt to secure their own independent state, sided with the British.
In 1948, shortly after the war, Gen. Aung and his followers gained independence and the British pulled out, leaving control of the entire territory to the Burmese nation, a postwar construct that ignored the aspirations of many non-Burman people, including the Karen, Shan, Mon and others.
The postwar years were thus characterized by internal strife, among the different political factions as well as those ethnic groups that refused to become subjugated minorities. Then, in 1962, all political development was suddenly blocked by a military coup led by Ne Win, which has kept the army in power to this day.
Journalist Phil Thornton takes no shortcuts in writing about this struggle: He spent five years living in Mae Sot, south-east of the Thai-Burma border, “trying to make sense of the Burmese military dictatorship and the people of Burma.”
Mae Sot is today “the unofficial headquarters for Burmese opposition groups and activists” — a normally restless border town whose wealth was founded on the smuggling of jade, drugs and people. It is surrounded by refugee camps and inundated by spies, aid workers, photojournalists and the odd adventurer in search of a quick emotion. Many of the Burmese refugees had fled their homes after the 1988 student demonstrations ended in bloodshed — some were just high-school kids back then, joining the demonstrations in the fervor of youth, and have been paying the price in fear and exile ever since.
Here, slowly and patiently, Mr. Thornton collects the pieces of a complex puzzle, resisting the temptation to reduce the Karen’s struggle to a simplistic, emotional sketch. In this way, while giving a moving portrait of those who have maintained an admirable humanity in spite of the hardships life has thrown them, Mr. Thornton also explores through chilling description how guerrilla warfare has hardened some of its leaders, or how the fight often exerts too heavy a toll, leading its combatants to the allure of a drug-induced oblivion.
One of the biggest challenges Mr. Thornton faced in researching and witnessing this story, however, was in maintaining a disinterested objectivity, or what he calls — quite diplomatically — “the constraints of modern journalism.” Thus, while he is able to gain the unprecedented trust of many activists, medics, villagers and workers, he finds himself at a loss to explain why the suffering of the murdered and maimed is “not news.”
Some of the people Mr. Thornton meets have indeed grown weary of the steady trickle of journalists into the country. Looking for a good story to sell, they would rush in and out, without taking even the minimal precautions of ensuring that their interview and photo subjects will not end up suffering for the access they grant.
What is going on in Burma, Mr. Thornton explains, is a complicated story, one that needs patience and dedication to be understood. It must be verified and retold, and cannot simply be dealt with in a couple of sensationalistic pieces.
Restless Souls, then, is the story of the Karen struggle, but also that of a people who lost everything when they were children, who endured the unthinkable and have become hardened to the constant risk of hunger, death, booby traps and deportation. It is the story of medics who have dedicated their lives to their people’s suffering — such as the renowned and admired Dr. Cynthia Maung (winner of the 2002 Magsaysay Award, Asia’s equivalent to the Nobel Prize, and called by some “Burma’s Mother Theresa”) — and who continue to treat patients under the most testing conditions imaginable.
The book also details how, once in Thailand, some of the refugees still lacking proper status are at the mercy of callous employers who exploit them ruthlessly and without fear of reprisal.
Writes Mr. Thornton: “Arkar asked me if I knew what Burmese workers say when they see smoke over Pro Phra district (south of Mae Sot)? I shook my head and said no. ‘Another Burmese worker is being burned. Thais say it takes three car tires to burn a Burmese. The police don’t care. Migrant workers have fewer rights than street dogs.”
This is a book with a mission. Mr. Thornton incites the world to “take responsibility and force the Burmese regime to release their political prisoners and hand over the country to its people.” By describing what is happening inside northeast Burma and along the Thai border, he has written an account that is eye-opening, urgent and indispensable.