In the café, which has a vibe reminiscent of Rick's Café from the movie Casablanca, just like the land it is located on, a meeting point for refugees, there is a group of young people engrossed in their mobile screens. They are absorbed in videos and images circulating on social media of the apocalyptic scene left by the earthquake in Myanmar. Silence prevails, occasionally interrupted by video calls from worried children to their parents.
We are in a café in Thailand, but here only Burmese is spoken. The present individuals are young people who fled the mandatory military service imposed last year in their home country, which applies to all men between 18 and 35 years old. "We are not going to fight for the military regime that ended our democracy," says Soe Mg, 19, who has considered returning home these days, risking arrest as a deserter, to lend a hand in rescuing earthquake survivors that has already claimed over 2,700 lives.
Soe's family is in a village in central Myanmar, the most devastated area. Last fall, this young man embarked on a journey of escape with eight colleagues who had also received the recruitment letter. "We left all our parents' savings bribing the ethnic guerrillas fighting against the army to let us pass through Karen state, the closest to Thailand, and then crossed the border river at night," he recounts.
Thailand and Myanmar share a 2,400-kilometer-long land border. But since the coup in February 2021, the crossing over the Moei River from the Burmese city of Myawaddy to the Thai Moe Sot has been the chosen route for tens of thousands of refugees fleeing war, as well as torture and persecution by the military dictatorship.
During these years of international lockdown in Myanmar, the reverse journey could sometimes be made with the help of humanitarian groups going to assist the border populations bombed by the army. There have been foreign journalists who crossed embedded with NGOs or paying local militias, mainly funded by methamphetamine trafficking. "The areas hardest hit by the earthquake have been in the central regions of the country, mostly controlled by the military. Now it is impossible to reach there," several humanitarian workers attending to Burmese in Mae Sot, west of Thailand, a place that was long ago engulfed by a large refugee camp, affirm.
On the dry river border, a young soldier named My is stationed. Armed with his assault rifle, he has been patrolling this area for a year. "We also strongly felt the earthquake here, but fortunately there were no serious damages or casualties," he assures. "This border is very dangerous. There are many mafias trafficking people here," he explains, pointing to the other side, where, connected by a well-guarded bridge, is the neighboring Burmese city of Myawaddy, a global center for phone scams run by Chinese mafias.
In an open space on the Thai side of the border, children are kicking a ball and young people are playing volleyball. They are all Burmese refugees. One of them, Waiyuemo, wearing an Atlético de Madrid shirt, says he arrived a year ago fleeing from bombs. Since the 1980s, thousands of humble Burmese families have crossed into Thailand fleeing the fighting between the army and ethnic minority rebel groups fighting for autonomy in their states, settling in the nine refugee camps along the mountainous border. But the recent military coup also pushed well-known Burmese artists, actors, or writers to leave the country, enriching the cultural scene in the dusty cafes of Mae Sot.
There is another café run by a Burmese couple, both musicians, who have a couple of shelters for compatriots fleeing from war. It is one of the many registered shelters occupying entire neighborhoods of the city. "We prefer not to have our name published, it is not safe for us. There are many regime spies here. They pose as refugees, but actually work as informants for the military," the couple asserts.
Although officially, in the Thai registry, the population of Mae Sot does not reach 120,000 inhabitants, several organizations estimate that only from Myanmar we would be talking about hundreds of thousands. Those not in shelters live illegally crowded in makeshift settlements within the city markets. The rest are scattered in refugee camps that many consider prisons they cannot leave.
Thailand, not a signatory to the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees, rejects thousands of asylum applications each year, and many Burmese crossing the border end up in a kind of limbo exploited by the local police, who force them to pay bribes in exchange for not being deported. There is an unwritten agreement that undocumented individuals must pay the agents 300 baht monthly (around eight euros), a significant amount for them, in exchange for a card theoretically serving as a safe conduct to avoid detention.
Upon stepping onto the Thai side, Burmese were usually attended to in health centers managed by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which provides healthcare in refugee camps, but had to halt many activities due to the suspension of aid from its main funder, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), frozen by President Donald Trump at the end of January.
The daily reality of Mae Sot is also affected by the frenetic activity of organized crime in neighboring Myawaddy, leading the refugee city to become one of the major hotspots in the region for cross-border human trafficking. "Here come victims from many corners of Southeast Asia and China who have been lured by false job offers. Upon arrival, the mafias lead their prey to Myawaddy, where they strip them of all documentation and lock them up in phone scam centers turned into prisons," explained Saphasakon Songsukkai, Thailand representative of the international organization World Vision, managing shelters in Mae Sot for rescued victims during raids carried out by the Thai police, under pressure from the Chinese government, on the other side of their border, in Burmese territory.
The Chinese control -and are also the main victims- of these scam centers in collusion with ethnic armed groups operating in the region because this activity helps finance the fight against the Burmese army. "Mae Sot has become a social experiment on the brink where human traffickers, drug traffickers, Burmese refugees, local textile factory workers, humanitarian workers, and foreign backpackers coexist," explains Joy, a Burmese refugee.
In his country, he had a hair salon that was bombed -he doesn't know if by the army or the rebels- a couple of years ago. Joy, very concerned these days about the devastation left by the earthquake, says we barely know a part of the tragedy's reality because many communities near the earthquake's epicenter are isolated.